Tiller is set in upcountry South Carolina in the year 2008. Its chief character, who has just turned sixty, is doing what he can to maintain a sane life in and for his farm community in a time that is seriously out of joint. After the tragic loss of his wife two decades ago, Chauncey still lives alone on his family farm, but has slowly rejoined the world. It is his ties to the land and the members of his community that aid in the healing process. Tiller details this coming back to normalcy through his primary friendships with Kildee and Bess Henderson, Clint Blair (his dead wife's brother) and Trig Tinsley, a childhood friend who has had his own problems. These are characters met in Kibler's three previous novels set in this same community: Memory's Keep (which takes place in 1975), Walking Toward Home (set in 2003), and The Education of Chauncey Doolittle (set the year before in 2007). A new character, Dana Oxner, now divorced, returns home from corporate life in Charlotte seeking normalcy as well. Both she and Chauncey have scars that still need healing and together find solace in one another. In many ways the novel inverts the plot of Thomas Hardy's famous tragic novel, The Return of the Native. Tiller can be read alone, but achieves richness and complexity from its three predecessors. It thus forms the cap and final volume of a full tetralogy. Few such literary accomplishments are to be found in modern literature.

Tiller (Clay Bank County)

Literature & Fiction

Kibler, James Everett

Humor & Satire

Green Altar Books

HISTORICAL ROMANCE. In 1863, amid the turmoil of the Civil War, the ladies of the aristocratic Middleford family flee war-torn Charleston to take refuge in their summer home in Flat Rock, North Carolina. Here, in the secluded beauty and splendor of the Blue Ridge Mountains, three sisters find their destinies in love. At the age of thirty, the eldest sister Harriott has long since put away any ideas of romance or marriage, but the possibility of both unexpectedly enter her life when she meets James Mitchell, a Confederate officer who comes to Flat Rock to convalesce from his wounds. The harsh reality of war intrudes when bushwhackers menace Flat Rock, forcing the Middleford sisters and their mother to seek safety elsewhere. They find refuge in the South Carolina upcountry for a while, but in the winter of 1865, a massive army led by General Sherman blazes a trail of destruction through the state that threatens to put an end to the happiness-and the very world-of the Middleford women and the men who love them. Author Karen Stokes is an archivist with the South Carolina Historical Society in Charleston, S.C.. BELLES was inspired by South Carolinians' Civil War letters found in the SCHS archives.

Belles: A Carolina Love Story

Stokes, Karen

United States

South Carolina, 1865. The army of General Sherman has ravaged the state, and Captain John Hutchinson comes home from the war to find his world-and a way of life-in ashes. He struggles to work his plantation lands again, all the while anxious about a wounded brother wavering between life and death, and though tempted to despair, he finds a source of hope and strength when he falls in love with Emma DuBose. This beautiful young woman soon becomes the center of his life, but their happiness is threatened when John learns of a shocking crime committed at his plantation by enemy soldiers and kept secret from him for months. Embittered by a futile pursuit for justice, John finally reveals the terrible news to Emma, unaware that she is haunted by the memory of her own deadly and brutal encounter during the war. Together, they must find the faith and courage to face an uncertain future and overcome the horrors of the past.

Honor in the Dust

Genre Fiction

The Immortals

Reduced to poverty after the Civil War, seventeen-year-old Mattie Campbell and her family struggle to survive in the ruined city of Charleston, South Carolina. When her father inherits land in the nearby countryside, the Campbells move there to farm it, though with little hope of ever regaining their former prosperity-until the day a stranger arrives and unexpectedly makes Mr. Campbell an offer that is both alluring and troubling. Learning that the farm is haunted by a ghost dressed in gray, young Mattie is skeptical, but she begins to believe when she sees it one night with her own eyes. Little does she suspect that this mysterious phantom holds the key to her family's future, and that a deadly encounter with the stranger will reveal all its secrets.

The Soldier's Ghost: A Tale of Charleston

Literary

A FATAL MERCY is set in the American War of Secession and its aftermath. Drayton FitzHenry is the son of a prominent South Carolina planter. He opposes secession but joins his brothers in the Confederate Army in defense of his state. During the war’s decisive battle at Gettysburg, Drayton commits an act of mercy toward a Union officer which he later discovers probably caused the South to lose the battle. By his act of mercy, he is literally “the man who lost the Civil War.” Drayton wrestles with guilt and self-reproach for half a century until he travels to Gettysburg in 1913 when 50,000 Union and Confederate veterans returned to the battlefield for a time of national reconciliation. A Fatal Mercy was Long-Listed for the 2017 British Bridport Prize for Fiction. The first chapter was a winner in the “Chapter One Contest” of the West Cork (Ireland) Literary Festival. ______________________________ "A Fatal Mercy is a gripping novel of conscience with all the grandeur of Gone with the Wind and all the gravitas of War and Peace." -- Mary Morissy , Professor, novelist, winner of a Hennessy Award, Lannan Literary Foundation Award, and a member of the Aosdana, the association of Ireland's leading writers. ______________________________ Thomas Moore brings 25 years’ experience in Washington, DC in national defense, foreign policy, and international trade to his writing of fiction. He is the author of two previous historical novels, The Hunt for Confederate Gold and No Villains, No Heroes. A graduate of The Citadel, he earned an MA in National Security Affairs from Georgetown University in Washington, DC. He attended University College Cork, Ireland, where he earned an MA in History of the Irish Revolution and an MA in Creative Writing, both with First Class Honours. Thomas and his wife Rhonda live in Aiken, SC.

