Books about Southern from Amazon.com

Author Barbara Kingsolver and her family abandoned the industrial-food pipeline to live a rural life—vowing that, for one year, they'd only buy food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is an enthralling narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat.

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Sookie Stackhouse is just a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. Until the vampire of her dreams walks into her life-and one of her coworkers checks out....

Maybe having a vampire for a boyfriend isn't such a bright idea.

A fun, fast, funny, and wonderfully intriguing blend of vampire and mystery that's hard to put down, and should not be missed. (Susan Sizemore)

Praise for Charlaine Harris:

Harris writes neatly and with assurance. (New York Times Book Review)

An author of rare talents. (Publishers Weekly).
Price: $4.14 [Notify me when price goes down.]

When a vampire asks Sookie Stackhouse to use her telepathic skills to find another missing vampire, she agrees under one condition: the bloodsuckers must promise to let the humans go unharmed..
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Sookie's boyfriend has been very distant-in another state, distant Now she's off to Mississippi to mingle with the underworld at Club Dead-a little haunt where the vampire elite go to chill out. But when she finally finds Bill-caught in an act of betrayal-she's not sure whether to save him...or sharpen some stakes..
Price: $3.98 [Notify me when price goes down.]

She’s adored by fans as one of country music’s top stars, but among family and friends, Trisha Yearwood is best known for another talent: cooking

Throughout her life–from her humble roots in Georgia to her triumphant recording years in Nashville and a fulfilling married life with husand Garth Brooks in Oklahoma–Trisha has always enjoyed feeding those she loves. Now she dishes up a collection of more than 120 of her go-to recipes in a tribute to both home-grown cooking and family traditions.

Trisha believes a recipe always tastes better when it has a memory attached to it. Here, she teams up with her mother and sister to share their family’s best-loved recipes. This is the kind of classic comfort food you’ll want at the heart of your own family’s mealtime memories. Inside is a full menu of Southern fare with a contemporary twist. But you don’t have to be a Southerner to enjoy Yearwood family favorites such as:

Trisha’s Chicken Tortilla Soup
Gwen’s Fried Chicken with Milk Gravy
Stuffed Pork Chops
Breakfast Sausage Casserole
Blackberry Cobbler
Banana Pudding

Along with the recipes for inviting soups, textural salads, home-style family entrées, colorful side dishes, and irresistible desserts, Trisha shares everything from charming personal anecdotes to practical advice, time-saving tips, and creative ingredient substitutions to accommodate all tastes.

With full-color photographs taken in and around Trisha’s homes and a foreword by Garth Brooks, this soul-warming slice of Southern life will delight country music fans and home cooks alike. Best of all, this is un-pretentious food that is easy to put together, satisfies even big country appetites, and tastes like home. Trisha’s warm evocations of pre-paring food for loved ones will transport you back to your own childhood. These are recipes you’ll enjoy with your family for years to come..
Price: $16.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.... When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident I maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before that. He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out."

Set in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird follows three years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finch, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus--three years punctuated by the arrest and eventual trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman. Though her story explores big themes, Harper Lee chooses to tell it through the eyes of a child. The result is a tough and tender novel of race, class, justice, and the pain of growing up.

Like the slow-moving occupants of her fictional town, Lee takes her time getting to the heart of her tale; we first meet the Finches the summer before Scout's first year at school. She, her brother, and Dill Harris, a boy who spends the summers with his aunt in Maycomb, while away the hours reenacting scenes from Dracula and plotting ways to get a peek at the town bogeyman, Boo Radley. At first the circumstances surrounding the alleged rape of Mayella Ewell, the daughter of a drunk and violent white farmer, barely penetrate the children's consciousness. Then Atticus is called on to defend the accused, Tom Robinson, and soon Scout and Jem find themselves caught up in events beyond their understanding. During the trial, the town exhibits its ugly side, but Lee offers plenty of counterbalance as well--in the struggle of an elderly woman to overcome her morphine habit before she dies; in the heroism of Atticus Finch, standing up for what he knows is right; and finally in Scout's hard-won understanding that most people are essentially kind "when you really see them." By turns funny, wise, and heartbreaking, To Kill a Mockingbird is one classic that continues to speak to new generations, and deserves to be reread often. --Alix Wilber.
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A seminal work of American Literature that still commands deep praise and still elicits controversy, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is essential to the understanding of the American soul. The recent discovery of the first half of Twain's manuscript, long thought lost, made front-page news. And this unprecedented edition, which contains for the first time omitted episodes and other variations present in the first half of the handwritten manuscript, as well as facsimile reproductions of thirty manuscript pages, is indispensable to a full understanding of the novel. The changes, deletions, and additions made in the first half of the manuscript indicate that Mark Twain frequently checked his impulse to write an even darker, more confrontational book than the one he finally published..
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New in the “addicting” New York Times bestselling series featuring Sookie Stackhouse

After the natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina and the manmade explosion at the vampire summit, everyone—human and otherwise—is stressed, including Louisiana cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse, who is trying to cope with the fact that her boyfriend Quinn has gone missing.

It’s clear that things are changing—whether the weres and vamps of her corner of Louisiana like it or not. And Sookie—Friend to the Pack and blood-bonded to Eric Northman, leader of the local vampire community—is caught up in the changes.

In the ensuing battles, Sookie faces danger, death, and once more, betrayal by someone she loves. And when the fur has finished flying and the cold blood finished flowing, her world will be forever altered..
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From Emma Bull's War for the Oaks to Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series, from The X-Files to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, creators are mixing old European myths and legends with modern American pop culture. Incorporating influences ranging from blaxploitation movies and erotic novels to tabloid staples like UFOs and Elvis, authors and directors are creating a new mythology for the strip-mall, tract-house, cell-phone America of the new millennium.

One of the best-known and best writers of the new American mythology is Charlaine Harris. Dead to the World is the fourth novel in her Anthony Award-winning Southern Vampire series. It continues the story of psychic waitress Sookie Stackhouse, who has fallen out with her undead lover, Bill. Bill has no sooner departed for Peru, than Sookie finds the head vampire, Eric, running naked and terrified through the rural night. She helps Eric, and discovers his memory has been destroyed by a coven of unscrupulous, astonishingly powerful witches, newly arrived in her small Louisiana town, and offering a huge reward for Eric. Sookie tries to hide Eric, but her brother sees him--and immediately disappears. And Sookie finds herself caught in a war among witches, vampires, and werewolves. --Cynthia Ward.
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