Sign-In
Cart
The Beauties of Belladonna: Stories from the New South
Paperback
Publisher Price: $21.00
ISBN13: 9781639822423
Publisher: Slant Books
Published: Nov 17 2026
Pages: 214
Weight: 0.64
Height: 0.49 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Pulling up to the gated community known as Belladonna-nestled comfortably in the foothills of South Carolina-one is confronted by a logo featuring a wide-eyed Cleopatra surrounded by the legendary poisonous plant. It's the sort of place that has a hammerlock on the American Dream, featuring a championship golf course, prizewinning lawns, Tuscan architecture, compulsory three-car garages, faux cobblestone sidewalks, and an Assisted Living Center.
Belladonna's inhabitants are a colorful lot, including a retired lawyer whose life is centered on his lawn; the Undefeated Speed Dating Champion of the World, who meets and marries a mother recovering from a traumatic event; a buxom college professor whose courses include Elementary Outrage and Feminism with a Human Face; a harried real estate agent who quotes Shakespeare and Wordsworth to his clients; and a former potato chip salesman whose brilliant, irreverent wife develops dementia.
In the spirit of Belladonna's logo, Gilbert Allen's series of linked stories from the New South are both seductive and, well, hazardous. Blending biting satire, rueful affection, and unblinkered curiosity about the strangeness of the human heart, these are tales that reveal truths about our upscale neighbors-and ourselves.
Although you won't find Belladonna on any map, you might have already encountered its past, present, and future in Gilbert Allen's previous collections, The Final Days of Great American Shopping and The Beasts of Belladonna.
Also from
Allen, Gilbert
Running Wild Press Short Story Anthology, Volume 9
Allen, Gilbert
Curtis, Joy
Kalita, Arindam
Paperback
Also in
General Fiction
Elizabeth Spencer: Novels & Stories (Loa #344): The Voice at the Back Door / The Light in the Piazza / Knights and Dragons / Stories
Spencer, Elizabeth
Hardcover
Anniversaries, Volume 2: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl, April 1968-August 1968
Johnson, Uwe
Paperback
Philip Roth: Novels 1973-1977 (Loa #165): The Great American Novel / My Life as a Man / The Professor of Desire
Roth, Philip
Hardcover
Selected Writings: Robert Musil: Young Torless, Three Women, the Perfecting of a Love, and Other Writings
Agee, Joel
Musil, Robert
Paperback
Before Gatsby: The First Twenty-Six Stories
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Bruccoli, Matthew J.
Baughman, Judith
Paperback