Don Noble

Mobile Under Siege: Surviving the Union Blockade

Author: Paula Lenor Webb

Publisher: History Press

Pages: 142

Price: $ 21.99 (Paper)

When I commenced reading “Mobile Under Siege,” I believed it would be the story of the Port City during most of the Civil War, under Union naval blockade, with plucky blockade runners dashing out in the fog with contraband cotton bound for the mills of England by way of Havana, Cuba, and dashing in with a fresh load of fine wine and cigars.

It is not.

“Debris Cloud”

Author: James Ezell

Publisher: Author House

Pages: 290

Price: $20.99 (Paper)

It is no surprise that a cataclysm like the 2011 tornado in Tuscaloosa would spawn a lot of written responses, in several genres.

“Bay Boy: Stories of a Childhood in Point Clear, Alabama”

Author: Watt Key

Publisher: University of Alabama Press

Pages: 136

Price: $24.95 (Cloth)

“The Paris Husband: How It Really Was Between Ernest & Hadley Hemingway”

Author: Scott Donaldson

Publisher: Simply Charlie

Pages: 139

Price: $11.99

Ernest Hemingway lived in Italy, in France, in Key West and in Cuba, was a prodigious drinker, loved hunting birds and big game, went to WWI as an ambulance driver and The Spanish Civil War and WWII as a correspondent. As a young man, he loved fishing for trout and later, in the Gulf, for marlin. It was undeniably an exciting life.

“Agent Running in the Field”

Author: John Le Carré

Publisher: Viking

Pages: 281

Price: $29.00 (Hardcover)

When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, presumably ending the Cold War, readers and critics feared for the careers of spy novelists like John Le Carré. What would these fellows write about now?

No problem, really.

There is always plenty of crime, rottenness and misery in the world.

“Brooding: Arias, Choruses, Lullabies, Dirges, and a Duet”

Author: Michael Martone

Publisher: The University of Georgia Press

Pages: 191

Price: $24.95 (Paper)

Michael Martone, just finishing a career teaching at the U of A, is the author of a shelf of books, nonfiction, generally speaking, essays on every imaginable subject.

Maya Angelou turned every experience, every day, into memoir.

“Robert B. Parker’s Angel Eyes”

Author: Ace Atkins

Publisher: G. P. Putnam’s Sons

Pages: 320

Price: $27.00 (Hardcover)

“L’Chaim and Lamentations”

Author: Craig Darch

Publisher: NewSouth Books

Pages: 158

Price: $ 24.95 (Hardcover)

As readers surely know, my mandate here is to discuss Alabama-related books, and for the last many months, during this bicentennial year especially, I have read a string of histories of early Alabama and Selma and Birmingham and Mobile Bay.

However, my mandate also extends to books by Alabama authors, and Craig Darch, who has taught at Auburn for over thirty years, qualifies as such an Alabama author.

“Tell Me a Story: My Life with Pat Conroy”

Author: Cassandra King Conroy

Publisher: William Morrow

Pages: 400

Price: $24.99 (Hardcover)

When Eugene O’Neill finished his masterpiece, “Long Day’s Journey into Night,” the painful dramatization of his tormented family, he gave his wife, Carlotta, the manuscript with this dedication:

“Dearest, I give you the original script of this play … written in tears and blood.”

“Selma: A Bicentennial History”

Author: Alston Fitts III

Publisher: University of Alabama Press

Pages: 360

$39.95 (Cloth)

Alston Fitts, originally from Tuscaloosa, has lived and worked in Selma since the early 1970s. A trained scholar with a PhD from the University of Chicago, Fitts is an excellent choice for this one-volume, richly illustrated history of Selma.

“Ghostly Demarcations: Stories”

Author: Joe Taylor

Publisher: Sagging Meniscus Press

2019

Pages: 215

Price: $19.95

Joe Taylor has been for 25 years the director of The Livingston Press at the University of West Alabama, where he is also a professor of English.

Taylor has edited a dozen volumes for the press and written six volumes of fiction of his own.

Livingston Press books feature the off-beat, experimental, and Taylor’s own work such as “Pineapple: A Comic Novel in Verse” is certainly that.

“Weathering Life”

Author: James Spann

Publisher: Crest Publishers, LLC

Pages not numbered

Price: $19.95 (Paper)

“Chasing the Bear: How Bear Bryant and Nick Saban Made Alabama the Greatest College Football Program of All Time”

Author: Lars Anderson

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Pages: 304

Price: $28.00 (Hardcover)

Only three years ago Monte Burke published a pretty good biography, “Nick Saban: The Making of a Coach.” Coach Bryant’s life has been done in detail by Allan Barra in “The Last Coach” (2006) and by many others including Keith Dunnavant (1996) and, earlier, John Underwood (1975) in cooperation with Bryant himself.

“The Old Federal Road in Alabama”

Authors: Kathryn H. Braund, Gregory A. Waselkov, and Raven M. Christopher

Publisher: The University of Alabama Press

Pages: 232

Price: $24.95 (Paper)

The Alabama Bicentennial has seen the publication of many new books on our state: general histories, histories of particular periods, especially the Civil War, a number of biographies of notable men and women, several histories of individual cities—Mobile, Huntsville, Tuscaloosa, Selma—and now we have a volume devoted to a road.

“Barracoon: The Story of the Last ‘Black Cargo’”

Author: Zora Neale Hurston

Edited by Deborah G. Plant

Foreword by Alice Walker

Publisher: Amistad (HarperCollins Publishers)

Pages: 171

Price: $24.99 (Hardcover)

There was a time when Zora Neale Hurston and her writings were, indeed, nearly forgotten. In her remarkable article in “Ms.” magazine in 1975, “Looking for Zora,” Alice Walker brought attention to Hurston’s life and work, and attention has been paid, pretty steadily, ever since.

