Welcome to Weldon, Kentucky, where no one can keep a secret forever. Nineteen years ago, a powerful and influential man assaulted former runway model Casey Bledsoe, resulting in an unwanted pregnancy. Casey’s biggest regret is allowing fear to influence her to give up her baby for adoption.
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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.
A bicultural child of a Malay mother and an Indian father, Amelia Zachry was different from the get-go, never quite fitting in. In this raw, inspiring memoir, she chronicles the long, winding journey that brought her from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Kentucky, USA—the place she and her family now call home.
What will Kentucky Book Festival visitors find on your table? Making Our Future: Visionary Folklore and Everyday Culture in Appalachia (University of North Carolina Press, 2022) Finalist, 2022 Weatherford Award for Nonfiction, Berea College and Appalachian Studies Association Drawing from her work as the West Virginia State Folklorist, Emily Hilliard explores contemporary […]
When former Kentucky Poet Laureate Richard Taylor took a job at Kentucky State University in 1975, he purchased a fixer-upper—in need of a roof, a paint job, city water, and central heating—that became known to his friends as "Taylor's Folly." The historic Giltner-Holt House, which was built in 1859 and sits close by the Elkhorn […]
Elin Hilderbrand, #1 bestselling author of Golden Girl, Summer of '69, the Paradise series, and dozens of other novels, will discuss her writing career, sources of inspiration, and more with debut novelist Dianna Rostad, author of You Belong Here Now, on the Main Stage. This event will not be livestreamed. To participate, join us at […]
Duncan the Dragon loves to read. When he reads a story, his imagination catches fire! Unfortunately . . . so does his book. Fire breath is great for roasting marshmallows, but it’s not so great for reading. Duncan just wants to get to those two wonderful words, like the last sip of a chocolate milk […]
Drowned Town explores the multigenerational impact caused by the loss of home and illuminates the joys and sorrows of a group of people bound by western Kentucky’s Land Between the Lakes and the lakes that lie on either side of it. The linked stories are rooted in a landscape forever altered by the impoundment of […]
From the New York Times bestselling author of Unsheltered and Flight Behavior, a brilliant novel which enthralls, compels, and captures the heart as it evokes a young hero’s unforgettable journey to maturity. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can’t imagine leaving behind.
Lots of children have pen pals but one little girl has a real-life dragon a Komodo dragon for a pen pal! When she and Komodo become pen pals, the wise-cracking dragon adds a generous helping of humor to letters that are chock full of accurate, interesting facts.
From the acclaimed author of the classics Shiloh and Other Stories and In Country comes a beautifully crafted and profoundly moving novel which follows a woman as she looks back over her life and her first love. Ann Workman is smart but naïve, a misfit who’s traveled from rural Kentucky to graduate school in the […]
Seventeen-year-old Sam, the daughter of a New England heiress, has tried hard to fulfill her father's dying wish: "Take care of your mother for me." Not an easy job. When her impulsive, romance-writing mom announces her engagement to a man whose last heiress wife died under suspicious circumstances, Sam tries to dissuade her. But her […]