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Week of February 23, 2018
The Commonplace Book | Read This! | The List | Trailer Park | Okra Picks | Southern Indie Bestsellers | Events |
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In which her ladyship, the editor, makes the most of being trapped in a hotel room at the airport, a teacher discovers that some of her students do not know what an imaginary friend is (she rectifies the situation with books by William Joyce), and Ms. Linda Howard chases cows to "stay real." |
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Her ladyship, the editor, finds herself this warm afternoon trapped in an hotel suite at the Atlanta airport -- one of the periodic travels and travails that comes with working in the book industry. There is little to do but listen to the traffic (both overhead and below her window) and to read. Fortunately, because she works in the book industry, her ladyship is at this hotel to meet with book people -- with booksellers, and authors, and media -- so finding something to read is not an issue.  In her hands right now are two novels which, even when opened to random pages, gave her ladyship a sort of internal shiver. One was Anthony Grooms' novel The Vain Conservation, which will be released next week -- it is inspired by an account of a man who witnessed a lynching as a boy, and it took over forty years before he could come forward to talk about it.
But what if you discovered that the family stories you grew up with weren't the whole story? What if you realized that "history" was missing a huge piece of the truth? A discovery like that is what drove Gwin to write her novel. She says she ". . .had a responsibility to this story" It may be the first time the whole story of the Tupelo tornado has been told.
Read Independently! And shop local.
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Lady Banks' Pick of the Week |
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Noteworthy poetry and prose from her ladyship's bedside reading stack. |
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8 P.M. Too still out there. Dark coming on and no birds singing good night lady. No squirrels rummaging for last year's acorns under the big oak out front. The sky bruised, yellow and green with streaks of plum. Peculiar smell in the air too: sour, vinegary. Downright peculiar. She knew it but couldn't place it. Something to eat, maybe? But what? Now the wind kicked up in wicked little bursts. Rain or worse. Maybe hail. And there it all was, an entire day's work, flapping on the line like some big white fell-from-the-sky bird: the McNabb wash. Sheets, towels, underwear, diapers, what have you. One sheet wrapped around the line, snagged. The Judge's upside-down dress shirts white as the driven snow, that much less skin on her knuckles. Her fingertips still burned, slick from the bleach. She stood on her tiptoes and peered out the open window over the kitchen sink. Her neck rose in cords above the buttoned collar of her wash dress, which was pocked with pulls and stains and gaping where the button under her breasts had long since popped off and been lost. She wiped her hands down the sides of her dress to dry them and touched her head the way she used to do when she was little and her people got around the table and started telling about how she came into the world with a little cap of hair that looked for all the world like the feathers of a baby bird. She'd had trouble catching her first few breaths and so was a grayish color when her father first saw her. He called her his Dovey, insisted on the name. Her mother had sat straight up in bed, labor sweat still wet on her face. Naming her firstborn after a bird? What you going to name the next one, she'd asked. Pigeon? Crow? Minrose Gwin, Promise (William Morrow, 2018) 9780062471710 top | share this |
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" We've always believed that the Regulator was a very special place, and it was fantastic to see how many of you agreed! " keep reading: Regulator Bookshop's new owners take over March 1
keep reading: Linda Howard, Queen of Romantic Suspense |
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Read This! Books with Street Cred Recommended reading from Southern Indie Booksellers |
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Look for Her by Emily Winslow ($15.99*, William Morrow & Company), recommended by Fiction Addiction, Greenville, SC.
The Queen of Hearts by Kimmery Martin ($26.00*, Berkley Books), recommended by Bookmarks, Winston-Salem, NC.
Sadness Is a White Bird by Moriel Rothman-Zecher ($26.00*, Atria Books), recommended by Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh, NC.
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keep reading: Tayari Jones gets to the heart of things. "To me, a novel is about a question. It's about ambiguity " keep reading: Tayari Jones is redefining the Southern novel
keep reading: The annual Page-Turner Luncheon
keep reading: Maroons, swamps, freedom
keep reading: Six books to help young children's vocabulary
keep reading: To Kill a Mockingbird coming to Broadway
keep reading: A novel transformation
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The List: Jihye's Staff Picks, from The Writers Block Bookstore, Winter Park, Florida |
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Jihye was born in Korea. She moved to Winter Park to attend Rollins College. She is, currently, a Political Science major. Currently. When she isn't working and going to class she screams, and watches movies. She lives with two cats and a mom.
