The Whole Town's Talking


Book Description

Elmwood Springs, Missouri, is a small town like any other, but something strange is happening out at the cemetery. 'Still Meadows, ' as it's called, is anything but still. Tells a surprising story of life, afterlife, and the mysterious goings-on of ordinary people"--Amazon.com.




Can't Wait to Get to Heaven


Book Description

Combining southern warmth with unabashed emotion and side-splitting hilarity, Fannie Flagg takes readers back to Elmwood Springs, Missouri, where the most unlikely and surprising experiences of a high-spirited octogenarian inspire a town to ponder the age-old question: Why are we here? Life is the strangest thing. One minute, Mrs. Elner Shimfissle is up in her tree, picking figs, and the next thing she knows, she is off on an adventure she never dreamed of, running into people she never in a million years expected to meet. Meanwhile, back home, Elner’s nervous, high-strung niece Norma faints and winds up in bed with a cold rag on her head; Elner’s neighbor Verbena rushes immediately to the Bible; her truck driver friend, Luther Griggs, runs his eighteen-wheeler into a ditch–and the entire town is thrown for a loop and left wondering, “What is life all about, anyway?” Except for Tot Whooten, who owns Tot’s Tell It Like It Is Beauty Shop. Her main concern is that the end of the world might come before she can collect her social security. In this comedy-mystery, those near and dear to Elner discover something wonderful: Heaven is actually right here, right now, with people you love, neighbors you help, friendships you keep. Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven is proof once more that Fannie Flagg “was put on this earth to write” (Southern Living), spinning tales as sweet and refreshing as iced tea on a summer day, with a little extra kick thrown in.




Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man


Book Description

“A hilarious, endearing novel.”—Los Angeles Times In Fannie Flagg’s high-spirited first novel, we meet Daisy Fay Harper in the spring of 1952, where she’s “not doing much except sitting around waiting for the sixth grade.” When she leaves Shell Beach, Mississippi, in September 1959, she is packed up and ready for the Miss America Pageant, vowing “I won’t come back until I’m somebody.” But in our hearts she already is. Sassy and irreverent from the get-go, Daisy Fay takes us on a rollicking journey through her formative years on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. There, at The End of the Road of the South, the family malt shop freezer holds unspeakable things, society maven Mrs. Dot hosts Junior Debutante meetings and shares inspired thoughts for the week (such as “sincerity is as valuable as radium”), and Daisy Fay’s Daddy hatches a quick-cash scheme that involves resurrecting his daughter from the dead in a carefully orchestrated miracle. Along the way, Daisy Fay does a lot of growing up, emerging as one of the most hilarious, appealing, and prized characters in modern fiction. Praise for Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man “Sheer unbeatable entertainment.”—Cosmopolitan “Unforgettable and irresistible.”—Chattanooga Free Press “Side-splittingly funny.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer




I Still Dream About You


Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The beloved Fannie Flagg is at her irresistible and hilarious best in I Still Dream About You, a comic mystery romp through the streets of Birmingham, Alabama, past, present, and future. Meet Maggie Fortenberry, a still beautiful former Miss Alabama. To others, Maggie’s life seems practically perfect—she’s lovely, charming, and a successful agent at Red Mountain Realty. Still, Maggie can’t help but wonder how she wound up living a life so different from the one she dreamed of as a child. But just when things seem completely hopeless, and the secrets of Maggie’s past drive her to a radical plan to solve it all, Maggie discovers, quite by accident, that everybody, it seems, has at least one little secret. I Still Dream About You is a wonderful novel that is equal parts southern charm, murder mystery, and that perfect combination of comedy and old-fashioned wisdom that can be served up only by America’s own remarkable Fannie Flagg. Praise for I Still Dream About You “[Fannie Flagg is] a born storyteller.”—The New York Times Book Review “Undoubtedly [Flagg’s] wisest book, comic and compassionate . . . Born of a tender heart and nurtured by an imaginative mind, it’s certain to touch the reader’s soul.”—Richmond Times Dispatch “A fun and rollicking Nancy Drew mystery for grown-ups.”—The Birmingham News “Classic Fannie . . . What [Flagg] writes about, time and again, are the touching, terrifying, heartbreaking, hysterical, extraordinary, everyday things that make us human.”—Southern Living




Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe


Book Description

Folksy and fresh, endearing and affecting, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is a now-classic novel about two women: Evelyn, who’s in the sad slump of middle age, and gray-headed Mrs. Threadgoode, who’s telling her life story. Her tale includes two more women—the irrepressibly daredevilish tomboy Idgie and her friend Ruth—who back in the thirties ran a little place in Whistle Stop, Alabama, offering good coffee, southern barbecue, and all kinds of love and laughter—even an occasional murder. And as the past unfolds, the present will never be quite the same again. Praise for Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe “A real novel and a good one [from] the busy brain of a born storyteller.”—The New York Times “Happily for us, Fannie Flagg has preserved [the Threadgoodes] in a richly comic, poignant narrative that records the exuberance of their lives, the sadness of their departure.”—Harper Lee “This whole literary enterprise shines with honesty, gallantry, and love of perfect details that might otherwise be forgotten.”—Los Angeles Times “Funny and macabre.”—The Washington Post “Courageous and wise.”—Houston Chronicle




