Staff Picks
#BroaderBookshelf 2024: Fiction set in Alabama
- Savannah G.
- Monday, January 01
Collection
Check out one of these titles set in Alabama and fulfill the 2024 Broader Bookshelf prompt "Read a book set in Georgia or Alabama"!
Daddy Wanted
Published in 2015
Overnight Mom Never in a hundred years does Sabrina Martinez expect to meet someone like handsome millionaire Jack Thorne--let alone find him volunteering at the Denver mission where she works. She's grown up in a humble home and is surprised an heir to a fortune could have such a kind and generous heart. But Sabrina can't let anything distract her--not even love. She's battling for custody of her nieces and there's nothing more important than that. Jack wants to help, but the divide between him and Sabrina seems impossibly wide. Can they learn to see past their differences, and give themselves a chance at true love--and a real family? Former wild child Savannah Bowers goes from being happily single to the guardian of three children after the sudden death of her best friend. Struggling with her new role, Savvy's not sure if Brodie Evans's offer to help is a welcome one. She has trouble forgiving her childhood friend's past mistakes, but she'll give him a chance for the sake of the kids. Which is why the attraction she begins to feel for him catches her off guard. And she can tell she's not the only one. If Brodie can prove he's changed his ways, he might just be this instant family's perfect daddy.
Family Wanted
Published in 2015
"Isabella Gray has always longed for a small town to call home. Newly arrived in Claremont, Alabama, she might finally have the chance to find that--and more. Handsome Titus Jameson and his daughter, Savannah, immediately capture Isabella's attention. The motherless child reminds Isabella of herself growing up, and she's determined to help bring the little girl out of her shell. But Isabella has been keeping a secret from the man she's fallen for--and she's torn. She knows telling him the real reason she came to Claremont is the right thing to do--but revealing the truth could break everyone's hearts." -- Page [4] cover.
Small-town Billionaire
Published in 2014
An Unexpected Romance As the CEO of Brooks International, Ryan Brooks has money, power and a sought-after family name. But here on his sister's ranch in Claremont, Alabama, the billionaire only wants to be loved for who he really is. So when small-town shop owner Maribeth Walton ignores him and his valuable business advice, he's determined to figure out why. Problem is, Maribeth knows he's not sticking around and she won't let him get close. Or could it be she's keeping a secret'one that may hold the key to why she's so reluctant to admit she's falling for the billionaire'
The Hideaway
Published in 2017
After her last remaining family member dies, Sara Jenkins goes home to The Hideaway, her grandmother Mags's ramshackle B&B in Sweet Bay, Alabama. She intends to quickly tie up loose ends then return to her busy life and thriving antique shop in New Orleans. Instead, she learns Mags has willed her The Hideaway and charged her with renovating it -- no small task considering Mags's best friends, a motley crew of senior citizens, still live there. Rather than hurrying back to New Orleans, Sara stays in Sweet Bay and begins the biggest house-rehabbing project of her career. Amid sheetrock dust, old memories, and a charming contractor, she discovers that slipping back into life at The Hideaway is easier than she expected. Then she discovers a box Mags left in the attic with clues to a life Sara never imagined for her grandmother. With help from Mags's friends, Sara begins to piece together the mysterious life of bravery, passion, and choices that changed Mags's destiny in both marvelous and devastating ways. When an opportunistic land developer threatens to seize The Hideaway, Sara is forced to make a choice -- stay in Sweet Bay and fight for the house and the people she's grown to love or leave again and return to her successful but solitary life in New Orleans.
The One You're with
Published in 2021
"Written in Lauren Denton's signature Southern style, The One You're With tells a story of marriage, choices, and what a good life really looks like"-- Provided by publisher.
A Place to Land
Published in 2022
"[A] story of sisterhood, healing, and the meaning of home. A hidden past isn't past at all. Violet Figg and her sister Trudy have lived a quiet life in Sugar Bend, Alabama, since a night forty years ago that stole Trudy's voice and cemented Violet's role as her sister's fierce and loyal protector. Now Trudy spends her days making sculptures from found objects and speaking through notes written on scraps of paper, while Violet runs their art shop, monitors bird activity up and down the water, and tries not to think of the one great love she gave up to keep her sister safe. Eighteen-year-old Maya knows where everyone else belongs, but she's been searching for her own place since her grandmother died seven years ago. Moving in and out of strangers' houses has left her exhausted. After seeing a flyer on a gas station window for a place called Sugar Bend, Maya chooses to follow the strange pull she feels and finds herself on the doorstep of an art shop called Two Sisters. When a boat rises to the surface of Little River in the middle of the night, the present and no-longer-buried past collide, and the future becomes uncertain for Maya, Violet, and Trudy. As history creeps continuously closer to the present and old secrets come to light, the sisters must decide to face the truth of what happened that night forty years ago, or risk losing each other and those they've come to love." Provided by publisher.
