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I canât say that I was even conscious of having grown up in the Ozarks until stumbling upon a regional geography book in college. Once I learned that the rural community of my childhood was part of a hill country stretching from the outskirts of St. Louis into the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, I dedicated my lifeâs work to explaining (and demystifying) the Ozarkers â a people not quite southern, not quite midwestern, and not quite western.
It may be pure fiction, but Haringtonâs saga of the remote community of Stay More (home, of course, to the Stay Morons) is still the best, most entertaining history of the Ozarks in existence. Beneath the postmodern devices and 1970s-era subversiveness, Haringtonâs abiding love for the Ozarks and its people shines through. From the backcountry dialect to the intricacies of a century and a half of regional history, it remains â for my money â the best thing ever written about the Ozarks.
Jacob and Noah Ingledew trudge 600 miles from their native Tennessee to found Stay More, a small town nestled in a narrow valley that winds among the Arkansas Ozarks and into the reader's imagination. The Ingledew saga-which follows six generations of 'Stay Morons' through 140 years of abundant living and prodigal loving-is the heart of Harington's jubilant, picaresque novel. Praised as one of the year's ten best novels by the American Library Association when first published, this tale continues to captivate readers with its winning fusion of lyricism and comedy.
I canât say that I was even conscious of having grown up in the Ozarks until stumbling upon a regional geography book in college. Once I learned that the rural community of my childhood was part of a hill country stretching from the outskirts of St. Louis into the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, I dedicated my lifeâs work to explaining (and demystifying) the Ozarkers â a people not quite southern, not quite midwestern, and not quite western.
If you want to understand the Ozarks, you need to understand the generations of people who leapfrogged from Appalachia to the Ozarks â and sometimes on to the Texas hill country. This underappreciated little book by a top-notch geographer uses a variety of cultural markers to explore the roots and branches of Upland Southerners. Itâs a rare thing for a scholar to do, and Jordan-Bychkov did it efficiently and expertly.
The Upland South is a regional band of natural beauty that runs from Virginia and North Carolina west through Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas and their bordering states. This book explores the region's character through an analysis of its traditional cultural landscape.
I canât say that I was even conscious of having grown up in the Ozarks until stumbling upon a regional geography book in college. Once I learned that the rural community of my childhood was part of a hill country stretching from the outskirts of St. Louis into the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, I dedicated my lifeâs work to explaining (and demystifying) the Ozarkers â a people not quite southern, not quite midwestern, and not quite western.
Woodrell is best known for the ominous, lyrical Winterâs Bone, but Iâm such a fan that my favorite Woodrell novel is always the most recent one Iâve re-read. So hereâs Give Us a Kiss, his first foray into the wild and rural Ozarks of West Table and Howl County. The novel is also a hard-charging, nuanced look into the life of a mostly unsuccessful writer facing an inner struggle over just how far, if at all, he should get above his raising. Itâs a concern for anyone caught between different worlds, and we are fortunate that the autobiographical sinews between author and protagonist were severed before Doyle Redmond spun out of control.
"My imagination is always skulking about in a wrong place." And now Doyle Redmond, thirty-five-year-old nowhere writer, has crossed the line between imagination and real live trouble. On the lam in his soon-to-be ex-wife's Volvo, he's running a family errand back in his boyhood home of West Table, Missouri -- the heart of the red-dirt Ozarks. The law wants his big brother, Smoke, on a felony warrant, and Doyle's supposed to talk him into giving up. But Smoke is hunkered down in the hills with his partner, Big Annie, and her nineteen-year-old daughter, Niagra, making other plans: they're about toâŚ
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctorâand only womanâon a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
I canât say that I was even conscious of having grown up in the Ozarks until stumbling upon a regional geography book in college. Once I learned that the rural community of my childhood was part of a hill country stretching from the outskirts of St. Louis into the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, I dedicated my lifeâs work to explaining (and demystifying) the Ozarkers â a people not quite southern, not quite midwestern, and not quite western.
It is doubtful that anyone has been more associated with an American region than Vance Randolph is with the Ozarks. Ornery and darkly romantic, Randolph was always attracted to people on the margins. Few were more marginal than the Ozarkers in the early twentieth century. While we must take a lot of Randolphâs ânonfictionâ with a dose of salt, The Ozarks, originally published in 1931, was the first book-length documentary take on the region and its people. It set the stage for generations of Ozarks observations to come.
