Book picks similar to
Tales From The Plum Grove Hills by Jesse Stuart
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Mother of Rain
Karen Spears Zacharias - 2013
Though family and community support helps, her hold on sanity remains tenuous.
Delirium of the Brave
William C. Harris Jr. - 1998
Confederate Captain Patrick Driscoll and his dear friend and manservant Shadrack "Shad" Bryan leave their tearful families to help fight for the Southern cause. They are to set up fort at Raccoon Island off Georgia's coast in a last-ditch effort to save their beloved city from Union attack. But only days into their assignment, the two men die in each other's arms in a Yankee bombardment. Though the men are gone, their legacy will live on-as will the legend of the priceless Driscoll family treasure the two men have buried on Raccoon Island.Four generations after the Civil War, many Confederate families still remain in Savannah, struggling through the twentieth-century in a South rife with hardball politics, personal vendettas and the hangover of war.John-Morgan Hartman, son of a newspaper man and great-great grandson of Captain Patrick Driscoll, goes to serve his country in Vietnam, unaware of the physical and psychological wounds that will befall him...Tony O'Boyle is an ambitious young politician who will stop at nothing and spare no one to get ahead-but his family's dark past will come back to haunt him...Lloyd Bryan, descended from slaves, is determined to succeed where his ancestors didn't. But his celebrity as a professional football player immerses him in a world of temptation that ultimately turns him toward religion...Charlotte Drayton, a successful television reporter, has always used her beauty to get her way-but the one man she can't have is the only one she wants...After many years, four friends will meet on the very island where the two confederate soldiers died in each other's arms. To find where they buried Driscoll's treasure-and to uncover the dangerous secrets of a prominent Savannah family.A gripping novel of history, intrigue, war, and love, Delirium of the Brave follows four generations of families contemplating the pain of the past and the promise of the future. Get swept away by this glorious saga rich with the sights, sounds, flavors, and people of the South's most stunning locale.
Brother of the Third Degree
Will L. Garver - 1894
There he meets his soul mate, who is an initiate of a higher order. In his eagerness to make rapid progress he falls prey to the dark brotherhood. The Masters use this near deadly experience to further test and teach him as part of their ultimate plan. He and his true love learn to work together in service to the Masters and humanity.
Secondhand Smoke: A Wickedly Dark Comedy
Patty Friedmann - 2002
Fortunately, poison is the very superfood of the satirist. Patty Friedmann, the reigning queen of black comedy, hits one out of the park with her family straight out of Tolstoy--unhappy in its own way, a uniquely twisted Southern way. Meet the Baileys. Born and bred in a working class New Orleans neighborhood, Zib and Wilson think the thick cloud of cigarette smoke enveloping their mother is what probably killed their father. Certainly the toxicity of Jerusha’s dark, cynical attitudes has driven her children far from the nest. Wilson has escaped to Chicago, married a woman who hates him, converted to Judaism, and become a decorated professor of Organic Evolution. Zib, almost forty, has made it only as far as the Florida Panhandle, where she's an assistant manager at the local Winn-Dixie, doomed to fending off a sleazy boss given to late night phone calls. Only one person, as isolated as she is, shows Jerusha any affection: Dustin Puglia, chubby, wise, and fearless, a ten-year-old living next door with a poisonous mother of his own. Although Wilson and Zib have forged independent lives away from their mother—as well as each other—their father's death brings them back together for a darkly droll, yet heart-wrenching round of domestic insanity. Does it remind you of AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY? Or THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS? Patty Friedmann got there first! And she’s just as funny and observant as the authors of those splendid screenplays. Who Will Like It: Fans of off-beat dark comedies like AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY, THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS, family dramas with a lot more humor than THE CORRECTIONS, the incomparable CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES, and another mistress of the twisted, Flannery O’Connor. Not to mention Patty Friedmann's other books: TOO JEWISH #1 TOO JEWISH: THE NEXT GENERATION (formerly The Exact Image of Mother) PICK-UP LINE (formerly Side Effects) ELEANOR RUSHING A LITTLE BIT RUINED ODDS “Secondhand Smoke does not seek life in fancy words and clever euphemisms. It tingles because it’s raw and true … The way [Friedmann] carves a sentence gives you the sense that she’s always known how to do it.” –Critique Magazine
The Travelers: Book 2
Lee Hunnicutt - 2018
Jack, Sonny and Beth are transported back to the ancient Indian burial cave in the jungles of the 1970s Panama Canal Zone. After spending time in the Canal Zone, they return to 1875 San Francisco and reunite with Anne. They visit China Town where they meet an interesting and powerful Chinese gentleman and are introduced to the warfare between the triads and the tongs.They find their lives are in danger from an old enemy. They decide it is better if they leave San Francisco and visit the Cheyenne. From there they travel to New York and witness first hand the cutthroat world of New York high society and then on to England where they are introduced to British society by none other than Prince Edward himself.
