Southern High

Things are going along okay with Dennis' gig at the Tishomingo Lodge & Casino in Tunica, Mississippi, "the Casino Capital of the South", until the day he looks down from the high-dive platform and witnesses a mob hit, Dixie style.

Another "Backwards Glance" story with a look at the Chambers Academy Graduation class of 1972 who are celebrating their 50th year after high school this summer. We take a look at the beginning days of Chambers Academy in a local motel with sixteen students and four teachers, to where we are today. We remember staff and faculty from our beginning and look at how our class grew up together and became life long friends. Finally, we celebrate where we are today individually and as an educational institution.

Nico Storm and his father, Willem, drive a truck filled with essential supplies through a desolate land. They are among the few in the world, as far as they know, to have survived a devastating virus that has swept over the planet. Their lives turned upside down, Nico realizes that his superb marksmanship and cool head mean he is destined to be his father's protector, even though he is still only a boy.

On a Mississippi morning in 1859, Emily Matthews begs her father to save a slave, Nathan, about to be auctioned away from his family. Judge Matthews is an abolitionist who runs an illegal school for his slaves, hoping to eventually set them free. One, a woman named Ginny, has become Emily's companion and often her conscience - and understands all too well the hazards an educated slave must face. Yet even Ginny could not predict the tangled, tragic string of events set in motion as Nathan's family arrives at the Matthews farm.

After her student was murdered for his grandfather's 1885 diary, a Professor of Archeology works with a Texas Ranger to find the killer and recover gold from a lost mine. They have a copy of the diary given to her by the deceased student. Their quest is complicated by the cryptic nature of the diary and the changes in the referenced landmarks since 1885.

In the charming little town of Heartsboro— rumored to be the birthplace of Cupid— Valentine’s Day is more than candy hearts and roses; it’s a tradition. Every year, the Valentine’s Ball draws hopeful singles to its twinkling dance floor, all chasing the promise of true love. The town buzzes with excitement as whispers of Cupid’s annual appearance ignite imaginations and stir hearts. But Liz Blackstone isn’t buying it. Back in Heartsboro for her twentieth high school homecoming, Liz has no patience for childhood myths or whimsical beliefs. Her former high school boyfriend feels...

They are buddies, not sweethearts. In this sweet Southern love story, the job of an airline stewardess beckons Joyce Williams with its offer of travel and mobility. She would return to her hometown in East Tennessee only if her best friend Wayne Mahan lived there instead of in Nashville. Then she receives an invitation to their ten-year high school reunion. Wayne Mahan has always loved his next-door neighbor, Joyce Williams. Because they both cherish their best friend status, Wayne has never mentioned his feelings to Joyce. When he receives his invitation to their ten-year high school ...

In 1979 the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith withdrew Hans Kung's missio canonica. Pope Paul VI approved the censure saying, "We are obligated to declare that in his writings he fell short of integrity and the truth of the Catholic faith." Through a 1980 agreement with the Vatican, Kung is now permitted to teach, but only under secular auspices. In this acclaimed Modern Library Chronicle, Kung examines the Catholic Church through its many reformations, focusing on the people and events...

A book that strikes at the heart of the recent flare-ups over Confederate symbols in Charlottesville, New Orleans, and elsewhere, Denmark Vesey's Garden reveals the deep roots of these controversies and traces them to the heart of slavery in the United States: Charleston, South Carolina, where almost half of the US slave population stepped onto our shores, where the first shot at Fort Sumter began the Civil War, and where Dylann Roof shot nine people at Emanuel A.M.E. Church, the congregation of Denmark Vesey, a black revolutionary who plotted a massive slave insurrection.

The Powell brothers - Muir and Moody - are as different as Cain and Abel. Muir is an innocent, a shy young man with big dreams. Moody, the older and wilder brother - embittered by the death of his father, by years of fighting his mother, and by his jealousy of Muir's place in the family - takes to moonshine and gambling and turns his anger on his brother. Muir escapes by wandering, making his way around the country in attempts to find something - an occupation, a calling - to match his ambition.

