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A novel concerning life, death, sex and recipes in Limoges, Louisana.
From the author of Mad Girls in Love comes this lively multigenerational tale of six charming, unforgettable Southern women -- a novel of love and laughter, pain and redemption. Though she was born in Tennessee, Miss Gussie is no country fool. A woman who can handle any situation, she has her hands full with two headstrong daughters who happen to be complete opposites -- dour Dorothy and sweet Clancy Jane. Hoping money will heal childhood wounds, Dorothy marries the owner of a five-and-dime, while Clancy Jane gets into a mess of trouble, running off with a randy tomcat who pumps gas at the Esso stand. And then there are Gussie's granddaughters, the smart but plain Violet and fancy-talking Bitsy -- a new generation whose lives will reflect a nation's tumultuous times. From Tennessee to New Orleans, from psychedelic San Francisco to a remote Southwestern desert ranch, this funny, poignant novel spans more than four decades as it vividly recounts the universal loves, sorrows, and joys of women's lives.
The Only Worlds We Know is a nuanced and tactile look at both addiction, and what comes after. Patient meditations on loss and the land where the people we love live and are also buried. Includes poems such as "Waking Up Naked", "The Addict, a Magician", "The Pill", and "Just Yesterday" that have been watched by millions online.
Hilarious, sexy, wise, and sassy, this debut novel features an unforgettable heroine who becomes the prime suspect in the murder of her fianc. "Gone with a Handsomer Man" is fun, funny, and fabulous.--Janet Evanovich.
The lives of the three McBroom sisters of Tallulah, Tennessee, were tangled before the eldest, Eleanor, discovered their mother hanging from the Venetian blinds—and the years have done little to comb out the knots. Now a drunken encounter with the midnight train has left brash, much-married Jo-Nell near death, compelling agoraphobic Eleanor to summon marine biologist Freddie home from California—where she fled after being expelled from med school following a daring gall bladder heist. At last the McBroom sisters are together again, to face old fears and new catastrophes as they cheerfully deflect every flaming arrow that outrageous fortune fires their way. With wit and loving compassion, Michael Lee West introduces us to an indomitable family of eccentric survivors in an unforgettable novel of cruel fate, bad luck, and unassailable resiliency.
Michael Lee West's indomitable G.R.I.T.S. (Girls Raised in the South) are back -- enduring rough times with all the grace and outrageous flair expected of true Southern heroines. Bitsy Wentworth -- fleeing yet another relationship nightmare in a “borrowed” red Corvette, with her baby daughter and a recently acquired “demon child” -- has an APB out on her for attempted murder (she broke her ex-husband's nose with a frozen slab of ribs that she purchased at the Piggly Wiggly). Her mama, Dorothy, is writing letters to First Ladies from inside the Central State Asylum, while Aunt Clancy Jane has completed her inevitable progression from hippie to local Crazy Cat Lady. Three generations of unforgettable Crystal Falls, Tennessee, women -- and the men they attract, enrage, and confound -- are courageously plowing through tumultuous lives of compound disaster . . . and hoping the chaos the next wrong step leads to won't be insurmountable.
Consuming Passions is Michael Lee West's delightfully quirky memoir of an adventurous life centered around food and family—the story of how she went from non-cook to gourmet of words and victuals by watching a multitude of relatives squabble, prepare sumptuous repasts, and carry on honored traditions. Laced with delicious secret recipes passed from generation to generation, West's irresistible chronicle recalls good times and wild times—mothers swinging from chandeliers, elderly aunts brewing up love potions, a South American nymphomaniac stirring up trouble at a Louisiana barbeque joint, and the spooky hauntings of a cabbage-eating ghost—all in the pursuit of good dining. Thoroughly entertaining, alive with West's distinctive humor and sharp, irrepressible insight, here are incomparable American kitchen tales as warm and tasty as freshly baked bread.
Reeling from the loss of her mother, plagued with a bad case of writer's block (and don't even talk about those extra twenty pounds), Renata DeChavannes feels as though everything is just plain wrong. And that was before the tabloids caught her sweetheart, filmmaker Ferg Lauderdale, sharing an intimate squeeze with Hollywood's hottest young tamale. But the granddaughter of the formidable Honora DeChavannes possesses more hell than belle in her backbone—and she's about to reclaim it. Heading south to Honora's home on the Gulf Coast, Renata is determined to stop feeling like a wilted gardenia and emerge as the unstoppable kudzu her beloved grandmother proudly proclaimed she would be. But for that to happen Renata's got to face some not-so-genteel ghosts from her past, discover the truth about the mother she desperately misses, and make peace with the first man who abandoned her and broke her heart: her handsome and distant father.
Swim out into the Pacific and look back to the shore. To the couple kissing in the hot afternoon, and the young girl rollerskating along the front, and the family setting up camp on the soft, warm sand. To the blues and yellows and pinks of fierce, determined revelry. Santa Monica, where the wooden pier juts out into the Pacific Ocean, marks the end of Route 66. The great American journey west culminates here, and it is on this short stretch of coast that Sarah Lee began shooting her photographic series in 2015. In West of West Sarah Lee and Laura Barton explore the idea of the West in shaping American identity, with its idealism and notions of the frontier, and what the American West means in an age of political turbulence, when the East is the rising global force and the frontier is shifting once more.
In this deliciously hilarious follow-up to A Teeny Bit of Trouble, Michael Lee West proves why she's quickly becoming a must-read, favorite author "I'd just put a praline cheesecake into the oven when my long-lost mama showed up on my doorstep with a bottle of merlot, a sack of whole wheat flour, and a dead hooker named Sugar." The night before Teeny's wedding, her mother, Ruby, shows up in Charleston, South Carolina with a body in the trunk of her car—a hooker named Sugar. Teeny hasn't seen her mother in decades, and she refuses when her mother asks her to help her dispose of the body. Ruby, not taking no for an answer, decides to kidnap Teeny and force her to bury Sugar . . . only Sugar isn't quite dead. And it's no wonder Ruby wants her gone: she knows a lot of dirt. Ruby was mixed up in the death of a South Carolina Senator and is accused of stealing an antique diamond necklace. Now the Senator's son wants vengeance--and the family jewels. Sugar's the only one who knows the truth.