Latest Releases

Milledgeville’s Sesquicentennial Murders

Susan released her latest book on May 2, the 70^th anniversary of a double murder and suicide in her home town. “It wasn’t just a launch. It was a blastoff, with more than 100 copies going out the door,” she said.

Milledgeville’s Sesquicentennial Murders tackles the story of Marion Stembridge, a white man charged with murder of a black teenage girl in 1949, but convicted of manslaughter by an all-white, all-male jury, and sentenced to prison. He never served a day in any jail. A genius suffering from mental illness, he used “ole time Southern conniving” to have a local judge override the decisions of the Georgia Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court.

You can’t lose when one of your lawyers is brother and law partner of the presiding judge, and the relationship is not documented in the records.

During the time the case was travelling through higher courts, the Internal Revenue Service investigated his tax returns. Stembridge informed the two agents they each would be $10,000 better off if they went away. He was to be sentenced for attempted bribery on May 4, 1953.

On May 2, while his home town, the former capital of Georgia, Milledgeville, began to celebrate a weeklong party in honor of its founding 150 years before, Stembridge shot and killed two attorneys, one his own and the other his wife’s divorce attorney. The killings made news nationwide, and newspapers gave the story higher recognition than they gave the Kentucky Derby upset of Native Dancer.

The book lays to bed the rumors spread for seventy years and still moving through Milledgeville. The author details the previously unknown legal shenanigans he used, and his desperation to stay out of jail. The community held its birthday party after funerals delayed the festivities.

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When Yestertime was Now

PRAISE FOR WHEN YESTERTIME WAS NOW

Susan Lindsley can write anything (and win awards!) but her poetry collections are first place with me…..Her poems have “life” and I can see, touch, smell, hear and taste as I read the lyrical, musical musings…so autobiographical, rich in precious memories and world class in composition.  Remembered “takes” on her own life, become takes on the readers and our journey is richer for reading this author.  
Peggy June Mercer BMI, Georgia Author of the Year, 2011

I enjoyed reading Susan Lindsley’s book of poems and photographs, WHEN YESTERTIME WAS NOW, because I was immediately reminded of another favorite of mine, Marcel Proust’s REMEMBRANCES OF THINGS PAST. Like Proust, Lindsley  was able to revel in the joys of “yestertimes” and bring the reader along for the ride. I was moved by the great affection she had for the pony she loved; I could just see the sexiness of the summer and autumn leaves, and I felt humbled by the solemnity of her poems about graves and battlefields. Perhaps the most powerful piece was “The Morning After Your Death.” Tears filled my eyes at the line, “You would have loved this day…” such poignancy! Susan Lindsley has a fine work here, and it is worth a read to remember many precious memories!
Dorothy Fletcher, Historian, teacher, columnist and nationally known poet, winner of the 2006 Robert Frost Poetry Contest and speaker at the Library of Congress’ Poetry at Noon Series.  Her works have appeared in more than eighty literary magazines. Her books include Zen Fishing and Other Southern Pleasures (poetry) and a children’s book The Week of Dream Horses as well as others. 

So many of those poems made me think of the freedom I had as a child, roaming the pastures and creek bottom on my pony. You and I had wonderful childhoods.  Some poems made me cry. Wish June could have seen this.
Patricia Blanks, classmate, Librarian (retired) and first reader.

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Whisper of Love

PRAISE FOR WHISPER OF LOVE

This assemblage of poems from Lindsley is an inspired venture into the charm of new love, love lost, and love remembered. Many float comfortably between poetic narrative and song, uplifting and lyrical: “I closed my eyes,/ caressed her soul,/ and stars, like legends, soared across the sky.” I imagine them to be spoken aloud from one to another, on a languid evening in spring or a snowbound night in winter – one to another, when all that matters is that new love becomes old.
Louisa Branscomb, author of two poetry chapbooks, an icon in acoustic and bluegrass music. Distinctions include three International Bluegrass Association Awards, another six nominations, two Grammy cuts, 2014 IBMA Song of the Year (“Dear Sister”), 1993 SPBGMA Song of the Year (“Steel Rails”). Member of the Alabama Bluegrass Hall of Fame, the Atlanta Country Music Hall of Fame, and the 2017 recipient of the IBMA Distinguished Achievement Award.  www.louisabranscomb.com

Whisper of Love is a moving collection of lyrical verse, many are elegiac homages to lost love; others explore discovering new love; haunting memories, all expressed with lyrical images of the natural world.
Libby Ware. Author of Lum (a five-star novel) and owner of Toadilly Books, an antiquarian book business.

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WILDLIFE IN PERSIMMON PARADISE

Available in soft back and hardback, this book takes the reader to a pictorial visit into seldom seen behaviors of a variety of wildlife, from courting bucks to dancing gobblers.

COMING SOON

RETURN TO YESTERPLACE

WHITETAIL SECRETS

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