First, you’re entranced by the title: Leta Pearl’s Love Biscuits (Koehler Books 2025). Then, buckle up. You’re about to enter three-hundred mischievous pages of 1982 small-town Alabama in this wildly entertaining romp by Arlon Jay Staggs. The protagonist, Trudy Abernathy, is a young woman with a past that continues to haunt her, largely because of […]
Read of the Month: “Leta Pearl’s Love Biscuits” by Arlon Jay Staggs
December 31, 2025 by Leave a Comment
“Junie” by Erin Crosby Eckstine
October 14, 2025 by Leave a Comment
Junie (Ballantine 2025) by Erin Crosby Eckstine is a vividly drawn work of historical fiction, set in the antebellum South, which features a complex, fully realized 16-year-old enslaved teen named Junie. While the title character is the heart and soul of the novel, other characters—good, bad, and hovering in between—fill the pages in this haunting, […]
Monroeville Literary Festival Feb. 27-March 1, 2025
February 2, 2025 by Leave a Comment
Where: Monroeville, AL When: February 27 – March 1, 2025 Winners: Cassandra King and Suzanne Hudson! See Monroeville Literary Festival here.
“Secrets of the Devil Vine,” by Faith Kaiser
July 16, 2020 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Heather Newcomb Secrets of the Devil Vine is a homecoming narrative, but the home here is built on greed, secrets and abuse. The main character, Abigail Stewart—whose keen point of view drives the plot—returns home to coastal Alabama to seek answers to difficult questions from her childhood. Abby’s search takes readers on a […]
“Never Have I Ever,” by Joshilyn Jackson
December 18, 2019 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Claire Hamner Matturro With her debut novel some fourteen years ago, Joshilyn Jackson established herself as a phenomenal author. In that debut, gods in Alabama (Warner Books, 2005), pathos, suspense, and humor were well balanced in a story about a young woman gone north, only to return home to Alabama to confront the […]
Allen Mendenhall Interviews Colleen D. Scott, Author of “Everybody Needs a Bridge”
March 7, 2018 by Leave a Comment
AM: Thanks for doing this interview, Colleen. Your first novel is Everybody Needs a Bridge, which you describe as a “work of fiction inspired by actual events.” It follows the story of Erin, a young girl in Alabama who’s growing up roughly a generation after the Civil Rights Movement. You might call it a bildungsroman […]