{Writing is an act of gratitude.}

Dearest readers,

In his latest interview with The Oxford American, Mr. Chris Offut revisits his earlier advice that we should all just shoot our television sets dead. Her ladyship, the editor has been having one of those...not days. Not weeks. No, months. Have you ever had one of those days where nothing seemed to work, and nature herself seemed bent on obstructing every plan--every endeavor seemed destined to be thwarted? So far the month of June has been notable for the beauty of her ladyship’s flower garden and the fact that anything  she owns with moving parts or an on/off switch was destined to break. 

She did not mind so much when the television remote died. But then so did the DVD player and  then the television. She turned on her air conditioning for the summer, only to discover it no longer remembered how to cool air. Then the ice maker in her freezer decided to stop working. And then tires in the lawnmower went flat. Then even the wheelbarrow’s tires decided to give up. At this point her ladyship is almost afraid to approach her own oven, for fear that her mere proximity will cause a malfunction and possibly a house fire.

But do you know what is working perfectly? Her books. Not a single one has gone flat, lost power, shorted out or otherwise malfunctioned. Each time her ladyship opens one it works as perfectly as the day she first bought it.

Happy reading!

her ladyship, the editor

Lady Banks' Commonplace Book

Noteworthy poetry and prose from her ladyship's bedside reading stack.

Redbird Creek
Now all of earth that fills the valley’s breast
Is turned in furrows and the ram’s horn rots
Where cloven soil has penned the acres up
With greenness prim and ordered into lots.
And all of oak and lynn that strode the west
Of Redbird Creek where crows and blackbirds call
Are things of mist grown stark and tall.

The vibrant canes crowding marshy ground
Are tuneless pipes heard by bleeding ears
Through blighted chestnut cankered to the heart
And rousing all of memory’s ancient fears.
These foils of clouds that men and plows attend
Are tares and thistles strewn upon the wind.

--James Still, The Wolfpen Poems

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Lady Banks' Receipt Book

The books lying open on her ladyship's kitchen counter.

Shortcut Piecrust

“This piecrust is revolutionary. It’s a press-in crust, with no rolling or chilling required. Plus, it’s buttery and flaky, and so easy to prepare it just may give you the courage to go forth and make a pie on a whim. You can use either granulated sugar or light brown sugar. Both are equally delicious here.

Makes one 9-inch piecrust

1.5 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/4 cup granulated sugar or packed brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
11 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, and salt. Slowly drizzle in the butter and stir with a fork until the mixture looks moist and crumbly.
Press the dough evenly over the bottom and up the sides of a 9-inch pie dish.

You can crimp the edges decoratively or leave them rustic.
If the recipe calls for a prebaked piecrust, preheat the oven to 350F. Line the pie shell with aluminum foil or parchment and fill with dried beans or pie weights.

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes. Remove the foil and beans and bake for an additional 5 minutes, or until golden brown. Let cool before filling.

--Cheryl and Griffith Day,  The Bake in the Day Bakery Cookbook (Artisan, 2012) 9781579654580

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Lady Banks' Housekeeping Book

Country wisdom from practical people.

To Clean Tea Kettles

To prevent tea kettles coating with lime, put the shell of an oyster in the tea kettle and the lime will adhere to it instead of coating the sides.

--The Receipt Book of Emily Wharton Sinkler, reprinted in An Antebellum Plantation Household 9781570036347

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Book Gossip

Literary News & Gossip passed along from the readers, the writers, the reviewers, the resellers, the riff raff, and dutifully repeated here by her ladyship (who falls into the last category).

The aptly titled “Appalachian Gateway: An Anthology of Contemporary Stories and Poetry” is meant to be less an exhaustive representation of the region’s great talents than an introduction that will draw more readers into the field. In one of the book’s extensive biographies, Ron Rash sums up an unspoken tenet among the authors featured here: “I think one of the reasons I write is that it is an act of gratitude that the people who came before me sacrificed so much.” Appalachian Gateway 9781572339446

Set in the early 19th century, The Invention of Wings opens on the 11th birthday of Sarah Grimke, member of a very wealthy family in Charleston, South Carolina, and inspired by a real-life historical figure. Sarah has just been given ownership of 10-year-old slave Hetty (“Handful”) to be her handmaid. The book follows Sarah and Handful over the next 35 years, “as both strive for a life of their own, dramatically shaping each other’s destinies and forming a complex relationship marked by guilt, defiance, estrangement and the uneasy ways of love New novel coming from Sue Monk Kidd

1. I've had to stop reading it in public places like on the train to DC and the hotel breakfast cafe cause it's embarrassing to start weeping in public.

