Download or read book Fair and Tender Ladies written by Lee Smith and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-07-05 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A tour de force." LOS ANGELES TIMES Ivy Rowe may not have much education, but her thoughts are classic, and her experiences are fascinating. Born near the turn of the century in the Virginia Mountains, Ivy's story is told completely through letters she is forever writing, and that you will forever want to read.... "Few readers will be dry-eyed as they watch this extraordinary woman disappear around that last bend in the road." CHICAGO TRIBUNE

Download or read book Guests on Earth written by Lee Smith and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Reading Lee Smith ranks among the great pleasures of American fiction . . . Gives evidence again of the grace and insight that distinguish her work.” —Robert Stone, author of Death of the Black-Haired Girl It’s 1936 when orphaned thirteen-year-old Evalina Toussaint is admitted to Highland Hospital, a mental institution in Asheville, North Carolina, known for its innovative treatments for nervous disorders and addictions. Taken under the wing of the hospital’s most notable patient, Zelda Fitzgerald, Evalina witnesses cascading events that lead up to the tragic fire of 1948 that killed nine women in a locked ward, Zelda among them. Author Lee Smith has created, through a seamless blending of fiction and fact, a mesmerizing novel about a world apart--in which art and madness are luminously intertwined.

Download or read book Family Linen written by Lee Smith and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-02-04 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Sybill Hess drives over to the hypnotist’s office, she hopes he can cure her of the headaches interrupting her sleep the way her friend Betty once saw a woman on TV cure a woman’s stammer. But what Dr. Diamond uncovers from Sybill’s subconscious goes much deeper than her nervousness over a new tenant who seems to want a date. A shocking memory from Sybill’s past threatens to upend everything she thinks she knows about herself and her family. But is it even real?

Download or read book The Last Girls written by Lee Smith and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2002-08-12 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a beautiful June day in 1965, a dozen girls-classmates at a picturesque Blue Ridge women's college-launched their homemade raft (inspired by Huck Finn's) on a trip down the Mississippi. It's Girls A-Go-Go Down the Mississippi read the headline in the Paducah, Kentucky, paper. Thirty-five years later, four of those "girls" reunite to cruise the river again. This time it's on the luxury steamboat, The Belle of Natchez, and there's no publicity. This time, when they reach New Orleans, they'll give the river the ashes of a fifth rafter-beautiful Margaret ("Baby") Ballou. Revered for her powerful female characters, here Lee Smith tells a brilliantly authoritative story of how college pals who grew up in an era when they were still called "girls" have negotiated life as "women." Harriet Holding is a hesitant teacher who has never married (she can't explain why, even to herself). Courtney Gray struggles to step away from her Southern Living-style life. Catherine Wilson, a sculptor, is suffocating in her happy third marriage. Anna Todd is a world-famous romance novelist escaping her own tragedies through her fiction. And finally there is Baby, the girl they come to bury-along with their memories of her rebellions and betrayals. THE LAST GIRLS is wonderful reading. It's also wonderfully revealing of women's lives-of the idea of romance, of the relevance of past to present, of memory and desire.

Download or read book Oral History written by Lee Smith and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-12-06 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The best novel so far by a writer whose growth has been steady and sure . . . . [Oral History] tells the story of the Cantrell family and the odd curse that its members believe to have hung over them. It is a tale that begins in the late 19th century with Granny Younger, the midwife, and continues well into the 20th century through several generations of Cantrells; it is also a tale deeply rooted in the folk culture of the Appalachians, a tale that in the best tradition of folklore contains 'story upon story.'" -- The Washington Post Book World "A novel as dark, winding, complicated as the hill country itself. . . You could make comparisons to Faulkner and Carson McCullers, to The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, and Wuthering Heights. You could employ all those familiar ringing terms of praise: 'rare,' 'brilliant,' 'unforgettable.' But Lee Smith and Oral History make you wish all those phrases were fresh and new, that all those comparisons had never before been made. For this is a novel deserving of unique praise." -- The Village Voice "Deft and assured . . . She is clearly drunk on the language of Appalachia, on its stories and its people . . . . She is nothing less than masterly." -- The New York Times Book Review

Download or read book Mrs Darcy and the Blue Eyed Stranger written by Lee Smith and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2011-05-31 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lee Smith is a "teller of tales for tale tellers to admire and envy . . . [and] a reader’s dream" (Houston Chronicle). A celebrated and bestselling writer with a dozen novels under her name, including Fair and Tender Ladies, Oral History, and The Last Girls, she is just as widely recognized for her exceptional short stories. Here, in Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger, Smith collects seven brand-new stories along with seven of her favorites from three earlier collections. The result? A book of dazzling richness. As the New York Times Book Review put it, "In al- most every one of [her stories] there is a moment of vision, or love, or unclothed wonder that transforms something plain into something transcendent."

