Ghosts of New York
In Jim Lewis’s wondrous novel "Ghosts of New York", encounters among strangers result in unexpected relationships, and a montage that celebrates a city of manifold graces.... Read More
Books We've Reviewed from West Virginia University Press
The Road to Blair Mountain
When history professor Charles B. Keeney committed to help preserve an important West Virginia landmark, the decision had implications for his job and his privacy; he knew the... Read More
This Way Back
Joanna Eleftheriou’s nuanced essays ask if one can ever truly go home again. Eleftheriou’s entries illuminate life at crossroads, handling Queens, New York, versus Cyprus;... Read More
Like Light, Like Music
It’s 1999; Emme McLean is twenty-eight. Ten years ago, she left rural Kentucky for college, and then a job in journalism in Washington, DC. Now, she’s headed back to her... Read More
St. Christopher on Pluto
The winkingly endearing stories of Nancy McKinley’s "St. Christopher on Pluto" function like a scrapbook, capturing life in a small Pennsylvania town through connected... Read More
American Grief in Four Stages
In fifteen stories that mine different forms of torment, Sadie Hoagland gathers lost innocence, altered lives, and harsh memories—sometimes with elegiac, bald realism, and... Read More
LGBTQ Fiction and Poetry from Appalachia
Edited by Jeff Mann and Julia Watts, "LGBTQ Fiction and Poetry from Appalachia" is an immersive exploration of queer life within the confines of a conservative American... Read More
Appalachian Reckoning
In 2016, J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy defined Appalachia for many, with Vance lionized as the region’s latter-day prophet. For Appalachians, the book has been much more... Read More
The Sound of Holding Your Breath
Natalie Sypolt’s "The Sound of Holding Your Breath" finds people on the cusp. Poised on the edge of change, these stories traffic in the ties of duty, trouble, and trauma... Read More
Their Houses
A foreboding tale of longing for solace ignites the rural West Virginia setting of Meredith Sue Willis’s "Their Houses". Dinah and Grace are sisters whose childhood was marked... Read More
On Homesickness
Longing permeates Donaldson’s lines, transferring to his readership. Jesse Donaldson’s "On Homesickness" is a lovely, nostalgic tribute to the author’s boyhood home,... Read More