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"I felt this sense that I had a responsibility to this story. . .This was my town, this was my story."
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A few minutes after 9 p.m. on Palm Sunday, April 5, 1936, a massive funnel cloud flashing a giant fireball and roaring like a run-away train careened into the thriving cotton-mill town of Tupelo, in northeastern Mississippi. Measured as an F5—the highest on the Fujita scale—the tornado killed more than 200 people, not counting an unknown number of black citizens, one-third of Tupelo's population, who were not included in the official casualty figures. When the tornado hits, Dovey, a local laundress, is flung by the terrifying winds into a nearby lake. Bruised and nearly drowned, she makes her way across Tupelo to find her small family—her hard-working husband, Virgil, her clever sixteen-year-old granddaughter, Dreama, and Promise, Dreama's beautiful light-skinned three-month-old son. Slowly navigating the broken streets of Tupelo, Dovey stops at the house of the despised McNabb family. Dovey hates Judge Mort NcNabb, a powerful man who cannot control his eldest son, a violent and sadistic youth who has left his mark on her own family, linking their fates. Inside, she discovers that the tornado has spared no one. The mother, Alice, a schoolteacher, is severely injured. The shell-shocked judge has gone to look for baby Tommy, blown from Alice's arms. And Jo, the McNabbs' dutiful teenage daughter, has suffered a terrible head wound. When Jo later discovers a baby in the wreckage, she is certain that she's found her baby brother, Tommy, and vows to protect him. During the harrowing hours and days of the chaos that follows, Jo and Dovey will struggle to navigate a landscape of disaster and battle both the demons and the history that link and haunt them. Drawing on historical events, Minrose Gwin beautifully imagines natural and human destruction in the deep South of the 1930s through the experiences of two remarkable women whose lives are indelibly connected by forces beyond their control. A story of loss, hope, despair, grit, courage, and race, Promise reminds us of the transformative power and promise that comes from confronting our most troubled relations with one another. Promise by Minrose Gwin | William Morrow | 9780062471710
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For the week ending February 81. Books on the Southern Indie Bestseller List that are southern in nature or have been recently recommended by southern indie booksellers.  The Southern Book Prize |  A SIBA Okra Pick |  Special to the Southern List Printable versions (PDF): Hardcover | Paperback | Children's
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Special to the Southern List     |
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What's happening at Southern Indies across the South? See the full calendar | Find a Southern Indie Bookstore near you. |
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Julio Capó Jr. (author appearance) Paul Goldberg Booksigning (author appearance) Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower (author appearance) Maude Schuyler Clay (author appearance) Charleston Author Series Luncheon with Peter Zheutlin - Rescued (author appearance) Ann Marie Sorrell (author appearance) Cheryl Mattox Berry (author appearance) John Dufresne Booksigning (author appearance) Meet Author Peter Rush (author appearance) Brittney Cooper in conversation with Nsenga Burton: ELOQUENT RAGE (author appearance) Johnette Downing and Heather Stanley - MADEMOISELLE GRANDS DOIGTS (author appearance) Hidden History of Jackson by Josh Foreman and Ryan Starrett (author appearance) Mr. Honeycut by Lottie Brent Boggan (author appearance) Bart Ehrman – The Triumph of Christianity (author appearance) Steve Cavanagh – The Plea (author appearance) Children's Author Event: Kathryn Sherry - Charlotte (author appearance) Book Signing with John Bloodworth (author appearance) Author event with David Frum, author of Trumpocracy (author appearance) Eleanor Davis: WHY ART? (author appearance) Amber Smith: Book Talk and Letter Writing (author appearance) TWO HOOTS PRESS presents MY MOUNTAINS, MY PEOPLE by JOHN PARRIS (author appearance) Author Event: Paula Lasso - What Are You Waiting For (author appearance) Michael McFee - We Were Once Here and Appointed Rounds (author appearance) Author event with Elizabeth Caldwell and Carol Wehrheim, authors of Growing in God's Love: A Story Bible (author appearance) Tim Dorsey, The Pope of Palm Beach (author appearance) An American Marriage by Tayari Jones (author appearance) Steve Cavanagh with THE PLEA (author appearance) GWEN DIEHN presents ON DRAWING TEN THOUSAND THINGS (author appearance) Surviving the Age of Trump: A Conversation about Leadership and Legacy of George H. W. Bush (author appearance) Robert McCammon - The Listener (author appearance) Ellen Friedman (author appearance) Tim Dorsey (author appearance) Donna Everhart with THE ROAD TO BITTERSWEET (author appearance) Radley Balko & Tucker Carrington with THE CADAVER KING AND THE COUNTRY DENTIST (author appearance) Steve Cavanagh with THE PLEA (author appearance) Perennials by Julie Cantrell (author appearance) Tayari Jones with AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE (author appearance) John Kessel discusses his novel Pride and Prometheus (author appearance) THOMAS MIRA Y LOPEZ presents THE BOOK OF RESTING PLACES: A PERSONAL HISTORY OF WHERE WE LAY THE DEAD in conversation with ROSS WHITE (author appearance) John Hart, Hush (author appearance) Author event with Perre Coleman Magness, author of The Southern Sympathy Cookbook (author appearance) The Bookaholics book group will discuss My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry (book club) Tim Dorsey (author appearance) The Great Florida Invasion: From Pepper to Pythons Presented by Author Charles Sobczak (author appearance) The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist by Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington (author appearance) Minrose Gwin & J.D. Wilkes on Thacker Mountain Radio (author appearance) David Collins discusses his book Accidental Activists: Mark Phariss, Vic Holmes, and Their Fight for Marriage Equality in Texas (author appearance) Author Event: Cinda Williams Chima - Shadowcaster (author appearance) John Hart - The Hush (author appearance) Laura Leigh Morris Launch Party (author appearance) Standing at the Edge with William Alan Webb (author appearance) Mark Greaney with "Agent in Place" (author appearance) Minrose Gwin's Promise (author appearance) 4 on 4th Local Author Event (author appearance) |
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Authors Round the South | www.authorsroundthesouth.com
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A beautiful young girl disappears on her way to school. Years later her body is found but the murderer is never caught. Morris Kaufmann is now a cold case inspector and when DNA is finally recovered from the clothes of the young girl he thinks he is well on his way to making a huge name for himself, as the abduction and murder of Annalise Wood received much notoriety at the time of the abduction and years later when the body was found. He seeks help from his old partner, Chloe, and they soon discover that the one thing they thought they knew – that the body was that of Annalise - is now in question. Look For Her is a terrific psychological thriller with many twists and turns. The sensationalization of the abduction and murder affected many people as did the lies told by those close to Annaliese. It is up to Morris and Chloe to figure out who was buried in Annalise's clothes and who murdered her, and how two unrelated patients of a local psychiatrist, both of whom were obsessed with Annalise, might be involved in the case.
In the aftermath of a devastating tornado that rips through the town of Tupelo, Mississippi at the height of the Great Depression, two women worlds apart—one black, one white; one a great-grandmother, the other a teenager—fight for their families' survival in this lyrical and powerful novel with the emotional power of the works of Jesmyn Ward, Christina Baker Kline, Jayne Anne Phillips, Sue Monk Kidd, and Tom Franklin
| 02/27/2018, 12:00 pm | Lady Banks is sponsored by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance, in support of independent bookstores in the South | SIBA | 51 Pleasant Ridge Dr.| Asheville, NC 28805
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Oh yeah, John, you have a winner here! The Hush continues the story of Johnny Merriman that began in The Last Child. Now, 12 years later, he's trying to save the land he has inherited and strange things are occurring. A bit of a change of pace from his previous books, The Hush kept me up all might and I can't wait to talk to people about it.
While most people will not be willing to go to the frugality extremes of the Thames family, this inspiring memoir should jolt everyone out of their normal spending practices for a second and encourage us to examine if our spending really brings us happiness or is instead covering up a deeper issue that should be addressed.
I'm a child of the South, and more specifically, a child of the river. Growing up in Rowan County, my family had 472 acres where the Yadkin spilled into the headwaters of High Rock Lake. It was a beautiful property, its borders unchanged since Cornwallis camped on it during the Revolutionary War. I've not stood on that land in three decades, but I remember the fields and woods like I'd walked them yesterday. I can close my eyes even now and feel the breeze that rose off the river. I remember the cattle, the deer, the stutter of quail and the smell of black snake on my hands. We lived in the city, but spent long days on the farm. We had horses and dirt bikes and outbuildings as old as the county, itself. For two miles our property followed the water. That meant coves and driftwood and arrowheads in the sand. For a boy like me it was paradise.
