Appalachian Mountain Books

06/19/2023

Proud to be here in D.C. with people all over America!

01/01/2023

December Reviews of New Appalachian books are up. https://apmtbooks.com/blogs/reviews/december-2022-reviews
This month features mostly novels, highlighted by Patricia L. Hudson’s wonderful historical novel, Traces, that traces the lives of Daniel Boone’s wife and two oldest daughters. Also this month is a short review of the new edition of Lambs of Men by Charles Dodd White set in Western North Carolina and of Shadows Hold Their Breath by Sherry Robinson, mostly set in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. A Christian romance by Beth Pugh, The Santa Run, is inspired by the real Santa Train that runs from Pikeville, Kentucky, each year to Kingsport, Tennessee, during the Christmas Season giving away toys. Asheville and Madison County, Kentucky, provide settings for the other two novels reviewed this month. Only one non-fiction book is included, but it is important and refreshing – Making Our Future: Visionary Folklore & Everyday Culture in Appalachia by Emily Hillard, a former West Virginia State Folklorist. The children’s book this month is a picture book about Dolly Parton.

A CHILDREN’S BOOK Dazzlin’ Dolly: The Songwriting, Hit-Singing, Guitar-Picking Dolly Parton by Suzanne Slade. New York: Calkins Creek/Astria Books for Young Readers, 2022. 40 pages, illustrated in full color by Edwin Fotheringham with a Timeline and Selected Bibliography. 9.25”X 11.5” hardba...

12/06/2022

November’s reviews of new Appalachian books - https://apmtbooks.com/blogs/reviews/november-2022-reviews -
are up! Three of these books have been highly anticipated nationally – Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead, Kevin Wilson’s Now Is Not the Time to Panic, and David Barclay Moore’s Holler of the Fireflies. And six authors also have strong followings as a result of their previous books. Shannon Hitchcock in children’s picture books, Aaron Purcell in non-fiction, and three poets: Marc Harshman, Annie Woodford and Thorpe Moeckel. Janisse Ray, known for creative nonfiction, has published her first novel. Plus, two books by new authors have attracted a lot of positive attention: The Coal Trap: How West Virginia Was Left Behind in the Clean Energy Revolution by James M. Van Nostrand and The Price of Bread and Shoes by Lonormi Manuel, a novel. November reviews also include a Cherokee book and a book about outstanding Tennessee women athletes!

BOOKS FOR CHILDREN AND TEENS Holler of the Fireflies by David Barclay Moore. New York: Barzoi Books/Alfred A. Knopf/Random House Children’s Books/Penguin Random House, 2022. 360 pages. Hardback in dust jacket. This book is a Kirkus Reviews and Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year! The auth...

11/12/2022

October’s batch of new Appalachian books - https://apmtbooks.com/blogs/reviews/october-2022-reviews - is headlined by two significant books now available for the first time in paperback. Gurney Norman’s Allegiance: Stories is an update to his 1977 classic, Kinfolks: The Wilgus Stories and Sharon Hatfield’s Enchanted Ground: The Spirit Room of Jonathan Koons puts an Appalachian Ohio farmer’s popular spiritualism in the context of 19th Century social movements. This month, the poetry section is the strongest featuring Ohio Poet Laureate, Kari Gunter-Seqmour’s Alone in the House of My Heart, popular African-American performance poet, Glenis Redmond’s The Listening Skin, and distinguished publisher, Robert B. Cumming’s After All. Three novels include Piano Days by Don Reid, the lead singer of the Statler Brothers. Ann Hite’s haunted short story collection, Haints on Black Mountain, rounds out October’s selections of new Appalachian books.

NON-FICTION Enchanted Ground: The Spirit Room of Jonathan Koons by Sharon Hatfield. Athens: Swallow Press/ Ohio University Press, a 2022 paperback edition of a 2018 release. 342 pages with Index, Notes, Bibliography and illustrations. Trade paperback. The enchanted ground and the spirit room of this...

