Entry Category: Fiction - Starting with A

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was written by Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835–1910), best known by his pen name Mark Twain. It was published in 1884 in the United Kingdom and 1885 in the United States, and is set on and around the Mississippi River in the pre-industrial era before the Civil War. Twain was familiar with the river from his time as a riverboat pilot in the years immediately before the Civil War and his childhood near the river in Hannibal, Missouri. The book contains vivid and humorous descriptions of Arkansas and its people. According to Ernest Hemingway: “It’s the best book we’ve had. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.” …

Along Came a Cowboy is a 2008 romance novel by Arkansas writer Christine Lynxwiler, the author of more than a dozen Christian romance novels and repeat winner of the American Christian Romance Writers/American Christian Fiction Writers Book of the Year Award. Published by Barbour Publishing, an outlet for Christian fiction and devotionals, and subtitled A Romantic Showdown in Small-Town Arkansas, the novel centers upon the unmarried Dr. Rachel Donovan who, thanks to her chairing the Shady Grove Centennial Rodeo Committee, finds herself once again in the company of rodeo star Jack Westwood, whom she knew in her youth. The book features some of the same characters as Promise Me Always, a 2006 novel by Lynxwiler, but is not a direct …

Arkansas Special Agents is a three-book series written by Maggie Wells (pen name for Margaret Ethridge) and published by Harlequin in May–July 2023 under the Harlequin Intrigue imprint, which offers a fusion of the thriller and traditional romance genres. The books feature the Arkansas State Police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and take place in northwestern Arkansas, highlighting the growing divide between rich and poor and the corruption bred by a tremendous influx of wealth into the region. The first book in the series, Ozarks Missing Person, opens with Mallory Murray riding in a speedboat on Table Rock Lake with Tyrone (Trey) Powers III and his friends. Trey is an Ivy League–educated lawyer at the firm of Powers, …

The Arkansaw Bear: A Tale of Fanciful Adventure is a children’s story written by Albert Bigelow Paine in 1898. Paine called upon southern folktale and storytelling tradition and used lyrics of “The Arkansas Traveler” as inspiration for his story. Albert Paine (July 10, 1861–April 9, 1937) was a highly respected American author and noted biographer of Mark Twain. Besides fiction, Paine wrote humor and poetry, and he served as a member of the Pulitzer Prize committee. Paine spent the majority of his adult life living and writing in Europe, where he was awarded the title of Chevalier in the Legion d’Honneur by the French government for his biographies of Joan of Arc. Paine told the story in The Arkansaw Bear: …

David Auburn is a Tony Award– and Pulitzer Prize–winning American playwright, screenwriter, and director best known for his 2000 play Proof, which he also adapted for the screen, and for the screenplay for the film The Lake House. His play The Columnist opened on Broadway in 2012. David Auburn was born on November 30, 1969, in Chicago, Illinois, to Mark Auburn and Sandy K. Auburn. He grew up in Ohio and moved with his family to Arkansas in 1982, where his mother worked first for the East Arkansas Area Agency on Aging in Jonesboro (Craighead County) and then as the assistant deputy director of the Division of Aging and Adult Services for the Arkansas Department of Human Services in Little …