Some secrets have a way of coming back and haunting us, no matter how much we try to bury them. Chelsea Coming back home was supposed to be normal. Not that my life had ever been normal, but it was getting there. Then I opened the door and found a man-broken, bloodied, and fighting for his life. I don't know why, but I said I would take care of him. I had to. Needed to. He was a mystery, showing up from out of nowhere. But he might have already stolen my heart. Mayson Carey The only thing I have ever wanted in my entire life was to forget who I was. Joining the military helped me do this. Keep your head down and glide through life was my new motto. No strings, no relationships. Nothing. Everything was working until a knock at the door had me face-to-face with the reason I was running. So I ran-I fell into her arms, and she fell into my heart, but I know better than to think it'll last. Some secrets have a way of coming back and haunting us, no matter how much we try to bury them.
"Surprise me," the words fell from my lips before I even realized what I was saying. Didn't matter though, they were true. I'm ready to start our forever. I want the future he and I have spent hours talking about, but I've never had the courage to reach out and grab it. Now I do. I knew on our first date; she was the girl I was going to marry. I told her so every chance I could get. Even went as far as asking more times than I can count, but never on one knee. I knew that she wasn't ready, but I needed her to know that I was.I've been planning for weeks, wanting to make everything perfect. I took her words to a whole other level, and now I'm worried I've gone too far.This is a 30k word companion novella to the Southern Heart Series.
After experiencing heartache and loss, Whitney decides it's time to move on and leave the past behind, while keeping the pain with her. Finding her way to Kentucky to be with family, she's finally settling and feeling some happiness. She meets Aaron and he's slowly showing her how to live again. But, what Aaron doesn't know, is the deep secret she's keeping from him. Aaron doesn't believe in spending time with women he doesn't see a future with. Love, to him was black and white, until Whitney found her way into his life. She's his one and he's her strength. The overshadowing secret plaguing Whitney's mind drivers her away, leaving Aaron and everyone she met behind. Will Aaron find his way to Whitney again? Or was their love something that most people desired and never found?
From celebrated New York Times bestselling author and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Rick Bragg, comes a poignant and wryly funny collection of essays on life in the south. Keenly observed and written with his insightful and deadpan sense of humor, he explores enduring Southern truths about home, place, spirit, table, and the regions' varied geographies, including his native Alabama, Cajun country, and the Gulf Coast. Everything is explored, from regional obsessions from college football and fishing, to mayonnaise and spoonbread, to the simple beauty of a fish on the hook. Collected from over a decade of his writing, with many never-before-published essays written specifically for this edition, My Southern Journey is an entertaining and engaging read, especially for Southerners (or feel Southern at heart) and anyone who appreciates great writing.
New York Times bestselling author Miranda James returns to Athena, Mississippi, with the first Southern Ladies mystery featuring Miss An’gel and Miss Dickce Ducote, two snoopy sisters who are always ready to lend a helping hand. With the Mississippi sun beating down, An’gel and Dickce are taking a break to cool off and pet sit their friend Charlie Harris’s cat, Diesel, when their former sorority sister, Rosabelle Sultan, shows up at their door unexpectedly, with her ne’er-do-well adult children not far behind. Rosabelle’s selfish offspring are desperate to discover what’s in her will, and it soon becomes clear that one of them would kill to get their hands on the inheritance. Suddenly caught up in a deadly tangle of duplicitous suspects and deep-fried motives, it will take all of the sisters’ Southern charm to catch a decidedly ill-mannered killer…
A young woman finally gets a second chance at life and love when she is rescued by a man who vows to give her everything she needs, only for her secret to threaten their budding romance.
