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Southern Writers Author Spotlight

Books featured in our Southern Writers Author Spotlight draw their inspiration from the culture and customs of the South, a region rich in history and tradition. Themes of race, class, poverty and family are often told in Southern settings with characters that embrace their heritage and pride.

Linda Goodnight, author of The Memory House: A Honey Ridge Novel

Memories of motherhood and marriage are fresh for Julia Presley, though tragedy took away both years ago. Finding comfort in the routine of running the Peach Orchard Inn, she lets the historic, mysterious place fill the voids of love and family. No more pleasure of a man's gentle kiss. No more joy in hearing a child call her Mommy. Life is calm and unchanging…until a stranger with a young boy and soul-deep secrets shows up in her Tennessee town and disrupts the loneliness of her world.

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Wilton Barnhardt, author of Lookaway, Lookaway

Jerene Jarvis Johnston and her husband, Duke, are exemplars of Charlotte, North Carolina’s high society, where old Southern money --- and older Southern secrets --- meet the new wealth of bankers, boom-era speculators, and carpetbagging social climbers. Jerene must prove tireless in preserving the family's legacy, Duke’s fragile honor, and what's left of the dwindling family fortune. But is it too much to ask for one ounce of cooperation from her heedless family?

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Anna Jean Mayhew, author of The Dry Grass of August

On a scorching day in August 1954, 13-year-old Jubie Watts leaves Charlotte, North Carolina, with her family for a Florida vacation. Crammed into the Packard along with Jubie are her three siblings, her mother, and the family's black maid, Mary Luther.

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James Villas, author of Dancing in the Lowcountry

Ella Dubose is a Southern lady of a certain age --- an age at which memories of youth can rush in at every turn and overwhelm the present. But while Ella’s two younger children are concerned for her health and want to limit her independence, Ella --- elegant, unconventional, and unrepentantly willful --- has very different ideas.

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Paula Wall, author of The Wilde Women

Paula Wall, the national bestselling author of THE ROCK ORCHARD, returns with another witty, wise, and romantic tale of two sisters with a talent for seduction and the unfortunate habit of falling for the wrong man every time.

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