Featured Selections
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From the Castle to the Cotton Mill
2026 · Memoir
Not all legacies are meant to be honored. Some are meant to be dismantled. Some are meant to be healed.
Part memoir, part women’s history, this braided story traces a thousand years of one maternal line, from Anglo-Norman nobility to Alabama cotton mill workers, and asks what every woman in it was denied: a choice.
"…it's never too late to break the cycle." — Amazon reader review
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The New Justice & Other Spirit Animals
2026 · Memoir
Justice was a big, lovable black Lab with a trickster’s twinkle in his eye. For fourteen years, he carried one family through childhood adventures and hard seasons alike. This is his story, and the story of the other animals who taught them what love looks like.
“His story is a reminder that life is to be cherished and lived fully each and every day.”
Dr. Ira Roth, University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine -
Dead River: A John Maynard & Abby Sinclair Novel
2015 · Book 1 of 7
Two young reporters. One dying river. And powerful people who want its secrets kept buried. In 1980s South Georgia, John Maynard and Abby Sinclair take on their first assignment together, and it will change both their lives. The first Maynard and Sinclair thriller.
“Dead River is a compelling read you won’t want to put down.” — Amazon reader review
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Phyllis McCoy Lightle
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From the Castle to the Cotton Mill
2026 · Memoir
This is not a genealogy book. Genealogy is the door to the house, but the house is something else.
Phyllis McCoy Lightle follows her maternal line back a thousand years, through Quaker colonists, a girl married at eleven, and a grandmother who left school at twelve, to her own inheritance of shame that was never hers to carry. Three questions guide the book: How are women taught their own inferiority? Why do women support the system that hurts them? How do we dismantle it?
“By Lightle bravely revealing her life story, she allows others to look more closely at their own lives.” — Amazon reader review
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Chasing Hemingway
2023 · Poetry, second edition
Raised in a South where girls are taught to "be sweet" and never talk politics or religion, Phyllis McCoy Lightle writes about everything she was told to keep quiet: family, women's history, and the fight for women's rights.
"Great tribute to family ties, Mothers, Grandmothers, strong women!!" — Amazon reader review
Bill Lightle — Nonfiction
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The New Justice & Other Spirit Animals
2026 · Memoir
Named for Atlanta Braves outfielder David Justice, a black Lab puppy joined Bill Lightle’s family in Albany, Georgia, in the mid-1990s. He grew up alongside Bill’s two young sons and saw Bill through some of the hardest times of his life. When Bill reconnected with Phyllis McCoy, the young reporter he’d dated decades earlier, Justice loved her as fully as she loved him, and the family grew to include more dogs and cats. A warm book for readers of all ages, including young readers ready for chapter books.
“Haven’t read a book in one sitting in a long time, but Bill Lightle’s new book mesmerized me.” — Amazon reader review
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Breaking Free: The John Huie Story
2023 · Biography
From a chaotic childhood in Albany, Georgia, John Huie rose to national leadership in wilderness education through Outward Bound, crossing paths with everyone from Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter to Jane Goodall.
"He was the conscience of Outward Bound back then." — Mark Udall, former U.S. Senator from Colorado
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Made or Broken: Football & Survival in the Georgia Woods
2014 · Memoir and history
Three-a-day practices, hazing, and cottonmouths at Albany High's legendary Graves Springs camp, and how Black and white teammates learned to fight for each other in the years of integration. Bill's first book.
"A splendid book reminding us of the great passion of high school football in the Deep South." — the late Vince Dooley, former UGA head football coach
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Race & Politics in the American South
2022 · Memoir and history
A former reporter, teacher, and activist traces race and Southern politics from the first days of school integration in 1960s Albany to the forces threatening American democracy today.
"He writes with no less intensity than William Faulkner but with much greater clarity." — John Huie, former director, North Carolina Outward Bound School
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Mill Daddy: The Life & Times of Roy Davis
2010 · Biography
A sharecropper's son who spent more than forty years in an Albany cotton mill, and the girl with eyes "like diamonds" he loved for life. A tribute to the Southern mill hands whose labor was never honored.
"…move over (John) Steinbeck and (Erskine) Caldwell." — Bobby Dews, author
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To Dance with the Devil's Daughter
2014 · Biography, with the Rev. Grady Caldwell
As a boy he watched the Klan burn a cross behind his Albany home. Grady Caldwell became Albany High's first Black football player, lost nearly twenty years to addiction, then found his way to the pulpit.