2. It made me want to  learn to fly helicopters. Five Days at Memorial 9780307718969

“This is the whole problem with words,” says the unamed narrator of “Fialta.” “There is so little surface area to reveal whom you might be underneath, how expansive and warm, how casual, how easygoing, how cool, and so it all comes out a little pathetic and awkward and choked.” Bobcat & Other Stories 9781616201739

It's not often that a weekend in  the Boone area is dedicated entirely to books, but beginning Friday, June 21, a large segment of the local population, in addition to numerous guests from across the southeast and other parts of the country, will be on the same page for the second annual High Country Festival of the Book. High Country Book Festival

Mary Kay Andrews is the maven of summer reading. She has come to this area of expertise by crafting some of the most enjoyable summer stories of the past decade. With her latest novel LADIES NIGHT she has sealed this crown in perpetuity. This is her best book yet and it combines all of the strengths we have come to expect from this audacious and beguiling author.  The Perfect Summer Read 9781250019677

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Author Gossip

Because I’m a younger laureate, it seemed important to me to do something, not to just accept the honor of the position but actually to make it useful. It’s hard though, I think, to come up with a good, meaningful project, because my predecessors have done amazing projects: Robert Pinsky’s “Favorite Poem” project is one of my favorite projects. [Joseph] Brodsky put poetry in the subway and in grocery stores. Deciding to put a personal slant on it seemed to be what I might be good at. NewsHour is very interested in poetry, but they’re also interested in not just that something’s cute to add on at the end of their programming, but something that actually is integrated into the news. Natasha Tretheway 9780547571607

During the day you could have experienced the raucous sense of humor of George Singleton, author of eight hilariously funny books including Stray Decorum, Work Shirts for Madmen, and others. Singleton shared his experience with an over-80 editor in New York who kept insisting that dialogue of George’s southern characters must read “want only” rather than the authentic “only want” that Singleton had written in his manuscript. After writing “stet” (meaning to keep it like it was) scores of times, George added in the margin, “I want only to kill you!” The Clarksville Writers Conference 9781938103544

Take grits, for example. "It's just corn," Matt explains of the oh-so-Southern staple. "It's a humble, simple, timeless ingredient, but it can be the most magical ingredient in your pantry if you seek it out, find the one whose story you like, understand the way it was created and visit the mill where it was ground. It can inflame your passion about food to whatever degree you prefer." The Lee Bros at the Coca Cola Company

“I absolutely despise watching television,” said Kentucky author Chris Offutt in 1994, shortly after publishing the collection of short stories Kentucky Straight and the memoir The Same River Twice. “I would advise you all to shoot your TV...I don’t have one.” Chris Offutt 9780743229494

Much of the novel revolves around dressage, an equestrian sport in which horses and their riders execute a series of precise movements in a ring. It's a subject that DiSclafani, 31 — whose first name is pronounced ANT-un, and who received a reported $1 million advance for her novel in one of the most competitive book auctions of recent years — knows very well from her own experience as a serious dressage rider. Riding is her forte 9781594486401

A crazy fact about me is that I have a thing for absolutely beautiful clean sheets, and I change my sheets every day. I triple sheet just like at fine hotels. With writing I have a cleaning service, but nobody touches that bed. It’s one of those little treats I give myself that every night when I get in between those sheets they are so gorgeous and clean and soft, and then the next morning I strip the bed. Beth Hoffman 9780670025831

STARS Authors on tour:

What are "STARS" authors? These are authors listing in the Southern Traveling Authors Registration Service--a directory of authors who live in, or are traveling in the South and are interested in meeting with book clubs, civic groups, classrooms, and readers of all kinds. The STARS directory is brought to you by Southern Indie Booksellers, who want to connect readers with their favorite writers.

Authors traveling right now:

• Kaye Wilkinson Barley | Surf City, Topsail Island, NC
  09/08/2013 to 09/13/2013 | Detail | Request this author!


• Deron Hicks | Milledgeville, GA
  11/09/2013 to 11/10/2013 | Detail | Request this author!


• Deron Hicks | Nashville, GA
  10/12/2013 to 10/13/2013 | Detail | Request this author!


• Deron Hicks | New Orleans, GA
  09/20/2013 to 09/22/2013 | Detail | Request this author!


• S. R. Lewis | Duck, Outer Banks, VA
  07/10/2013 to 07/12/2013 | Detail | Request this author!


• Lynne Barrett | Coral Gables, FL
  10/24/2013 to 10/26/2013 | Detail | Request this author!


• Lynne Barrett | Sanibel, FL
  11/07/2013 to 11/10/2013 | Detail | Request this author!


