Don Noble

“You Ought To Do a Story About Me: Addiction, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Endless Quest for Redemption” 

Author: Ted Jackson 

Publisher: Dey St. / Harper Collins 

2020 

Pages: 329 

Price: $27.99 (Hardcover) 

"The Forever Wish of Middy Sweet: A Story of What Might Have Been” 

Author: Terry Kay 

Publisher: Mercer University Press 

Pages: 328 

Price: $24.00 (Hardback) 

“Lost Girls: Short Stories” 

Author: Ellen Birkett Morris 

Publisher: TouchPoint Press 

Pages: 132 

Price: $13.99 (Paper) 

“Lost Girls” is a debut volume of 17 stories, about 7 pages each, with each one an examination of a particular turning point or crisis in the life of a female protagonist. Some stories are of childhood. In others, the protagonist might be in her seventies. 

“Hieroglyphics” 

Author: Jill McCorkle 

Publisher: Algonquin Books 

Pages: 309 

Price: $26.95 (Hardcover) 

Many, many years ago on an elementary school field trip to the New York Museum of Natural History, I was stopped in my tracks by the Egyptian hieroglyphics. I had a little notebook and pencil and was copying them, thinking that I could somehow, later, figure out at least a part of what this writing from the past meant. 

“Stay Hungry” 

Author: Charles Gaines 

Publisher: Doubleday 

Pages: 244 

Price: Out of print: purchase used 

Charles Gaines is a professional, hardworking writer with about 19 books, several movie scripts and 300 magazine articles to his credit and although he lives north of Birmingham half the year-the other half in Nova Scotia—he is not seen much around Alabama literary world. 

“Alabama Rivers: A Celebration and Challenge” 

Author: William G. Deutsch 

Publisher: Mindbridge Press  

Price: $27.00 (Paper) 

Pages: 227 

“Alabama Rivers” is one of the many books published in cooperation with the Alabama Bicentennial Commission. This volume is beautifully and profusely illustrated with photographs, maps, charts and drawings.  

“The Devil’s Bones” 

Author: Carolyn Haines 

Publisher: Minotaur Books, St. Martin’s 

Pages: 440 

Price: $26.99 (Hardcover) 

Here it is: the twenty-first Sarah Booth Delaney Mystery by Carolyn Haines. She writes them fast—more than one a year—but she doesn’t stint. This mystery is 440 pages—long for a detective story, but what’s the hurry? 

“The Summer House” 

Author: Lauren K. Denton 

Publisher: Thomas Nelson 

Pages: 368 

Price: $26.99 (Hardcover) 

Only a few months ago Lauren Denton published her third novel, “Glory Road,” and now we have her newest, “The Summer House,” released in June as a summer read. 

“Underwater: How Our American Dream of Homeownership Became a Nightmare” 

Author: Ryan Dezember 

Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books 

“Fancy Strut: A Novel” 

Author: Lee Smith 

Publisher: Ballantine Books  

Pages: 343 

Price: $11.00 (Paper) 

“Stealing Our Democracy: How the Political Assassination of a Governor Threatens Our Nation” 

Author: Don Siegelman 

Publisher: NewSouth Books  

Pages: 320 

Price: $28.95 (Cloth) 

As his second trial was coming to an end, Governor Siegelman wanted to testify on his own behalf. His lawyers, certain the state had not made its case and the governor would be acquitted, persuaded him not to. 

Siegelman’s brother Les disagreed. 

“André’s Reboot: Striving to Save Humanity” 

Author: Steve Coleman 

Publisher: S.B. Coleman 

Birmingham AL 

Pages: 254 

Price: $ 14.95 (Paper) 

I have seldom discussed a science-fiction novel in this space, but after I learned that “André’s Reboot” has won the Silver Award from Independent Publisher Book Awards and Honorable Mention from “Writer’s Digest,” I decided to give it a look. I’m glad I did. 

“Boys of Alabama” 

Author: Genevieve Hudson 

Publisher: Liveright Publishing Corp. 

Pages: 282 

Price: $26.95 (Hardcover) 

“Boys of Alabama” is Genevieve Hudson’s first novel but third published book. In each the reader can see the development of a bright, sensitive and gay young woman in Alabama coming to terms with her place and her place in it. 

“Sisters of the Undertow” 

Author: Johnnie Bernhard 

Publisher: Texas Review Press 

Pages: 200 

Price: $21.95 (Paper) 

Bernhard’s third novel is the story of two sisters and may be enjoyed by women who have a sister, but these sisters are far from average. The problems of sibling rivalry and family dynamics presented here are far from common. 

“Here We Are: My Friendship with Philip Roth” 

Author: Benjamin Taylor 

Publisher: Penguin Books 

Pages: 171 

$26.00 (Hardcover) 

Readers should be aware that “Here We Are” is not the full biography of novelist Philip Roth. That volume is being written by Blake Bailey, the biographer of John Cheever and Richard Yates. 

