UM Common Reading Experience 2012: Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

Tom Franklin -- Blood and bone

Based on incidents that occurred a few miles from the author's childhood home, Hell atthe Breech chronicles the events of dark days that led the people involved to discover their capacity for good, evil, or for both.

Barry Hannah : interview, with handgun. Tom Franklin interviews one of his literary heroes in a section of the literary magazine,Tin House, vol. 10 no.4, pp. 214 – 233.

In ten bleak tales set in the woodlands, swamps and chemical plants along the Alabama River, Tom Franklin conjures a world of violence, hunting, fishing, gambling, drinking, and poaching. This terrain isn't pretty, isn't for the weak of heart, but in these desperate, lost people, Franklin somehow finds the moments of grace that make them what they so abundantly are: human.

It's 1911 and the townsfolk of Old Texas, Alabama, have had enough. Every Saturday night for a year, E. O. Smonk has been destroying property, killing livestock, seducing women, cheating and beating men. It's high time he was stopped. But capturing old Smonk won't be easy—and putting him on trial could have shocking and disastrous consequences, considering the terrible secret the citizens of Old Texas are hiding.

This volume features new Southern fiction, poetry, and essays by acclaimed veterans of the popular "Blue Moon Cafe" series, handpicked by editors Beth Ann Fennelly and Tom Franklin. Contributors: Matt Brock; Bev Marshall; Brock Clarke; Jack Pendarvis; Joe Formichella; Michelle Richmond; Juliana Gray; Donald Hays; Brad Vice; Bret Anthony Johnston; Daniel Wallace; Suzanne Kingsbury and David Wright.

Franklin and his wife, Beth Ann Fennelly, write their first co-authored novel. In 1927, as the Mississippi River threatens to burst its banks and engulf all in its path, two federal revenue agents investigate the disappearance of two fellow agents on the trail of a local bootlegger.

HBO feature documentary. 89 minutes. For generations, the legacy of the cotton industry for African-Americans in the Mississippi Delta has been hardscrabble poverty and virtual illiteracy. This compelling program focuses on the family unit in crisis and the urgent need for education reform through the stories of two remarkable individuals.

MISSISSIPPI INNOCENCE tells the story of Levon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer, two men who combined spent over thirty years behind bars for crimes they didn’t commit. 58 minutes. mississippiinnocence.com

Now considered a contemporary classic, Airships features 20 short stories about the American South

This volume surveys the first 50 years of the detective story in 19th century America and England, examining major works as well as the lesser known stories. By rewriting the history of the mystery genre, this study opens up new avenues for literary exploration.

In the 1960s, racism was rampant in Jackson, Mississippi, and it was common for white men caught in the act of killing blacks to be acquitted by all-white juries. But 40 years later, someone is seeking vigilante justice. Now, James Reynolds, the only black prosecutor in Jackson, will face the toughest case of his life: He'll have to prosecute prime suspect Martin Matheson, a brilliant professor, the son of a venerated Civil Rights leader, and the newly appointed folk hero for thousands of African Americans hungry for retribution.

In this riveting political and social history of the American South during the second half of the twentieth century, acclaimed journalist Curtis Wilkie tells the story of a region and a man -- himself -- intimately transformed by racial and political upheavals. He endeavors to make sense of the enormous changes that have convulsed the South for more than four decades.

This book explores the relationship between the fictional detective and his or her South. It covers the satires and parodies of Mark Twain, the stories of Melville Davisson Post and Irvin S. Cobb, and includes the many writers who are using the detective story to compose inquiries into the character of life in the South today. At the center of the book lies an analysis of William Faulkner's exploitation of the genre.

The year is 1962, and there is a picture of seven white Mississippi lawmen who have gathered to stop James Meredith from integrating the University of Mississippi. One of them is swinging a billy club. Paul Hendrickson sets out to discover who these men were, what happened to them after the photograph was taken, and how racist attitudes shaped the way they lived their lives. Sons of Mississippi tracks the movement of racism across three generations and bears witness to its ravages among both black and white Americans.

Racial segregation in a small 1950s Mississippi community is brought into question in the aftermath of an apparent hunting accident, an event that also tests the views of two prominent physicians.

This collection of British and American crime fiction considers fiction where crime plays a substantial part, such as the thriller and spy fiction. Ranging over the last three centuries, it includes chapters on the analysis of crime in eighteenth-century literature; French and Victorian fiction; women and black detectives; crime on film and TV; and police fiction and postmodernist uses of the detective form.

This E-Book has been heralded in many spheres of public discourse as a televisual revolution, its effects on the public unprecedented. This book demonstrates that CSI's appeal cannot be disentangled from either its production as a televisual text or the broader discourses and practices that circulate within our social landscape. This interdisciplinary collection bridges the gap between the study of media and crime.

This book explores the ways in which crime fiction manipulates cultural constructions such as race and gender to inscribe dominant cultural discourses. The greatest obstacle to transforming crime fiction, Reddy states, is the fact that the genre itself is deeply embedded in the discourse of white (and male) superiority. There is, therefore, an absolute necessity to break away from that discourse through reversal or other strategies in order to produce work that defies, and thus helps readers to defy, the dominant ideology of race.

Yonder Stands Your Orphan opens with the establishment of an orphans' camp and the discovery of an abandoned car with two skeletons in the trunk. Man Mortimer has just been betrayed, and his revenge becomes a madness that will ravage the Mississippi community of Eagle Lake and give vent to his lifelong fascination with knives. The pompous young sheriff is useless at solving the crimes, so Mortimer's only challengers are three eccentric Christians.