Book Club
An Appalachian Bookshelf
Featuring reviews of “Phenomenal” by Leigh Ann Henion, “Beautiful Land of the Sky” by Loren M. Wood, and “Real Goods Solar Living Sourcebook” by John Schaeffer
Read MoreAppalachian Voices Book Club
Appalachia’s triumphs and tragedies, its beauty and mystery, and its people’s tenacity, love and good humor have long been enshrined in fiction. This year, the stories of the region’s struggles with coal are reaching a national audience thanks to two powerful new novels.
Read MoreSelf-publishing: A Modern Avenue for Appalachian Authors
By Dac Collins Self-publishing is on the rise in today’s progressive literary scene, and quite a few writers in Appalachia have foregone the traditional process of submitting their work to publishers in favor of publishing it themselves. Julie E. Calestro-McDonald and Peggy Calestro self-published “Lost and Found in Appalachia” with the help of the CreateSpace…
Read MoreThe Girls of Atomic City
The Untold Story of Women Who Helped Win World War II By Denise Kiernan Back when African Americans and Caucasian Americans couldn’t drink from the same water fountains and women were an anomaly in the workforce, a team of young women unknowingly helped enrich fuel for the world’s first atomic bomb in the hills of…
Read MoreAppalachian Toys and Games from A to Z
By Linda Hager Pack and Pat Banks This colorful and educational book teaches children about a simpler time when dolls were made out of corn husks and apples, and games relied more on imagination than electricity. With the help of Pat Banks’ watercolor illustrations, Linda Hager Pack introduces some of the games that were played…
Read MoreVirginia Climate Fever
How Global Warming Will Transform Our Cities, Shorelines, and Forests By Stephen Nash As visiting senior research scholar at the University of Richmond, Stephen Nash explores the stunning local aspects of climate disruption. This digestible work employs enough facts and visuals to demonstrate the amount of damage that global warming promises for the Old Dominion.…
Read MoreTurning Carolina Red
Reports from the Front of an Energy Culture War E-Book by the Staff of Environment & Energy Publishing Five years ago, North Carolina veered from being a fairly moderate, progressive state and took a hard right when the Republican party gained control. The eBook “Turning Carolina Red: Reports from the Front of an Energy Culture…
Read MoreThe Secret Wisdom of the Earth
The debut novel by Christopher Scotton is a coming-of-age story that takes familiar themes — tragedy and the quest to find healing — and explores them with the backdrop of a central Appalachian community beset by mountaintop removal coal mining.
Read MoreGray Mountain by John Grisham
It’s 2008, ten days after the fall of Lehman Brothers, when 29-year-old Samantha Kofer is laid off from her profitable but uninspiring career at a New York law firm. Within days she finds herself traveling the hairpin roads of southwest Virginia to intern with the Mountain Aid Legal Clinic, a nonprofit law firm in the…
Read MoreJoe Potato’s Real Life Recipes
Rooted in rural Appalachia, these tales feature animals, humans and plants that celebrate country living while being brave — or perhaps stubborn — enough to stand unflinching in the face of hardscrabble realities.
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