November 2006’s issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, “the world’s leading mystery magazine,” salutes the city of New Orleans, including a short story by author Tony Dunbar. The issue features stories solely devoted to New Orleans, and all advertising proceeds from the issue go toward relief and rebuilding New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Additionally, in The Jury Box column, John L. Breen offers additional praise for Dunbar’s Tubby Meets Katrina. He writes, “The first fully post-Katrina suspense novel is a first-rate job, crisply written and expertly paced, offering a harrowing, sometimes sardonic description of the city���s physical and psychological state before, during, and after the disaster.”

Tony Dunbar’s short story in the magazine is called “Monday Morning at the Pie Pie Club.”

Tubby Meets Katrina is available directly from NewSouth Books, Amazon, or your local or online book retailer.

NewSouth Books has launched all new book pages on our website, bringing you the most information on all your favorite NewSouth books and authors.

Now, visit our titles in print to view all the NewSouth, Junebug, and Court Street Press books by title, author, category, or imprint. You can also use our handy search box at the bottom of every menu to help you quickly find any NewSouth book.

Our book pages include first looks at the cover images of new titles, like Bill Elder’s All Guts, No Glory and the anticipated update of C. S. Fuqua’s Music Fell on Alabama. Read excerpts of titles like Mark Ethridge’s Grievances and Roger Reid’s Longleaf. Check out ebooks of our titles like John Egerton’s Ali Dubyiah and the Forty Thieves and Ibrahim Fawal’s On the Hills of God. Learn more about our prolific NewSouth authors, including Hans Koning and Kathryn Tucker Windham. You can even send emails to our authors, including Tubby Meets Katrina author Tony Dunbar and A White Preacher’s Message‘s Reverend Robert Graetz.

Don’t hesitate to leave a comment if we can answer any questions. It’s a great time to learn more about NewSouth Books.

A full auditorium at the Alabama Department of Archives and History yesterday enjoyed NewSouth author and Alabama historian Mary Ann Neeley discussing her upcoming book The Writings of M. P. Blue: Montgomery’s First Historian. Mary Ann talked about the troubled life of Matthew Blue and his drive to write the history of Montgomery; Mary Ann also read excerpts from the diary of Blue’s sister Ellen, regarding the approach of the Union army to Montgomery during the Civil War. For her book, Mary Ann has annotated Blue���’s history to correct errors and clear up inconsistencies, and added other material on early churches and a genealogy of the colorful Blue family, as well as Ellen’s Civil War diary. The book also includes many nineteenth century photographs.

The Writings of M. P. Blue will be available soon for pre-order from NewSouth Books, or your favorite local or online book retailer. To be notified when the book is available, call NewSouth books toll-free at (866) 639-7688.

An excerpt of Longleaf, Junebug Books’ thrilling new young adult mystery by Discovering Alabama‘s Roger Reid, is now online. Read the excerpt at http://www.newsouthbooks.com/longleaf.

When 14-year-old Jason Caldwell goes camping with his scientist parents in Longleaf, all he expects is peace and quiet. But before they arrive, Jason has already been the witness to a crime, and soon he’ll find himself lost among the very longleaf pines that his parents hoped to study. Now Jason—and his new forest-smart friend Leah—will have to use all their knowledge of the outdoors to outwit a trio of villains and make it home safe. Set in the real-life Conecuh National Forest, Longleaf is a thrilling adventure for boys and girls—and an excellent introduction to the plants and animals of the Conecuh region.

Roger Reid is a writer, director, and producer of the award-winning Discovering Alabama series from the University of Alabama’s Alabama Museum of Natural History, in cooperation with Alabama Public Television.

Longleaf will be available for pre-order soon from NewSouth Books and other online and local book retailers.

NewSouth announces three intriguing new titles for the Spring 2007 season:

Fire Ants is the hilarious new short story collection from award-winning Coasters author Gerald Duff. Publisher’s Weekly has hailed the “wit and subtlety” in Gerald Duff’s fiction as “simply satisfying as a tall cold one on a hot Gulf Coast afternoon,” and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazetter said “Gerald Duff’s dialogue is among the best being written, and his sense of the absurd is Portis-like.” This new collection of short stories features the Ploughshares Cohen Prize-winning story “Fire Ants.”

All Guts, No Glory by NAIA Basketball Coaches’ Hall of Fame inductee Bill Elder tells how Elder and a courageous group of white and black student athletes broke racial barriers at a small college in northeast Alabama in the early 1970s. He shows vividly why he sometimes wondered whether he and his players would live through their experience. Abandoned by their school officials, the players faced constant threats and harassment and occasional violence, but they kept playing and winning games and forging bonds between themselves that lasted long after that first season was over.

The Judge : The Life and Opinions of Alabama’s Frank M. Johnson, Jr., by veteran journalist Frank Sikora (Hear the Bugles Calling [2001]), remembers Judge Frank Johnson of Mongomery, Alabama, who presided over some of the most emotional hearings and trials of the civil rights movement. The black petition for full freedom began in Montgomery in Johnson’s courtroom, and it would end in this city, also before Judge Johnson. This book covers many of the notable cases: the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Freedom Rides, school desegregation, the Selma-to-Montgomery march, and the Ku Klux Klan conspiracy case in the night-rider slaying of Viola Liuzzo.

