Features

Summer Reading 2013

Summer is here! At Bookreporter.com, this means it's time for us to share some great summer book picks with our Summer Reading Feature. While our series of 24-hour contests have ended, we encourage you to take a look at our 21 featured titles for some sizzling summer reading ideas.

» Click here to see the winners of our Summer Reading contests.

Whistling Past the Graveyard by Susan Crandall

From an award-winning author comes a wise and tender coming-of-age story about a nine-year-old girl who runs away from her Mississippi home in 1963, befriends a lonely woman suffering loss and abuse, and embarks on a life-changing road trip.

- Click here to read more about the book and enter to win an early reader edition.

Whistling Past the Graveyard by Susan Crandall

July 2013

Set in the summer of 1963 (hard to believe that was 50 years ago) during a pivotal time in the civil rights movement, WHISTLING PAST THE GRAVEYARD by Susan Crandall tells the story of those turbulent times through the eyes of nine-year-old Starla Claudelle. Starla runs away from home to find her mother, who deserted her and her father years ago, as she pined for a career as a country music singer. Starla is hellbent on getting to Nashville, the last place she has known her mother to be, where she is sure her mother is a country music star.

End-of-the-Year Contest 2013

Congratulations to the winners of our 2013 End-of-the-Year Contest! One Grand Prize winner received all 36 of Carol Fitzgerald's Bookreporter.com Bets On picks from 2013, while 36 others won a copy of one of these titles. You can see all the winners below, along with 2013's Bets On selections.

Week of February 3, 2014

Releases for the week of February 3rd include SEE NOW THEN, Jamaica Kincaid's first novel in 10 years; Bill Cheng's SOUTHERN CROSS THE DOG, a debut in which the bonds between three childhood friends are upended by the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927; and WHISTLING PAST THE GRAVEYARD by Susan Crandall, a coming-of-age story about a nine-year-old girl who runs away from her Mississippi home in 1963, befriends a lonely woman suffering loss and abuse, and embarks on a life-changing road trip.

Susan Crandall, author of Whistling Past the Graveyard

Susan Crandall’s latest novel takes place in the summer of 1963 and introduces readers to nine-year-old Starla Claudelle, who runs away from home to be with her mother in Nashville and is offered a ride by a black woman who is traveling with a white baby. As the two unlikely companions make their long and sometimes dangerous journey, Starla’s eyes are opened to the harsh realities of 1963 southern segregation.

You are here:

Features

Susan Crandall

Find a Book