THE HIJACKING OF THE CRUISE SHIP OCEAN PEARL SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE WITHOUT THE SHEDDING OF BLOOD. It should have been done without the death and destruction which they had experienced in Afghanistan, in East Timor, and in Iraq. But once begun, once the ship had been taken, death and destruction followed as it had done before. The ten former serving members of the Australian Army had all been bored, some in low-paying jobs, others unemployed. And so the subject had been tossed around until they had decided to proceed with Jazza’s idle suggestion that they should hijack a cruise ship for ...

A livewire debut from Dantiel W. Moniz, one of the most exciting discoveries in today's literary landscape, Milk Blood Heat depicts the sultry lives of Floridians in intergenerational tales that contemplate human connection, race, womanhood, inheritance, and the elemental darkness in us all. Set among the cities and suburbs of Florida, each story delves into the ordinary worlds of young girls, women, and men who find themselves confronted by extraordinary moments of violent personal reckoning.

Rescue Agent Ryland Stark has traveled all over the world with the Wild Animal Protection Agency, but a part of his heart has always remained in his hometown of Ferriday, Louisiana. When the animals in the bayou are in jeopardy due to exotic animal traders, he knows he needs to protect the place he loves. What he doesn’t expect is to end up working with his high school sweetheart in the process. Josette Trudeau never really got over her first boyfriend, even though he took off for the Army when he was eighteen and never looked back. She’s dated, but no one ever measured up to the nearly...

On a bright June day in 1965, a dozen girls - classmates at a Blue Ridge women's college - launch a ramshackle raft on a trip down the Mississippi. Their journey, inspired by Huckleberry Finn, is duly reported in the Paducah, Kentucky newspaper. 35 years later, four of the "girls" reunite to cruise the river again. This time, it's on the luxury steamboat The Belle of Natchez. This time, when they reach New Orleans, they'll give the River the ashes of a fifth rafter: Margaret ("Baby") Ballou.

A powerfully built man more than six feet tall, Amundsen’s career of adventure began at the age of fifteen (he was born in Norway in 1872 to a family of merchant sea captains and rich ship owners); twenty-five years later he was the first man to reach both the North and South Poles. Lynne Cox, adventurer and swimmer, author of Swimming to Antarctica (“gripping”—Sports Illustrated) and Grayson (“wondrous, and unforgettable”—Carl Hiaasen), gives us in South with the Sun a full-scale account of the explorer’s life and expeditions.

Ambientada en Carolina del Sur en 1964, La vida secreta de las abejas es la historia de Lily Owens, cuya vida ha sido formada alrededor del recuerdo confuso de la tarde en que su madre fue asesinada. Esta es una novela notable sobre el poder divino femenino, una historia que las mujeres compartiran y pasaran a sus hijas por generaciones.

Set against the backdrop of the both optimistic and violent 1950s and 1960s, Affections traces the Ertls's slow and inevitable breakdown through the various erratic trajectories of each family member: Hans's undertakings of colossal, foolhardy projects and his subsequent spectacular failures; his daughter Monika, heir to his adventurous spirit, who joins the Bolivian Marxist guerrillas and becomes known as "Che Guevara's avenger"; and his wife and two younger sisters left to pick up the pieces in their wake.

The Confederate States of America was born in defense of slavery. Between Fort Sumter to Appomattox, Confederates bought and sold thousands African American men, women, and children. These transactions in humanity made the internal slave trade a cornerstone of Confederate society, a bulwark of the Rebel economy, and a central part of the experience of the Civil War for all inhabiting the American South.

In a suburban LA neighborhood, neighbors keep wary distance and at times collide, propelled by desire, fury, and mischief. Precocious Korean-American sisters Mira and Rosemary find their world rocked by a suicide; a charismatic and creepy drama teacher grooms his students; an aging gay horror novelist fights loneliness; and a white mother and her adopted Vietnamese daughter deal with lifelong anger issues.

Here's a sly, dry, hilarious collection of essays, his first in more than 10 years, from the writer who, according to The New York Times Book Review, is "in serious contention for the title of America's most cherished humorist". This time Blount focuses on his own dueling loyalties across the great American divide, North vs. South.