Corey Mesler
Queen's Ferry Press
172 pages
$14.95
“This is what a collection of stories should be, rich and varied, playful, daring, poignant and always entertaining. Corey Mesler’s children and adults move about American locales both familiar and exotic and the result is an experience as broad and interesting as life itself.”
— Robert Lopez, author of Kamby Bolongo Mean River and Asunder
Edited by Leah Kaminsky
Vintage
272 pages
$15
“When it was time to hang pictures in our new house in San Antonio, my wife asked me to buy a studfinder. As a husband I demurred; as an internist, I flat-out refused. We internists make it our business to devine the stutters and stumbles of lungs, hearts, brains, adrenals, guts, gonads – hence the term ‘internal medicine.’ Once upon a time, doctors examined patients not with CAT scans of MRIs but with their senses. ‘Surely’ I said, ‘skills that can find pus behind the chest wall can find a stud behind drywall.’”
— excerpt from Abraham Verghese’s “Bedside Manners”
Edited by James R. Veteto and Edward M. Maclin
Vanderbilt University Press
232 pages
$27.95
“The Slaw and the Slow-Cooked has far wider relevance than the Mid-South of its subtitle. Its contributors examine many aspects of America’s oldest Slow Food, from its primeval origins into the age of Twitter and Facebook. They treat their savory subject seriously, but not (thank the Lord) solemnly. You don’t have to be a barbecue nut to enjoy this book, but if you are one, you’ll be in hog heaven.”
— John Shelton Reed, co-author, Holy Smoke: The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue
Tav Falco
Creation
312 pages
$24.95
“This book is the bible of dixie-fried rockabilly psychosis and Memphis beat art underground true crime history myth – read it and scream for hell.”
— Bobby Gillespie, Primal Scream
Barrett Hathcock
Aqueous Books
200 pages
$14
“The ghosts of the Old South are present throughout, even while the main characters’ struggles are distinctively contemporary. It’s all here, the awkwardness of reconnecting with childhood friends, the impossibility of integrating your youth with your adulthood, the longing for home when home is a time and not a place: Hathcock writes haunting, unforgettable stories.”
— Publishers Weekly
Michael Potts
WordCrafts Press
264 pages
$14.99
“A deeply moving and passionate book, Michael Potts’ End of Summer is a poignant literary novel about childhood and memory. This is contemporary Southern fiction at its best. In textured language and with heartfelt attention to detail, Potts’ nuanced portrayal of rural life in southern Appalachia and a young boy’s initial encounter with death reminds us that life at the economic margins can be culturally and spiritually rich, and that even as absences and losses sometimes damage us, these can also strengthen and redeem.”
— Michael Colonnese, Ph.D.