“Here We Are,” a memoir, is the story of a friendship. 

“The Cat Man of Aleppo” 

Authors:  Irene Latham and Karim Shamsi-Basha 

Illustrated by Yuko Shimizu 

Publisher: G. P. Putnam’s Sons 

Pages: 

Price: $17.99 (Hardcover) 

“After Sundown: A Novel” 

Authors: Linda Howard and Linda Jones 

Publisher: William Morrow 

Pages: 369 

Price: $27.95 (Hardcover) 

“Blue Marlin” 

Author: Lee Smith 

Publisher: Blair, an imprint of Carolina Wren Press 

Pages: 123 

Price: $15.95 (paper) 

“Who Got Game?: Baseball: Amazing but True Stories” 

Author: Derrick Barnes  

Illustrated by John John Bajet 

Publisher: Workman Publishing  

Pages: 171 

Price: $12.95 (paper) 

It has been over a month now since the 2020 baseball season should have opened and there is an empty place in the hearts of millions of Americans. The national pastime is on indefinite hold. 

“Old Lovegood Girls: A Novel” 

Author: Gail Godwin 

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing 

Pages: 352 

Price: $27.00 (hardcover) 

The publication of “Old Lovegood Girls” is a genuine literary event, worthy of celebration. This book marks 50 years of publishing since Godwin’s debut with “The Perfectionists” in 1970. 

“Will the Circle be Unbroken?” 

Author: Sean “Sean of the South” Dietrich  

Publisher: Zondervan Books 

Pages: 256 

Price: $24.99 (Hardcover)  

Sean Dietrich has become truly famous for his blog posts which are eagerly, ritualistically, almost addictively, read by tens of thousands of people every morning. 

“Firebird: A Novel” 

Author: Mark Powell 

Publisher: Haywire Books  

Pages: 312 

Price: $17.95 (Paperback)

Readers of “Firebird” might not immediately recognize Mark Powell as a Southern writer, but he surely is. At present, Powell is teaching creative writing at Appalachian State in Asheville, North Carolina. 

“Glory Road: A Novel” 

Author: Lauren K. Denton 

Publisher: Thomas Nelson 

“The Testaments “ 

Author: Margaret Atwood 

Publisher: Nan Talese/Doubleday 

“Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption” 
Author: Bryan Stevenson 
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau 
Pages: 336 
Price: $28.00 (Hardcover) 

I am embarrassed to say I am just now reading Bryan Stevenson’s “Just Mercy,” but I am really glad I’ve read it. Every American should read this book.  

“Library Girls of New York: A Secret Place”

Author: Carolyn Rhodes

Publisher: Borgo Publishing

Pages: 101

Price: $15.99 (Paper)

The millionaire industrialist Andrew Carnegie believed deeply in philanthropy. He was famous for giving a dime to anyone who asked, which sounds cheap, but isn’t really. Most millionaires did not want to be bothered.

“Gifts: A Novel”

Author: May Lamar

Publisher: The Donnell Group

Pages: 246

Price: $28.00 (Hardcover)

May Lamar’s new novel is a fictionalized account of the life of pioneering artist Anne Goldthwaite, who lived from 1869 till 1944. Goldthwaite, raised partly in Montgomery, was a suffragette, and an artist in several media. She began but did not complete a memoir.

May Lamar had published a similar book, “Brother Sid,” based on the life of the poet Sidney Lanier.

This novel is even more ambitious and a delight to read.

“Operation Dimwit: A Penelope Lemon Novel”

Author: Inman Majors

Publisher: LSU Press

Pages: 219

Price: $29.95 (Hardcover)

Inman Majors, a Tennessean with an MFA from UA, is in mid-career and in fine form. He has an amazing and underrated serious novel in “The Millionaires,” set at the World’s Fair in Knoxville, but also that rarest of gifts these days, a comic sensibility.

“Dear Betty, Love Byron: The Letters of Lieutenant Byron Yarbrough and Betty Jones, 1944-1945”

Introduction by Mark Wilson

Preface by Dennis Blocker II

Publisher: Solomon & George Publishers

Pages: 107

Price: $10.00 (Paper)

There could be literally thousands and thousands of books like this one, letters between a sailor away at war and a young woman at home. My own father and mother did exactly this during WWII.

“The Nickel Boys”

Author: Colson Whitehead

Publisher: Doubleday

Pages: 210

Price: $24.95 (Hardcover)

Years ago I met a man who had made a success in Hollywood writing ethnic wedding scenes, a narrow specialty indeed.  This man wrote the extraordinary wedding scenes for the first “Godfather” movie, Italian Roman Catholic, and “The Deer Hunter,” Russian Orthodox.

If Hollywood should develop a need for a specialist to write scenes of savage beatings, Colson Whitehead is their man.