"There is nothing small about Childress's fine novel. It's big in all the ways that matter - big in daring, big in insight, and big-hearted. Really, really big-hearted." -New Orleans Times-Picayune

This exuberantly acclaimed novel by the author of the bestselling Crazy in Alabama tells an uproarious and moving story about family, best friends, first love, and surviving the scariest years of your life.

You need only one best friend, Daniel Musgrove figures, to make it through high school alive. After his family moves to Mississippi just before his junior year,...

East Tupelo was a sprinkling of poor houses at the scratched-out back edge of Mississippi--and the birthplace of a boy who would become the greatest rock legend of his time.

In Tender, novelist Mark Childress has redefined the American epic. He takes us on a wild ride through the last three decades as his fictional hero, Leroy Kirby, makes his meteoric rise to stardom, from the poverty-stricken child of an overprotective mother and absent father, to an icon who stands for everything American--a role that will ultimately consume him. After reading Tender, you will never think about the...

Georgia Bottoms may be Six Points, Alabama's finest feature - beautiful, worldly, a splendid cook and faithful churchgoer who cares for her aged mother and sells handmade quilts to her grateful neighbors.

Georgia also has a discreet side business, "entertaining" six local gentlemen at night. Judge Barnett on Sunday, Sheriff Allred on Friday, the doctor on Wednesday (Monday's are Georgia's own). Each gentleman gets a night tailored to his particular tastes, each has been trained to leave a "gift" to help Georgia get by, and each one thinks he is Georgia's only secret lover.

When...

"Mark Childress is an artist with an ear comparable to Eudora Welty's. I haven't read a Southern novel since Losing Battles that has given me such pleasure." - Harper Lee.An extraordinary burst of praise greeted Mark Childress's enthralling first novel, "A World Made of Fire." Set in Alabama at the turn of the century, it tells the story of Callie Bates and her adoring children; the preacher-husband leaving in a buggy after the wedding and returning with spiteful sermons about the children Callie gives birth to year after year in his absence. It is the story of the secret visitor who is the...

Alabama, 1942. The war is everywhere, but Victor - a 16-year-old boy sent by his father to care for his dying grandmother on a lonely island in Mobile Bay - can only dream of it. Then he wakes one amazing night to a thunderous roar from the Bay...and sees the ominous shadow of an enemy submarine surfacing at night. "Fantastic, extravagant...thoroughly charming." -Boston Globe.

In two short essays and one long piece of reportage, author and screenwriter Mark Childress ("Crazy in Alabama," "One Mississippi," "Georgia Bottoms") explores New Orleans before, during, and after Katrina. Essays: "What It Means to Miss New Orleans" originally appeared in the New York Times, "Disaster Tourism" in Salon magazine, and "The Tragic City Laughs" in The Birmingham News. All proceeds from this book go to Habitat for Humanity for their continued work in New Orleans. Approximately 36 pp., 9000 words, with illustrations.

Novelist Mark Childress ("Crazy in Alabama," "Georgia Bottoms") happened to be born in Monroeville, Alabama - the town Harper Lee called Maycomb when she wrote about it in the classic "To Kill a Mockingbird." For years, as a journalist, Childress was told to pursue an interview with the famously reclusive author, who refused all entreaties. The first essay describes the importance of Harper Lee's novel to the Southern fiction of today, and explores the question of why Harper Lee prefers to remain a figure of mystery. (The author did not meet Miss Lee until after writing this article.) In...