November is for soup and pies and good books! Check out these great new Southern titles, and if you’re getting a head start on your holiday shopping list, consider buying from a Southern independent bookstore.
The Sum of Trifles
By Julia Ridley Smith
November 1, 2021
University of Georgia Press: “When Julia Ridley Smith’s parents died, they left behind a virtual museum of furniture, books, art, and artifacts. Between the contents of their home, the stock from their North Carolina antiques shop, and the ephemera of two lives lived, Smith faced a monumental task. What would she do with her parents’ possessions? The Sum of Trifles offers up dark humor and raw feeling, mixed with an erudite streak. It’s a curious, thoughtful look at how we live in and with our material culture and how we face our losses as we decide what to keep and what to let go.”
The Girl Singer
By Marianne Worthington
November 2, 2021
Fireside Industries: “Skillfully divided into three distinct yet harmonious parts, cantillating local, familial, and personal histories, Girl Singer is a collection of lyrical and descriptive poems that offer unique insight on famous and infamous Appalachian tales from this life and the next.”
All The Young Men
By Ruth Coker Burks, Kevin Carr O’Leary
November 9, 2021
Grove Press: “All The Young Men, a gripping and triumphant tale of human compassion, is the true story of Ruth Coker Burks, a young single mother in Hot Springs, Arkansas, who finds herself driven to the forefront of the AIDS crisis, and becoming a pivotal activist in America’s fight against AIDS.”
Aux Ark Trypt Ich
by Cody-Rose Clevidence
November 9, 2021
Nightboat Books: “Set among blue Ozark creeks, hoods of trucks, and changing constellations, Cody-Rose Clevidence’s poems call up embodied sensations as they arise, with love and anguish, in a specific place. Navigating between senses and the sensed world, in lyric, lushness and density, Clevidence constructs an intricate and playful poetics both experimental and emotive to investigate the interplay between the vivid sensations of the body and the viscerally surrounding world.”
Doctors and Friends
By Kimmery Martin
November 9, 2021
Berkley Books: “Hannah, Compton, and Kira have been close friends since medical school, reuniting once a year for a much-needed vacation. Just as they gather to travel in Spain, an outbreak of a fast-spreading virus throws the world into chaos. Written prior to Covid-19 by a former emergency medicine physician, Doctors and Friends incorporates unexpected wit, razor-edged poignancy, and a deeply relatable cast of characters who provoke both laughter and tears. Martin provides a unique insider’s perspective into the world of medical professionals working to save lives during the most difficult situations of their careers.”
Indigo
By Padgett Powell
November 9, 2021
Catapult: “Gathering pieces written during the past three decades, Indigo ranges widely in subject matter and tone, opening with “Cleve Dean,” which takes Padgett Powell to Sweden for the World Armwrestling Federation Championships, through to its closing title piece, which charts Powell’s lifelong fascination with the endangered indigo snake, “a thinking snake,” and his obsession with seeing one in the wild. His idiosyncratic playfulness brings this collection to vivid life, while his boundless curiosity and respect for the truth keep it on course.”
The Way We Weren’t
By Phoebe Fox
November 9, 2021
Berkley Books: “An unlikely friendship between a septuagenarian and a younger woman becomes a story of broken trust, lost love, and the unexpected blooming of hope against the longest odds.”
Power Hungry
Suzanne Cope
November 9, 2021
Lawrence Hill Books: “These two women’s tales, separated by a handful of years, tell the same story: how food was used by women as a potent and necessary ideological tool in both the rural south and urban north to create lasting social and political change. The leadership of these women cooking and serving food in a safe space for their communities was so powerful, the FBI resorted to coordinated extensive and often illegal means to stop the efforts of these two women, and those using similar tactics, under COINTELPRO — turning a blind eye to the firebombing of the children of a restaurant owner, destroying food intended for poor kids, and declaring a community breakfast program a major threat to public safety.”
The Office of Historical Corrections
By Danielle Evans
Paperback November 9, 2021
Riverhead Books: “Danielle Evans is widely acclaimed for her blisteringly smart voice and X-ray insights into complex human relationships. With The Office of Historical Corrections, Evans zooms in on particular moments and relationships in her characters’ lives in a way that allows them to speak to larger issues of race, culture, and history. She introduces us to Black and multiracial characters who are experiencing the universal confusions of lust and love, and getting walloped by grief — all while exploring how history haunts us, personally and collectively.”
These Precious Days
By Ann Patchett
November 23, 2021
Harper: “‘Any story that starts will also end.’ As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart. At the center of These Precious Days is the title essay, a surprising and moving meditation on an unexpected friendship that explores ‘what it means to be seen, to find someone with whom you can be your best and most complete self.'”
Southern Review of Books 