Book picks similar to
Bootlicker by Steve Piacente
historical-fiction
southern-gothic
southern
want
We Came Here to Shine
Susie Orman Schnall - 2020
She’s assigned the leading role in the heralded Aquacade synchronized swimming spectacular at the World’s Fair, a fate she believes will destroy her film career. If she performs well, she’ll have another chance at stardom, but with everything working against her, will her summer lead to opportunity or failure?Plucky Max dreams of becoming a serious journalist, but when her job at the New York Times doesn’t pan out, she finds herself begrudgingly working for the daily paper of the World’s Fair. As her ideas are continually overlooked by her male counterparts and her career prospects are put in jeopardy, Max must risk everything to change the course of her life.When Max and Vivi’s worlds collide, they forge an enduring friendship. One that teaches them to go after what matters most during the most meaningful summer of their lives.
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.
Waterproof: A Novel of the Johnstown Flood
Judith Redline Coopey - 2012
The flood wiped out Pam's fondest hopes: her brother and her fiance were killed. Her mother is locked in catatonic hysteria. Her father, torn apart by the flood's affect on his family, just walks away, leaving Pam poverty stricken and alone, to care for a mother who may never recover. Then Davy Hughes, Pam's dead fiance, reappears and, instead of being the answer to her prayers, further complicates her life. Someone is seeking revenge on the owners of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, the Pittsburgh millionaires who owned the failed dam, and Pam thinks Davy might have something to do with it. Waterproof, set in Johnstown two years after the flood, examines how people react to tragedy. Do they recover from physical injury only to succumb to the psychological affects? Or do they run away? Do they rise to the challenge and become better people or give in to their rage and seek revenge? For the people of Johnstown, survivors of the flood, it became the measure of their character. Determined to get past the tragedy and get on with her life, Pam spurns self-pity. She will not be defined by the flood. In this decades-deep story of loss and struggle against loss, we find a heroine to respect and a path to recovery.
Miss Appleby's Academy
Elizabeth Gill - 2013
And because she has a child with her, seemingly out of marriage, they want nothing to do with her – except for pub landlord Mick Castle. When Emma opens an academy and sets herself up in competition with the local school, she provokes a savage response from the community. But she will not be deterred – even when her past catches up with her and Mick is forced to choose between family and love.
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.
The Air Raid Girls
Jenny Holmes - 2021
Meet the Air Raid Girls: three young women keen to do their bit during the Yorkshire blitz.Connie's life has taken an unexpected turn since her husband died - she's living at home and working in the family bakery - but night shifts as an ARP Warden give her a firm sense of purpose.Her younger sister Lizzie is eager to play her part too, perhaps as an ambulance driver. Her fiance refuses to support her decision... but does he really know what's best for her?Twenty-year-old Pamela has led a sheltered life, but when her family's home is destroyed in a raid she must learn to stand on her own two feet - helped by new friends.As bombs fall and fires rage, the young women face the destruction of everything they've ever known. Can their fighting spirit prevail? And what of their families and the men they love?A thrilling and heartwarming new story of friendship, love and duty in wartime by the author of The Spitfire Girls, for fans of Elaine Everest and Rosie Hendry.
The Bluebeard Club: A 1920's Historical Murder Mystery (Lord Kit Aston Book 6)
Jack Murray - 2021
Nightwoods
Charles Frazier - 2011
Now, with his brilliant portrait of Luce, a young woman who inherits her murdered sister's troubled twins, Frazier has created his most memorable heroine.Before the children, Luce was content with the reimbursements of the rich Appalachian landscape, choosing to live apart from the small community around her. But the coming of the children changes everything, cracking open her solitary life in difficult, hopeful, dangerous ways.Charles Frazier is known for his historical literary odysseys, and for making figures in the past come vividly to life. Set in the twentieth century, Nightwoods resonates with the timelessness of a great work of art.
Shadows of the Past
June Francis - 2019
Fifteen-year-old Annie Anderson was adopted by Sylvia and Hugh after the death of their own daughter. Annie is told that her own mother in childbirth and her father died before she was born.A chance encounter introduces Annie to local lad Andrew Fraser. Their friendship blossoms, but once Annie’s adoptive parents learn of it they forbid her from seeing him. When Annie asks why, it sets her on a path to discover more about her origins – but will what she learns bring heartache or joy?
Don’t miss this rich and vivid saga by one of Liverpool’s best-known novelists, perfect for fans of Kitty Neale and Katie Flynn.