• Lynne Barrett | Panama City, FL
  09/20/2013 to 09/21/2013 | Detail | Request this author!


• Deanna Klingel | Murfreesboro, NC
  10/12/2013 to 10/13/2013 | Detail | Request this author!


• Deanna Klingel | Perryville, NC
  10/05/2013 to 10/06/2013 | Detail | Request this author!


• Deanna Klingel | Ridgefield, NC
  09/28/2013 to 09/29/2013 | Detail | Request this author!


• Deanna Klingel | Somerset, NC
  08/07/2013 to 08/09/2013 | Detail | Request this author!


• Deanna Klingel | Denton, NC
  07/10/2013 to 07/14/2013 | Detail | Request this author!


• Deanna Klingel | Franklin, NC
  07/17/2013 to 07/18/2013 | Detail | Request this author!


• Jessica James | Rodanthe, PA
  06/22/2013 to 06/25/2013 | Detail | Request this author!


• Debra Moffitt | all, SC
  05/01/2013 to 12/31/2013 | Detail | Request this author!


• Debra Moffitt | Charleston, SC
  06/28/2013 to 06/30/2013 | Detail | Request this author!


• Jessica James | Nags Head, PA
  06/22/2013 to 06/24/2013 | Detail | Request this author!

See the full list online here and find the authors touring in your area here

Bookstore Gossip

You can’t drink wine at an online author event: Dorothea Benton Frank at Pelican Books and the Silver Coast Winery.

Locally owned and operated, Avid Bookshop has been popular among Athens residents since opening in 2011. Not only does the unique selection of books and gifts make Avid an Athens favorite; the curbside appeal, outdoor sitting area, and recently added “Little Free Library” set it apart from other bookstores. Colorful arrangements of flowers by the doorstep and creative reuse of household items (ironing board table!) help enliven the sidewalk and beckon patrons inside. Bookshop is a beautiful business

Garden District Bookshop video tour

Get your walking sticks and glasses – it’s time to find Waldo. Books on Broad and Coffee is sponsoring Find Waldo In Camden, S.C., a month-long scavenger hunt taking place at various businesses downtown. The event will begin July 1, 2013, and will culminate in a grand-prize drawing July 31. Books on Broad

If you live in the Big Easy, then Where's Waldo? It’s no surprise that Waldo has chosen to hang out near his favorite bookstore in beautiful uptown New Orleans for his vacation this July! The famous children’s book character in the striped shirt and black-rimmed specs is out hobnobbing at 25 different independent local shops all around Octavia Books — from ice cream parlors, snowball stands, chocolate shops, and bakeries to toy stores, hobby shops, movie theaters, and bike shops. Those who spot him can win prizes, including stickers, book coupons and more, (with the top prize being a 6-volume deluxe set of Waldo books. Octavia Books

Lady Banks' {Book} Trailer Park:
on writing Yonahlossee

Author 2 Author: Peggy Payne and Carrie Knowles

Carrie Knowles Interviews Peggy Payne, author of Cobalt Blue, Roundfire Books

Peggy Payne and Carrie Knowles, good friends and colleagues for 35 years, both have new novels released within a few weeks of each other.  These two, who work in adjoining offices in Raleigh’s historic Oakwood neighborhood, are on a rollicking 3-state tour together doing readings and signings.  They call themselves The Crazy Ladies Book Tour, since both their main characters are women who are a bit off the rails for most of their respective stories.

Payne’s previous novel, Sister India, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.  Her first, Revelation, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice. She is also co-author of The Healing Power of Doing Good.

Carrie:  So, Peggy, how do you describe the kind of fiction you write?  Does it fit into any familiar category?

Peggy:  The short answer is: I write spooky-sexy novels about religion.  The first was set in a church in Chapel Hill, the second in a holy city in India.  Cobalt Blue is about a 30-something woman, a painter in Pinehurst, who has hit a low point in her life and then while in the meditative state that painting produces, has a spontaneous religious experience that overwhelms her and quickly begins to disrupt her life.

Carrie:  It’s about religion and yet the Wilmington paper, among others, says that in places it’s sexier than 50 Shades of Grey.  Explain!

Peggy:  You could say it’s a story about ecstatic religion and sacred sex. Both! Though the sex doesn’t start off feeling very sacred.  It has a 50 Shades-ish flavor.

Carrie: But I know those books weren’t an influence.

Peggy: No, I’d finished Cobalt Blue before they emerged.  And Cobalt Blue is very very different from those. But I think it appeals to a lot of the same readers.  And I’m pleased that the 50 Shades books prove that a huge number of women, as well as men, can be engaged by a story that involves some unsettling sex.