Stars of Alabama
Published in 2019
"When two Depression-era migrant workers, Paul and Vern, find an abandoned baby in the woods, they take it upon themselves to care for the mysterious child. When fifteen-year-old Marigold, reviled by her family after an unwanted pregnancy, loses her baby in the forest, her whole world is painted black. She's still fraught with despair when she discovers what seems to be a miraculous power within her. Coot, a child preacher on the Kansas plains, escapes the outfit that's been handling him--and takes the collection plate full of money with him. As the years pass, these stories intertwine in surprising ways--proving how ugly circumstances can produce beautiful people"-- Provided by publisher.
The Education of Dixie Dupree
Published in 2016
In 1969, Dixie Dupree is eleven years old and already an expert liar. Sometimes the lies are for her mama, Evie's sake?to explain away a bruise brought on by her quick-as-lightning temper. And sometimes the lies are to spite Evie, who longs to leave her unhappy marriage in Perry County, Alabama, and return to her beloved New Hampshire. But for Dixie and her brother, Alabama is home, a place of pine-scented breezes and hot, languid afternoons. Though Dixie is learning that the family she once believed was happy has deep fractures, even her vivid imagination couldn't concoct the events about to unfold. Dixie records everything in her diary?her parents' fights, her father's drinking and his unexplained departure, and the arrival of Uncle Ray. Only when Dixie desperately needs help and is met with disbelief does she realize how much damage her past lies have done. But she has courage and a spirit that may yet prevail, forcing secrets into the open and allowing her to forgive and become whole again. Narrated by her young heroine in a voice as sure and resonant as The Secret Life of Bees' Lily or Bastard Out of Carolina's Bone, Donna Everhart's remarkable debut is a story about mothers and daughters, the guilt and pain that pass between generations, and the truths that are impossible to hide, especially from ourselves. ADVANCE PRAISE FOR THE EDUCATION OF DIXIE DUPREE "Please open your heart to Dixie Dupree. With unflinching honesty and a voice that rings with authenticity, she survives the unthinkable. Her story celebrates the resiliency of the human spirit and the triumph of the imagination. An important novel, beautifully written, this is a story to cherish."?Susan Wiggs, # 1 New York Times bestselling author "A searingly honest coming of age story with a heroine unlike any other I've met in a long time. I read this book through from start to finish in one sitting, simply unable and unwilling to put it down. Here's to another beautiful novel from Donna Everhart."?Holly Chamberlin, author of Seashell Season "Secrets, lies, peach cobbler, grits, a hot Alabama sun, and a girl named Dixie Dupree who shows courage in the face of betrayal, strength when all falls down around her, and shining hope in the darkness. This is a story you'll read well into the night."?Cathy Lamb, author of The Language of Sisters "A poignant coming of age novel as gritty as red Alabama dirt. Dixie Dupree will stay with you long after you've turned the last page."?Colleen Faulkner, author of Julia's Daughters "In a powerful coming-of-age story that pitches southern charm against dark family secrets, the voice of 11-year-old Dixie Dupree captivates from the first page to the last."?Barbara Claypole White, bestselling author of The Perfect Son
To Kill a Mockingbird
A Graphic Novel
Published in 2018
The explosion of racial hate in an Alabama town is viewed by a little girl whose father defends a black man accused of rape.
Transcendent Kingdom
Published in 2020
"A novel about faith, science, religion, and family that tells the deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief, narrated by a fifth year candidate in neuroscience at Stanford school of medicine studying the neural circuits of reward seeking behavior in mice"-- Provided by publisher.
Rabbit Cake
Published in 2017
Twelve-year-old Elvis Babbitt has a head for the facts: she knows science proves yellow is the happiest color, she knows a healthy male giraffe weighs about 3,000 pounds, and she knows that the naked mole rat is the longest living rodent. She knows she should plan to grieve her mother, who has recently drowned while sleepwalking, for exactly eighteen months. But there are things Elvis doesn't yet know--like how to keep her sister Lizzie from poisoning herself while sleep-eating or why her father has started wearing her mother's silk bathrobe around the house. Elvis investigates the strange circumstances of her mother's death and finds comfort, if not answers, in the people (and animals) of Freedom, Alabama. As hilarious a storyteller as she is heartbreakingly honest, Elvis is a truly original voice in this exploration of grief, family, and the endurance of humor after loss.
