Football | topshelfmerricklibrary

“Madeline Kay Sneed has written a Friday Night Lights for a new generation. The Golden Season is a heartfelt story of finding yourself, coming out, and coming home… A tender, bighearted exploration of family, first love, and faith, with a gorgeously evoked west Texas landscape as backdrop.” —Sarah McCraw Crow, author of The Wrong Kind of Woman. An absolutely spot-on review for this remarkable debut, a novel about love, acceptance, and the expansion of your heart.

For this episode, debut author Madeline Kay Sneed chatted with me about writing a debut novel, setting the novel in West Texas and signature cocktails. Madeline even offers to teach me how to say, “y’all” like a true Texan. A must listen, thank you SO much Madeline!

Madeline Kay Sneed recommends: Vigil Harbor by Julia Glass; The Burning Season by Allison Wisdom

Follow Madeline on Twitter: @madelinesneed and on Instagram @madzsneed

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You may not know tough but author Eli Cranor sure does in his debut, DON’T KNOW TOUGH, a book that S.A. Cosby calls, “…a searing and stunningly poignant study in what makes us and what breaks us and ultimately what brings us to a place of peace. Eli Cranor is that rare writer who can make you gasp, cry and cheer often in the same paragraph.” There’s not a single a lie in that review.

Sarah Weinman, of the The New York Times Book Review and true-crime writer says, “Eli Cranor’s top-shelf debut, DON’T KNOW TOUGH, is Southern noir at its finest, a cauldron of terrible choices and even more terrible outcomes . . . There is a raw ferocity to Cranor’s prose, perfectly in keeping with the novel’s examination of curdling masculinity.” All I can say about DON’T KNOW TOUGH is, think Friday Night Lights with a much darker edge. Speaking of the edge? I was on the edge of my seat for this incredible debut. For this episode, we talk football, Arkansas, recording his own audiobook and more. Thank you Eli!

Eli Cranor recommends: Razorblade Tears and Blacktop Wasteland both by S.A.Cosby; Shoot the Moonlight Out and all of the novels by William Boyle; The Turnout and all of the novels by Megan Abbott; all the work by Ace Atkins; The Devil Himself by Peter Farris;