For more information on any of these titles, please email or call NewSouth toll-free at (866) 639-7688.

Congratulations to NewSouth author Steve Suitts, who has won the Georgia Author of the Year Award for Biography, for his book Hugo Black of Alabama. This definitive study of Black‚Äôs origins and early influences offers fresh insights into the justice‚Äôs character, thought processes, and instincts, detailing Black’s rise from the hardscrabble Alabama hill country to his nomination as a Supreme Court justice.

The Georgia Author of the Year Awards (GAYA) began in 1964, and it is the oldest literary award in the Southeastern region. Sponsored by the Georgia Writers Association, they note that the award is meant “to recognize and acknowledge Georgia’s wealth of outstanding writers and to acquaint them with the public and one another, thus continuing our literary heritage.”

Hugo Black of Alabama is available directly from NewSouth Books, Amazon.com, or your favorite local or online book retailer. Learn more about Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black at hugoblack.com.

The Koret International Jewish Book Awards today named Shlemiel Crooks as one of three finalists in the BabagaNewz Children’s Literature category. Shlemiel Crooks, a whimsical Yiddish-inflected retelling of the Passover story, set in 1919 St. Louis, also received the Association of Jewish Libraries 2006 Sydney Taylor Honor Award earlier this year.

The winners of the Koret International Jewish Book Awards will be announced on November 15 at a ceremony at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, at 7 pm. The program is open to the public. For complimentary tickets to the Nov. 15 awards ceremony in San Francisco, contact the JCCSF box office at (415) 292-1233 or email koretbookawards@jflmedia.com. A celebration of the Koret International Jewish Book Award winners is also scheduled at New York City’s 92nd Street Y on November 21.

“This year’s finalists have helped shape some of the most thought-provoking Jewish ideas and values, advancing the international Jewish dialogue,” said book awards chairman and JFL founder Yosef I. Abramowitz.

Shlemiel Crooks is available directly from NewSouth Books, Amazon.com, or your favorite local or online book retailer.

Congratulations to Shlemiel Crooks author Anna Olswanger and illustrator Paula Koz, and to all the Koret International Book Award finalists.

An interview with Charles Rose, author of the NewSouth book In the Midst of Life, is now available for download. As part of the Alabama Arts Radio series from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, Randy Shoults interviews Rose about his writing career and his new novel, including a reading from In the Midst of Life.

In the Midst of Life is a moving, evocatively described narrative of the patients and caregivers Charles Rose encountered as a hospice volunteer. It is also a perceptive account of his own journey into the world of the dying–a journey that in the end brings him, and us, more deeply and compassionately into the transitory world of our own lives. It is available directly from NewSouth Books, Amazon.com, or your favorite local or online book retailer.

Listen to the interview with Charles Rose at the Alabama Arts Radio series website, and search for Charles Rose.

Anna Olswanger, NewSouth author of Shlemiel Crooks is coordinating the Eighth Annual Jewish Children’s Book Writers’ Conference on Sunday, November 19 in New York. The featured speakers include executive editor Deborah Brodie of Roaring Brook Press/Holtzbrinck Publishing, executive editor Jill Davis of Bloomsbury Children’s Books, publisher Joni Sussman of Kar-Ben Publishing, marketing vice president Terry M. Borzumato-Greenberg of Holiday House, literary agent Michele Beno of Curtis Brown Ltd., and artist and author representative Ronnie Ann Herman of the Herman Agency.

Author Norman H. Finkelstein, winner of two National Jewish Book Awards, will give opening remarks, and the day will include the popular “Query Letter Clinic and First Pages” with the editors, sessions on the Grinspoon Foundation’s P.J. (Pajama) Library, “Israel’s Multicultural Mix” with Israeli author Anna Levine,” the Association of Jewish Libraries’ Sydney Taylor Manuscript Competition, and door prizes.

The registration form is available for download at www.92y.org/content/pdf/jewishchildrensbookwriters.pdf. Call 212-415 5544 or e-mail library@92Y.org for additional information or to request the form by mail. The final registration deadline is November 1.

Anna recommends the conference for anyone interested in writing or illustrating children’s books for the Jewish market.

Shlemiel Crooks, a 2006 Sydney Taylor Honor Book, is available directly from NewSouth Books, Amazon.com, or your favorite local or online book retailer.

NewSouth author Kathryn Tucker Windham will appear today at the LaFayette Pilot Public Library in LaFayette, Alabama at noon CST, and at the Langdale Auditorium in Valley, Alabama at 7 pm EST. Ms. Windham will speak, followed by a booksigning; both events are free to the public.

Kathryn Tucker Windham is one of America‚Äôs best-loved storytellers. Now in her eighties, she began writing as one of the first women daily newspaper reporters in Alabama. After a successful career as a journalist, she turned to writing books of ghost stories and folklore, including six collections of “Jeffrey” stories beginning in 1969. She remains one of the most popular performers at national storytelling festivals and has been a featured commentator on National Public Radio and Alabama Public Radio. Her 2004 book, Ernest’s Gift, commemorated the Selma Public Library’s 100th anniversary.

Jeffrey’s Favorite 13 Ghost Stories is available directly from NewSouth Books, Amazon.com, or your favorite local or online bookseller.

For more information about the library programs, call Mary Hamilton or Tabitha Truitt at (334)768-2161.