Books published by publisher NewSouth Books

During his Roaring Twenties heyday, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote three stories about the belles of Tarleton, Georgia, a setting readers recognized as a thinly veiled version of his wife Zelda’s hometown of Montgomery, Alabama. Inspired by Fitzgerald's own belle, Zelda Sayre, whom he met in Montgomery while stationed at Camp Sheridan training for the Great War, these stories are minor masterpieces long regarded as the very best of the 160-plus short stories the writer published during his short life. All of the Belles collects these stories ― “The Ice Palace,” “The Jelly-Bean,” and “The Last of the Belles” ― in a single volume for the very first time. This special book is being released to commemorate the centennial anniversary of Scott and Zelda’s marriage and in recognition of the many hundredth anniversaries of Fitzgerald’s work which will be celebrated starting in 2020. The heroines of these still remarkable tales rebel against Southern expectations of women, revel in the newfound freedoms young people enjoyed at the outset of the modern age, and ultimately discover that home is far harder to run away from than they ever expected. The stories capture all the winsome qualities that readers love about F. Scott’s writing: the keen observation of manners, the comic insights, the lyricism, and the poignant, powerful sense of loss. The Jazz Age may have begun a century ago, but Fitzgerald’s works remain among American literature’s most powerful writing, as will become clear with a reading of All of the Belles.

In the best Southern literary tradition, A Yellow Watermelon explores poverty and racial segregation through the eyes of an innocent boy. In rural south Alabama in 1948, whites picked on one side of the cotton field and blacks on the other. Where the fields meet, twelve-year-old Ted meets Poudlum, a black boy his own age, who teaches him how to endure the hard work while they bond and go on to integrate the field. Through Poudlum and Jake, an escaped black convict, Ted learns of evil forces gathering to deprive Poudlum’s family of their property and livelihood. The white boy and the black boy encounter danger and suspense while executing a plan to save Poudlum’s family, set Jake onto a river of freedom, and discover a great, yet simple secret of enlightenment.

In 1961, 16-year-old Brenda Travis was a youth leader of the NAACP branch in her hometown of McComb, Mississippi. She joined in the early stages of voter registration, and when the Freedom Rides and direct action reached McComb, she and two SNCC workers sat-in at the local bus station. That led to her first arrest and jailing, which resulted in her being expelled and leading a protest walkout from her high school. Thrown in jail for a second time, she was eventually released on the condition that she leave the state. Her poignant memoir describes what gave her the courage at such a young age to fight segregation, how the movement unfolded in Mississippi, and what happened after she was forced to leave her family, friends, and fellow activists.One of the civil rights workers who befriended her in McComb was the legendary activist Bob Moses, who contributed the Foreword to her book. A white educator and Vietnam war hero, J. Randall O’Brien, was deeply inspired by learning about her courage, and he contributed the Afterword.

Ludelphia Bennett may be blind in one eye, but that doesn't mean she can't put in a good stitch. In fact, Ludelphia sews all the time, especially when things are going wrong. But when Mama gets deathly ill, it doesn't seem like even quilting will help. Mama needs medicine badly—medicine that can only be found in Camden, over forty miles away. That's when Ludelphia decides to do something drastic—leave Gee's Bend. Beyond the cotton fields of her small sharecropping community, Ludelphia discovers a world she never imagined, but there's also danger lurking for a young girl on her own. Set in 1932 and inspired by the rich quilting traditions of Gee's Bend, Alabama, Leaving Gee's Bend is a delightful story of a young girl facing a brave new world, presented in a new paperback edition.

Originally published in the children’s magazine Cricket, Golemito is the story of how a couple of Jewish boys in Mexico City confront bullying by creating a Golem, the mythical creature of Jewish folklore, originally made by Rabbi Lowe, known as the Maharal of Prague, in the sixteenth century, to defend the city’s Jewish community from anti-Semitic attacks. Sammy Nurko, along with the story’s narrator, conjure an Aztec version of the Golem that is minute in size and responds to enchanting Nahuatl poetry. Written by internationally renowned, prize-winning author Ilan Stavans and illustrated by Teresa Villegas, Golemito is both an endearing tale of courage and redemption and an enthralling fusion of the Jewish and Latino traditions.

Times are hard in Depression-era Georgia mountain country. Even so, fourteen-year-old Halley Owenby, her younger brother, Robbie, and their parents, Jim and Kate, manage to get by until Jim dies suddenly in an accident, and Kate decides she and her children have no choice but to move in with her parents. Like her father, Halley has never cared for her grandparents. Her grandfather Franklin is a fire-and-brimstone fundamentalist preacher who runs a strict and joyless household. A miserly tyrant, he claims any money the women in his household earn. Even their mail he considers his to read first. Waiting for the Rapture, when Jesus will return, may suit her grandparents and many others of the same faith, but Halley wants more. She yearns for some control of her own life. She longs for an education, which she firmly believes would eventually allow choices. Little does she suspect that such dreams might actually come true.

More than twenty years ago, Robert Croshon, an elderly friend of Frye Gaillard's, told him the story of Croshon's ancestor, Gilbert Fields, an African-born slave in Georgia who led his family on a daring flight to freedom. Fields and his family ran away intending to travel north, but clouds obscured the stars and when morning came Fields discovered they had been running south instead. They had no choice but to seek sanctuary with the Seminole Indians of Florida and later a community of free blacks in Mobile.With Croshon's blessing, Gaillard has expanded this oral history into a novel for young readers, weaving the story of Gilbert Fields through the nearly forgotten history of the Seminoles and their alliance with runaway slaves. As Gaillard's narrative makes clear, the Seminole Wars of the 1830s, in which Indians fought side by side with former slaves, represents the largest slave uprising in American history. Gaillard also puts a human face on the story of free blacks before the Civil War and the lives they painfully built for themselves in Mobile. Hauntingly illustrated by artist Anne Kent Rush, Go South to Freedom is a gripping story for readers of any age.