Bury Me when I'm Dead
Published in 2016
"Charlene "Charlie" Mack is a PI in Detroit. Born and raised in the city that America forgot, Charlie has built a highly respected private investigations firm through hard work, smart choices, and relentless ambition. Her team of investigators are highly skilled and trustworthy, but she secretly struggles with her sexual orientation and a mother with early-onset Alzheimer's. When Charlie and her crack team head to Birmingham, Alabama following the trail of a missing person, what should be a routine case turns into a complex chase for answers. Shady locals and a southern patriarch with dark secrets dating back forty years obscure their path. It seems like everyone has something to hide, including Charlie. When the case turns deadly with a double murder, and Charlie is attacked on a quiet neighborhood street, everything suddenly becomes personal"-- Back cover.
Treeborne
A Novel
Published in 2018
"Wedged between the bluffs and the river for which it's named, there's a small and all-but-forgotten town. Janie Treeborne lives on an orchard at the edge of Elberta, Alabama, and in time, she has become its keeper. A place where conquistadors once walked, and where the peaches they left behind now grow, Elberta has seen fierce battles, violent storms, and frantic change--and when the town is once again threatened from without, Janie realizes it won't withstand much more. So she tells the story of its people: of Hugh, her granddaddy, determined to preserve Elberta's legacy through his art; of his wife Maybelle, who shook the town when she became its first female postmaster, then again when she died a sudden and mysterious death; of her lover Lee Malone, a black orchardist and musician harvesting from a land where he is less than welcome; of the local legend Ricky Birdsong, who scored touchdown after touchdown, only to run headlong into tragedy; of the time Janie herself kidnapped her own Hollywood-obsessed aunt and tore the wrong people apart. As the world closes in on Elberta, Alabama--a fictional land equal parts Macon and Macondo--Caleb Johnson's debut novel lifts the veil and offers one last glimpse. Treeborne is both a celebration and a reminder: of the difficulty of untangling the past from the future, and of how home is a story as much as a place"-- Provided by publisher.
Letters from My Sister
Published in 2023
"Sisters Emmy and Callie have no secrets between them until a mysterious accident robs one of a crucial memory and sparks troubling visions. Only through letters they exchange while painfully separated do the sisters reveal hidden truths leading back to a fateful springtime day--and a chilling September night--that changed them both forever"-- Provided by publisher.
The Lehman Trilogy
A Novel
Published in 2020
A "novel in verse that inspired the ... West End and Off-Broadway play of the same name, [this book] follows the epic rise and fall of three generations of [the Lehman] family and through them tells the story of American ambition and hubris"--Publisher marketing.
The Unsettled
Published in 2023
"Set in the 1980s in racially and politically turbulent Philadelphia and in the tiny town of Bonaparte, Alabama-about a mother fighting for her sanity and survival"-- Provided by publisher.
Moonrise over New Jessup
Published in 2023
"It's 1957, and after leaving the only home she has ever known, Alice Young steps off the bus into the all-Black town of New Jessup, Alabama, where residents have largely rejected integration as the means for Black social advancement. She falls in love with Raymond Campbell, whose clandestine organizing activities challenge New Jessup's status quo and could lead to the young couple's expulsion-or worse-from the home they hold dear. But as Raymond continues to push alternatives for enhancing New Jessup's political power, Alice must find a way to balance her undying support for his underground work with her desire to protect New Jessup from the rising pressure of upheavals both in and out of town"-- Provided by publisher.
Gonna Lay Down My Burdens
Published in 2002
Carmen Taylor's life spins out of control when her friend Desiree begins dating Chester Sheffield, the man Carmen has loved for years, and when Desiree gets pregnant, Carmen commits a reckless crime of passion.
Empty Vows
Published in 2022
Popular, generous, forty-something widow Jessie Tucker decides to make herself indispensable to recently widowed Hubert Wiggins but is disappointed when he is not everything she dreamed he would be and instead turns her attentions to a much younger man.
Mrs. Wiggins
Published in 2021
"The daughter of a prostitute mother and an alcoholic father, Maggie Franklin knew her only way out was to marry someone upstanding and church-going. Someone like Hubert Wiggins, the most eligible man in Lexington, Alabama--and the son of its most revered preacher. Proper and prosperous, Hubert is glad to finally have a wife, even one with Maggie's background. For Hubert has a secret he desperately needs to stay hidden. And Maggie's unexpected charm, elegance, and religious devotion makes her the perfect partner in lies..."-- Publisher's description.