“Time for Bed”

Author: Wendy Rawlings

Publisher: LSU Press

Pages: 155

Price: $24.95 (Paper)

Wendy Rawlings teaches fiction writing at UA and is the recipient of grants and prizes and the author of two previous volumes of stories. These 13 lightly interlinked stories were first published in such periodicals as “Kenyon Review,” “Indiana Review,” “Southern Review” and others. She is, in short, a professional, and these stories are artful and polished.

“Redbirds, Roses, and Ghosts: A Memoir”

Author: Gayle Young

Publisher: Bluewater Publications

Pages: 188

Price: $18.95 (paper)

Gayle Young has subtitled her book “A Memoir” and it is that, in part.

Young, in her sixties, in the middle of an ordinary July, retires after years of working as an assistant and typist in a law office. She enjoyed the work but, like so many, she had always dreamed of being a writer.

“Murder at Royale Court”

Author: G. P. Gardner

Publisher: Lyrical Underground, Kensington Publishing Corp.

Pages: 226

Price: $15.95 (Paper)

Only this spring I reviewed G. P. Gardner’s debut mystery, “Murder at Harbor Village,” and found it a satisfying, pleasing cozy, complete with cats.

We met Cleo Mack, who retires from an academic position as sociology professor in Atlanta, and takes over as administrator of this Fairhope retirement complex.

Still attractive, Cleo is being courted by several men, some creepy, some not.

“Zora and Langston: A Story of Friendship and Betrayal”

Author: Yuval Taylor

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Pages: 302

Price: $27.95

This study of the relationship of African American writers Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes is, happily, much more about friendship than betrayal.

The “betrayal” part is an organizing dramatic device, used especially well in Scott Donaldson’s “Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald: The Rise and Fall of a Literary Friendship.” It combines a dual biography with a focus on a particular period of time.

“The Shameless”

Author: Ace Atkins

Publisher: G. P. Putnam’s Sons

Pages: 464

Price: $27.00 (Hardcover)

“The Shameless” is the ninth in Atkins’ Quinn Colson series, and it may be the best. Here is your action novel for the beach, filled with distressingly realistic dialogue and wonderful characters, from Fannie Hathcock, brothel madam, to middle-school boys playing JV football.

“Beloved Mother”

Author: Laura Hunter 

Publisher: Bluewater Publications

Pages: 294

Price: $18.95 (Paper)

“Beloved Mother” is as genuinely Appalachian as a novel could be. The action begins in 1923 in the mountains west of Boone, North Carolina, and continues there until up into the 1960s.

The descriptions of food, dress, furniture, folkways and the dialects used are entirely convincing and one assumes accurate without the feeling that recipes or idioms have been looked up.

“Our Prince of Scribes: Writers Remember Pat Conroy”

Editors: Nicole Seitz and Jonathan Haupt  

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Pages: 285

Price: $29.95 (Hardcover)

Volumes like this one, designed to remember and honor a beloved figure, often a writer, have happily, become more frequent of late.

Here in Alabama Rebecca Barrett and Carolyn Haines put together “Moments with Eugene,” in which about 70 contributors wrote up their memories of Eugene Walter, from his childhood in Mobile through his last days.

“Tuscaloosa Stories”

Authors: Tuscaloosa Writers and Illustrators Guild  

Publisher: Borgo Publishing

Pages: 111

$21.99 (Hardcover)

This collection of 16 stories, each about six pages long, and each illustrated with pleasing watercolors by Sharron Stough Rudowski, is described as “historical fiction” written for young people, I would guess from 8-12 years old.

I enjoyed them anyway.

Most of the entries are dramatized scenes from Tuscaloosa’s past, allowing for a good deal of creative license.

“Staff Picks”

Author: George Singleton  

Publisher: LSU Press

Pages: 200

Price: $22.50 (Paperback)

George Singleton has two novels, it is true, but his reputation as a writer rests on his eight volumes of short stories. And it is a fine reputation. Singleton is a writer’s writer, a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, among other honors.

Making a career in the short story these days is a struggle, but a few, like George Saunders and Singleton, carry on.

“Camino Island”

Author: John Grisham  

Publisher: Bantam

Pages: 336

Price: $17.00 (Paperback)

Ordinarily, I would not review a novel by John Grisham. He is a known quantity, a master of his craft, and every book is a best-seller.

But this novel intrigued me with its connection to the literary world, and there is even a tenuous Alabama connection.

“Game of Bones”

Author: Carolyn Haines 

Publisher: Minotaur Books

Pages: 384

Price: $26.00 (Hardcover)

“Game of Bones” is, unbelievably, the twentieth in Haines’ “Bones” series, starring Sarah Booth Delaney, private detective. With each novel, using the same set of characters, Haines must cook up a new crime, a new venue and if possible a new method of killing. And she has.

In this novel, we learn there is an archaeological dig happening, in the Mississippi Delta, but some distance from the river.

“Treeborne”

Author: Caleb Johnson   

Publisher: Picador

New York

2018

Price: $26.00 (Hardcover)

Pages: 320

“Treeborne” is an amazing debut novel that has arrived on the scene with considerable fanfare. Advance praise comes from Daniel Wallace, Jill McCorkle, Brad Watson, and many others.

Caleb Johnson, a native of tiny Arley, Alabama, graduated from the university, then took the MFA in Laramie, at The University of Wyoming, to study with Brad Watson.