Born in 1920 in Greensboro, North Carolina, Junius Scales, whose great-uncle had been governor of the state, grew up in the privileged environment of his family’s estate. The only black people he knew were the servants. Wanting to improve the lot of workers, mainly African-American, he joined the Communist Party in 1939 while at the University of North Carolina, seeing in the Party an opportunity to right the wrongs done to blacks and poor working people. Scales rose quickly within the Party to coordinate civil rights and labor organizing activities in several Southern states. He went underground when Party leaders were trailed and harassed by federal authorities. In 1954, FBI agents arrested Scales in Memphis for violation of the Smith Act of 1940. The only American convicted solely for being a member of the Communist Party, Scales would serve 15 months in prison before his 6-year sentence was commuted by President Kennedy in 1962. Cause at Heart follows Scales from his privileged southern upbringing through the awakening of his social conscience, his civil- and labor-rights work for the Party across the South, his arrest and trials, his disillusionment with the Party, and his time in prison. In a new afterword, Barbara Scales, who was 10 years old when her father went to prison, recounts what it was like to be Junius Scales’ daughter. “It is the calm, even voice of Junius Scales we hear in Cause at Heart... this moving and memorable document... It is the voice of a decent, idealistic man who spent 18 years of his life in the Communist Party... And we don’t hear a false note: he is telling us the truth, as he reveals his illusions and delusions, his weaknesses and his strengths, his passionate belief in his party and the Soviet Union, and all the nagging doubts as well. He spares us nothing... Cause at Heart is an intelligent, rock honest... memoir, an interesting document that helps to explain in no small measure the tragic attraction the strange and hydra-headed American Communist Party held for the many decent human beings who passed through its revolving doors.” — William Herrick, The New York Times “Scales’s political life... is beautifully described in this well written book. His scenes of prison life alone — where he won respect from his fellow inmates and jailers alike — make remarkable reading.” — Monthly Review “Compelling reading, especially the discussions of Scales’s arrest, trials, and prison experience, interwoven, as they are, with his reevaluation of the Party.” — Journal of American History “An important and often moving account of the Communist Party’s role in labor organizing and civil rights activities in the South during the 1940s... [Scales’] memoir succeeds in capturing the hope and enthusiastic dedication that motivated him and many of his compatriots... the story of one individual’s unending quest on behalf of human decency and justice.” — Patricia Sullivan, Southern Changes “An engrossing saga.” — Michal R. Belknap, The Georgia Historical Quarterly “A book of unique perception and value. It is must reading for anyone interested in the era of Joseph McCarthy.” — Choice
A groundbreaking contribution to the history of the "long Civil Rights movement," Hammer and Hoe tells the story of how, during the 1930s and 40s, Communists took on Alabama's repressive, racist police state to fight for economic justice, civil and political rights, and racial equality. The Alabama Communist Party was made up of working people without a Euro-American radical political tradition: devoutly religious and semiliterate black laborers and sharecroppers, and a handful of whites, including unemployed industrial workers, housewives, youth, and renegade liberals. In this book, Robin D. G. Kelley reveals how the experiences and identities of these people from Alabama's farms, factories, mines, kitchens, and city streets shaped the Party's tactics and unique political culture. The result was a remarkably resilient movement forged in a racist world that had little tolerance for radicals. After discussing the book's origins and impact in a new preface written for this twenty-fifth-anniversary edition, Kelley reflects on what a militantly antiracist, radical movement in the heart of Dixie might teach contemporary social movements confronting rampant inequality, police violence, mass incarceration, and neoliberalism.
A searing portrait of the racial dynamics that lie inescapably at the heart of our nation, told through the turbulent history of the city of St. Louis. From Lewis and Clark's 1804 expedition to the 2014 uprising in Ferguson, American history has been made in St. Louis. And as Walter Johnson shows in this searing book, the city exemplifies how imperialism, racism, and capitalism have persistently entwined to corrupt the nation's past. St. Louis was a staging post for Indian removal and imperial expansion, and its wealth grew on the backs of its poor black residents, from slavery through redlining and urban renewal. But it was once also America's most radical city, home to anti-capitalist immigrants, the Civil War's first general emancipation, and the nation's first general strike—a legacy of resistance that endures. A blistering history of a city's rise and decline, The Broken Heart of America will forever change how we think about the United States.
Rebecca grew up in a well-to-do family in Memphis. For years, her father wanted her to marry the son of a family friend, but Rebecca did not love him. No sooner had she turned eighteen, she became pregnant by Vernon; a man she barely knew. Before she could share the good news with him, he suddenly left Memphis, never to return. Devastated, she had no choice but to give up the baby. Her parents sent her away to hide her growing shame, and arranged for an adoption. But Rebecca couldn’t go through with the adoption, and made her own plans. With her secret secured, she returned home and dutifully married. In time, she gave birth to another child. Life was good, until fate stepped in threatening to expose her secret. A series of events ensued that not only threatened to destroy her family, but also the lives of a family living in the fertile cotton belt of Arkansas.