Carrie: How do you describe the religious experience in Cobalt Blue?  It’s sure not Presbyterian, as in your first novel.

Peggy:  Here’s where I take a deep breath.  It’s pretty exotic for Eastern North Carolina where I’ve lived my whole life.  It’s called kundalini rising.  The Hindu-Buddhist tantric belief is that there’s a reservoir of psychic energy located at the base of the spine.  Meditation and yoga are usually required to prepare for and to allow tapping into that force. But it can also happen spontaneously through entrancing activities like making art.

Carrie:  And this is what hits Andie Branson and knocks her for a loop while she’s at work? 

Peggy: It is. And it takes most of the rest of the story for her to find out about this stuff and to get herself under control again.  Without long preparation, it’s supposedly like a fire hose going off.  And in a most vulnerable area of the body, at the base of the spine.

Carrie: Two things we should get clear: do you believe in kundalini and is this book at all autobiographical?

Peggy:  I’m open to the idea of kundalini. I think of it as the life force.  Cobalt Blue is a story about a woman suddenly dealing with the full power of the life force.  And no, not at all autobiographical.

Carrie:  Then where did it come from?  I know you get asked that a lot.

Peggy: Here’s the ironic thing: after I finished my first novel, Revelation, I wanted to write something lighter and settled on a premise for a bedroom comedy.  But the story  evolved.  Spirituality welled up under the events of the story.  And it gets pretty dark before the light gloriously rises.

Also, this novel can be read simply as an emotional/psychological crisis in this woman’s life with the kundalini explanation seen as just a name and reason she gives for what she does and what she goes through.  That’s the sort of final decision I like to leave to the reader.  For myself, whatever the truth of the matter in the physical world, I believe that Andie was seized from within by something large. Divine, even.  That fascinates me.

Carrie:  At the same time, you’re going around promoting this novel of the terrifying and the divine wearing a one-shouldered blue-sequined body stocking of a cocktail dress.

Peggy:  Cobalt-blue-sequinned. And I’m dressing up as the life force, a bioelectric river of energy.  Or maybe that’s just the excuse I give….

And, well, anything for a little literary attention.  I just had a piece about this dress appear as the back page essay in Publishers Weekly, “Tap Dancing Authors,” about all the non-writing things that authors do to get people to come to readings, to get people interested in our books.

As you know, I did once provide cobalt blue punch at a reading. Tasty, but looked like Windex or that blue toilet bowl cleaner.  Won’t be doing that one again.

So since I can’t play the banjo and make frightening fruit punch, my strategy is to dress funny, like a blue flame.  At the age of 64, no less. I also have a long blue-cape and blue star-shaped sunglasses.  It’s a look I tremulously launched at the Los Angeles Festival of Books. Now it’s mine.  And it’s tremendous fun.

Carrie Knowles is the author of the new novel Lillian’s Garden and of The Last Childhood: A Family Story of Alzheimer’s. Her next novel Ashoan’s Rug, also published by Roundfire Books, will be out in September.

Read This! Okra Picks and Recommendations from Alabama Booksmith in Birmingham, AL

Okra Picks

The Astronaut Wives Club: A True Story by Lily Koppel
Grand Central Publishing, June 2013 9781455503254

America's Mercury Seven astronauts were launched on death-defying missions, television cameras focused on the brave smiles of their young wives. Overnight, these women were transformed from military spouses into American royalty. They had tea with Jackie Kennedy, appeared on the cover of "Life" magazine, and quickly grew into fashion icons.
Annie Glenn, with her picture-perfect marriage, was the envy of the other wives; platinum-blonde Rene Carpenter was proclaimed JFK's favorite; and licensed pilot Trudy Cooper arrived on base with a secret. Together with the other wives they formed the Astronaut Wives Club, meeting regularly to provide support and friendship. Many became next-door neighbors and helped to raise each other's children by day, while going to glam parties at night as the country raced to land a man on the Moon.

