Like the widows in The Widows’ Wine Club, I’m getting on. Unlike them, I’ve been a writer for forty years, often hunched over a keyboard, ignoring people. Amazingly, though, I managed to have a happy marriage and make some great friends. Phew! Because I’ve needed friends, especially since my husband died. Looking back, I’m interested to see that I didn’t instantly take to some of my closest buddies. Circumstances threw us together, and we got to know and like and love each other. I explore this in my book.
I love this book because it has everything, believable, engaging characters, a riveting plot, a vivid setting, and a cause. Larger-than-life Margery O’Hare and lady-like Alice are unlikely friends, but friends they become in this great story.
When I first saw photos of those "librarians on horseback," the wonderful women who responded to Eleanor Roosevelt’s call to take books to the rural poor of Kentucky in the depressed 1930s, I longed to know more. Jojo Moyes gives us lots more. There’s an array of well-drawn characters, but it’s Margery and Alice who drive the story forward, defying the odds to achieve their aims and find men who love and appreciate them.
Yes, it’s a love story, too, and a whodunnit? Perfect!
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | A REESE WITHERSPOON X HELLO SUNSHINE BOOK CLUB PICK
"A great narrative about personal strength and really captures how books bring communities together." -Reese Witherspoon
From the author of The Last Letter from Your Lover, now a major motion picture on Netflix, a breathtaking story of five extraordinary women and their remarkable journey through the mountains of Kentucky and beyond in Depression-era America
Alice Wright marries handsome American Bennett Van Cleve, hoping to escape her stifling life in England. But small-town Kentucky quickly proves equally claustrophobic, especially living alongside her overbearing father-in-law. So when…
I grew up during the Second World War and had many relatives serving in Canada’s Armed Forces. I developed a deep interest in the military, which my High School history teacher – a veteran himself – encouraged. I made a zillion models of soldiers, aircraft, vessels, and tanks; then, when I reached the proper age, I began collecting military firearms. Long story short, I eventually took up military reenacting, and because the American bicentennial was imminent, I chose to recreate a United Empire Loyalist regiment, which had fought from Canadian bases. Our enthusiastic, very competitive group of men and women grew to be one of the largest and best drilled in the hobby.
Lofaro portrays the other side of the coin, describing the amazing career of an American legend – the restless, fearless Daniel Boone, who took the settlers’ side during the relentless expansion westwards onto Native lands. After a personal exploration of Kentucky territory, Boone raised a large body of settlers, guided them to the territory, and created a community guarded by forts he helped to construct. Boone took the lead in fighting the Natives who objected to the intrusion.
To the American mind, this man is the epitome of the American frontiersman and Lofaro’s book reveals all sides of his complex personality while describing the Revolutionary War conflict in the mid-west. Notably, Boone was not without sympathy for the Natives’ plight. Of course, he crossed paths with many British partisans and their Native allies who vigorously attacked the Kentucky settlements. (Appropriately, this book was published in Kentucky.)
The embodiment of the American hero, the man of action, the pathfinder, Daniel Boone represents the great adventure of his age -- the westward movement of the American people. Daniel Boone: An American Life brings together over thirty years of research in an extraordinary biography of the quintessential pioneer. Based on primary sources, the book depicts Boone through the eyes of those who knew him and within the historical contexts of his eighty-six years. The story of Daniel Boone offers new insights into the turbulent birth and growth of the nation and demonstrates why the frontier forms such a significant…
I am a historian based in Louisville, Kentucky. When I moved here two decades ago, I could tell the vibe was different than other places I had been. Southern—but not like Tennessee. Midwestern—but not like Illinois. So I started reading, and eventually writing, about the state’s history. I have a Ph.D. in United States history so I lean toward academic books. I like authors who dig into the primary sources of history and then come out and make an argument about the evidence that they uncovered. I also lean toward social and cultural history—rather than military history—of the Civil War.
To outsiders, Kentucky is clearly part of the South. For those of us who live here—especially those who know a little about the state’s history—it can be a little more nebulous. Phillips’ book helps explain why. Kentucky had a lot in common with its fellow states of the first West like Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois, and those northern states could be a lot more “southern” than commonly understood. Phillips’s book shows how the Civil War remade those regional boundaries, turning the Ohio River into a line of separation between “North” and “South.”
Most Americans believe that the Ohio River was a clearly defined and static demographic and political boundary between North and South, an extension of the Mason-Dixon Line. Once settled, the new states west of the Appalachians - the slave states of Kentucky and Missouri and of the free states of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Kansas - formed a fixed boundary between freedom and slavery, extending the border that inevitably produced the war. None of this is true, except perhaps the outcome of war. But the centrality of the Civil War and its outcome in the making of these tropes is…
My father’s favorite first cousin Ava married Homer McCoy, a direct descendant of the Fighting McCoys. Homer’s aunt married a Hatfield, so my family is distantly related by marriage to both the Hatfields and McCoys. As a girl, Ava witnessed the aftermath of the feud: The elders in her household froze whenever they heard pounding hoofbeats in the night. She assured me that the reasons for the feud were far more complicated than escaped hogs or the derring-do of sociopathic veterans nostalgic for the bloodbaths of the Civil War. I started reading whatever I could find and visiting feud sites, trying to understand what had really gone on and why.
