Distinct and complex, Southern fiction is a conversation about place—rural to urban, pine forests to sand dunes, woodland cabins to high-rise condos, office buildings to mills to farms—and how it shapes us. It explores what it means to live in the New South while keeping a tether to the old. The essence of the Sour Mash Series is to get at what Flannery O’Connor once wrote: “The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location.”
We believe Southern fiction writers have found that location and its people, and Regal House Publishing wants to honor that by publishing the most compelling Southern fiction being written today under our Sour Mash series.
Browse our published Sour Mash titles.
Monarchs Under the Sassafras Tree by Lillah Lawson
“Monarchs Under the Sassafras Tree reads like a low country boil with spice and warm flavor. It is a love letter to the resilient people of Georgia.”
– Avid Bookstore, Book of the Week Pick (Athens, GA)
Children of Dust by Marlin Barton
“Through his complex characterizations, Marlin Barton elucidates Faulkner’s adage that ‘The past is never dead.’ In Children of Dust, the past haunts the present, possessing our imaginations and revealing its violence, if not all of its mysteries. This moving literary achievement is a thoughtful reminder of the complexity of race relations and the truths that bind us.”
-Anthony Grooms, author of The Vain Conversation and Bombingham, winner of the Lillian Smith Prize
Tiki Man by Thomas M. Atkinson
“As a lifelong fan of stories about found families and unlikely alliances, I love everything about Tiki Man, an unflinching look at life on the edges of society. Atkinson shows us there is hope in the smallest of hearts and love in the roughest of gestures.”
-Catherine Ryan Hyde, author of 40 published and upcoming books including Pay It Forward
Upcoming Sour Mash Titles
McMullen Circle by Heather Newton
“In McMullen Circle, Heather Newton’s riveting novel in short story form, compelling and believably flawed characters inhabit Tonola Falls, Georgia, a small town on the cusp of integration. In a dozen connected stories, Newton weaves a tapestry of rich irony with fierce emotion and genuine bewilderment. Ordinary people, animated with astounding power, confront their weaknesses and principles in a baffling, rapidly changing world. Empathy and insight are forces as powerful as the stone mountain that supports and looms over these unforgettable stories.”
—Anna Jean Mayhew, author of The Dry Grass of August and Tomorrow’s Bread
Loving the Dead and Gone by Judith Turner-Yamamoto
Hemlock Hollow by Culley Holderfield
The Kudzu Queen by Mimi Herman
Indigo Field by Marjorie Hudson
We look forward to bringing you more finely crafted Southern fiction in our Sour Mash series.
