Don Noble

“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.

“At Briarwood School for Girls”

Author: Michael Knight  

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press

Pages: 221

Price: $26.00 (Hardcover)

After publishing his stunning collection of stories, “Eveningland,” in 2017, it would be understandable if Michael Knight lay fallow for a season.

But he is back with a new novel.

“Eveningland” was set, like most of Knight’s fiction, in his home place, around Mobile Bay.

“Southern Lady Code: Essays”

Author: Helen Ellis  

Publisher: Doubleday

Pages: 203

Price: $22.00 (Hardcover)

Helen Ellis, raised in Tuscaloosa, has been, through two previous volumes, a very funny writer. Her novel "Eating the Cheshire Cat," set on the UA campus, is a delight and her short story collection, "American Housewife" is a treat.

“Murder at Harbor Village”

Author: G. P. Gardner  

Publisher: Kensington Publishing Co.

Pages: 215

Price: $15.00 (Paper)

Cozies are springing up all over.

Just a few weeks ago a new series, The Sarah Blair Mysteries by Debra Goldstein, was launched in Birmingham; now the first in a new series is out in Fairhope, Alabama.

In the opening pages of “Murder at Harbor Village,” we meet Cleo Mack, our heroine and narrator. Dr. Mack lives in Atlanta where she is a professor of social work and chair of the department.

“Tuscaloosa: 200 Years in the Making”

Author: G. Ward Hubbs  

Publisher: University of Alabama Press

Pages: 204

Price: $24.95 (Paper)

This year marks the bicentennial for the state and, as it happens, for the city of Tuscaloosa. There has been a stream of fine books summarizing, explaining, examining Alabama’s past 200 years. Guy Ward Hubbs was the perfect choice to write of his home place.

“The Graceland Conspiracy”

Author: Philip Shirley  

Publisher: Mindbridge Press

Pages: 271

Price: $17.99 (Paper)

“To Dance With the White Dog”

Author: Terry Kay  

Publisher: Peachtree Publishers

Pages: 178

Price: $15.00

From time to time in this space I consider a book that is not brand new. Not too long ago, for example, I talked about “The Keepers of the House” by Shirley Ann Grau, which had won the Pulitzer Prize.

“The Fireball Brothers”

Author: M. David Hornbuckle  

Publisher: The Livingston Press

Pages: 194.

Price: $16.95 (Paper)

David Hornbuckle’s third novel opens in early June of 1959 on a farm in Pickens County near the Mississippi state line. Two boys are swimming, happily, in a small pond when a fireball—meteorite? space debris? or, perhaps, “the smoldering remains of a failed alien visitor”—splashes down at the other end of the pond, some 50 yards away.

“Hank: The Short Life and Long Country Road of Hank Williams”

Author: Mark Ribowsky  

Publisher: Liveright Publishing Corp.

Price: $29.95 (Hardcover)

Pages: 496