"Hot Brandy Toddy (bonus points for a slice of Molasses Cake) and The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom
Just when you thought you had a good grasp on the horrors of plantation life, enter Lavinia, a seven-year old white servant girl that upsets the cruel class order and turns the world upside-down. Grissom side-steps the cliches and tells a smart, profoundly disturbing and emotionally-ripping tale of loyalty and sorrow. Lavinia’s naivety provides intelligence and heart throughout the book.
A cup of bitter tea and A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories by Flannery O'Connor
If you have yet to pick up this 1955 classic that cemented Flannery O’Connors position in the literary world, do. O’Connors’ surprisingly simple plots dig deep into the underbelly of Southern mystique, with ominous waiting in each tale. While not a collection of horror stories, you might consider reading by a bright light as you will undoubtedly be uncomfortably haunted.
This book is perhaps the most tangible wild tale ever told. It's characters are grounded and even easy to identify with, but at the same time it challenges the readers' grasp of the line between fiction and non-fiction... Unbelievable epic tale you say? Shocked that you read so many pages so quickly? Do you already miss Prabaker? Now you have to listen to this book read by Humphrey Bower, the reader offers a whole new element to this story.
Lemon and hot water and Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell
As gripping as her premiere collection Swamplandia, it manages to thrill and surprise the reader through plots and twists that seem to have been received in a fever dream, including a Kafkaesque metamorphosis, presidential reincarnation, and surprisingly untrendy vampires. The length of each of the strange tales are short enough for brief escapes from reality, but you may end up lost in the dreamland of the lemon grove...
Anything Warm and Not Without Peril by Nicholas Howe
It is the place that shapes the person in this non fiction study of death on Mt. Washington. From the earliest settlers to the most recent victims, this text explores just how severe our 6,288 foot peak really is. Seen clearly from our grand hotels, mountain down towns, ski resorts, and several great restaurants and bars, even accessed with ease via it's very own auto road and cog railway, until one delves into the enormity of it's history, Mt. Washington goes misunderstood.
inevitably embrace her parallel counterpart’s intelligence and heart.
Irish Tea by a warm peat fire and Dubliners by James Joyce
Short story collections can be just the things for vacation reading. In Dubliners, Joyce shows the reader his Dublin. He just shows it in the deepest intellectual complexity that can be conjured by one of the greatest modernist writers of all time. It's like a Magic Eye image, the looking takes some work, but man, it is so worth it.
Hard Cider (Graf) and The Dark Tower Series by Stephen King
Harry Potter, The Lord Of The Rings, Narnia, if you enjoyed spending hours at a time dedicating your soul to these worlds of mystery and fascination please allow me to introduce you to The Dark Tower. Your protagonist will be Roland Deschain who is basically The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly's Man With No Name, but he has some magic too. There is nothing predictable between the covers of any of the books in this series.
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