Book Awards Finalists Announced

The Southern Regional Council has announced the finalists for the Lillian Smith Book Awards. In nonfiction, the finalists are Peter Applebome (“Dixie Rising: How the South Is Shaping American Values”); John M. Barry (“Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America”); and Horace Mann Bond and Julia W. Bond (“The Star Creek Papers: Washington Parish and the Lynching of Jerome Wilson”).

Fiction finalists are Charles Frazier (“Cold Mountain”); John Calvin Rainey (“The Thang That Ate My Granddaddy’s Dog”); and Judith Richards (“Too Blue to Fly”). Winners will be announced Nov. 7 at a luncheon in Atlanta.

Romance and riches

After getting little more than good reviews for her seven literary novels, Nashville author Cathie Pelletier decided to use a pen name and shoot for the best-seller list. Writing as K.C. McKinnon, Pelletier turned out “Dancing at the Harvest Moon” (Doubleday, $16.95), a novel about a middle-aged woman who finds love after being dumped by her husband. “I wanted to make some money and get more readers for my other books,” she says. It worked. Farrah Fawcett bought television rights, and Doubleday paid $1 million for the next K.C. McKinnon novel, “Candles on Bay Street,” due next year.