Read Appalachia Favorites

Make Me Rain

Poems & Prose

By: Nikki Giovanni
Narrated by: Nikki Giovanni
Length: 2 hours 7 minutes

“I would not call myself a poetry reader, but there is something about Nikki Giovanni’s poetry that speaks to me so deeply. Sentimental and comforting, Make Me Rain covers a wide range of topics, from quilts and rising bread to the social change we so desperately need in our world. Giovanni’s wisdom and understanding once again prove why she is... Read more

Demon Copperhead

A Novel

By: Barbara Kingsolver
Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
Length: 21 hours 2 minutes

“Kingsolver’s best work- destined to be a new classic! Read more

Hill Women

Finding Family and a Way Forward in the Appalachian Mountains

By: Cassie Chambers
Narrated by: Cassie Chambers
Length: 7 hours 31 minutes

After rising from poverty to earn two Ivy League degrees, an Appalachian lawyer pays tribute to the strong “hill women” who raised and inspired her, and whose values have the potential to rejuvenate a struggling region.

“Destined to be compared to Hillbilly Elegy and Educated.”—BookPage (starred review)

“A gritty, warm love letter to Appalachian... Read more

When These Mountains Burn

By: David Joy
Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews
Length: 7 hours 22 minutes

Winner of the 2020 Dashiell Hammett Award for Literary Excellence in Crime Writing 
 
Acclaimed author and "remarkably gifted storyteller" (The Charlotte Observer) David Joy returns with a fierce and tender tale of a father, an addict, a lawman, and the explosive events that come to unite them.

When his addict son gets in deep with his dealer, it... Read more

Take What You Need

A Novel

By: Idra Novey
Narrated by: Christina Delaine & Idra Novey
Length: 5 hours 49 minutes

A New York Times Notable Book of 2023

A Best Book of the Year: The New Yorker, L.A. Times, Boston Globe, NPR, The Guardian Author Pick, and Today

Longlisted for the 2024 Dublin Literary Award

Longlisted for 2024 Joyce Carol Oates Prize

“A heart-rending book, but also a beautiful celebration of ‘the glorious pleasure of erecting something new,’ be... Read more

Stay and Fight

A Novel

By: Madeline ffitch
Narrated by: Bailey Carr & Sophie Amoss
Length: 12 hours 44 minutes

“From the first page of this debut novel set deep in Appalachia, we know that Stay and Fight is aptly named, for the way it explores the constant struggle of its characters to stay where they are while fighting for a better existence. ffitch expertly shows us the romantic, albeit brutally raw, reality of living off the grid (on one’s own terms,... Read more

House of Cotton

A Novel

By: Monica Brashears
Narrated by: Jeanette Illidge
Length: 10 hours 41 minutes

A stunning, contemporary Black southern gothic novel about what it means to be a poor woman in the God- fearing south. The perfect audiobook if you loved The Other Black Girl and Luster.

“Every page, every scene, every sentence of Monica Brashears’s debut novel House of Cotton dazzles and surprises. An intense, enthralling, and deeply satisfying... Read more

Same Sun Here

By: Silas House & Neela Vaswani
Narrated by: Silas House & Neela Vaswani
Length: 5 hours 47 minutes

Meena and River have a lot in common: fathers forced to work away from home to make ends meet, grandmothers who mean the world to them, and faithful dogs. But Meena is an Indian immigrant girl living in New York City’s Chinatown, while River is a Kentucky coal miner’s son. As Meena’s family studies for citizenship exams and River’s town faces... Read more

Soul Full of Coal Dust

A Fight for Breath and Justice in Appalachia

By: Chris Hamby
Narrated by: Gary Tiedemann
Length: 14 hours 1 minute

In a devastating and urgent work of investigative journalism, Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hamby uncovers the tragic resurgence of black lung disease in Appalachia, its Big Coal cover-up, and the resilient mining communities who refuse to back down. Decades ago, a grassroots uprising forced Congress to enact long-overdue legislation designed to... Read more

The Writing Life

By: Annie Dillard & Janet Stevens
Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
Length: 2 hours 37 minutes

With color, irony, and sensitivity, Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Dillard illuminates the dedication, absurdity, and daring that is the writer's life. As it probes and exposes, examines and analyzes,The Writing Lifeoffers deeper insight into one of the most mysterious of professions.A gregarious recluse, Dillard has passed many days, weeks, and... Read more

