If you have never visited Black Mountain, North Carolina, by the time you finish reading Sarah Loudin Thomas’s These Blue Mountains (Bethany House 2025) you will want to pack your bags and go. Fans of Kim Michele Richardson’s The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, Jayne Anne Phillips’s Night Watch, and Annette Clapsaddle’s Even As We […]
M. Lynne Squires
November 3, 2025 by Leave a Comment
M. Lynne Squires is an award-winning Urban Appalachian author. She is an essayist, fiction crafter, and occasional poet. Her books include the award-winning Letters to My Son – Reflections of Urban Appalachia at Mid-Century, Mid-Century Recipes from Cocktails to Comfort Food, and Looking Back at Charleston, vol.1 & 2. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies […]
“Measure of Devotion” by Nell Joslin
November 3, 2025 by Leave a Comment
In her novel Measure of Devotion (Regal House 2025) Nell Joslin takes readers on an intensely personal, first-person journey of rescue during the American Civil War. With blunt-force realism and eloquent descriptive prose, she brings to life the pervasive brutality and sporadic heroism, as well as deprivations, of the nation’s darkest time: “Their eyes crawled […]
“Deep and Wild – On Mountains, Opossums & Finding Your Way in West Virginia”
November 2, 2025 by 1 Comment
By M. Lynne Squires To read a book about your home state is a bit like playing the lottery. You hope you hit big instead of suffering buyer’s remorse. Reading Deep and Wild – On Mountains, Opossums & Finding Your Way in West Virginia is like having the winning ticket, plus the multiplier. Author Laura […]
“Shelter Me” by Daren Dean
November 1, 2025 by Leave a Comment
In Shelter Me, Daren Dean brings to life the residents of a struggling neighborhood in central Louisiana. Though the town of Satsuma Grove is fictional, the catastrophic flood at the heart of this novel is based on the real and unnamed 2016 disaster, during which twenty to thirty inches of rain fell over just three […]
“Haircuts for the Dead,” by William Walsh
October 15, 2025 by Leave a Comment
To say that William Walsh is a deliberate writer who knows the value and timing of language is an understatement. His first novel Lakewood, published in 2022, is a coming-of-age story that explores family, secrets, lost love, and forgiveness. A project begun in the 1970s, it was set aside, and worked on over 39 years. […]