Southern Fiction Family

This profound portrait of family life takes listeners inside the hearts and minds of members of the Quick family, whose raw-edged emotions are stirred up by a visit home. An inexplicably violent death and painful confrontations leave every family member forever changed. Rich in insight and psychological entanglements, A Southern Family is a masterful tale of anger and pain, of love and hatred, and ultimately of healing, understanding, and wisdom.

"I'm no one's idea of a savior, Jailbait." Creed Hayes wasn't looking for redemption or a happily ever after, and he sure as hell wasn't looking to save a girl that tempted him beyond all reason. Sloan Spencer was trouble with a capital T. Too young, too innocent, and too damn beautiful. She was also alone and damn near defenseless except for the kitten claws she somehow thought would save her. Taking her home to the club is a cluster waiting to happen, I know it, and she knows it, but I can't stop myself.

For twelve-year-old Martha "Sonny" Creech, there is no place more beautiful than her family's cotton farm. She, her two brothers, and her parents work hard on their land - hoeing, planting, picking - but only Sonny loves the rich, dark earth the way her father does. When a tragic accident claims his life, her stricken family struggles to fend off ruin - until their rich, reclusive neighbor offers to help finance that year's cotton crop.

Lee Smith is one of today's most critically acclaimed authors writing about contemporary life in the South. In Family Linen, with a remarkable economy of description and dialogue, Smith sketches eccentric, yet familiar characters moving through a family drama that resonates with both tension and humor.

Twenty-one-year-old Skye Willis lives in Eufaula, Alabama, a tourist mecca of stately homes and world-class bass fishing. Skye's grandmother, Verna, insists on being called "Sparrow" because she suspects her ancestors were Muscogee Creek. Skye has no idea what to do with her life. Nor does she know much of anything about her father, who died in Afghanistan when she was a toddler. But when Sparrow sets out to confirm her Creek ancestry through genetic testing, Skye joins in. The results hit like a DNA bomb, launching them both on a path filled with surprises and life-changing events.

Michael Vargas is living the life of a celebrity architect when his world collapses. He walks away from the glamorous career of the star architect and begins a quest that will take him 23 years back in time. The challenge his mentor presented at the time is beckoning Michael back to the South - his home, a place he loved and hated.

In 1961 Charlotte, North Carolina, the predominantly black neighborhood of Brooklyn is a bustling city within a city. Self-contained and vibrant, it has its own restaurants, schools, theaters, churches, and night clubs. There are shotgun shacks and poverty, along with well-maintained houses like the one Loraylee Hawkins shares with her young son, Hawk, her Uncle Ray, and her grandmother, Bibi. Loraylee's love for Archibald Griffin, Hawk's white father and manager of the cafeteria where she works, must be kept secret in the segregated South.

Eve Mann arrives in Ideal, Georgia, in 1972 looking for answers about the mother who died giving her life. A mother named Mercy. A mother who for all of Eve’s 22 years has been a mystery and a quest. Eve’s search for her mother, and the father she never knew, is a mission to discover her identity, her name, her people, and her home. Eve’s questions and longing launch a multigenerational story that sprawls back to the turn of the 20th century.

She’s 43 years old…and starting over from scratch. How did this happen? She had it all together. A stable marriage of two decades. Two grown daughters. And now she and her husband, empty nesters, were moving to a beach house. Until he showed up late one night and tore their marriage apart. A secret life. A different woman. Another family. Left alone, she has to begin again. And then her estranged sister and mother get thrown into the mix. When she buys a house on a small South Carolina island, will she learn what life is really about?

Jo-Lynn Hunter is at a crossroads in life when her great-aunt Stella insists that she return home to restore the old family house in sleepy Cottonwood, Georgia. Seeing the project as the perfect excuse for some therapeutic time away from her self-absorbed husband and his snobby Atlanta friends, Jo-Lynn longs to get her teeth into a noteworthy and satisfying project. But things are not what they seem, both in the house and within the complex history of her family.

Lex fled Memphis years ago, making ends meet with odd jobs teaching English around the world. She only returns when she has no choice, when her godmother presents her with a bargain she can't refuse. Lex has never understood her mother, who died tragically right before Lex's college graduation, but now she's got a chance to read her journals, to try and figure out what sent her mother spiraling all those years ago.

The Goode-Brown family, led by matriarch and pillar of the community Minnie Mae, is plagued by old secrets and embarrassment over mental illness and illegitimacy. Meanwhile, single mother Francine Clark is haunted by her dead, lightning-struck husband and forced to fight against both the moral judgment of the community and her own rebellious daughter, Mona. The residents of Opulence struggle with vexing relationships to the land, to one another, and to their own sexuality.

Fifteen years ago, a family member stole the money Hunt Knox had saved for college, while three of his siblings and his father hid the truth and told him to get over it. Betrayed by their lies and thievery, Hunt joined the army and wound up flying Apache helicopters in Iraq. Now, he's a chopper pilot for an oil company in Houston, Texas; his father has been dead for six years; and he's finally returning home to Blessings at his mother's dying request.

In this riveting continuation of the Brisco family saga, brothers Dub and Tim strive to persevere against their early 1900s post-slavery beginnings—clashing with their history of family trauma and their different coping mechanisms for living in a world that doesn’t accept them. While Dub becomes a respected coal miner and finds prosperity for his family, Tim continues a slow descent into a fog of psychosis, alcoholism, and perpetual joblessness—forced to live an isolated existence on Dub’s property despite his desire for deeper connection.

This story of a young woman's confrontation with death and her past is a poetic study of human relations.

Now that attorney Jason Rich has returned home to Guntersville, Alabama, the “In an accident? Get rich!” lawyer is anxious to leave his checkered past behind. Jason hopes this next chapter in his life will be a chance to confront his personal troubles while making amends with his family. But when a former high school football star stands accused of killing a police officer, Jason is unwillingly thrust into the chaos.

Returning home to Ditto, Texas, is bittersweet for Lila Matthews. Her dear and feisty aunt Gracie has passed away, leaving Lila her estate. That includes a centuries-old house, a field of the freshest strawberries in Atascosa County, more money than Lila can count, and a secret Aunt Gracie took to her grave. All the angels in heaven won’t be able to pry it out of her.

Since childhood, identical twins Leona and Fiona Dunbar have been getting in—and out—of trouble by pretending to be each other. Yet underneath, they couldn’t be more different. Outspoken Leona lives to break rules, have a good time, and scandalize their respectable hometown of Lexington. Fiona is a seemingly demure churchgoing girl who is the apple of her domineering, widowed mother Mavis’s eye. But together, the twins have fooled teachers, boyfriends, bosses, racist police—and most importantly, straitlaced Mavis.

The recipe for forgiveness begins with an open heart and a full belly. Sisters Rose Tillman and her sister Marvina Nash haven't spoken in decades—not since Rose sent Marvina $40 to register their business and Marvina used that money for her own personal purposes. Now retired, Rose wants to open the restaurant they'd once dreamed of. But, to her horror, Rose realizes she's forgotten their mother's secret spice mix recipe, known to only one other person in the world.

At thirty-two, Jillian Parrish finally finds the courage to put herself in the driver’s seat of her life. Pregnant and recently divorced, she and her seven-year-old daughter find refuge and solace on Pawleys Island, South Carolina—Jillian’s only source of happy childhood memories. Summers spent at her grandmother’s beach house had been Jillian’s sanctuary from indifferent parents—until her best friend Lauren Mills disappeared, never to be found.