House Maid: A story behind the suffering of a Sri Lankan Migrant worker in Saudi Arabia.
Indika Guruge - 2017
She thinks migrating to a foreign land would be the only hope. The only qualification she has to migrate to a foreign country is to be a housemaid. That salary would be way better than in Sri Lanka, flying to Saudi Arabia as a housemaid would be a dream come true.Yet day after day, Kamala comprehends her mistake and regrets her stupid actions of leaving her beloveds. She is trapped by the secured walls of the Arabian house and by the rules, regulations and her negligence on working. She gets punished by horrific physical and mental abuse by the hands of her employer. Finally trapped her in a room as a punishment with nonpayment of her salary.When she tries to escape she is being physically tortured by the employer with nailing her body feet beating her with chains and sticks. Finally, when she escapes and returns to her mother land, everything what she worked have gone on a waste by her husband and leaving it all for nothing.Why I wrote this book.Labor migration to the Middle East has become a main feature of Sri Lankan economy strategies making it the second biggest foreign exchange earnings. Migration is likely to continue in the future. Foreign embassies continued to receive many reports that employers abused foreign women working as domestic servants. Some embassies of countries with large domestic servant populations maintained safe houses to which their citizens may flee to escape work situations that included forced confinement, withholding of food, nonpayment of salaries, beating and other physical abuse, and rape.These are few stories... "One particular day I dropped a saucer which broke into pieces. My employer was angry and he heated up five nails and drove them into my hand. When I shouted out in pain my employer's wife held a knife to my neck," she said.Why you should read this book?When you Google Sri Lanka all you see is a beautiful island with beautiful sceneries and nature surrounded by lovely sandy beaches, diverse landscapes ranging from plains to highlands, rainforests, wildlife and exotic food.But not many know how the Sri Lankan lower middle class suffer. How everyday is a challenge for them to make their ends meet. How much they suffer to keep their families alive, insufficient money to feed their children and to spend for their education.I was inspired by so many stories about how these migrant workers suffer. I have been fortunate enough to help these people and listen to their stories.This shows us how cruel the world is. Another side of life which many has not seen, or even think about, simply a nightmare. Why cannot the governments take any action about this? Non-government organizations? Is there anyone at all? When they send their hard earn money with high hopes, most of the time husbands waste money on alcohol and gambling, children go astray and get abused. These women and families fall of from the frying pan into fire. Time, money, pain all gets wasted. Everything end up in tears.This story will give you the inner aspect in depth about the middle class migrant workers and their lives, how hard they work, how much they sacrifice, how hard they hide their feelings and pain, suffer and struggle to survive every day.This book is a story about a family that went through this horrific abuse and torture. Hope you enjoy this book.Scroll up and grab your copy now.
Born a Workhouse Baby: Victorian Romance
Dolly Price - 2021
Deserted by a selfish man, and driven to the workhouse, young Annabel and her midwife mother face a harsh and hopeless future.A critical situation for the workhouse governor then opens a door of deliverance for them both, but it seems that revenge and bitterness hound their every step.A harrowing story of stolen love, rich and poor, faith, family, and fearful odds, Born A Workhouse Child, will keep your heart pounding and your hopes soaring to the end.Join Dolly Price for her most heart-warming Victorian romance yet, and follow Annabel’s courageous quest to discover the real meaning of love, faith, and family.
The Little Friend
Donna Tartt - 2002
The setting is Alexandria, Mississippi, where one Mother’s Day a little boy named Robin Cleve Dufresnes was found hanging from a tree in his parents’ yard. Twelve years later Robin’s murder is still unsolved and his family remains devastated. So it is that Robin’s sister Harriet - unnervingly bright, insufferably determined, and unduly influenced by the fiction of Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson--sets out to unmask his killer. Aided only by her worshipful friend Hely, Harriet crosses her town’s rigid lines of race and caste and burrows deep into her family’s history of loss.
Come and Tell Me Some Lies
Raffaella Barker - 2000
Her father is an impoverished poet with a penchant for mending cars with string and optimism, her mother a classicist now more concerned with trying to keep track of spiralling chaotic family life than the declining of verbs.Gabriella and her brothers run amuck through the attics and wilderness garden of their home, Mildney. Here she observes and experiences the triumphs and pitfalls of belonging to a wayward family, and longs for conformity. Her failure to achieve it is absolute.
Bimbos & Zombies: Bimbos of the Death Sun / Zombies of the Gene Pool
Sharyn McCrumb - 1997
Contents:* Bimbos of the Death Sun* Zombies of the Gene Pool