This book by a Kentucky journalist, based on the sparse court records and on interviews with descendants of the feudists, helped me understand that the Hatfield-McCoy feud was not an isolated occurrence. In addition to the Hatfield-McCoy feud, it describes five other feuds being conducted in Kentucky at the same time. There appear to be similar patterns governing the combustion and ferocity of all these feuds, having to do with a struggle for control over the shifting social, economic, and political hierarchies following the upheavals of the Civil War and the invasions launched by lumber and coal companies.
Among the darkest corners of Kentucky's past are the grisly feuds that tore apart the hills of eastern Kentucky from the late nineteenth century until well into the twentieth. Now, from the tangled threads of conflicting testimony, John Ed Pearce weaves engrossing accounts of six of the most notorious feuds -- those in Breathitt, Clay, Harlan, Perry, Pike, and Rowan counties. What caused the feuds that left Kentucky with its lingering reputation for violence? Who were the feudists, and what forces -- social, political, financial -- caused the conflicts? For years, Pearce has interviewed descendants of feuding families and examined…
Before I could walk, horses were my passion and every thought. At five, Blackie came into my life a black Shetland stud and from there, I've never stopped enjoying a life with horses. Having been born in the 1970's I witnessed some of the horse racing greats from the television, and ever since the Thoroughbred racehorse has been my favorite breed. I've been involved in a variety of ways with the rehabilitation and transition of the thoroughbred from the track to new careers. My most beloved OTTB, Blue Blue Sea, overcame so much, and naturally, I had to memorialize his amazing life as a book.
While learning letters youngsters can also learn about the most exciting two minutes in sports. Jaime Corum's illustrations are deeply moving and the action springs to life through them and the poetry that Helen Wilbur's words provide. Although a young reader wouldn't be able to read the book to themselves, that is actually a benefit. I love how the book demands that an adult sit down, slow time, and enjoy it with the youngster they are reading to. There is no more beautiful ride than that.
The Kentucky Derby is the oldest continuous sporting event in the United States. But don't call it just a horse race. This annual May event, known as "the most exciting two minutes in sports," is steeped in tradition and pageantry far beyond what happens on the track. Following the alphabet, D is for Derby: A Kentucky Derby Alphabet uses poetry and expository text to explain this world-famous event. Topics include famous jockeys, legendary horses, fabled Bluegrass farms and owners, as well as offering a behind-the scenes view of thoroughbred breeding and racing. Readers young and old, along with horse enthusiasts…
I am a historian based in Louisville, Kentucky. When I moved here two decades ago, I could tell the vibe was different than other places I had been. Southern—but not like Tennessee. Midwestern—but not like Illinois. So I started reading, and eventually writing, about the state’s history. I have a Ph.D. in United States history so I lean toward academic books. I like authors who dig into the primary sources of history and then come out and make an argument about the evidence that they uncovered. I also lean toward social and cultural history—rather than military history—of the Civil War.
I once stumbled onto a celebration of Confederate Memorial Day in a small Kentucky mountain town, but I had always been told that the mountains of eastern Kentucky were a stronghold of Unionism during the Civil War. McKnight’s book helped me understand the complexity of the Appalachian region and its experience of the war. Both armies used the mountain gaps as gateways to invasion, exploited the local residents, and despoiled the landscape. Life in the mountains in the 19th century had always been hard; the Civil War made it a lot harder.
From 1861 to 1865, the border separating eastern Kentucky and southwestern Virginia was more than just a geographic marker -- it represented a major ideological split, serving as an "international" boundary between the United States and the Confederacy. The loyalties of those who lived in this mountainous region could not be so easily divided, and large segments of the population remained neutral or vacillated in their support. Location and a wealth of resources made the region strategically important to both sides in the conflict, and both armies fought for control. In Contested Borderland, Brian D. McKnight shows how military invasion…
I am a historian based in Louisville, Kentucky. When I moved here two decades ago, I could tell the vibe was different than other places I had been. Southern—but not like Tennessee. Midwestern—but not like Illinois. So I started reading, and eventually writing, about the state’s history. I have a Ph.D. in United States history so I lean toward academic books. I like authors who dig into the primary sources of history and then come out and make an argument about the evidence that they uncovered. I also lean toward social and cultural history—rather than military history—of the Civil War.
