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January 1998

Note: Prices listed below reflect the publisher's suggested list price. They are subject to change without notice.

A Homecoming for Murder

Fiction by John Armistead

Dell (Mass Market Paperback, $5.99, ISBN: 0440224357)

Publication date: January 1998

Description:

From the acclaimed author of A Legacy of Vengeance comes an intriguing new mystery set in tranquil Sheffield, Mississippi. The cold-blooded murder of one of the high school’s most respected teachers jerks Sheriff Grover Bramlett into a Byzantine web of deceit, forbidden love, and bank accounts, when his grandson encounters the killer face to face in the cemetery.

Uncle Jed’s Barbershop

Juvenile Fiction by Margaree King Mitchell

Aladdin (Paperback, $5.99, ISBN: 0689819137)

Publication date: January 1998

Description:

In the segregated South of the 1920s, Uncle Jed was the only black barber in a county of sharecroppers. He always dreamed of owning his own barbershop, but his generous heart and some bad luck during the Depression forced him to defer that dream for years. Finally, on his 79th birthday, Uncle Jed opened the doors of his new shop. A Coretta Scott King Honor Book. An ALA Notable Children’s Book. Full color. Ages 4-7.

Landscapes of the Heart: A Memoir

By Elizabeth Spencer

Random House (Hardcover, $24.00, ISBN: 0679457399)

Publication date: January 1998

Description:

Conveying a unique sense of history and place, Southern novelist Elizabeth Spencer (The Salt Line, Light in the Piazza) tells of her youth in Carrollton, Mississippi, a time preserved in amber, then moves to Italy, Canada, and finally back “home” to North Carolina. Along the way, she recalls friendships with Eudora Welty and Robert Penn Warren, plus encounters with many others, including William Faulkner and Saul Bellow.

The Last Gentleman

Fiction by Walker Percy

Modern Library (Hardcover, $18.50, ISBN: 0679602720)

Publication date: January 1998

Description:

An inquisitive young Southerner—with a special gift for cultivating life’s possibilities—lives with the secret suspicion that the great world catastrophe that everyone fears will happen has already happened.

Have No Fear: The Charles Evers Story

Autobiography by Charles Evers

John Wiley & Sons (Mass Market Paperback, $5.99, ISBN: 0471246921)

Publication date: January 1998

Description:

Charles Evers’s voice resonates from the pages of his autobiography, recounting his unique perspective on America from the beginnings of the civil rights movement to recent events in American history. Evers describes his early life in the South amid the injustices of racism and the outrages of segregation. He recounts the details of the 1963 murder of his younger brother Medgar, a field secretary for the NAACP in Mississippi, and the 30 years and three trials it took to bring his murderer to justice. He tells his own stories of the movement in plain-speaking terms, giving frank assessments of characters ranging from Stokely Carmichael to George Wallace. Evers drives home his thoughts on the promises of opportunity in America and the importance of commercial success and describes his accomplishments as mayor of Fayette, Mississippi, and as an independent businessman. His memoir is an exuberant display of his triumphant character as well as an interesting perspective on the civil rights movement in America.

And All These Roads Be Luminous: Poems Selected and New

Poems by Angela Jackson

Triquarterly Books (Paperback, $14.95, ISBN: 0810150778;

Hardcover, $39.95, ISBN: 081015076X)

Publication date: January 1998

Description:

As Angela Jackson has developed as a poet, her poetry has engaged various artistic perspectives, yet always maintains a characteristic combination of compassion, grace, and daring. Jackson moves with ease from the personal to the historical—filled alternately with wonder, righteous anger, tenderness, and a tangible intensity. Her verse is rich and passionate and brimming with poetic surprises.

Drawing from earlier works contained in the chapbooks VooDoo/Love Magic, The Greenville Club, Solo in the Boxcar Third Floor E, and The Man with the White Liver, And All These Roads Be Luminous is filled with an impressive variety of characters engaged in compelling explorations of identity, creativity, spiritual experience, and the rites and rituals of race and sexuality. Jackson moves with ease from the personal to the historical: filled alternately with wonder, righteous anger, tenderness, and a tangible intensity, Jackson’s is rich and passionate verse brimming with poetic surprises.

Crimes of the Heart

A play by Beth Henley

Dramatists Play Service (Paperback, $5.95, ISBN: 0822202506)

Publication date: January 1998

Description from The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature:

Drama in three acts by Beth Henley, produced in 1979 and published in 1982. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1981. Set in a small Mississippi town, the play examines the lives of three quirky sisters who have gathered at the home of the youngest. During the course of the work the sisters unearth grudges, criticize each other, reminisce about their family life, and attempt to understand their mother’s suicide years earlier.

The New Regionalism: Essays and Commentaries

Edited by Charles Reagan Wilson

University Press of Mississippi (Hardcover; $40.00; ISBN: 1578060133)

Publication date: October 1998

Description from the publisher:

A DIALOGUE AMONG SCHOLARS THAT REVEALS ISSUES AND ATTITUDES IN THE CONTEMPORARY RENAISSANCE OF REGIONAL STUDIES

Interest in American regions has undergone a revival since the 1970s. This book presents views of key interpreters of the South, the West, New England, and the Midwest. Although they choose differing approaches and methodologies, they collectively explore the landscapes and peoples of regional cultures that long have been a significant factor in understanding American culture.

The dynamic subject of regionalism fostered a popular and intellectual movement in the period between the world wars. Such notable figures as the sociologist Howard Odum, the historian Walter Prescott Webb, and the urban planner Lewis Mumford proposed theoretical bases for regional study and aspired to shape public policy in the New Deal era. These modernists were aware of the cultural crisis that shook western civilization after World War I. They saw regional cultures as models of the well-integrated communities that might offer hope to their disenchanted contemporaries. However, interest in regionalism declined in the 1950s, as the decade concerned itself with the view that consensus and homogenization would destroy regional identity.

Through films, television, and novels set in different regions, American popular culture kept regional cultures in the national spotlight. By the 1970s, it was clear that regions not only had survived but also continued to play a prominent role in the shaping of cultural attitudes and political thought and behavior.

The essays in this volume, papers presented at the Porter L. Fortune History Symposium at the University of Mississippi in 1993, are products of this new wave of scholarship. The New Regionalism the scholars discuss here focuses on the geography of place, the local context of differing physical environments, and the centrality of social relations that includes attention to the key concerns of race, class, and gender.

Familiar Fire

By Caroline Burnes (Carolyn Haines)

Harlequin (Paperback, ISBN: 0373224524)

Publication date: January 1998

Dead Over Heels

By Charlaine Harris

Harlequin (Paperback, ISBN: 0373262604)

Publication date: January 1998

Description:

Soon after happily married Aurora Teagarden discovers her husband’s shady past, the dead body of Detective Sergeant Jack Burns is unceremoniously dumped in her backyard by a small plane and she cannot help but wonder if it is related to Martin’s secrets.