Vance Randolph was perfectly constituted for his role as the chronicler of Ozark folkways. As a self-described "hack writer," he was as much a figure of the margins as his chosen subjects, even as his essentially romantic identification with the region he first visited as the vacationing child of mainstream parents was encouraged by editors and tempered by his scientific training. In The Ozarks, originally published in 1931, we have Randolph's first book-length portrait of the people he would spend the next half-century studying. The full range of Randolph's interests - in language, in hunting and fishing, in folksongs andâŚ
I lost my mother unexpectedly when I was a young mother myself. Oh, how I missed the gentle wisdom that had guided me my whole life! As I journeyed through the various stages of life, there was so much I wanted to ask her. She would be in her eighties now, but in my mind, she is and will always be fifty-seven. Gone now, but I still feel the influence of her kindness, wisdom, and compassion in my life and decisions. Iâm drawn to stories about families and the far-reaching influence a mother has on her daughtersâ lives. Though I mostly write romance, many of my novels contain older women who've had such an influence.
This book is my favorite in Lisa Wingateâs Tending Roses series.
I could so relate to Karen Sommerfield and her struggles. Karenâs life is falling apart. The passion in her marriage has cooled, she is unable to have the children she longs for, and on the same day she receives frightening news from her doctor and is let go from a company she put her whole heart and soul into.
On impulse, she returns to her grandmotherâs farm in the Ozarks to try and regroup. Right away the old tensions resurface between her and her sister, who seems to have it all together, and Karen feels returning may have been a mistake.
But then she begins to hear her grandmotherâs wisdom whispering in the century-old sycamore trees and finds the courage to examine her heart and reconstruct her life.
I loved that Grandma Roseâs influence lived on in her granddaughtersâŚ
When a womanâs whole life falls apart, she finds refuge in the home she left behind in this touching novel in the Tending Roses series from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Lost Friends and Before We Were Yours.
Karen Sommerfield has been hiding from the big questions of her lifeâthe emotional distance in her marriage, her inability to have children, and her bout with cancer. Getting lost in her high-powered career provides the sense of purpose she yearns for. Until the day sheâs downsized out of her job and the doctor tells her theâŚ
Iâve written and published one hundred very short ghost stories, plus a handful of longer ones, and have spent a lifetime reading and watching and thinking about stories of ghosts and the afterlife. My expertise, such as it is, involves ghosts as beings of narrative and metaphor. Iâve encountered great numbers of them on the page and on the screenânowhere elseâbut I confess that I would love someday (though donât expect) to encounter them in the flesh. My flesh, that is to say; their fleshlessness.
Harington was one of the great unheraldedâor at least under heraldedânovelists of the last fifty years, bursting with stories and whole populations of flawlessly captured human voices, and With was one of his highest achievements. It follows the fortunes of a kidnapped girl in the Arkansas Ozarks who befriends the woodsâ menagerie of animals, as well as the ghost (or, as Harington would style it, the âin-habitâ) of a twelve-year-old boy whose body did not die but moved away and abandoned him. Recommended if you like your ghosts warm-hearted and aching for home.
With is the sensual, suspenseful and irresistible tale of Robin Kerr, a young girl abducted from her family and brought to a remote Ozark mountaintop, where she is left to fend for herself. Over the course of a decade, Robin grows up without human relationship, but with the company of animals and an inhabit, the half-living ghost of a young boy. In this magical novel in the Stay More series, Harington gives us one of the most original survival, coming-of-age, and love stories ever told.
This irreverent biography provides a rare window into the music industry from a promoterâs perspective. From a young age, Peter Jest was determined to make a career in live music, and despite naysayers and obstacles, he did just that, bringing national acts to his college campus atUW-Milwaukee, booking thousands ofâŚ
I am an author who believes stories must first entertain and thrill if they are ever to instill something powerful and unforgettable. While I would love to sit here and compile books that laud the values I believe in, thatâs just not how it works. Action is the best way to convey theme â and these examples celebrate the storytelling techniques I stand by. I love ass-kickers, in literature and in life. And I hope one day to be remembered as one of them.
This author has a talent for using just a hint of magic to flirt with the reader in an otherwise rural, modern, realistic environment. Okay, okay, there may not be machine guns of ass-kicking in this novel, but there is an ass-kicking female lead who renders an Oscar-worthy performance of compelling the story forward. If you want a feisty book with a little less guts spilled (maybeâŚ), this is my recommendation. Although I read this book long ago, Iâm always drawn back into it the second I reopen to page one, like a tsunami of nostalgia wrapped in a sheet of music. Maybe on a pillow of bear fur. (Seriously, just read it).