Life on the river was a special gift, and there was a song I learned early: the call of a fox in the night, of bullfrogs and owl and the blow of a startled deer. For a handful of years it was the rhythm of my childhood, to wake in the gray light and fall asleep with fireflies in the trees. And all the while there was the river, the slow, muddy brown and all the wonderful things it carried - not just the fish and the otter, but the blue-glass bottles, half-buried, the boaters and the fowl and the silver wood stacked everywhere the water bent. Childhood on the Yadkin was an adventure, and the river cut a channel right through me. I write about it in my books; it touches most every story. My second novel, DOWN RIVER, is an unabashed testament to the river, and to the power of memory.
Zelie is a girl with magic in her blood, in a land where magic has been destroyed and outlawed by the cruel king. When she accidentally rescues the princess and the prince/captain of the guard comes after her, Zelie goes on the run with her brother and the princess, discovering that she has been chosen by the gods to bring magic back to the world. But before she can defeat the king and save her people, Zelie must face her own powers and what this mission might cost her and the people she loves. With rich world building and fantastic mythology, readers of Leigh Bardugo's Grisha trilogy will love this book.
A beautiful baking cookbook of 100 recipes for the delicious cakes that made Daisy Cakes a huge success story of ABC's Shark Tank, plus cookies, pies, cobblers, and more—with 60 photographs evoking a sense of nostalgia for making your own family recipes.
Oh my! Such lovely poetic writing that detail such difficult times! Ruth is surviving in a household of chaos and illness and she paints the reality of an extremely painful situation as her husband, Simon, suffers from ALS and is immobile. Although she lives with caregivers who are in her house constantly and 5 children who have had to deal with a Dadda who can't play with them, she has managed to find meaning and love in her life full of sadness and loss. This she does because she has many friends who love her and children who bring her joy. It is an amazing memoir! I loved her rambling style of writing which is so reflective of her chaotic life but so expressive! That she finds joy in the midst of her suffering makes me grateful for all that I have. A must read!
If you like stories set in South Africa well you need to check out Jassy MacKenzie. This contemporary series casts a gimlet eye on a society of such disconcerting contradictory opposites that I'd rather travel there vicariously than go in person. Good stuff!
The Proclamation Crew's Brunswick Stew -- and the attendant history of the dish --is one of the recipes included in Molly O'Neill's cookbook One Big Table, one of her ladyship, the editor's most-loved and most-used cookbooks in her kitchen. So loved and used, in fact, that the pages containing her favorite recipes have long since come loose and are now held in place by paper clips, the book itself held together with twine when not in use. Several years ago, her ladyship purchased a back up copy, just in case the originals fell to pieces beyond repair.
Andrea Bobotis was born and raised in South Carolina and received her PhD in English Literature from the University of Virginia. Her fiction has received awards from the Raymond Carver Short Story Contest and the James Jones First Novel Fellowship, and her essays on Irish writers have appeared in journals such as Victorian Studies and the Irish University Review. She lives with her family in Denver, Colorado, where she teaches creative writing at Lighthouse Writers Workshop. The Last List of Miss Judith Kratt is her debut novel.
One of the things her ladyship, the editor, does miss from her days working in a bookstore is the store displays. The displays are one of the places where the ostre staff really get to express themselves.
When her ladyship, the editor, sat down to write her letter for this week's newsletter, she began with "Another beloved Southern voice has fallen silent..."
Outside her ladyship, the editor's library window, the season has changed. Her ladyship has watched the signs: The first hard frost has killed the late morning glories, which were lavender-blue the previous evening, and have crumpled, sodden, in the cold wet morning. The painted buntings that graced her ladyship's feeder right through a warm October have disappeared and left the field to the chickadees, cardinals, and Carolina wrens. There are apples, oranges and pomegranates in bowls on the table instead of the peaches and blueberries she is never without in the summer. There is a large pot of vegetable soup simmering on the stove and her ladyship no longer leaves her bedroom window open at night, even though she likes to listen to the owls.
There is a rather delightfully addictive quality to family trees. Not that one expects to find anybody famous (highly unlikely) or "royal" (certainly not, her ladyship's antecedents were Mennonite farmers). But there is something rather fantastic in discovering that one's great-great grand uncle was a grocer in Pennsylvania, or that a great-great grandfather spent a year or so in Brooklyn as a librarian.
