Most Popular Books by Ron Rash

The New York Times bestselling author of Serena returns to Appalachia, this time at the height of World War I, with the story of a blazing but doomed love affair caught in the turmoil of a nation at war Deep in the rugged Appalachians of North Carolina lies the cove, a dark, forbidding place where spirits and fetches wander, and even the light fears to travel. Or so the townsfolk of Mars Hill believe–just as they know that Laurel Shelton, the lonely young woman who lives within its shadows, is a witch. Alone except for her brother, Hank, newly returned from the trenches of France, she aches for her life to begin. Then it happens–a stranger appears, carrying nothing but a beautiful silver flute and a note explaining that his name is Walter, he is mute, and is bound for New York. Laurel finds him in the woods, nearly stung to death by yellow jackets, and nurses him back to health. As the days pass, Walter slips easily into life in the cove and into Laurel''s heart, bringing her the only real happiness she has ever known. But Walter harbors a secret that could destroy everything–and danger is closer than they know. Though the war in Europe is near its end, patriotic fervor flourishes thanks to the likes of Chauncey Feith, an ambitious young army recruiter who stokes fear and outrage throughout the county. In a time of uncertainty, when fear and ignorance reign, Laurel and Walter will discover that love may not be enough to protect them. This lyrical, heart-rending tale, as mesmerizing as its award-winning predecessor Serena, shows once again this masterful novelist at the height of his powers.

Maggie Glenn, a newspaper photographer sent to cover an incident in her home town, becomes caught in the middle of the conflict, opening old wounds and forcing her to revisit a past she wanted to leave behind.

The year is 1929, and newlyweds George and Serena Pemberton arrive in the mountains of North Carolina from Boston to create a timber empire. Although George has already lived in the camp long enough to father an illegitimate child, Serena is new to the mountains--but she soon shows herself the equal of any worker, overseeing crews, hunting rattlesnakes, even saving her husband’s life in the wilderness. Together, they ruthlessly kill or vanquish all who fall out of favor. Yet when Serena learns that she will never bear a child, she sets out to kill the son George had without her. Mother and child begin a struggle for their lives, and when Serena suspects George is protecting his illegitimate family, the Pembertons'' intense, passionate marriage starts to unravel as the story moves toward its shocking reckoning.

"13 haunting and picturesque stories that illuminate the terms of survival in that often forgotten landscape"—the Appalachian Mountains ( Booklist ). "Ron Rash writes some of the most memorable novels of this young century. . . . One of the major writers of our time." — The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Ron Rash is one of the greatest chroniclers of modern Appalachia, a writer whose insight and empathy have illuminated this terrain in three transcendent novels. In his new volume of stories, spanning the entire twentieth century, Rash chronicles the onset of the modern era in rural communities, the deterioration of the old ways, and the violent arrival of a broader world. Three old men stalk the shadow of a giant fish no one else believes is there. A son watches his father take up scuba diving in the town reservoir to fight off a killing depression. A grieving mother leads a surveyor deep into the woods to name once and for all the county and state where her son was murdered by thieves. In the Appalachian Mountains of Ron Rash''s stories, the collision of the Old and New South, of antique and modern, of family and the wider world, resonate with the depth and power of ancient myths. " Chemistry and Other Stories is a real winner. Each tale painstakingly made and shows a deep understanding of the heart and character of Appalachia." —Tim Gautreaux, author of The Clearing "With Chemistry , Ron Rash assures himself a place among the greatest of Southern writers. I keep shaking my head at the raw and tragic beauty of these stories." —Janiesse Ray, author of Wild Card Quilt "Extraordinary . . . powerful . . . charming. . . . No matter the story, Ron Rash grabs you and doesn''t let go." — Kirkus Reviews

Will Alexander, sheriff of a small town in southern Appalachia, is baffled by a murder case with no body and no suspect, and sets out to find the truth about what really happened to a local thug.

Vivid, harrowing yet ultimately hopeful, The World Made Straight is Ron Rash''s subtlest exploration yet of the painful conflict between the bonds of home and the desire for independence. NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING NOAH WYLE, JEREMY IRVINE, MINKA KELLY, ADELAIDE CLEMENS, STEVE EARLE, AND HALEY JOEL OSMENT. "ONE OF THE MAJOR WRITERS OF OUR TIME."—THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION Travis Shelton is seventeen the summer he wanders into the woods onto private property outside his North Carolina hometown, discovers a grove of marijuana large enough to make him some serious money, and steps into the jaws of a bear trap. After hours of passing in and out of consciousness, Travis is discovered by Carlton Toomey, the wise and vicious farmer who set the trap to protect his plants, and Travis''s confrontation with the subtle evils within his rural world has begun. Before long, Travis has moved out of his parents'' home to live with Leonard Shuler, a one-time schoolteacher who lost his job and custody of his daughter years ago, when he was framed by a vindictive student. Now Leonard lives with his dogs and his sometime girlfriend in a run-down trailer outside town, deals a few drugs, and studies journals from the Civil War. Travis becomes his student, of sorts, and the fate of these two outsiders becomes increasingly entwined as the community''s terrible past and corrupt present bear down on each of them from every direction, leading to a violent reckoning—not only with Toomey, but with the legacy of the Civil War massacre that, even after a century, continues to divide an Appalachian community.