Daniâs met two new friends this summer: bad boy Eli, and a big black bear. She doesnât know which one is more dangerousâŚ.
Dani Moser is a fifteen-year-old girl who dreams of being a blues guitarist and singer like her hero, Janis Joplin. When her dad takes Dani and her annoying little brother to his hometown for the summerâa tiny little town in the Arkansas Ozarksâshe thinks sheâs in for the most boring summer of her life.
She didnât expect she would meet a small-town bad boy named Eli, and join his bluegrass band. She didnât expect sheâd get inâŚ
My grandmother had what we in the South call the sight. I have it as wellâthat sense of foreboding. Of knowing what will happen next. Some call it a premonition, others Deja vu. Whatever you call it, I think itâs something weâve all experienced at some point in our lives. Empathy, telepathy, telekinesisâŚthe list is endless. Thereâs no proof that psychic abilities exist, but thereâs no proof that they donât, either. I find the concept fascinating, so when I started writing, it was a natural fit for me to combine my love for thrillers and mysteries with the added twist of psychic ability. I hope you love it too.
I have to say itâCharlaine Harris can write a good story. I read all the Stackhouse books, but it was when I found her Harper Connelly series that I was truly hooked. This book has all the elements I love: a complex female protagonist, good supporting characters, and a unique psychic ability.
Combine all that with great writing, and it doesnât get any better. I read this book and then quickly flew through the rest of the series. This was the first book Iâd read featuring a psychic twist, and discovering this new genre opened the door to my writing journey.
Harper Connelly had a lucky escape when she was hit by lightning: she didn't die. But sometimes she wishes she had died, because the lightning strike left her with an unusual talent: she can find dead people - and that's not always comfortable. Everyone wants to know how she does it: it's a little like hearing a bee droning inside her head, or maybe the pop of a Geiger counter, a persistent, irregular noise that increases in strength as she gets closer. It's almost electric: a buzzing all through her body, and the fresher the corpse, the more intense theâŚ
I have always had a passion to engage with the deepest questions of existence, from the interpretation of quantum mechanics to string theory and cosmology. My desire to understand is driven purely by curiosity, and my aim in writing about these topics is to make the wonders of the universe as widely accessible as possible. But scientific knowledge and the advance of technology also has a potentially darker side. It is vital for the future of humanity that science is widely understood so that democratic informed decisions can be made to safeguard against its misuse, and this was the motivation for recommending my list of books.
James Mahaffey is an American physicist who worked in the nuclear industry for many years.
Atomic Accidents is his engaging account of what happens when something goes badly wrong. What I particularly like is that it is written from the perspective of someone who completely understands the science and who is also well informed by his first-hand experience of working with nuclear technology.
Although Mahaffey is clearly a supporter of nuclear research and the nuclear industry, the book presents an objective balanced picture, acknowledging the risks of nuclear technology, but placing the scale of those risks into context. The book is full of interesting stories and offers some reassurance that the nuclear industry is able to learn from the mistakes of the past.
Iâve always loved dark, thought-provoking tear-jerkers, the way they challenge my mind and elicit powerful emotions. Maybe itâs because I grew up in an age when men couldnât cry or show emotions. Maybe itâs because I lived such a happy-go-lucky childhood, hiking through woods and catching lizards and turtles, that I grew curious about the darker aspects of life. It could be how I cope with having fought for two years on the front lines of combat and why I found myself in a philosopherâs classroom, studying ethics. All I know is that my heart craves powerful, dark stories that make my eyes leak.
I read it in the 5th grade, and it set the bar for the type of story I yearn to read. Itâs such a heartwarming story up until it rips open the heart. It helped me through a difficult loss in my youth.
I found myself walking beside the main character and his two dogs, enduring their cold hunts and sobbing over his loss.
Read the beloved classic that captures the powerful bond between man and manâs best friend. This edition also includes a special note to readers from Newbery Medal winner and Printz Honor winner Clare Vanderpool.
Billy has long dreamt of owning not one, but two, dogs. So when heâs finally able to save up enough money for two pups to call his ownâOld Dan and Little Annâheâs ecstatic. It doesnât matter that times are tough; together theyâll roam the hills of the Ozarks.
Soon Billy and his hounds become the finest hunting team in the valley. Stories of their great achievementsâŚ