North Carolina Writers’ Network members Taylor Brown and Lee Smith have books coming out this month, and they’ve been selected as 2016 Winter Okra Picks by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance.
Taylor Brown’s debut novel Fallen Land (St. Martin’s Press) is set in “the final year of the Civil War, as a young couple on horseback flees a dangerous band of marauders who seek a bounty reward.” North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame inductee Robert Morgan, author of many books including Gap Creek, called Fallen Land a “thrilling fugue, in both senses: of flight, and intricate composition. It is also the story of a revenge quest, the horrors of Sherman’s March, a noble horse named Reiver, of sacrifice, endurance, and redemption. No one who reads Fallen Land will ever forget it. In this first novel, Taylor Brown proves himself a fresh, authentic, and eloquent new voice in American fiction.â€
Despite being a New York Times bestseller for fiction, and also an inductee of the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame, Lee Smith’s Dimestore (Algonquin Books) is her first work of nonfiction. In it, she “deploys the wit, wisdom, and graceful prose for which she is beloved to conjure her early days in the small coal town of Grundy, Virginia—and beyond.” Anyone who heard her Keynote Address at the NCWN 2015 Fall Conference knows they’re in for a treat; Kirkus Reviews called it a “warm, poignant memoir from a reliably smooth voice.”
2016 Winter Okra Picks have a strong Southern focus and are published between January and March, 2016, and all of them have fans among Southern indie booksellers; people who are always looking out for the next great writer who should be on your plate and in your To Be Read stack. So it is very likely the next time you visit your local Southern indie bookstore, someone will hand you one and say, “You’ve got to read this!†Read them before they hit the bestseller lists and impress your friends with your impeccable taste and literary savvy!
For a complete list of 2016 Winter Okra Picks, click here.