Book picks similar to
Pattern of a Man & Other Stories by James Still


appalachia
southern
short-stories
fiction-american-short-stories

Cold Comfort: Life at the Top of the Map


Barton Sutter - 1998
    Cold Comfort is his temperamental tribute to the city of Duluth, Minnesota, where bears wander the streets and canoe racks are standard equipment.

Death of a Laird (Hamish Macbeth)


M.C. Beaton - 2022
    

Trapped


Richard Greener - 2011
    He had violent hallucinations based on the Iraq war and the reports of terrorism and violence constantly playing on his hospital TV tuned into CNN. He believed his family to be in danger, but he had no way to communicate with them. For a long time after the whole ordeal, he had trouble knowing what had happened. What was real and what wasn't. If part of the core of who we are is our memory, what does it mean when the memory is still there, but false?

Whiskey Devil


Christian Galacar - 2013
    His father is an abusive drunk with muddled religious views, and his mother, as hard as she tries to defend her son, only ever ends up delaying the inevitable. Things take a turn for the worse one Friday when Bobby brings home a black eye from school. The following day his father brings him out into the woods on a mission to do “God’s Work” and bring him into adulthood. A coming-of-age story about the sins of a father and a son’s chance to absolve himself from them.

This Rock


Robert Morgan - 2001
    Muir is an innocent, a shy young man with big dreams. Moody, the older and wilder brother-embittered by the death of his father, by years of fighting his mother, and by his jealousy of Muir's place in the family-takes to moonshine and gambling and turns his anger on his brother. Muir escapes by wandering, making his way around the country in attempts to find something-an occupation, a calling-to match his ambition.Through it all, their mother, Ginny, tries to steer her boys right, all the while remembering her own losses: her husband (whose touch still haunts her), her youth, and the fiery sense of God that once ordered her world.When Muir, in a drunken vision, decides that his purpose in life is to clear a space on a hill and build a stone church with his own hands, the consequences of his plan are far-reaching and irrevocable: a community threatens to tear itself apart, men die, and his family is forever changed. All that's left in the aftermath are the ghosts and the memories of a new man.

THE DARKNESS


Stephen King - 2019
    King. Do not let the lack of light stop you from discovering more adventures and stories that will keep you up at night and ignite the imagination. There is no place to hide in, THE DARKNESS!

Braid: Three Twisted Stories


S.G. Redling - 2012
    In ‘Cora Lee is Stupid’ a young girl takes vengeance on an abusive older sister. In ‘Dead Weight’ three bank robbers get more than they bargained for during their getaway. In ‘Rosetta Stone’ a bitter young man comes face to face with the end of the world.

A Yankee Girl's Guide to the South


Jillian Perry - 2014
    With a conked out ’72 Beetle, and a newly broken heart courtesy of her cheating ex-fiancée, Libby Green finds herself fleeing to tiny Spoonbend, Georgia to claim a cottage willed to her family years ago. Libby must learn the ins and outs of life in the small town south—where the iced tea is sweet, the drawl is slow, the men are sexy, and southern belles aren’t always charming. After embarrassing herself in hopes of assimilating (who knew people actually still called northerners Yankees?) and catching the eye of more than one gallant good ol’ boy, Libby inadvertently uncovers a dark secret that will challenge the very fabric of Spoonbend society.

Hill William


Scott McClanahan - 2013
    He wants you to feel something too."—The Huffington PostI walked up to the side of the mountain like I used to do when I was a little boy. I looked out over Rainelle and watched it shine. The coal trucks and the logging trucks were still gunning it through town. They were still clear cutting the mountains and cutting the coal from the ground. Then I heard my mother calling and it was like I was a child again.Beginning to read Hill William is like tuning into a blues station at 4:00 a.m. while driving down the highway. Scott McClanahan's work soars with a brisk and lively plainsong, offering a boisterous peek into a place often passed over in fiction: West Virginia, where coal and heartbreak reign supreme. Hill William testifies to the way place creates and sometimes stifles one's ability to hope. It reads like a Homeric hymn to adventure, to the human comedy's upsets and small downfalls, and revels in its whispers of victory. So grab coffee, beer—whatever gets you through the night—and join Scott around the hearth. Lend him your ear, but be warned: you might not want it back.Scott McClanahan's work has appeared in New York Tyrant, Bomb, Vice, and Harper Perennial's Fifty-Two Stories. His books include Stories II and Stories V! In 2013 Two Dollar Radio will release his book Crapalachia.

Bloodroot


Amy Greene - 2010
    The novel is told in a kaleidoscope of seamlessly woven voices and centers around an incendiary romance that consumes everyone in its path: Myra Lamb, a wild young girl with mysterious, haint blue eyes who grows up on remote Bloodroot Mountain; her grandmother Byrdie Lamb, who protects Myra fiercely and passes down “the touch” that bewitches people and animals alike; the neighbor boy who longs for Myra yet is destined never to have her; the twin children Myra is forced to abandon but who never forget their mother’s deep love; and John Odom, the man who tries to tame Myra and meets with shocking, violent disaster. Against the backdrop of a beautiful but often unforgiving country, these lives come together—only to be torn apart—as a dark, riveting mystery unfolds. With grace and unflinching verisimilitude, Amy Greene brings her native Appalachia—and the faith and fury of its people—to rich and vivid life. Here is a spellbinding tour de force that announces a dazzlingly fresh, natural-born storyteller in our midst.

Comedy of Marriage and Other Tales


Guy de Maupassant - 2004
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

The Unwashed


Seán Hogan - 2016
    Each story follows the life of a person living on a fictitious council estate in London. The stories illustrate the realities and struggles that ordinary people go through at a time when people are feeling disenfranchised and are frustrated at not having their voices heard. Ranging from a humorous look at the gentrification of London to the realities of living with addiction the stories place the reader in the shoes of each character allowing them to feel their emotions.

Accidental Birds of the Carolinas


Marjorie Hudson - 2011
    In the centerpiece story, an eighteenth-century Eno Indian tells of the fiery fate of his adopted father, English explorer John Lawson. In the surrounding stories, the age-old conflicts between newcomer and old-timer play out as twenty-first century retirees, carnies, runaways, heartbroken women, and farmers stumble into new lives and new insights in Ambler County, North Carolina. "Hudson's prose is pure as birdsong," says novelist Doris Betts. "These fine stories of change and discovery are a field guide to the human species in transition."

The Butcher's Husband and Other Stories


Amy Cross - 2019
     A suspicious husband sets out to discover what his wife really does late at night in her shop. A man starts a new job guarding the entrance to a pier at night. An abandoned house hides a sinister – and disgusting – secret in its basement. A young girl waits for a message from her dead mother, and then she finds something stranger in the freezer. The Butcher's Husband and Other Stories features the new short stories The Butcher's Husband, Tongue, The Pier and The Butcher's Husband II, as well as revised versions of The Seagull and A Perfect Death, and a new novella titled Larry.

The Best of 2.13.61


Henry Rollins - 1998
    Culling over 300 pages of some of today's most thrilling writers, The Best of 2.13.61 Publications hallmarks our company's ten year existence. Excerpts include new material from Henry Rollins and Hubert Selby, Jr, as well as excerpts from Henry Miller's love letters, Nick Zedd's hilarious nihilistic New York urban spelunkings, Ian Shoales' undeniably witty social commentaries and so much more.