Recommended Reading from the Alabama Booksmith Blog

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Man in the Blue Moon by Michael Morris is that it has its origins in a family story, a curious event that happened to the author's grandfather.  Around the bare bones of family anecdote, Morris weaves a truly fascinating tale of love, abandonment, desperation, greed, hypocrisy, faith, murder and second chances.  In it, a very typical Southern town, during the last days of World War I and the early days of the Spanish flu epidemic, has to deal with an enormously atypical situation, one of uncanny forces beyond anything they've previously experienced, something well outside ordinary comprehension. 9781414368429

Saving Italy is not just the story of the Monuments Men, although they are the stars of the show.  There were many other groups and individuals involved in the effort to protect Italy's cultural heritage, and each is given due credit and attention: the Vatican, the Italian government, Italian partisan fighters, and even the Nazis, at least in some cases.  The sheer number of factions (whose goals often overlapped, but rarely aligned completely) throughout is mind-boggling, yet somehow Edsel manages to weave everything into a coherent, comprehensive and heart-stopping narrative, painting brief yet vivid character sketches of those involved.   Some figures are well-known: Eisenhower, Roosevelt, Churchill, Dulles, Himmler and Hitler.  Others are less familiar, but no less crucial to the success of the effort to protect some of Western Civilization's greatest treasures.  Eisenhower's orders placed the responsibility for protecting Italy's cultural treasures on everyone,  from the bottom up, but the Monuments men were really the only ones with sufficient knowledge to make the job possible. 9781599951508

I love historical fiction - which may explain why I enjoyed the Broadway musical Gypsy so much.  For it is fiction, no matter how well the title character rewrote, concealed and fabricated her own past.  There is a very good reason why the play is subtitled "A Musical Fable".  Gypsy Rose Lee used it as a vehicle to revise her past: her childhood as she wished it had happened, or at the very least, exaggerated, softened, glamorized and simplified to make a better story.  The bare bones of truth are there, all right, but shrouded in mythology, nostalgia ... and Sondheim.  The truth is just as complex, but far less flattering to everyone. In American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee, Karen Abbott does a superb job of peeling away the layers and exposing the real Gypsy, at least as far as possible.  The woman behind the façade was intensely private, and unbelievably complex – how could she not be, with her personal history?  In many instances, it’s impossible to fully understand Gypsy, her actions and motivations, but Abbott manages, teasing out every nuance from her subject’s personal papers, while at the same time acknowledging the limits of her research.  It certainly helps that she was lucky enough to access two sources available to few other biographers: Erik Preminger, Gypsy's son, and actress June Havoc, Gypsy's sister. 9780812978513

I read Daniel Silva's The Fallen Angel (the latest in his Gabriel Allon series, at least until The English Girl comes out on July 16) without reading any of the previous installments in the saga - of which there are eleven.  Not my usual modus operandi.  It was sitting there on the shelf, staring me in the face, and the jacket blurb was tantalizing, so one day, I finally decided, "The heck with it".  Still, whoops.  Big problem, right?  There's a lot of back story in eleven volumes, and there's no way you can really enjoy the book without knowing what came first.   Incredibly, enough, no.  The story is fascinating in its own right, even lacking all previous context, and I enjoyed every second of it. For the neophyte, Silva strikes an incredible balance between catching new readers up to speed and not talking down to veterans.  We get snippets of information, just enough for context, but not enough to (really) spoil the other novels.  For the most part, spoilers are limited to "Character X does not die" - although, considering how often the characters court or face death, that's actually a pretty big spoiler.  The terse back story is enough to clue readers in, without slowing down the plot.  Despite being part of a much larger universe, it stands alone. 9780062073129 9780062073167

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Southern Indie Bestsellers

For the week ending June 9, 2013

- A STARS Author | - A SIBA Okra Pick 
Titles in red are SIBA Book Award winners and finalists!
Printable versions: Hardcover | Paperback | Children.

HARDCOVER FICTION

3. Z
Therese Anne Fowler, St. Martin's, $25.99, 9781250028655

6. Looking for Me
Beth Hoffman, Pamela Dorman Books, $27.95, 9780670025831

9. Life After Life
Jill McCorkle, Shannon Ravenel Books, $24.95, 9781565122550

HARDCOVER NONFICTION

TRADE PAPERBACK FICTION

TRADE PAPERBACK NONFICTION

MASS MARKET

CHILDREN'S ILLUSTRATED

CHILDREN'S INTEREST

CHILDREN'S FICTION SERIES TITLES

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In This Issue

• Lady Banks' Commonplace Book
• Lady Banks' Receipt Book
• Lady Banks' Housekeeping Book
• Book Gossip
• Author Gossip/ Stars Authors
• Bookstore Gossip
• The {book} trailer park
• Author 2 Author
• Read This!/Okra Picks
• Special to the Southern List
• Authors Round the South
• Southern Indie Bestsellers

Special to the
Southern List

(Books that appear on the Southern list, but not the national list) Click on a book to purchase from a great indie bookstore!

Author Readings

(events in BOLD are STARS authors available for readings and meetings with bookclubs and other groups)

Authors Round the South
www.authorsroundthesouth.com