Eleven-year-old April Sloane has never set foot in a school before, and now that President Hoover and his wife are building a one-room schoolhouse in the hollow of the Blue Ridge Mountains where April lives, she is eager to attend it. But these are the Depression years, and Mama, who has been grieving ever since the accidental death of her seven-year-old son, wants April to stay home and do the chores around their dilapidated farm. With her grandmother's intercession, April is grudgingly allowed to go. The kind teacher encourages her apt pupil, who finds a new world opening up to her. But at home, April cannot repair the relationship with her mother, and worse, her mother overhears the dark secret April confesses to her teacher regarding the true cause of her brother's death, for which April feels responsible. The author has used her own experience growing up in a rural area of northern Virginia to create the vivid characters and authentic dialogue and background detail that characterize this finely honed debut novel. She has based the one-room schoolhouse on papers in the Hoover Presidential Library in West Branch, Iowa, which include letters between the White House and the young teacher who taught at the school.

A stirring debut novel-of love, struggle, and savagery on America's colonial frontier- (Bernard Cornwell). They call her Dark Maggie for her thick black hair, but the name also has a more sinister connotation. As the lone survivor of an attack on her village, she was thought to be cursed, and unfit for marriage. Maggie is also gifted with quick wits and skilled in medicine, trained as a midwife. Venturing to the colonies as an indentured servant, she hopes to escape the superstitions of the old country, and find a home of her own. But what she discovers is a New World fraught with new dangers.

Journey into the Blue Ridge Mountains of 1918 where Laurel McAdams endures the challenges of a hard life while dreaming things can eventually improve. But trouble arrives in the form of an outsider. Having failed his British father again, Jonathan Taylor joins is uncle’s missionary endeavors as a teacher in a two-room schoolhouse. Laurel feels compelled to protect the tenderhearted teacher from the harsh realities of Appalachian life, even while his stories of life outside the mountains pull at Laurel’s imagination. Faced with angry parents over teaching methods, Laurel’s father’s drunken rages, and bad news from England, will Jonathan leave and never return, or will he stay and let love bloom?

The guinea hens wanted everybody to get up. They said so right under the bedroom window; and the turkey gobbler had the same wish and made it known in his most important manner. Hours before, Mr. Rhode Island Red, the rooster, had expressed his opinion on the subject, and from the first pale hint of dawn till the sun swung up in the clear May sky, a great company of tanagers, robins, martins, meadow larks and their friends had suggested, each in his own way, that it was time to be awake. But really, it didn’t need all of this clamor to get the McBirneys out of bed. Since sunup, Thomas McBirney had been planting cotton on the red clay terraces of his mountain farm; and Mary McBirney, his wife, had been busied laying her hearth-fire, getting the breakfast and feeding the crowing, cackling, gobbling creatures in the yard. And three times she had thrust her head in at the door of the lean-to to say that if she were a boy she’d get up and see what a pretty day it was. James Stuart McBirney, otherwise Jim, thought his mother was right about almost everything, but he did differ with her about getting up when a fellow felt like a log and his eyes were as tight as ticks. He had heard her say there was a time for everything, and it seemed to him that the time to sleep was when a fellow was sleepy. Why should sensible people send him to bed when he wasn’t sleepy and make him get up when he was? Besides, something kept nagging away in the back of his mind. It was something that he ought to remember, and couldn’t quite, on account of being so sleepy. Or perhaps he didn’t want to remember it. At any rate, it wouldn’t let him rest in comfort, but pecked away like a woodpecker at a tree. So, in spite of himself, it all came back to him. Ma was out of “fat pine” for kindling, and he must go hunting it.

A young boy dreams of music and sunshine in the Great Smoky Mountains As far as Billy is concerned, there’s no sight more beautiful than the sun setting over the Blue Ridge Mountains. When the day is done, he sneaks away from his work to watch the sun go down. If his father knew, he would call Billy lazy, but Mama would understand. She knows life in the mountains is hard and that there’s no point in living if a person can’t take time to appreciate what he has. Billy dreams of the day when he can pick up his fiddle and sing the folk songs of his people. Until then, he will be content with the sun. This beautifully written novel tells a story of simple fun and irresistible pleasures in 1 of the most beautiful regions in the United States.

The Blue Ridge Parkway began as a dream in the late 1800s and became reality in 1983 when the 469-mile scenic highway was completed. Heavy construction was done by contractors who won bids for the different projects along various sections of the parkway. Construction of the Blue Ridge Parkway began in September 1935 at Cumberland Knob. Civilian Conservation Corps troops took care of the roadsides, landscaping, and structure building. As part of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, this project was intended to provide jobs throughout the region. Images of America: Building the Blue Ridge Parkway contains approximately 200 construction photographs of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Even as she comes to terms with the shifting relationships in her life, Zoe still isn't sure if she can remain in Copper Creek with her new responsibilities--and her first love.

RECOMMENDED BY DOLLY PARTON IN PEOPLE MAGAZINE! A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A USA TODAY BESTSELLER A LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER The bestselling historical fiction novel from Kim Michele Richardson, this is a novel following Cussy Mary, a packhorse librarian and her quest to bring books to the Appalachian community she loves, perfect for readers of William Kent Kreuger and Lisa Wingate. The perfect addition to your next book club! The hardscrabble folks of Troublesome Creek have to scrap for everything—everything except books, that is. Thanks to Roosevelt's Kentucky Pack Horse Library Project, Troublesome's got its very own traveling librarian, Cussy Mary Carter. Cussy's not only a book woman, however, she's also the last of her kind, her skin a shade of blue unlike most anyone else. Not everyone is keen on Cussy's family or the Library Project, and a Blue is often blamed for any whiff of trouble. If Cussy wants to bring the joy of books to the hill folks, she's going to have to confront prejudice as old as the Appalachias and suspicion as deep as the holler. Inspired by the true blue-skinned people of Kentucky and the brave and dedicated Kentucky Pack Horse library service of the 1930s, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek is a story of raw courage, fierce strength, and one woman's belief that books can carry us anywhere—even back home. Look for The Book Woman's Daughter, the new novel from Kim Michele Richardson, out now! Other Bestselling Historical Fiction from Sourcebooks Landmark: The Mystery of Mrs. Christie by Marie Benedict The Engineer's Wife by Tracey Enerson Wood Sold on a Monday by Kristina McMorris

The Blue Ridge is of the Western genre which starts in the late eighteen hundreds in Texas and moves to Colorado. The Blue Ridge is on the northern side of the canyon carved by the Colorado River as it runs toward Glenwood Springs, Colorado. The story of the Buhler family and its feud with the Toms family runs throughout the story. After David Buhler dies his widow, Ruth, marries Dan Toms. After the first year of marriage Dan begins abusing Ruth and her two sons, Brett and Barney. The abuse reaches a point where Dan Toms beats Ruth so badly that the younger boy, Barney, puts a butcher knife into Dan killing him almost instantly. The older boy Brett buries Dan with all his belongings and no one else knows what has happened to Dan as Ruth is unconscious. Dans disappearance festers with the Toms brothers especially the eldest, Sheriff Bob Toms, as he suspects that the Buhler boys knows what happened to Dan. Tom Mason, a retired U. S. Marshal, meets Ruth as she and the boys put their farm up for sale. The story moves at a rapid pace and has several romances laced through the story giving it spice. The five Toms brothers add excitement as does the goldmine adventures that both the Buhler/Mason and Toms family encounter.