Standing in the Rainbow


Book Description

Good news! Fannie’s back in town—and the town is among the leading characters in her new novel. Along with Neighbor Dorothy, the lady with the smile in her voice, whose daily radio broadcasts keep us delightfully informed on all the local news, we also meet Bobby, her ten-year-old son, destined to live a thousand lives, most of them in his imagination; Norma and Macky Warren and their ninety-eight-year-old Aunt Elner; the oddly sexy and charismatic Hamm Sparks, who starts off in life as a tractor salesman and ends up selling himself to the whole state and almost the entire country; and the two women who love him as differently as night and day. Then there is Tot Whooten, the beautician whose luck is as bad as her hairdressing skills; Beatrice Woods, the Little Blind Songbird; Cecil Figgs, the Funeral King; and the fabulous Minnie Oatman, lead vocalist of the Oatman Family Gospel Singers. The time is 1946 until the present. The town is Elmwood Springs, Missouri, right in the middle of the country, in the midst of the mostly joyous transition from war to peace, aiming toward a dizzyingly bright future. Once again, Fannie Flagg gives us a story of richly human characters, the saving graces of the once-maligned middle classes and small-town life, and the daily contest between laughter and tears. Fannie truly writes from the heartland, and her storytelling is, to quote Time, "utterly irresistible."




Coming Attractions


Book Description

The journal of Daisy Fay Harper from 1952, when she is eleven years old, through the next six years and her crowning as Miss Mississippi.




The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop


Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A heartwarming novel about secrets of youth rediscovered, hometown memories, and the magical moments in ordinary lives, from the beloved author of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe “A gift, a blessing and a triumph . . . celebrates the bonds of family and friends—and the possibilities of recovery and renewal.”—The Free Lance–Star Bud Threadgoode grew up in the bustling little railroad town of Whistle Stop with his mother, Ruth, church-going and proper, and his Aunt Idgie, the fun-loving hell-raiser. Together they ran the town’s popular Whistle Stop Cafe, known far and wide for its fun and famous fried green tomatoes. And as Bud often said of his childhood to his daughter Ruthie, “How lucky can you get?” But sadly, as the railroad yards shut down and Whistle Stop became a ghost town, nothing was left but boarded-up buildings and memories of a happier time. Then one day, Bud decides to take one last trip, just to see what has become of his beloved Whistle Stop. In so doing, he discovers new friends, as well as surprises about Idgie’s life, about Ninny Threadgoode and other beloved Fannie Flagg characters, and about the town itself. He also sets off a series of events, both touching and inspiring, which change his life and the lives of his daughter and many others. Could these events all be just coincidences? Or something else? And can you really go home again?




A Redbird Christmas


Book Description

Welcome to the charming town of Lost River – and an enchanting and unforgettable Christmas... When Oswald moves to the sleepy little town of Lost River he’s not expecting to make friends - but one by one the eccentric inhabitants win his heart. There’s his landlady Betty who’s a force to be reckoned with, Roy who runs the local store and secretly nurses a broken heart, Patsy the little abandoned girl he takes under his wing and, most importantly, Jack the redbird who brings the sort of miracle that can only happen at Christmas... 'A wonderful book ...oozing with goodness and charm... Absurdly satisfying' Guardian 'A born storyteller' New York Times




Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!


Book Description

A funny, serious, and compelling novel by Fannie Flagg, author of the beloved Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (and prize-winning co-writer of the classic movie). “[This] tale of tough, eccentric, endearing women who first endure and then prevail. . . . will make you laugh out loud—and shed a few tears. . . . Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! is another rattling success.”—Richmond Times-Dispatch Once again, Flagg's humor and respect and affection for her characters shine forth. Many inhabit small-town or suburban America. But this time, her heroine is urban: a brainy, beautiful, and ambitious rising star of 1970s television. Dena Nordstrom, pride of the network, is a woman whose future is full of promise, her present rich with complications, and her past marked by mystery. Among the colorful cast of characters are: Sookie, of Selma, Alabama, Dena's exuberant college roommate, who is everything that Dena is not; she is thrilled by Dena's success and will do everything short of signing autographs for her; Sookie's a mom, a wife, and a Kappa forever Dena's cousins, the Warrens, and her aunt Elner, of Elmwood Springs, Missouri, endearing, loyal, talkative, ditsy, and, in their way, wise Neighbor Dorothy, whose spirit hovers over them all through the radio show that she broadcast from her home in the 1940s Sidney Capello, pioneer of modern sleaze journalism and privateer of privacy, and Ira Wallace, his partner in tabloid television Several doctors, all of them taken with—and almost taken in by-Dena There are others, captivated by a woman who tries to go home again, not knowing where home or love lie.