This month's guest is Stone Mountain, Georgia author Brian Egeston. He joins host St.John Flynn in the studio to talk and take listener calls about his latest novel An Auburn Autumn (Rock Point Books, 2006), a look at the good, the bad, and the ugly of life in the "New South."

From the Book Jacket

"It was an innocent Halloween party until a photographer arrived and later posted the images on the Internet. When the world saw what went on behind closed doors of wealthy and privileged frat boys, the campus erupted and so too did the city. No one could have imagined that the deplorable activities, seen in the pictures, could have taken place in the twenty-first century.

What started as a party quickly evolves into a civil war among various factions of the administration, students and outsiders. A small group of black men descend upon the town of Auburn to negotiate retribution for offended black students while a small underground army lurks in the shadows waiting for the chance to riot.

The administration makes several attempts to make the problems disappear. But the number of protesters, calling for swift and harsh consequences, grows every hour. None more surprising than a group of star athletes who threaten to bring the entire city to its knees by foiling the biggest sporting event of the year. Based on a true story, An Auburn Autumn is a fast-paced and passionate story about what happens when power, class, race, money and big college football collide in a brewing and disastrous perfect storm that sweeps across the plains of a small Alabama town."

About the Author

Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1970, Brian Egeston graduated from Tennessee State University in 1995 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and, after several years working in corporate America, he quit his job to write full-time.

In addition to An Auburn Autumn, Brian is the author of five other novels, Crossing Bridges: A Testimony of Brotherhood (1997); Whippins, Switches and Peach Cobbler (2000); Granddaddy's Dirt (Cover to Cover, November 2001), nominated for the PEN-Faulkner Award, the National Book Award, and the Townsend Prize for Fiction; The Big Money Match (2003); and Catfish Quesadillas (2003).

Brian is associate editor at Atlanta Goodlife magazine and a contributing writer for The Champion newspaper. His commentaries have been featured on NPR's All Things Considered.

Since 1997, Brian has lived in Stone Mountain, Georgia with his wife. To find out more about Brian and his books, visit his website, www.brianwrites.com.

Brian has appeared twice before on Cover to Cover. Click on the book titles to listen to each program:

• November 2001: Granddaddy's Dirt
• March 2004: Catfish Quesadillas

Praise for Brian Egeston and An Auburn Autumn

• "Thrilling, honest, unpredictable, sad and somehow, he still manages to be witty."
• "Egeston's fiction is like a painful truth serum."