Download or read book Dreadful Wind Rain written by Diane Gilliam and published by Red Hen Press. This book was released on 2017-04-24 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the award-winning author of Kettle Bottom, a sequence of fairytale-inspired narrative poems concerning the life of a troubled girl. Once upon a time, there lived a girl whose story was not her own . . . So the story goes: Neglected and abused by her family, eclipsed by her elder and more beautiful sister, a young girl longs for happily-ever-after, for something, someone to rescue her. She is soon swept away into the next chapter of her life: marriage—a promising world mirroring Old Testament stories and fairy tale traditions. But loving just anyone and living the age-old “ever-after” narrative, as it turns out, fails to bring true happiness after all. Dragged down by a destructive marriage, her sister’s continued manipulations, and the growing weight of roles and expectations created by others at her back, she must choose between continuing in her familiar, complacent life, or boldly breaking free—and finally making her own way. Named for an Appalachian murder ballad in which a girl is drowned by her sister, this lyrical fairy tale unseats expectations for what it means to live a fairy tale life, revealing the powerful force that comes from stripping away the traditional roles and beginning to write a story all your own. Praise for Dreadful Wind & Rain “Ache and lift and veracity tambourine through these lines and stanzas. This . . . collection exults its power inside our ears and through our hearts in a rich, stinging, marvelous way . . . I believe that Diane Gilliam is incorruptible as a poet.” —Nikky Finney, poet, winner of the National Book Award for Head Off & Split

Download or read book Wildings written by Eleanor Glewwe and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Rivka, one of the magical elite, embarks on a quest to find her twin brother, Arik, who was sent away when he failed to develop his own magical abilities"--

Download or read book The Devil s Dream written by Lee Smith and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-03-01 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now back in print from the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Girls. It was in 1833 or '34 that Moses Bailey brought young Kate Malone down to Cold Spring Holler to be his wife. But Moses, wanting to become a preacher like his daddy was, left Kate time and again to look after the kids while he went out in search of a sign from God. Though he warned them about the evils of playing the fiddle, a kind of music he likened to the devil's own laughter, it passed the time for his bride and children, and soon became not just a way of life for the Baileys, but a curse that would last for generations.

Download or read book Dimestore written by Lee Smith and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2016-03-22 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A memoir that shines with a bright spirit, a generous heart and an entertaining knack for celebrating absurdity.”—The New York Times Book Review “This is Smith at her finest.”—Library Journal, starred review Set deep in the mountains of Virginia, the Grundy of Lee Smith’s youth was a place of coal miners, tent revivals, mountain music, drive-in theaters, and her daddy’s dimestore. When she was sent off to college to gain some “culture,” she understood that perhaps the richest culture she would ever know was the one she was leaving. Lee Smith’s fiction has always lived and breathed with the rhythms and people of the Appalachian South. But never before has she written her own story. Dimestore’s fifteen essays are crushingly honest, wise and perceptive, and superbly entertaining. Together, they create an inspiring story of the birth of a writer and a poignant look at a way of life that has all but vanished.

Download or read book The Ballad of Laurel Springs written by Janet Beard and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-07-25 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A provocative new novel by the nationally bestelling author of THE ATOMIC CITY GIRLS, about nine generations of one family in Eastern Tennessee whose women, in eerie echoes of the notorious Appalachian murder ballads made famous by singers, over more than a century, have been traumatized by acts of violence"--

Download or read book Parking Lot Picker s Songbook Dobro written by Dix Bruce and published by Mel Bay Publications. This book was released on 2011-01-13 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of over 200 great Bluegrass, Old Time, Country and Gospel standards. Melodies are presented with standard notation and tablature along with lyrics and chords.Learn to play songs written and recorded by the giants of traditional American music: Bill Monroe, the Stanley Brothers, Flatt & Scruggs, Ralph Stanley, the Osborne Brothers, Jimmy Martin, Doc Watson and many more. Also included: Step-by-Step instruction on how to transpose any song to any key!The two CDs include recordings of EVERY song in the book.

