Cash, Wiley. A Land More Kind Than Home. New York, New York: William Morrow Paperbacks, 2013.
In the opening pages of A Land More Kind than Home, two young boys go to church one Sunday morning only to witness something they never should have seen. What allows is an unimaginable violence that must be untangled by a local sheriff with his own tragic past. It is a devastating portrait of faith, betrayal, and deliverance in North Carolina.

Franks, Julia. Over the Plain Houses. Spartanburg, South Carolina: Hub City Press, 2016.
Over the Plain Houses is the story of a woman intrigued by the possibility of change, escape, and reproductive choice - stalked by a Bible-haunted man who fears his government and stakes his integrity upon an older way of life. As Brodis chases his demons, he brings about a final act of violence that shakes the entire valley. In this spellbinding Southern story, Franks exposes the myths and mysteries that modernity can’t quite dispel.

Frazier, Charles. Cold Mountain. New York, New York: Grove Press, 2017.
Cold Mountain is the extraordinary tale of a soldier’s perilous journey back to his beloved at the end of the Civil War is at once an enthralling adventure, a stirring love story, and a luminous evocation of a vanished land.

Giardina, Denise. Storming Heaven. Ivy Books, 1988.
Annadel, West Virginia, was a small town rich in coal, farms, and close-knit families, all destroyed when the coal company came in. It stole everything it hadn't bothered to buy -- land deeds, private homes, and ultimately, the souls of its men and women.
In 1921, an army of 10,000 unemployed pro-union coal miners took up arms and threatened to overthrow the governments of two West Virginia counties. They were greeted by U.S. Army airplanes, bombs, and poison gas. This book recounts the real story of what happened--and where it all went wrong.
Four people tell this powerful, deeply moving tale: Activist Mayor C. J. Marcum. Fierce, loveless union man Rondal Lloyd. Gutsy nurse Carrie Bishop, who loved Rondal. And lonely, Sicilian immigrant Rosa Angelelli, who lost four sons to the deadly mines. They all bear witness to nearly forgotten events of history, culminating in the final, tragic Battle of Blair Mountain--the first crucial battle of a war that has yet to be won.

Holbrook, Chris. Upheaval. Lexington: University of Kentucky, 2010.
In 1995, Chris Holbrook burst onto the southern literary scene with Hell and Ohio: Stories of Southern Appalachia, stories that Robert Morgan described as "elegies for land and lives disappearing under mudslides from strip mines and new trailer parks and highways." Now, with the publication of Upheaval, Holbrook more than answers the promise of that auspicious debut. In eight interrelated stories set in Eastern Kentucky, Holbrook again captures a region and its people as they struggle in the face of poverty, isolation, change, and the devastation of land and resources at the hands of the coal and timber industries. In the title story, Haskell sees signs of disaster all around him, from the dangers inherent in the strip-mining machinery he and his coworkers operate to the accident waiting to happen when his son plays with a socket wrench. Holbrook employs a native's ear for dialect and turns of phrase to reveal his characters' complex interior lives. In "The Timber Deal," two brothers -- Russell, a recovering addict recently released from prison, and Dwight, who hasn't worked since being injured in a coal truck accident -- try to convince their upwardly mobile sister, Helen, to agree to lease out timber rights to the family land. Dwight is unable to communicate his feelings, even as he seethes with rage: "Helen can't see past herself, is what it is. If John James had fractured his back in two places, it'd be a different story. If he'd broke his neck, it'd be a different story told." Written with a gritty, unflinching realism reminiscent of the work of Larry Brown and Cormac McCarthy, the stories in Upheaval prove that Holbrook is not only a faithful chronicler and champion of Appalachia's working poor but also one of the most gifted writers of his generation.

House, Silas. Clay's Quilt. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 2001.
After his mother is killed, four-year-old Clay Sizemore finds himself alone in a small Appalachian mining town. At first, unsure of Free Creek, he slowly learns to lean on its residents as family. There’s Aunt Easter, who is always filled with a sense of foreboding, bound to her faith above all; quiltmaking Uncle Paul; untamable Evangeline; and Alma, the fiddler whose song winds its way into Clay’s heart. Together, they help Clay fashion a quilt of a life from what treasured pieces surround him.

McCrumb, Sharon. The Ballad of Tom Dooley. New York, New York: Press, Thomas Dunne Books. 2015
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley…The folk song, made famous by the Kingston Trio, recounts a tragedy in the North Carolina mountains after the Civil War. Laura Foster, a simple country girl, was murdered and her lover Tom Dula was hanged for the crime.
With the help of historians, lawyers, and researchers, Sharyn McCrumb visited the actual sites, studied the legal evidence, and uncovered a missing piece of the story that will shock those who think they already know what happened—and may also bring belated justice to an innocent man. What seemed at first to be a sordid tale of adultery and betrayal was transformed by the new discoveries into an Appalachian Wuthering Heights. Tom Dula and Ann Melton had a profound romance spoiled by the machinations of their servant, Pauline Foster.

Rash, Ron. Serena. New York, New York: Ecco/HarperCollins, 2008.
A chilling gothic tale of greed, corruption, and revenge set against the backdrop of 1930’s wilderness and America’s burgeoning environmental movement.

Smith, Lee. Oral History. New York, New York: Berkley, 2016.
Oral History is the story of the Cantrell family, a story that spans the better part of a century. The Cantrells are a mountain family who inhabit the hills and environs of Hoot Owl Holler, Jennifer, a citified descendant of the Cantrells, arrives to record an ‘oral history’ of her family for a college course, and all the old stories unscroll.

Still, James. River of Earth. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1978 (first published in 1940).
First published in 1940, James Still's masterful novel has become a classic. It is the story, seen through the eyes of a boy, of three years in the life of his family and their kin. He sees his parents pulled between the meager farm with its sense of independence and the mining camp with its uncertain promise of material prosperity. In his world privation, violence, and death are part of everyday life, accepted and endured. Yet it is a world of dignity, love, and humor, of natural beauty which Still evokes in sharp, poetic images. No writer has caught more effectively the vividness of mountain speech or shown more honestly the trials and joys of mountain life.