This collection shows Flannery O'Connor's extraordinary versatility and expertise as a practitioner of the essayistic form. The book opens with "The King of the Birds", her famous account of raising peacocks. There are three essays on regional writing, two on teaching literature, and four on the writer and religion. Essays such as "The Nature and Aim of Fiction" and "Writing Short Stories" are gems, and their value to the contemporary reader -- and writer -- is inestimable. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

The essays and articles in this volume are concerned mainly with the art of fiction--its quality, in regional writing; its nature and its aims; and its relatino to the writer's religion.

Savannah, its mercurial history and enigmatic charms are evocative of nothing less than paradox. Home to cotton barons, literary giants (such as Flannery O'Connor and Conrad Aiken), antique dealers, and preservationists, it has helped define Southern elegance, manners, and style for the last three centuries. From the slightly faded grandeur of the Second Empire baroque Thomas Levy House, with its sumptuous collection of antique maps, prints, books, and other curiosities, to the phantasmal, Proustian decor of the grandiose and elegiac Knapp House interiors, all of the 20 houses featured in this book express a sensitivity to the city's sanguine and decadent eclecticism. Quite often a serene or verdant exterior -- designed in a Georgian, Federal, or neoclassical style by John Ash, Isaiah Davenport, William Jay, or Amos Scudder -- will relinquish its polite composure or symmetrical facade to an ingenious play of interior whimsy and light-hearted frippery. Opulent plantation manors, town houses renovated by artists, and summer cottages evincing a warmth, tasteful calculation, and measured spontaneity are featured in detail in word and image, along with a delightful foreword by John Berendt that acts as an informative addendum to Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and an excellent introduction to this book.

During the 1950s and early 1960s Flannery O'Connor wrote more than a hundred book reviews for two Catholic diocesan newspapers in Georgia. This full collection of these reviews nearly doubles the number that have appeared in print elsewhere and represents a significant body of primary materials from the O'Connor canon. We find in the reviews the same personality so vividly apparent in her fiction and her lectures--the unique voice of the artist that is one clear sign of genius. Her spare precision, her humor, her extraordinary ability to permit readers to see deeply into complex and obscure truths-all are present in these reviews and letters.

Névé is a young woman who rescues things like dogs, sugar beets, and a scientific theory, which is in the possession of a fugitive scientist named Incense Rising. Incense is wanted by the Central Bureau of Intelligence for work she did with her murdered uncle. As Névé and Incense gather allies and dodge assassins, they will learn the harsh truths about their world, where consumerism has invaded every aspect of their lives, and the political system protects itself by making people and information disappear.

Flannery O'Connor was working on Everything That Rises Must Converge at the time of her death. This collection is an exquisite legacy from a genius of the American short story, in which she scrutinizes territory familiar to her readers: race, faith, and morality. The stories encompass the comic and the tragic, the beautiful and the grotesque; each carries her highly individual stamp and could have been written by no one else.

A young girl brings home a peacock, but he refuses to show off his colorful tail! Inspired by the life of Flannery O'Connor. In this picture book, inspired by the life of Flannery O’Connor, a young fan of fowl brings home a peacock to be the king of her collection, but he refuses to show off his colorful tail. The girl goes to great lengths to encourage the peacock to display his plumage — she throws him a party, lets him play in the fig tree, feeds him flowers and stages a parade — all to no avail. Then she finally stumbles on the perfect solution. When she introduces the queen of the birds — a peahen — to her collection, the peacock immediately displays his glorious shimmering tail. This delightful story, full of humor and heart, celebrates the legacy of a great American writer. Includes an author’s note about Flannery O’Connor. Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.5 Describe the overall structure of a story, including describing how the beginning introduces the story and the ending concludes the action.