Download or read book One Foot in Eden written by Ron Rash and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2004-01-03 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Will Alexander, sheriff of a small town in southern Appalachia, is baffled by a murder case with no body and no suspect, and sets out to find the truth about what really happened to a local thug.

Download or read book The Ladies Book of Etiquette and Manual of Politeness written by Florence Hartley and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 1872 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In preparing a book of etiquette for ladies, I would lay down as the first rule, "Do unto others as you would others should do to you." You can never be rude if you bear the rule always in mind, for what lady likes to be treated rudely? True Christian politeness will always be the result of an unselfish regard for the feelings of others, and though you may err in the ceremonious points of etiquette, you will never be impolite. Politeness, founded upon such a rule, becomes the expression, in graceful manner, of social virtues. The spirit of politeness consists in a certain attention to forms and ceremonies, which are meant both to please others and ourselves, and to make others pleased with us; a still clearer definition may be given by saying that politeness is goodness of heart put into daily practice; there can be no _true_ politeness without kindness, purity, singleness of heart, and sensibility.

Download or read book A Short Time to Stay Here written by Terry Roberts and published by Turner Publishing Company. This book was released on 2016-12-06 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The summer of 1917 should have been a summer like any other. Stephen Robbins should have been doing the same thing he'd been doing for years past. As a young boy he'd fled his life in a secluded mountain cove and risen through the ranks to become the manager of the South's finest resort, the elegant Mountain Park Hotel. By all rights, he should have spent this summer as host to some of the wealthiest gentry on the East Coast. Hans Ruser, German Commodore of the world's largest and most luxurious cruise liner, Vaderland, should have been sailing yet again with his elite passengers to the far corners of the world. And Anna Ulmann, captivating and beautiful, should have been at home in her New York mansion planning yet another lavish dinner party for her famous husband and his rich and powerful friends. She should have idled away her spare time by taking perfectly staged photographic portraits of the very same people. But war will change everything that should have been in that summer of 1917— the U.S. enters WWI and the Mountain Park Hotel is pressed into service as an internment camp for over 2,000 German nationals, including Ruser and his men. This sudden collision of lives and cultures in the small town of Hot Springs, North Carolina is both frightening and exhilarating. And the unlikely alliance that forms between Hans Ruser and Stephen Robbins will force each to decide just how far they are willing to go to keep peace in the beautiful and isolated mountains. Feisty Anna Ulmann, seeking to assert her independence in a male-dominated world, mysteriously flees south to devote her life to documentary photography. When she steps off the train at the Hot Springs depot one sultry summer day, she could not have imagined the passionate journey that will result when she matches wits with Stephen Robbins. Haunted by demons both past and present, they will face heartbreaking tragedy. Yet together they will discover the true meaning of imprisonment and escape.

Download or read book Blue Marlin written by Lee Smith and published by . This book was released on 2020-04-21 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a patched-up family vacation to Key West, a young girl seeks out movie stars and redemption for her fractured family.

Download or read book Refuge written by Dot Jackson and published by Diversion Publishing Corp.. This book was released on 2017-12-12 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An intensely readable novel of the complexity of family ties . . . Dot Jackson is a true Southern voice, a master storyteller and an Appalachian treasure” (Dori Sanders, author of Clover and Her Own Place). Early one morning in 1929, Mary Seneca Steele spontaneously packs a suitcase, gathers up her son and daughter, and drives away in her abusive and dissolute husband’s brand-new Auburn Phaeton automobile leaving her privileged life in Charleston behind. It is the beginning of a journey of enlightenment that leads Mary “Sen” to the mountains and mysteries of Appalachia where she will learn unexpected family secrets, create a new life for herself and her children, and finally experience love and happiness before tragedy will once again test her. Written by Pulitzer Prize–nominated author, Dot Jackson has spun a story that will captivate readers looking for an entertaining saga of self-discovery, family, love, loss, and redemption. “Refuge is a wonderful story about the need to find one’s place in the world—and the price paid to remain there. With her narrative gift and keen ear for Appalachian speech, Dot Jackson gives her readers a beautifully rendered portrait of a lost time and place.” —Ron Rash, author of Serena and The Cove