10/22/2022

The September 2022 Reviews of new Appalachian books are up!
https://apmtbooks.com/blogs/reviews/september-2022-reviews
In non-fiction, they include an amazing book called Something in These Hills: The Culture of Family Land in Southern Appalachia by James M. Coggeshall. An anthropologist, he interviewed more than fifty people and couples to shine light on this crucial dimension of Appalachian culture. Also not to miss are two books by Jake Richards, an expert on traditional magic practices in Appalachia, a memoir of a West Virginia woman who worked her way through graduate school as a s*x worker, a book about the “treaty” that forced the Cherokees to move to Oklahoma, and a cookbook from the Red Truck Bakery. Three novels include a new one from Terry Roberts, one of Appalachia’s finest native novelists, another Western North Carolina novel from a New York Times best-selling author, and a mystery set in Morgantown, West Virginia whose protagonist is a bigfoot.

NON-FICTION Doctoring the Devil: Notebooks of an Appalachian Conjure Man by Jake Richards. Newburyport, Massachusetts: Weiser Books/Red Wheel-Weiser, 2021. 265 pages with a bibliography and two appendices. Trade paperback. The devil himself or any unfriendly spirit that is bringing on bad luck or an...

09/19/2022

The August 2022 reviews of new Appalachian books are finally up!
https://apmtbooks.com/blogs/reviews/august-2022-reviews
The highlight is Toward Cherokee Removal: Land, Violence and the White Man’s Chance by Adam J. Pratt. This is an important examination of the removal of the Cherokee people from Georgia. Also of interest is BJU and Me: Q***r Voices from the World’s Most Christian University edited by Lance Weldy and Gwinnett County, Georgia, and the Transformation of the American South, 1818-2018 by Michael Gagnon and Matthew Held. In fiction there is Across the Blue Ridge Mountains by M. S. Marangione. The protagonist was evicted from her farmstead to make way for Shenandoah National Park. Two short story collections have been reprinted. The Hills Remember: The Complete Short Stories of James Still is the same price as On Troublesome Mountain: Stories by James Still. The first of these two books includes all the stories in the later book plus 37 more. Good news! James Still’s first book of poetry has also been reprinted- Hounds on the Mountain. Mr. Still (1906-2001), often called the Dean of Appalachian Literature, is one of the region’s very most respected fiction writers!

NON-FICTION BJU and Me: Q***r Voices from the World’s Most Christian University edited by Lance Weldy. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2022. 347 pages with a Bibliography and Glossary of BJU terms. Trade paperback. It takes guts to call any university the “world’s most Christian.” T...

08/08/2022

The July reviews of new Appalachian books are up:
https://apmtbooks.com/blogs/reviews/july-2022-reviews
Most dramatic to me is the ineptly titled book about cave drawings by indigenous Americans in Appalachia: A Dark Pathway: Precontact Native American Mud Glyphs from lst Unnamed Cave, Tennessee by Jan F. Simek. I had no idea these existed. Another personal favorite is the aptly titled, Fishing for Chickens: A Smokies Food Memoir by Jim Casada. An important and stimulating entry is Robert Morgan: Essays on the Life and Work edited by Robert M. West and Jesse Graves. New fiction includes Call It Horses by Jesse van Eerden and The Heart of the Mountains by Christian romance writer, Pepper Basham, and a first novel by a British writer, Paddy Crewe: My Name is Yip set during the gold rush in the Georgia mountains.

Bearing the Torch: The University of Tennessee, 1794-2010 by T. R. C. Hutton. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2022. 240 pages with an Index, Bibliography, and Notes. Hardback with pictorial cover. This is the first scholarly history of the University of Tennessee since 1984 and reflects th...

07/05/2022

June News of the Appalachian Literary Scene is out –
https://apmtbooks.com/blogs/news/june-2022-news-of-the-appalachian-literary-scene -
One of the seven 2022 Independent Publisher’s Outstanding Book Awards went to The Moonshiner Popcorn Sutton by Neal Hutcheson. And Perfect Black by Chrystal Wilkinson won the 2022 Tillie Olson Award from the Working Class Studies Association. Brian D. Kennedy and Silas House were also recognized this last month.

The Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY Awards) came out in June. The Independent Spirit Award – one of seven 2022 IPPY Outstanding Books - went to The Moonshiner Popcorn Sutton by Neal Hutcheson. The two are pictured above. Perfect Black by Crystal Wilkinson has won the Working Class Studies ...

07/01/2022

June reviews of newly published Appalachian books are up!
https://apmtbooks.com/blogs/reviews/june-2022-reviews
What a month for novels! We have two brand new books by one of our most distinguished authors: the first paperback reprint of last year’s The Killing Hills by Chris Offutt, and also the first edition hardback release of the second book in this crime novel series, Shifty’s Boys. Also this month, poet Susan Underwood has published her first novel, Genesis Road, which is likely to catapult her into the leading ranks of regional novelists. The Book of Susan by Melanie K. Hutsell will be appreciated as a novel featuring a protagonist with bipolar disorder. Thomas Alan Holmes, whose previous books have all been scholarly, has just published his first book of poetry: In the Backhoe’s Shadow. Non-fiction books this month feature Cherokee life during the Trail of Tears era, the murder of two WVU coeds, tall tales of Appalachian monsters, and a guidebook to West Virginia.

NON-FCTION Eerie Appalachia by Mark Muncy and Kari Schultz. Charleston, South Carolina: History Press, 2022. 139 pages, illustrated with black-and-white photos on many pages. Trade paperback. About forty short tales of inexplicable incidents form this book, almost all centered in Southern Appalachia...

06/06/2022

The May News of the Appalachian Literary Scene is now up!
https://apmtbooks.com/blogs/news/may-2022-news-of-the-appalachian-literary-scene
This month’s news sadly includes an obituary, but also good news for Beth Macy, pictured above, Kim Michele Richardson, Joy Callaway, Chris Offutt, Megan Miranda, Chrystal Wilkinson, Gregory Samantha Rosenthal, and Neema Avashia.

Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis by Beth Macy, pictured above, is on Esquire magazine’s list of the 20 most anticipated books for the Summer of 2022. It is due for release on August 16th. It also makes Boston.com’s list of 24 Books You Should Read Thi...

06/05/2022

May 2022 reviews of recent Appalachian books are up!
https://apmtbooks.com/blogs/reviews/may-2022-reviews
Just to highlight a few of this month’s books, I must give special recognition to a book of collaborative essays entitled, Appalachian Health: Culture, Challenges, and Capacity edited by F. Douglas Scutchfield and Tandy Wykoff. Also impressive is Trailed: One Woman’s Quest to Solve the Shenandoah Murders by Kathryn Miles and Y’all Means All: The Emerging Voices Q***ring Appalachia edited by Z. Zane McNeill. The fiction highlight is The Book Woman’s Daughter a novel by Kim Richardson that follows the author’s previous New York Times best seller, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek.

CHILDREN AND TEENS West Virginia (Blastoff! Discovery: State Profiles) by Betsy Rathburn. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Bellweather Media, 2022. 32 pages with an Index, Glossary, “To Learn More,” and full color illustrations and photos. 6.75” X 9.5” hardback with pictorial cover and library bindin...

05/02/2022

The April 2022 News of the Appalachian Literary Scene has been posted.
https://apmtbooks.com/blogs/news/april-2022-news-of-thef-appalachian-literary-scene
Three recently published Appalachian books have been named finalists to NATIONAL book awards. Congratulations to Julia Watts, Tina Parker, and Marianne Worthington. One regional book has been named to a “most anticipated” list for the season. Congratulations to Ashley Bloom. Two Appalachian books have been named to a “most anticipated” list for the month of April. Congratulations to Mark Powell and Z. Zane McNeil. Another has been named an anticipated book for next month. Last, but not least, Mandi Fugate Sheffel’s Hazard, Kentucky, bookstore, Read Spotted Newt, has been honored as an exemplary Eastern Kentucky business.

Needle Work by Julia Watts is one of 9 finalists in YA Fiction for Foreword Indie. Lock Her Up by Tina Parker was one of eleven finalists for Eric Hoffer’s 2022 Medal Provocateur that recognizes the “best on the frontier of poetry – the experimental, the innovative, the daring and stunning, th...