Lee Smith

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Missouri

A Novel

Discovered in the ruins of a North Carolina plantation, an old box of mementos brings to life the world of young Molly Petree, an orphan growing up in the smoldering remains of the post-Civil War American South.

On Agate Hill

e2659bf5-e84a-45df-a1a8-8c169e1e5a5e

Carl. Sandburg

Oregon

A painter’s deeply felt images match a poet’s timeless observations about the heart of America in this profound evocation of the texture of life in the Midwest. A sophisticated and beautiful book for all ages, Grassroots is Wendell Minor’s tribute to Carl Sandburg’s work and to the Midwest upbringing they both share.


Grassroots

74710f32-5369-4541-8ae0-21e82fead09a-1

#hardcover #craft #afghans #crochet #nonfiction #handmade #americana


Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Wisconsin

40 Prize-Winning Crocheted Designs

Each of these extraordinary hand-crocheted afghans, displayed in magnificent photos, is a blue-ribbon winner. They've all taken the top prize at one of America's state fairs-the prime public venue for showing off the nation's best traditional crafts. The styles, colors, and patterns are as varied as the folks who fashioned them, ranging from an afghan with an elegant white-on-white country design to a one made from leftover yarn that has a wildly kaleidoscopic motif. Not only can crocheters recreate these wonderful items at home, thanks to patterns, detail shots, and instructions, but they'll also experience the charm that makes the state fair such a special part of American culture. Scattered throughout the text are fun facts about the fairs, from the invention of the ferris wheel to favorite foods, along with both new and vintage black and white photos.


Blue Ribbon Afghans from America's State Fairs

af878fb8-c524-47d9-a77d-b7abe4b3afa4-1

Tom McNeal

Debut novel reviewed as “remarkable, vivid, alive”

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Maryland

At the age of 17, Randall Hunsacker shoots his mother's boyfriend, steals a car and comes close to killing himself. His second chance lies in a small Nebraska farm town, where the landmarks include McKibben's Mobil Station, Frmka's Superette, and a sign that says The Wages of Sin is Hell. This is Goodnight, a place so ingrown and provincial that Randall calls it "Sludgeville"-until he starts thinking of it as home.

In this pitch-perfect novel, Tom McNeal explores the currents of hope, passion, and cruelty beneath the surface of the American heartland. Innbsp;nbsp;Randall, McNeal creates an outcast whose redemption lies in Goodnight, a strange, small, but ultimately embracing community where Randall will inspire fear and adulation, win the love of a beautiful girl and nearly throw it all away.

Goodnight, Nebraska

541ae906-e651-4ce9-a93e-86ffea99ccad-1

A Los Angeles Times Book Prizes finalist.
see last 2 pictures for table of contents.

Poems

Now in paperback, a 2009 Los Angeles Times Book Award finalist.

"She is a daring act as a poet/athlete . . . but she can also travel the backwoods, pointing out herons, ivy vines and creek water with a kind of divining rod rightness. . . . Her wild lyrics shudder and shine, jubilant and threatening, exuberant."--Carol Muske-Dukes, Huffington Post

Apocalyptic Swing Poems

e1a9b2a0-2b0f-46d6-a72a-13e5e4fd3ca2-1

#hardcover #carolynsee #hardtimes #america #americana #memior #hillbillyelegy #familyhistory. For fans of Half-broke Horses, or Alexandra Fuller.  A beautifully written story of those lost in middle America.

Minnesota

Hard Luck and Good Times in America

The award-winning author of Golden Days and The Rest Is Done With Mirrors now tells her life story and that of her family--one in which heavy drinking and, later, recreational drugs, were something of a family tradition. A fiercely funny and deeply empathetic book which shows that the wild life, for better and worse, has made us what we are. Photos.