In this poetic and haunting tale set in contemporary Appalachia, New York Times bestselling author Ron Rash illuminates lives shaped by violence and a powerful connection to the land. Les, a long-time sheriff just three-weeks from retirement, contends with the ravages of crystal meth and his own duplicity in his small Appalachian town. Becky, a park ranger with a harrowing past, finds solace amid the lyrical beauty of this patch of North Carolina. Enduring the mistakes and tragedies that have indelibly marked them, they are drawn together by a reverence for the natural world. When an irascible elderly local is accused of poisoning a trout stream, Les and Becky are plunged into deep and dangerous waters, forced to navigate currents of disillusionment and betrayal that will force them to question themselves and test their tentative bond—and threaten to carry them over the edge. Echoing the heartbreaking beauty of William Faulkner and the spiritual isolation of Carson McCullers, Above the Waterfall demonstrates once again the prodigious talent of "a gorgeous, brutal writer" (Richard Price) hailed as "one of the great American authors at work today" (Janet Maslin, New York Times).

From Ron Rash, PEN / Faulkner Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author of Serena, comes a new collection of unforgettable stories set in Appalachia that focuses on the lives of those haunted by violence and tenderness, hope and fear—spanning the Civil War to the present day. The darkness of Ron Rash’s work contrasts with its unexpected sensitivity and stark beauty in a manner that could only be accomplished by this master of the short story form. Nothing Gold Can Stay includes 14 stories, including Rash’s “The Trusty,” which first appeared in The New Yorker.

ONE OF THE NEW YORKER''S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • Told against the backdrop of the Korean War as a small Appalachian town sends its sons to battle, The Caretaker by award-winning author Ron Rash ("One of the great American authors at work today" —The New York Times) is a breathtaking love story and a searing examination of the acts we seek to justify in the name of duty, family, honor, and love. It’s 1951 in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. Blackburn Gant, his life irrevocably altered by a childhood case of polio, seems condemned to spend his life among the dead as the sole caretaker of a hilltop cemetery. It suits his withdrawn personality, and the inexplicable occurrences that happen from time to time rattle him less than interaction with the living. But when his best and only friend, the kind but impulsive Jacob Hampton, is conscripted to serve overseas, Blackburn is charged with caring for Jacob’s wife, Naomi, as well. Sixteen-year-old Naomi Clarke is an outcast in Blowing Rock, an outsider, poor and uneducated, who works as a seasonal maid in the town’s most elegant hotel. When Naomi eloped with Jacob a few months after her arrival, the marriage scandalized the community, most of all his wealthy parents who disinherited him. Shunned by the townsfolk for their differences and equally fearful that Jacob may never come home, Blackburn and Naomi grow closer and closer until a shattering development derails numerous lives. A tender examination of male friendship and rivalry as well as a riveting, page-turning novel of familial devotion, The Caretaker brilliantly depicts the human capacity for delusion and destruction all too often justified as acts of love.

The Shark''s Tooth is a poetic tale of imagination and conservation in which a young girl visiting her grandparents'' beach house finds friendship with the ocean''s creatures. Sharks'' teeth are given to her by her new aquatic friends as gifts, symbolic of her connections to nature and the sea. As the little girl grows up and moves away to the city, she loses her kinship to the natural world. When she returns to the beach house as an adult, she is convinced that her childhood memories were only acts of make-believe—until she receives a sign that her ocean adventures may have been real after all. The Shark''s Tooth is the first children''s book written by New York Times best-selling author Ron Rash. Cecile L. K. Martin''s colorful cut-paper illustrations complement the story, and novelist and children''s author Mary Alice Monroe provides an engaging afterword on the story''s empowering message of creativity and conservation.

Jacob and Edna have fallen on hard times. They haven''t lost everything the way others have, but they have lost enough. When one of their hens stops laying eggs, it seems like the final straw. Jacob is determined to solve the mystery. What he discovers is as heartbreaking as it is revelatory. This is just one of the remarkable stories in Burning Bright - an award-winning collection that confirms why Ron Rash has won comparisons with John Steinbeck, Cormac McCarthy and Gabriel García Márquez. It is rare that an author can capture the complexities of a place as though it were a person, as Ron Rash does with the rugged, brutal landscape of the Appalachian Mountains. At the same time, again and again he conjures characters that live long in the mind after their stories have been told.