The Commandant’s Dog: A WW2 Historical Novel, Based on a True Story of a Jewish Holocaust Survivor
Shmuel David - 2021
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek
Kim Michele RichardsonKim Michele Richardson - 2019
The lonely young Appalachian woman joins the historical Pack Horse Library Project of Kentucky and becomes a librarian, riding across slippery creek beds and up treacherous mountains on her faithful mule to deliver books and other reading material to the impoverished hill people of Eastern Kentucky.Along her dangerous route, Cussy, known to the mountain folk as Bluet, confronts those suspicious of her damselfly-blue skin and the government's new book program. She befriends hardscrabble and complex fellow Kentuckians, and is fiercely determined to bring comfort and joy, instill literacy, and give to those who have nothing, a bookly respite, a fleeting retreat to faraway lands.
Crum
Lee Maynard - 1985
This novel, named after a real-life, gritty little coal town on the West Virginia-Kentucky border, offers a sometimes shocking, often outrageous, always irreverent look at this young man’s attempt to escape his home.In Crum, the boys fight, swear, chase - and sometimes catch girls, and have unflattering things to say about their neighbors across the river in Kentucky. The adults are cramped and clueless, hemmed in by the mountains that loom over this tiny suffocating town. And to boys flush with the hormones of youth, this situation is full of wonder, dejection, and even possibility.Lee Maynard, a native of Crum in Wayne County, West Virginia, spins this tale of a young man whose rebellion against the people and the place of his childhood allows him to reject the comfort and familiarity of his home in search of his place in a larger world.This novel stirred deep feelings in West Virginia, as readers reacted in different ways to the poetry and reality of Maynard's creation. Since its highly successful first publication, this novel has become an underground classic, with used copies now scarce and costly. Maynard adds a brief epilogue to this new edition, and West Virginia writer Meredith Sue Willis provides an introduction. Crum shot to number eight on the Doubleday Best Seller list within its first month of publication, despite its ban in West Virginia. He has since published a sequel to Crum entitled Screaming with the Cannibals.
Hound Dog Man
Fred Gipson - 1947
For Christmas, Cotton bought his dad a studded dog collar and his mom an enameled cake-mixing pan just the right size for feeding a dog. It didn't do any good. When Christmas comes, Cotton still doesn't get his dog. But Blackie Scantling, best coon hunter in the country, and his two coonhounds, Rock and Drum, come by for dinner one night. Blackie takes Cotton and his best friend Spud, and Spud's little feist-dog Snuffy, on a series of adventures that include a show-down with a bull, a wrestling match with a turkey gobbler, and the search for a dog Cotton can call his own.
Tomorrow River
Lesley Kagen - 2010
During the summer of 1968, Shenandoah Carmody's mother disappeared. Her twin sister, Woody, stopped speaking, and her once-loving father slipped into a mean drunkenness unbefitting a superior court judge. Since then, Shenny-named for the Shenandoah valley-has struggled to hold her world together, taking care of herself and her sister the best she can. Shenny feels certain that Woody knows something about the night their mother vanished, but her attempts to communicate with her mute twin leave her as confused as their father's efforts to confine the girls to the family's renowned virginia estate. As the first anniversary of their mother's disappearance nears, her father's threat to send Woody away and his hints at an impending remarriage spur a desperate Shenny to find her mother before it's too late. She is ultimately swept up in a series of heartbreaking events that force her to come to terms with the painful truth about herself and her family. Told with the wisdom, sensitivity, and humor for which Lesley Kagen has become known, Tomorrow River is a stellar hardcover debut.
Blood Brothers
Gary McCarthy - 1989
Don't miss this exciting action adventure western from America's great western storyteller, Gary McCarthy!
A.J. Smith
C.J. Petit - 2017
He had his ranch, a good-sized herd, and a healthy bank account. He thought he had finally added the last, most important part of the dream when Hannah Jacobsen, recent widow and mother of two, moved in with her sister in the neighboring ranch. But the reason she had become a widow would turn into a harrowing race across two counties, sometimes as the pursuer and other times as the pursued.
Boat of Longing
O.E. Rølvaag - 1974
E. Rölvaag lyrically chronicles the experiences of Nils Vaag, a young Norwegian immigrant. Abandoning the life of a fisherman in Nordland, a region poor but full of mystical beauty, Nils emigrates to the New World in 1912. There he sweeps saloons, lives in a boardinghouse called "Babel" for the many languages used by its residents, and begins to find his way among the people of the city.The Boat of Longing was Rölvaag's favorite of all his books and the only one set in urban America. When it was first published in English in 1933, it received wide praise from American critics. This edition includes an introduction by Einar Haugen, professor emeritus of Scandinavian and Linguistics at Harvard University and author of a critical study of Rölvaag.
Tucker's Way
David Johnson - 2012
Yet she is passionate about her grandchildren, whom she is raising. She overcomes her abusive upbringing by facing life head on, making no excuses. Always full of surprises, Tucker will inspire you.
Down From The Mountain (Clint Hunter: Mountain Man #1)
Mike Mackessy - 2019
With degrees in both Medicine and Law, at the age of seventeen, Clint still felt empty and dissatisfied. He struck up a bargain with his father, to be allowed four years to go West and see the lands, experience life, then return to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a doctor in the family practice. When he boarded the train west with fifty thousand dollars set up in a bank account, Clint had no way of knowing just how much his life would turn in a completely different way.