Dreaming

2687abd2-ac1e-4791-836e-bc61e015c110-1

Amy Bloom

I dropped the book as i was listening it. Its never been read

New Jersey

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND O: THE OPRAH MAGAZINE • Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more. “My father’s wife died. My mother said we should drive down to his place and see what might be in it for us.” So begins this remarkable novel by Amy Bloom, whose critically acclaimed Away was called “a literary triumph” (The New York Times). Lucky Us is a brilliantly written, deeply moving, fantastically funny novel of love, heartbreak, and luck. Disappointed by their families, Iris, the hopeful star and Eva the sidekick, journey through 1940s America in search of fame and fortune. Iris’s ambitions take the pair across the America of Reinvention in a stolen station wagon, from small-town Ohio to an unexpected and sensuous Hollywood, and to the jazz clubs and golden mansions of Long Island. With their friends in high and low places, Iris and Eva stumble and shine though a landscape of big dreams, scandals, betrayals, and war. Filled with gorgeous writing, memorable characters, and surprising events, Lucky Us is a thrilling and resonant novel about success and failure, good luck and bad, the creation of a family, and the pleasures and inevitable perils of family life, conventional and otherwise. From Brooklyn’s beauty parlors to London’s West End, a group of unforgettable people love, lie, cheat and survive in this story of our fragile, absurd, heroic species. Praise for Lucky Us “Lucky Us is a remarkable accomplishment. One waits a long time for a novel of this scope and dimension, replete with surgically drawn characters, a mix of comedy and tragedy that borders on the miraculous, and sentences that should be in a sentence museum. Amy Bloom is a treasure.”—Michael Cunningham “Exquisite . . . a short, vibrant book about all kinds of people creating all kinds of serial, improvisatory lives.”—The New York Times “Bighearted, rambunctious . . . a bustling tale of American reinvention . . . If America has a Victor Hugo, it is Amy Bloom, whose picaresque novels roam the world, plumb the human heart and send characters into wild roulettes of kismet and calamity.”—The Washington Post “Bloom’s crisp, delicious prose gives [Lucky Us] the feel of sprawling, brawling life itself. . . . Lucky Us is a sister act, which means a double dose of sauce and naughtiness from the brilliant Amy Bloom.”—The Oregonian “A tasty summer read that will leave you smiling . . . Broken hearts [are] held together by lipstick, wisecracks and the enduring love of sisters.”—USA Today “Exquisitely imagined . . . [a] grand adventure.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “Marvelous picaresque entertainment . . . a festival of joy and terror and lust and amazement that resolves itself here, warts and all, in a kind of crystalline Mozartean clarity of vision.”—Elle

Lucky Us

a75066a3-9ffa-45b9-a34c-88a5fde83c6a-1

Alabama

Nothing seems to change in Eden Hill, Kentucky, and that's just fine with Virgil T. Osgood. He's been content to raise his family and run the only service station in town. But when a new station is set to open right across the road from Virgil's pumps, he suddenly faces obstacles in his career, his marriage, and his self-worth that he's never even dreamed of.Cornelius Alexander wants his new Zipco station to succeed and help establish a strong foundation for his growing family. As long as he follows the Zipco guide, he's sure to be a success--and prove his father wrong.Reverend Caudill wants to be a conduit for grace in his town, but that grace is challenged by the changes sweeping through in the early 1960s. For the sake of this small town, Virgil and Cornelius must learn to get along, but how do you love your neighbor when his very presence threatens to upend everything you hold dear?

Eden Hill

af6d4a16-a539-4c4b-a088-1683c349e96b-1

The American Freedom Train 

#hardcover #craft #afghans #knit #nonfiction #handmade #americana


Instructions for 65 brand-new afghans that can be knitted in less than two weeks.

Quick Knitted Afghans

ae96c581-581d-46aa-aa30-9fa8718790ec-1

George Douglas

Michigan

The Railroad in American Life

Traces the history of railroads in the United States, from the 1830s to the present, and examines their impact on the social and cultural life of the country.

All Aboard!

030bab7b-7def-4446-bf49-4134d2221808-0

Tales Out of Oregon: Since the Beginning 

Garrison Keillor

In very good reading condition, just a little warped. 

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

"Keillor's best stuff is clean (in the sense that lines are clean), down to earth, exquisitely good-hearted, highly ludicrous, and as labored as nitrous oxide. This book will either leave you dumbfounded or happy -almost deservedly happy -to be anywhere" -The New York Times Book Review "His humor is cerebral and complex, a blend of romance and nostalgia; it sparklingly parodies the American (and human) condition. His stories and satires glow with a sense of time and place." -The Washington Post

Happy to Be Here

b29edb98-c9f6-459e-a1c5-980ad9389803-1

#paperback #fiction #mystery #Americana #texas #historicalfiction #serialkiller #thriller #murder 

The Rock Hole

a246f0a2-065c-4dbb-b9fb-f15e0628d98f-1

Katherine J. Parkin

Former library book. Plastic jacket taped to cover. Library stamp on top of pages. Deactivated library theft device on inside of back cover. Pages in great shape. Devoid of any trace of dog ears, scribbles. Please see photos for reference.

