Chapter 16

Only Connect

A yearning to be known drives the characters in Holly LeCraw’s The Swimming Pool

By Galyn Glick Martin | May 3, 2010

May 3, 2010 The ideal beach read is often no more than the literary equivalent of an umbrella drink: light, frothy, and sweet. Although Holly LeCraw’s ambitious debut novel, The Swimming Pool, is none of those things, it’s worth packing with the beach towels and sunscreen anyway. LeCraw has a keen eye for details, her writing is compelling enough to keep readers engrossed, even on vacation. LeCraw will appear at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on May 4.

Molehills Out of Mountains

In a new oral-history project, novelist Silas House assembles a powerful collection of voices speaking out against the coal-mining practice of mountaintop removal

By Galyn Glick Martin | October 22, 2009

There are places in the Appalachians where entire mountaintops are blown to smithereens; bulldozers push trees, topsoil, dirt, and rocks off the mountainsides; and the debris fills rivers and streams in the valleys below. This practice, known as mountaintop removal mining and valley fill, turns lush green mountains into barren gray moonscapes. Something’s Rising: Appalachians Fighting Mountaintop Removal, a new collection of oral histories by Silas House and Jason Howard, gives a tally of just what we’re losing to this destructive mining method and notes that the relatively small seams of coal unearthed by the process come at an immeasurably high price.

The Rise and Fall of Treason in English History

By Allen Boyer and Mark Nicholls
Routledge
340 pages
$180

The book “explores the reasons why treason coalesced around specific offences agreed by both the monarch and the wider political nation, why it became an essential instrument of enforcement in high politics, and why, over the past three hundred years, it has gradually fallen into disuse while remaining on the statute book.”

~the publisher