Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

The thirteenth novel in Émile Zola?s great Rougon-Macquart sequence, Germinal expresses outrage at the exploitation of the many by the few, but also shows humanity?s capacity for compassion and hope. Etienne Lantier, an unemployed railway worker, is a clever but uneducated young man with a dangerous temper. Forced to take a back-breaking job at Le Voreux mine when he cannot get other work, he discovers that his... (more)

Night Comes to Cumberlands

by Harry M. Caudill

At the time it was first published in 1962, it framed such an urgent appeal to the American conscience that it actually prompted the creation of the Appalachian Regional Commission, an agency that has pumped millions of dollars into Appalachia. Caudill's study begins in the violence of the Indian wars and ends in the economic despair of the 1950s and 1960s. Two hundred years ago, the Cumberland Plateau was a... (more)

A Coal Miner's Bride the Diary of Anetka Saminska (Dear America)

A Coal Miner's Bride the Diary of Anetka Saminska (Dear America)

by Kathryn Lasky

Growing Up in Coal Country

by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

Inspired by her in-laws' recollections of working in coal country, Susan Campbell Bartoletti has gathered the voices of men, women, and children who immigrated to and worked in northeastern Pennsylvania at the turn of the century. The story that emerges is not just a story of long hours, little pay, and hazardous working conditions; it is also the uniquely American story of immigrant families working together to... (more)

How Green Was My Valley

by Richard Llewellyn

Llewellyn's tale of a young man's coming-of-age in a small Welsh mining town--the basis for the beloved film of the same name--is "a beautiful story told in words which have Welsh music in them . . . a book which will live in the mind and memory of its readers" (Atlantic Monthly)

The Valley of Fear and Selected Stories (Penguin Classics)

The Valley of Fear and Selected Stories (Penguin Classics)

by Arthur Conan Doyle

A bizarre series of clues found at a murder scene have Scotland Yard stumped. But Sherlock Holmes has ideas of his own.

Missing Mountains: We went to the mountaintop but it wasn't there

Missing Mountains: We went to the mountaintop but it wasn't there

Thirty-five Kentuckians write against mountaintop-removal mining. With an introduction by Silas House and an afterword by Wendell Berry.

Coal Miners' Wives: Portraits of Endurance

Coal Miners' Wives: Portraits of Endurance

by Carol A. B. Giesen

Statistics reported in this well-researched study reveal the grim reality of daily life for coal-mining families in Appalachia. Between 1897 and 1939, nearly every day a West Virginia mining family lost a member to the mines (346 deaths per year), while dozens of men suffered injuries daily. Despite modern safety procedures and technological advances that lowered that astounding death rate to an average 22 deaths... (more)

Rocket Boys (aka October Sky)

by Homer H. Hickam

The true story, originally published as Rocket Boys , that inspired the Universal Pictures film. It was 1957, the year Sputnik raced across the Appalachian sky, and the small town of Coalwood, West Virginia, was slowly dying. Faced with an uncertain future, Homer Hickam nurtured a dream: to send rockets into outer space. The introspective son of the mine’s superintendent and a mother determined to get him out... (more)

Sons and Lovers

by D. H. Lawrence

With a new Introduction by Geoff Dyer Commentary by Anthony Burgess, Jessie Chambers, Frieda Lawrence, V.S. Pritchett, Kate Millett, and Alfred Kazin Of all Lawrence's work, Sons and Lovers tells us most about the emotional source of his ideas," observed Diana Trilling. "The famous Lawrence theme of the struggle for sexual power--and he is sure that all the struggles of civilized life have their root in this... (more)

Rose

by Martin Cruz Smith

The year is 1872. The place is Wigan, England, a coal town where rich mine owners live lavishly alongside miners no better than slaves. Into this dark, complicated world comes Jonathan Blair, who has accepted a commission to find a missing man. When he begins his search every road leads back to one woman, a haughty, vixenish pit girl named Rose. With her fiery hair and skirts pinned up over trousers, she cares... (more)

Storming Heaven

by Denise Giardina

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. 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... (more)

The Coal Tattoo: A Novel

by Silas House

Life isn’t easy for twenty-two year old Easter and her teenage sister Anneth, who were left parentless as young children. While Easter, a devout Pentecostal, finds solace in the powerful music of her church, Anneth seeks comfort in the rougher edges of life found in dancing, drinking, and fast living. Easter believes in tradition and is intent on rearing her wild young sister properly, but it’s only a matter of... (more)

Big Stone Gap

by Adriana Trigiani

“FUNNY, CHARMING, AND ORIGINAL.” –FANNIE FLAGG Nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, the tiny town of Big Stone Gap is home to some of the most charming eccentrics in the state. Ave Maria Mulligan is the town’s self-proclaimed spinster, a thirty-five year old pharmacist with a “mountain girl’s body and a flat behind.” She lives an amiable life with good friends and lots of hobbies until the fateful... (more)

The Glass Castle

A Memoir

by Jeannette Walls

Jeannette Walls's father always called her "Mountain Goat" and there's perhaps no more apt nickname for a girl who navigated a sheer and towering cliff of childhood both daily and stoically. In The Glass Castle , Walls chronicles her upbringing at the hands of eccentric, nomadic parents--Rose Mary, her frustrated-artist mother, and Rex, her brilliant, alcoholic father. To call the elder Walls's childrearing... (more)

Sweet Creek Holler (A Sunburst Book)

by Ruth White

Spanning six years in Ginny Shortt's life, this is a remarkable novel about growing up in a small mining town in Appalachia. A "novel of aspiring proportions...This is a haunting story, well written." -- Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books A "triumph." -- The New York Times Book Review

Appalachian Mountain Girl

by Rhoda B. Warren

This is the story of the Bailey family's escape from the gruelling Corbin Glow mines in 1930 to find a better life in Letcher, Kentucky - 'the prettiest place in the world'. Rhoda Warren's account is three dimensional: with humour and warmth - but without sentimentality. She recounts the lives of these mining people whose religion and 'family values' buttressed and sustained them. Among others, we meet Kin, who... (more)

We Be Here When the Morning ComesBryan Woolley, Ford Reid

We Be Here When the Morning Comes

by Bryan Woolley

Fourth HouseKerry Zukus

Fourth House

by Kerry Zukus

Little Audrey

by Ruth White

“What else would you wish for?” Daddy says. “If you could have anything in the world, what would you wish for?” I shrug. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe . . .” “Maybe what?” “For us to live better than we do.” He does not say anything. In 1948, award-winning author Ruth White lived in Jewell Valley, a coal camp nestled between the hills of southwestern Virginia, with her mother, still mourning for a baby... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: coal mining

by Emile Zola

by Harry M. Caudill

by Kathryn Lasky

by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

by Richard Llewellyn

by Arthur Conan Doyle

by Carol A. B. Giesen

by Homer H. Hickam

by D. H. Lawrence

by Martin Cruz Smith

by Denise Giardina

by Silas House

by Adriana Trigiani

A Memoir

by Jeannette Walls

by Ruth White

by Rhoda B. Warren

by Bryan Woolley

by Kerry Zukus

by Ruth White