Ohio

A Century of Buying, Driving, and Fixing Cars

Women at the Wheel explores women's historical experience with automobiles. Katherine Parkin argues that in every regard, from learning to drive to repairing cars, from being a passenger to taking the wheel, women had a distinct experience with cars in American culture.

Women at the Wheel

4869f5c0-204a-473b-b590-a5e19a64c096-1

Super fun vintage seasonal ice cream recipe book from the famous ice cream chain! 

Ice Cream World of Baskin-Robbins 

#paperback #fiction #historicalfiction #bestseller #1nationalbestseller #awardwinner #nationalbookaward #americana little warped

New York

Inman, an injured and disillusioned Confederate soldier, embarks on a harrowing journey home to his sweetheart, Ada, who herself is struggling to run the farm left her at her father's sudden death

Cold Mountain

bc5721de-9f7e-4092-8ad6-8bcfff1b7170-1

#hardcover #art #coffeetablebook #america #americanart #americana #arthistory #classic #traditional #artist 

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

By Arthur L. Guptill, pref. by Dorothy Canfield Fisher; biographical introd. by Jack Alexander.

Norman Rockwell, Illustrator

341449f0-aaee-44b1-aca4-99bd3ac9fd6e-1

The Old Farmer's Almanac Sampler

Gin Phillips

Illinois

A novel of warmth and true feeling, The Well and the Mine explores the value of community, charity, family, and hope that we can give each other during a time of hardship. Look out for Phillips's new novel, Fierce Kingdom. In a small Alabama coal-mining town during the summer of 1931, nine-year-old Tess Moore sits on her back porch and watches a woman toss a baby into her family’s well without a word. This shocking act of violence sets in motion a chain of events that forces Tess and her older sister Virgie to look beyond their own door and learn the value of kindness and lending a helping hand. As Tess and Virgie try to solve the mystery of the well, an accident puts their seven-year-old brother’s life in danger, forcing the Moore family to come to a new understanding of the power of love and compassion.

The Well and the Mine

e296c575-e979-4d5c-b846-034b48916463-1

Warren Kimble

Rated 4.1 out of 5 on Goodreads, this is a great book about the life of American folk artist, Warren Kimble, featuring his art and collections with inspirations and patterns for creative American folk crafts

His Life, His Art and Collections with Inspirations and Patterns for Creative American Folk Crafts

Warren Kimble American Folk Artist

b0f458ad-d7ea-4c7c-8970-3e000dc3fa6a-1

Dave Eggers

Describes how Abdulrahman Zeitoun remained in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, his subsequent efforts to help other victims, his disappearance a week later, and the effect of these events on his wife Kathy and their children.

Zeitoun

15792399-aafb-4359-ba80-3bd76c396a44-1

Texas

Working as a quality control inspector at a toy factory in Rhode Island, friendless alcoholic Smithy Ide considers himself a loser until a tragic event prompts him to set off on an epic cross-country bicycle journey that promises him a final chance to become the man he has always wanted to be. 300,000 first printing.

The Memory of Running

588c5982-12a8-4cc1-af77-238613c3c5f5-1

#paperback #nonfiction #biography #daveeggers #history #americana #katrina #bookmarkjourneybiographymemoir 

Browse by categories

Save this search

Lee Smith

On Agate Hill

Carl. Sandburg

Grassroots

Valerie Van Arsdale Shrader

Blue Ribbon Afghans from America's State Fairs

Tom McNeal

Goodnight, Nebraska

Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Apocalyptic Swing Poems

Carolyn See

Dreaming

Amy Bloom

Lucky Us

Bill Higgs

Eden Hill

American Freedom Train Foundation Inc.

The American Freedom Train

Jeanne Stauffer (Editor); Vicki Blizzard (Editor)

Quick Knitted Afghans

George Douglas

All Aboard!

Ralph Friedman

Tales Out of Oregon: Since the Beginning

Garrison Keillor

Happy to Be Here

Reavis Z. Wortham; Joe R. Lansdale (Introduction by)

The Rock Hole

Katherine J. Parkin

Women at the Wheel

Thomas P. Jones

Ice Cream World of Baskin-Robbins

Charles Frazier

Cold Mountain

Arthur L. Guptill

Norman Rockwell, Illustrator

Robb Sagendorph Editor

The Old Farmer's Almanac Sampler

Gin Phillips

The Well and the Mine

Warren Kimble

Warren Kimble American Folk Artist

Dave Eggers

Zeitoun

Ron McLarty

The Memory of Running

Dave Eggers

Zeitoun