Something She Can Feel
Published in 2009
Tuscaloosa, Alabama, may not be a glamorous place, but for Journey Cash, the small Southern town has always been enough. She has a loving husband, a great family, and she even occasionally brings the house down at church with her beautiful, thunderous singing voice. Problem is, Journey finds herself wondering if all those years as an obedient preacher's daughter have kept her from living a life she is really meant to live. When Dame, one of Journey's former students, comes back to town after striking it big as a rap star, Journey gets a taste of the fast-lane life that has passed her by. Dame is exciting, unpredictable and sexy. He is also ten year Journey's junior. But no matter, Journey runs from everything that is idyllic and stable in her world and into the arms of Dame.
The Last Thing You Surrender
Published in 2019
"A historical novel of race and war that follows three characters from the Jim Crow South as they face the enormous changes World War II triggers in the United States." -- Provided by publisher.
Since I Laid My Burden Down
Published in 2017
""Brontez is a raw tongue of flame blazing through all the blatant fakery and insincere bullshit of today's gay/music/human scene. This audacious non-memoir burnt the hair off the back of my neck and had me rolling with glee."--SF Guardian on Johnny Would You Love Me The adult DeShawn lives a high, artistic, and promiscuous life in San Francisco. But when he's called back to his cramped southern hometown for his uncle's funeral, it's inevitable that he'll be hit by flashbacks of handsome, doomed neighbors and sweltering Sunday services. Amidst prickly reminders of his childhood, DeShawn ponders family, church, and the men in his life, prompting the question: Who deserves love? Since I Laid My Burden Down is a raw, funny, and uninhibited novella that traces a queer black man's sexual and artistic awakenings as he stumbles-often painfully, sometimes joyously-down memory lane. Brontez Purnell is author of the cult zine Fag School, frontman for his band The Younger Lovers, and founder and choreographer of the Brontez Purnell Dance Company. He was a guest curator for the Berkeley Art Museum's L@TE program, honored by Out Magazine's Hot 100 List and Most Eligible Bachelors List, and most recently won the 2014 SF Bay Guardian's Goldie for Performance/Music. His previous books include graphic novel The Cruising Diaries, and a novella Johnny Would You Love Me (if My Dick Were Bigger)"-- Provided by publisher.
Work Like Any Other
A Novel
Published in 2016
"In this astonishingly accomplished, morally complicated, "exceptional and starkly beautiful debut" (Kevin Powers, National Book Award-nominated author of The Yellow Birds), a prideful electrician in 1920s rural Alabama struggles to overcome past sins and find peace after being sent to prison for manslaughter. Roscoe T Martin set his sights on a new type of power spreading at the start of the twentieth century: electricity. It became his training, his life's work. But when his wife, Marie, inherits her father's failing farm, Roscoe has to give up his livelihood, with great cost to his sense of self, his marriage, and his family. Realizing he might lose them all if he doesn't do something, he begins to use his skills as an electrician to siphon energy from the state, ushering in a period of bounty and happiness. Even the love of Marie and their child seem back within Roscoe's grasp. Then a young man working for the state power company stumbles on Roscoe's illegal lines and is electrocuted, and everything changes: Roscoe is arrested; the farm once more starts to deteriorate; and Marie abandons her husband, leaving him to face his twenty-year sentence alone. Now an unmoored Roscoe must carve out a place at Kilby Prison. Climbing the ranks of the incarcerated from dairy hand to librarian to "dog boy," an inmate who helps the guards track down escapees, he is ultimately forced to ask himself once more if his work is just that, or if the price of his crimes--for him and his family--is greater than he ever let himself believe. Gorgeously spare and brilliantly insightful, Work Like Any Other is "a striking debut about love and redemption, the heavy burdens of family and guilt, and learning how to escape them ... Virginia Reeves is a major new talent" (Philipp Meyer, New York Times bestselling author of The Son)"-- Provided by publisher.
The Creole Princess
A Novel
Published in 2015
All along the eastern seaboard, the American struggle for independence rages. In the British-held southern port of Mobile, Alabama, the conflict brewing is quieter--though no less deadly. The lovely Frenchwoman Lyse Lanier is best friends with the daughter of the British commander. Rafael Gonzalez is a charming young Spanish merchant with a secret mission and a shipment of gold to support General Washington. As their paths cross and their destinies become increasingly tangled, Lyse and Rafael must decide where their true loyalties lie.
The Pelican Bride
A Novel
Published in 2014
"A fiesty young Frenchwoman gets more than she bargained for when she flees to the New World as a mail-order bride"-- Provided by publisher.