"Grady's story will touch your heart." — Dr. J. Robert White, Georgia Baptist Convention
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Straight Outta CME: Bobby Jackson's Journey to the NFL
2018 · Biography
Told he was too small to play football, Bobby Jackson rose from Albany's CME housing project to All-American honors at Florida State and eight seasons as a starter for the New York Jets.
"Bobby's career was remarkable, but his personal character was even more remarkable." — Deek Pollard, FSU defensive backs coach
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Don't Tell Your Mother
2014 · Memoir
In 1960s Indiana, young Billy and his cousins followed their uncle Kevin Simpkins, a storyteller with the imagination of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, into one adventure after another. You'll wish you'd been part of the gang.
"Don't Tell Your Mother is a delight … a bit of our generation's history." — Amazon reader review
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My Mother's Dream: Baseball with the Bankers
2010 · Baseball
The Bankers of a small Indiana town played baseball with big hearts, held tight to their boyhood dreams and the women they loved, and could be a mischievous bunch once they left the field.
"…a great story of how people come together to be a 'team'." — Amazon reader review
Two young reporters, a South Georgia newspaper in the 1980s, and a habit of chasing the stories powerful people want buried. Bill Lightle’s thriller series grew out of his own years as a reporter at The Albany Herald, and out of a brief newsroom romance with a fellow young journalist named Phyllis, whom he married more than two decades later. The seven novels can be read in order or on their own.
The John Maynard & Abby Sinclair Series
Thrillers by Bill Lightle
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Dead River
2015 · Book 1 of 7
Their editor at the Albany Chronicle believes a free press should be a force for good, so he sends John Maynard and Abby Sinclair to investigate the destruction of the Flint River and Lake Blackshear. Their first assignment together pulls them into a fight between people working to save the river and powerful forces determined to destroy it. A timely environmental thriller steeped in the South Georgia landscape.
Book 1 of 7. Each novel stands on its own, but this is where the story begins.
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Under Blood
2017 · Book 2 of 7
A wealthy couple is murdered on their pecan plantation outside Albany, and a Black farmhand is charged. John and Abby suspect the truth lies buried behind the mansions and magnolias of South Georgia.
"I thought I had figured the killer out but was wrong." — Amazon reader review
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Monkey Palace
2017 · Book 3 of 7
A migrant teenager is found murdered in Albany, other girls are missing, and John and Abby race to stop a killer protected by ruthless criminals and the politicians who look the other way.
"I couldn't put it down, but I was also sorry when it ended." — Amazon reader review
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Fire Eater
2019 · Book 4 of 7
In 1957, a Black teenager was lynched in Calhoun County, Georgia, and no one was ever charged. Thirty years later, John and Abby reopen the case, and dangerous men want it to stay closed.
"Page-turning suspense and realistic characters that come to life on the page." — Amazon reader review
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Aucilla Bones
2019 · Book 5 of 7
A quiet fishing getaway on the Florida Panhandle turns deadly when John and Abby pull a wounded Seminole man from the Aucilla River and land in a showdown with violent Gulf Coast gangs.
"Lightle weaves the special place that is Florida's Big Bend into an entertaining mystery." — Amazon reader review
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Nochaway Knife
2020 · Book 6 of 7
A body by the railroad tracks near an Albany cotton mill leads John and Abby into a web of greed and international intrigue that stretches from the mill floor all the way to Ireland.
"Bill excels at action scenes that blindside you as much as they do his characters." — Amazon reader review
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Turtle Town
2024 · Book 7 of 7, the newest
A professor's apparent suicide, two escaped German POWs, and a forty-year-old murder lead John and Abby to family secrets South Georgia has kept hidden for decades.
"The author knows intimately the region about which he writes." — Amazon reader review
Ways to Buy Our Books
We know some readers would rather not shop on Amazon, and we understand that. Here’s the honest picture.
Like most independent authors, we publish through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing. It prints each book when it’s ordered and ships it anywhere, so we can keep eighteen books in print without a warehouse full of boxes or a big-house publisher deciding what’s worth reading. Amazon keeps a share for printing and distribution, and we earn a royalty on every copy.
That said, the best way to support us is to buy in person. When you pick up a book at one of our events, more of the money stays with us, and we’ll be glad to sign it for you. Check our Events page to see where we’ll be next. If you can’t make it to an event, contact us and we’ll work something out.
You can also find our books at local Shops, where your purchase supports a neighborhood business as well as two independent authors.
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