The Third Rainbow Girl

The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia

By: Emma Copley Eisenberg
Narrated by: Emma Copley Eisenberg
Length: 10 hours 32 minutes

“The facts are that in the summer of 1980, two young women were hitchhiking in Pocahontas County, West Virginia en route to the annual Rainbow Festival. Their murdered bodies were found in a remote clearing on a remote road. Over the years, multiple people confessed to the murders. Was it a local as many thought? Or an itinerant mass murderer... Read more

The Birds of Opulence

By: Crystal Wilkinson
Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
Length: 4 hours 50 minutes

From the critically acclaimed, award-winning author of Blackberries, Blackberries and Water Street comes an astonishing new novel. A lyrical exploration of love and loss, The Birds of Opulence centers on several generations of women in a bucolic southern black township as they live with and sometimes surrender to madness.



The Goode-Brown family,... Read more

Even As We Breathe

A Novel

By: Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle
Narrated by: Kaipo Schwab
Length: 8 hours 28 minutes

Nineteen-year-old Cowney Sequoyah yearns to escape his hometown of Cherokee, North Carolina, in the heart of the Smoky Mountains. When a summer job at Asheville's luxurious Grove Park Inn and Resort brings him one step closer to escaping the hills that both cradle and suffocate him, he sees it as an opportunity. With World War II raging in... Read more

Blind Man's Bluff

By: James Tate Hill
Narrated by: Curtis Armstrong
Length: 7 hours 26 minutes

At age sixteen, James Tate Hill was diagnosed with Leber’s hereditary optic neuropathy, a condition that left him legally blind. After high-school friends stopped calling and a disability counselor advised him to aim for Cs in his classes, he used his remaining blurry peripheral vision to pretend he could still see. Feigning eye contact,... Read more

Southernmost

By: Silas House
Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
Length: 8 hours 19 minutes

In this stunning novel about judgment, courage, heartbreak, and change, author Silas House wrestles with the limits of belief and the infinite ways to love.



In the aftermath of a flood that washes away much of a small Tennessee town, evangelical preacher Asher Sharp offers shelter to two gay men. In doing so, he starts to see his life anew—and... Read more

The Prettiest Star

By: Carter Sickels
Narrated by: Charlie Thurston & Tiffany Morgan
Length: 10 hours 21 minutes

“This beautiful, elegiac novel tells the story of the last homecoming to rural Ohio for Brian, who is dying of AIDS at the height of the 1980s epidemic. Told with empathy and heart, complemented by a pitch-perfect sense of time and place, The Prettiest Star is a deeply affecting story about what it means to understand each other and where we come... Read more

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

By: Deesha Philyaw
Narrated by: Janina Edwards
Length: 4 hours 6 minutes

“In this powerful anthology we are introduced to a diverse cast of characters, each with their own distinct voice and troubles. Through them we explore the complexities & expectations of womanhood, the challenges of love & relationships, and how these topics impact their lives within church culture. Full of moving, delicious language that... Read more

Desperate

An Epic Battle for Clean Water and Justice in Appalachia

By: Kris Maher
Narrated by: Gibson Frazier
Length: 12 hours 29 minutes

Set in Appalachian coal country, this “superb” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) legal drama follows one determined lawyer as he faces a coal industry giant in a seven-year battle over clean drinking water for a West Virginia community.

For two decades, the water in the taps and wells of Mingo County didn’t look, smell, or taste right. Could the water be... Read more

What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia

By: Elizabeth Catte
Narrated by: Jo Anna Perrin
Length: 4 hours 15 minutes

In 2016, headlines declared Appalachia ground zero for America's "forgotten tribe" of white working class voters. Journalists flocked to the region to extract sympathetic profiles of families devastated by poverty, abandoned by establishment politics, and eager to consume cheap campaign promises. What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia is a... Read more

Belonging

A Culture of Place

By: Bell Hooks
Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
Length: 9 hours 34 minutes

What does it mean to call a place home? Who is allowed to become a member of a community? When can we say that we truly belong?



These are some of the questions of place and belonging that renowned cultural critic Bell Hooks examines in Belonging: A Culture of Place. Traversing past and present, Belonging charts a cyclical journey in which Hooks... Read more