Hello!
Hoping to find some great books with Appalachian setting. I would prefer something kind of spooky, preferably supernatural, but am totally open to stories that are not.
Also open to non-fic. Collection of ghost/cryptids/folk stories would be awesome. I'm very open to general non-fic as well though I'd prefer if it wasn't centered around the Civil War.
I have already read and loved Demon Copperhead. I have Rocket Boys on my TBR, and I'm not interested in reading Hillbilly Elegy.
Thank you so much in advance!
by Anxious-Fun8829
9 Comments
North woods by Daniel mason
The Silver John stories by Manly Wade Wellman are all set in the Appalachians, as I recall. There are a bunch of short stories, and five novels.
* The Old Gods Waken
* After Dark
* The Lost and Lurking
* The Hanging Stones
* Voice of the Mountain
The Witch’s Orchard by Archer Sullivan
*Revelator* by Daryl Gregroy, about a family in 1930s Tennessee that worships a strange mountain god.
*The Vine that Ate the South* by JD Wilkes, a man’s strange odyssey through the woods.
*The Bog Wife* by Kay Chronister, a gothic story about a family that once made a deal with the bog they live on – care and stewardship in exchange for a wife.
*Smothermoss* by Alisa Alering, about a pair of sisters in the 1980s in the aftermath of the murder of two women on the Appalachian Trail.
For nonfiction, *The Girls of Atomic City* by Denise Kiernan is about the women who worked on the Manhattan Project at Oak Ridge in Tennessee. The military built an entire town in the mountains to create fuel for the atomic bomb. *Cherokee Women* by Theda Purdue is about gender roles in Cherokee society, who lived in the Appalachians before they were forced out on the Trail of Tears. It’s really interesting. *Feud* by Altina Waller is about the Hatfield and McCoy feud, and how it changed the fabric of Appalachia.
A lot of Barbara Kingsolver’s work, but especially Demon Copperhead.
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek. Not spooky but pretty good. It talks about the “blue people.”
Graveminder by Melissa Marr
The Hum and the Shiver by Alex Bledsoe This is the first book of a series.
The Unquiet Grave by Sharyn McCrumb. This is the first of a loose series of books based on Appalachian ballads.
I’ll Bring You the Birds from Out of the Sky by Brian Hodge
You might like Fear by Ronald Kelly