A Fatal Mercy: The Man Who Lost the Civil War

Moore,Thomas

Catharine Savage Brosman, emerita professor of French at Tulane University, has published 35 lauded books of poetry, essays, literary criticism, and scholarship. This volume is her first book of fiction. Readers will find in these stories her familiar territory of New Orleans, the Southwest, and France. Comments on An Aesthetic Education Readers of Catharine Brosman’s poetry will discover in this collection of her short fiction a new manifestation of her unique talent: a gift for story-telling matched with a shrewd insight for shaping compelling, wholly believable characters. These readers will, however, appreciate, as well, the same virtues that also mark her poetry: elegant style, a vision of the world that blends skeptical sophistication with generous sympathy, and an inerrant ear for representing the language that men and women actually speak. ..— R.V. Young, Professor Emeritus of English, North Carolina State University, former Editor of Modern Age I tried to take a preliminary look at some of these seventeen stories, sampling a few lines at the beginning of each before going back and reading in full. I couldn’t do it—had to go on and finish every time. These are chiseled, powerful stories—the accomplished prose of an accomplished poet. — Donald Mace Williams, journalist (Newsday) and novelist Catharine Savage Brosman does a splendid book. Her continued work is a gift to readers. — Marc A. Jolley, Director, Mercer University Press After years of publishing some of the most elegantly incisive and insightful poetry, literary criticism, and travel writing in America, Catharine Savage Brosman now brings readers her first collection of short fiction, and it comes equipped with the wit, sophistication, fearlessness, and good judgment to be found in her previous work. —Randall Ivey, author of A New England Romance and Other SOUTHERN Stories.

An Aesthetic Education and Other Stories

Brosman, Catharine Savage

SOUTH CAROLINIAN MAXCY GREGG was a lawyer, a classically educated scholar with mastery of many languages, a politician, and a volunteer soldier. But his primary interest was the natural world, especially birds, more than 50 varieties of which he must have identified. Gregg was a self-instructed genuine expert and avid investigator of birdlife and wild plants and he had an astronomical observatory built into his house. His "sporting journals," long neglected sources of antebellum Southern history, were meticulous and are meticulously edited by Suzanne Parfitt Johnson. Gregg's recorded trips cover most of South Carolina, portions of neighboring States, and a sojourn in Mexico--mountains, rivers, Upcountry, Lowcountry. In addition to the wildlife and his hunting prowess or lack thereof, he describes topography, weather, and natural phenomenon (a comet, a hurricane, immense flights of passenger pigeons). The record also provides insight into city, country, and wilderness life. His hunting companions play a prominent part--dogs, horses, and men. Here is a realistic and unusual sample of antebellum Southern life as it was lived day by day.

Maxcy Gregg's Sporting Journals 1842-1858

History

Gregg, Maxcy

Americas

THIS WORK REPRESENTS the increasing mastery of the novel by Karen Stokes. Her previous half dozen works of fiction have been historical. In CAROLINA TWILIGHT she deals with contemporary times and contemporary problems—the epidemic of teenage depression and suicide. This story of a young woman’s journey from the depths of despair to spiritual redemption shows great psychological insight and is an inspiring account of the power of faith. * * * * KAREN STOKES lives in Charleston, South Carolina, where she has worked as a manuscript archivist for over 25 years. A graduate of the College of Charleston and the University of South Carolina, she has authored or edited numerous works of fiction and non-fiction relating to South Carolina history. Carolina Twilight is based on her experiences as a teenager and young adult dealing with depression. Mrs. Stokes is the author of a dozen books of history and fiction. Her works available from Shotwell Publishing are Belles: A Carolina Romance; Honor in the Dust; The Immortals; The Soldier’s Ghost: A Tale of Charleston; Carolina Love Letters; and A Legion of Devils: Sherman in South Carolina.

Carolina Twilight

Runaway Haley: An Imagined Family Saga

SEEKING A BETTER LIFE, Michael Haley fled Ireland, but in America he found only hard work, hardship, Civil War, and epidemics. His children's futures didn't start out brighter than what he'd left behind, as they suffered with him then, and later at the hands of others during the Reconstruction.﻿In 1958, Ruby Haley received a letter from a distant uncle that told the story of her father, Robert, his sister Fannie, and their remarkable journey across the years. Based on these real-life ancestors; and using letters, documents, and newspaper clippings; RUNAWAY HALEY imagines what might have happened in the lives of two generations of the Haley family living in the Deep South during centuries past.

Thomas, William A

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