From the acclaimed, New York Times bestselling award-winning author of Serena and The Cove, thirty of his finest short stories, collected in one volume. No one captures the complexities of Appalachia—a rugged, brutal landscape of exquisite beauty—as evocatively and indelibly as author and poet Ron Rash. Winner of the Frank O''Connor International Short Story Award, two O Henry prizes, and a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, Rash brilliantly illuminates the tensions between the traditional and the modern, the old and new south, tenderness and violence, man and nature. Though the focus is regional, the themes of Rash’s work are universal, striking an emotional chord that resonates deep within each of our lives. Something Rich and Strange showcases this revered master’s artistry and craftsmanship in thirty stories culled from his previously published collections Nothing Gold Can Stay, Burning Bright, Chemistry, and The Night New Jesus Fell to Earth. Each work of short fiction demonstrates Rash’s dazzling ability to evoke the heart and soul of this land and its people—men and women inexorably tethered to the geography that defines and shapes them. Filled with suspense and myth, hope and heartbreak, told in language that flows like “shimmering, liquid poetry” (Atlanta Journal Constitution), Something Rich and Strange is an iconic work from an American literary virtuoso.

A collection of haunting lyricism that evokes the beauty and hardship of the rural South, by a revered American master of letters—the award-winning, bestselling author of the novels Serena, Something Rich and Strange, and Above the Waterfall. In this incandescent, profound, and accessible collection, beloved and award-winning poet, novelist, and short-story writer Ron Rash vividly channels the rhythms of life in Appalachia, deftly capturing the panoply of individuals who are its heart and soul—men and women inured to misfortune and hard times yet defined by tremendous fortitude, resilience, and a fierce sense of community. In precise, supple language that swerves from the stark to the luminous, Rash richly describes the splendor of the natural landscape and poignantly renders the lives of those dependent on its bounty—in cotton mills and tobacco fields, farmlands and forests. The haunting memories and shared histories of these people—their rituals and traditions—animate this land, and are celebrated in Rash’s crystalline, intensely imagined verse. With an eye for the surprising and vivid detail, Ron Rash powerfully captures the sorrows and exaltations of this wondrous world he knows intimately. Illuminating and indelible, Poems demonstrates his rich talents and confirms his legacy as a standard-bearer for the literature of the American South.

Ron Rash, PEN/Faulkner finalist and New York Times bestselling author of Serena and The Cove, has been called "a gorgeous writer" (Richard Price) with a "reputation for writerly miracles" (Janet Maslin, The New York Times), and is been heralded as "one of our very finest novelists" (Richard Russo). Now comes an exclusive eSingle featuring a never-before-published short story that shows the lyrical and masterful RonRash at his very best. My Father Like a River transcends the haunting landscape of Rash''s native south and explores the complex, powerful relationship between father and family, and the authentic sense of loss one experiences while unemployed—all told in vivid, potent prose. Also includes Ron''s short story "The Trusty", which was originally published in The New Yorker.

*Named a Garden & Gun and Atlanta Journal Constitution best book of the year* Winner of the 2020 Thomas Robinson Prize for Southern Literature "Mesmerizing...He''s one of the best living American writers."--Janet Maslin, New York Times Book Review From bestselling and award-winning writer Ron Rash ("One of the great American authors at work today."--The New York Times) comes a collection of ten searing stories and the return of the villainess who propelled Serena to national acclaim, in a long-awaited novella. Ron Rash has long been a revered presence in the landscape of American letters. A virtuosic novelist, poet, and story writer, he evokes the beauty and brutality of the land, the relentless tension between past and present, and the unquenchable human desire to be a little bit better than circumstances would seem to allow (to paraphrase Faulkner). In these ten stories, Rash spins a haunting allegory of the times we live in--rampant capitalism, the severing of ties to the natural world in the relentless hunt for profit, the destruction of body and soul with pills meant to mute our pain--and yet within this world he illuminates acts of extraordinary decency and heroism. Two of the stories have already been singled out for accolades: "Baptism" was chosen by Roxane Gay for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories 2018, and "Neighbors" was selected by Jonathan Lethem for The Best American Mystery Stories 2019. And in revisiting Serena Pemberton, Rash updates his bestselling parable of greed run amok as his deliciously vindictive heroine returns to the North Carolina wilderness she left scarred and desecrated to make one final effort to kill the child that threatens all she has accomplished. "A gorgeous, brutal writer" (Richard Price) working at the height of his powers, Ron Rash has created another mesmerizing look at the imperfect world around us.