This book reminded me of the deep parallels in the histories of Missouri and Kentucky. I don’t tend to associate Kentucky with Missouri, but Astor’s book really drives home why that is wrongheaded. Both were border states and, during the war, both suffered guerrilla insurgencies, had divided populations, and ended up supporting the pro-Confederate Lost Cause vision of the war. And when so much writing on Kentucky’s history is focused on its white inhabitants, Astor restores agency to its African American residents, showing how they resisted slavery and then, after emancipation, created their own institutions to contest for racial equality in the face of fierce opposition.
Rebels on the Border offers a remarkably compelling and significant study of the Civil War South's highly contested and bloodiest border states: Kentucky and Missouri. By far the most complex examination to date, the book sharply focuses on the ""borderland"" between the free North and the Confederate South. As a result, Rebels on the Border deepens and enhances understanding of the sectional conflict, the Civil War, and Reconstruction.
After slaves in central Kentucky and Missouri gained their emancipation, author Aaron Astor contends, they transformed informal kin and social networks of resistance against slavery into more formalized processes of electoral participation…
I've been in love with ecological writing, the effort to communicate love for and grief over the destruction of the profound beauty of the natural world, since I wrote my first play about rainforest clear-cutting in fifth grade—if not before. In 2016, I started Reckoning, a nonprofit journal of creative writing about environmental justice, because I wanted to encourage others doing this work, to provide an independent platform for it in ways profit-driven traditional publishing wasn't, and to build a community where those writers could share and inspire each other. Seven years later, that community defines me; it's the most rewarding thing I've ever done.
Christopher Rowe's prose is beautiful, vivid, and engrossing. His vision of a future mid-South dominated by rogue artificial intelligence conceals amid its wild phantasmagoria a surprisingly perceptive tenderness for the ways people cling together as they struggle to adapt and make space for each other in a complex and massively changed world. These stories also communicate an engrossing, evangelical love for bikes and cycling like nothing else I've read.
There are ten stories here including one readers have waited ten long years for: in new novel-la The Border State Rowe revisits the world of his much-lauded story The Voluntary State. Competitive cyclists twins Michael and Maggie have trained all their lives to race internationally. One thing holds them back: their mother who years before crossed the border into Tennessee.
Praise for Christopher Rowe:
"Rowe's stories are the kind of thing you want on a cold, winter's night when the fire starts burning low. Terrific." Justina Robson (Glorious Angels)
"As good as he is now, he'll keep getting better. Read…
When students ask me if I am from Kentucky, I say “no, but I got here as quickly as I could.” I chose to make the state my home and raise my family here, and I have studied its history for nearly three decades. I am drawn to Kentucky’s story and the paradox it represents: on one hand, you have the Derby, rolling hills and pastures, and fine bourbon, but set against that polished, sophisticated image are the stereotypes of a lawless, illiterate, poor state. As a borderland, not quite north or south, east or west, Kentucky offers a fascinating lens through which to view the nation’s history.
Jim Klotter, Kentucky’s preeminent historian, takes an obscure nineteenth-century Kentucky Superior Court Judge, Richard Reid, and uses his life and death to understand the tragic ways southern honor forced men to prove themselves. John Jay Cornelison attacked Reid at his law Mount Sterling law office in 1884, setting off an unexpected series of events. Reid’s story reveals the conflicts between old, traditional southern ways, and the new urban, industrial order, and Klotter tells it masterfully. The book is filled with suspense and sharp analysis, but it is also a quick read.
When attorney John Jay Cornelison severely beat Kentucky Superior Court judge Richard Reid in public on April 16, 1884, for allegedly injuring his< honor, the event became front-page news. Would Reid react as a Christian gentleman, a man of the law, and let the legal system take its course, or would he follow the manly dictates of the code of honor and challenge his assailant?
James C. Klotter crafts a detective story, using historical, medical, legal, and psychological clues to piece together answers to the tragedy that followed.
""This book is a gem. . . . Klotter's astute organisation and…
I’ve
been reading Ilona Andrews’ Kate Daniels series all summer and loving every
moment of each book, cover to cover.
Iron and Magic is the
first installment of a spin-off series from Kate Daniels in which the villain
from the main story actually becomes the hero. The complexity of character and
thrilling suspense of such a well-crafted antihero was absolutely delicious. Coupled
with a strong heroine who also flirts with the dark side, I found this first
installment of The Iron Covenant series riveting.
Anyone who enjoys
enemies-to-lovers, forced proximity, and marriage of convenience will devour
this story, same as I did.
No day is ordinary in a world where Technology and Magic compete for supremacy…But no matter which force is winning, in the apocalypse, a sword will always work.
Hugh d’Ambray, Preceptor of the Iron Dogs, Warlord of the Builder of Towers, served only one man. Now his immortal, nearly omnipotent master has cast him aside. Hugh is a shadow of the warrior he was, but when he learns that the Iron Dogs, soldiers who would follow him anywhere, are being hunted down and murdered, he must make a choice: to fade away or to be…
