Tom Stechschulte
1) Plainsong
Author
Series
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 4.6 - AR Pts: 13
Lexile measure
770L
Language
English
Description
Ambitious, but never seeming so, Kent Haruf reveals a whole community as he interweaves the stories of a pregnant high school girl, a lonely teacher, a pair of boys abandoned by their mother, and a couple of crusty bachelor farmers. From simple elements, Haruf achieves a novel of wisdom and grace--a narrative that builds in strength and feeling until, as in a choral chant, the voices in the book surround, transport, and lift the reader off the ground....
Author
Lexile measure
HL 610L
Language
English
Description
When Llewelyn Moss stumbles upon a group of murdered men, a stash of heroin, and more than two million in cash, he makes a rash decision and takes the money, which soon puts himself and his young wife in danger as they are hunted by a ruthless drug lord.
3) The road
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 4 - AR Pts: 8
Lexile measure
670L
Language
English
Description
America is a barren landscape of smoldering ashes, devoid of life except for those people still struggling to scratch out some type of existence. Amidst the destruction, a father and his young son walk, always toward the coast, but with no real understanding that circumstances will improve once they arrive. Still they persevere, and their relationship comes to represent goodness in a world that is utterly devastated.
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
Texas attorney and former Texas Ranger Billy Bob Holland has many secrets. Among them is Vernon Smother's son, Lucas, a now-teenaged boy about whom few know the truth - Lucas is really Billy Bob's illegitimate son. When Lucas is arrested for murder, Billy Bob must confront the past and serve as the boy's criminal attorney. Billy Bob knows the propensity of the town, Deaf Smith, Texas, to make scapegoats out of the innocent and to exploit and sexually...
Author
Series
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 5.3 - AR Pts: 6
Language
English
Description
Blinking Jack Stokes was a skinny tenant farmer, and Ruby Pitt Woodrow was "the carefully raised daughter of Carolina gentry.....They didn't fall in love so much as they simply found each other and held on for dear life."--Pbk. cover.
Author
Language
English
Description
Lonely widower Cal Sawyer struggles to raise his teenage daughter Rachel while keeping his business afloat in the failing small town of Athens City, Alabama, and serving as assistant coach of the high school football team which is playing its last season before the school is consolidated.
Author
Language
English
Description
As he cleans out his dead father's workshop, Jess Kirkman of North Carolina discovers a treasure map with the names of women. He goes to see them and obtains new insights into his father's character. Fourth installment in a family saga by the author of Farewell, I'm Bound to Leave You.
Author
Language
English
Description
In his prime, Edward Bloom was an extraordinary man. He could outrun anybody. He never missed a day of school. He saved lives and tamed giants. He was an inspired salesman-a visionary, in fact-and a beneficent real estate magnate who once bought a whole town just to make sure it would never change. Animals loved him. People loved him. Women loved him (and he loved them back). And he knew more jokes than any man alive. Or at least that's what he's...
Author
Language
English
Description
"In a North Carolina mountain town filled with moonshine and rotten husbands, Sadie Blue is only the latest girl to face a dead-end future at the mercy of a dangerous drunk. She's been married to Roy Tupkin for fifteen days, and she knows now that she should have listened to the folks who said he was trouble. But when a stranger sweeps in and knocks the world off-kilter for everyone in town, Sadie begins to think there might be more to life than being...
11) Clay's quilt
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
"After his mother is killed, four-year-old Clay Sizemore finds himself alone in a small Appalachian mining town. At first, unsure of Free Creek, he slowly learns to lean on its residents as family. There's Aunt Easter, who is always filled with a sense of foreboding, bound to her faith above all; quiltmaking Uncle Paul; untamable Evangeline; and Alma, the fiddler whose song wends it way into Clay's heart. Together, they help Clay fashion a quilt of...
12) American rust
Author
Language
English
Description
Set in a beautiful but economically devastated Pennsylvania steel town, a lush landscape as deceptively promising as the edifices of the abandoned steel mills, "American Rust" is a novel of the lost American dream and the desperation that arises in its absence. Left alone to care for his aging father after his mother commits suicide and his sister escapes to Yale, Isaac English longs for a life beyond his hometown. But when he finally sets out to...
13) Fay: a novel
Author
Language
English
Description
Fay Jones abandons her Mississippi home and her abusive father, leaving a clutch of corrupt policemen, truck drivers, strip joint bouncers, and a pile of dead bodies in her wake.
14) Child of God
Author
Language
English
Description
Falsely accused of rape, Lester Ballard is released from jail, and a trip to the dry-goods store, an errand to the blacksmith, and other incidents are transformed into scenes of the comic and the grotesque.
15) The dying animal
Author
Series
Kepesh novels volume 3
Language
English
Description
A prominent TV culture critic and lecturer, sixty-plus David Kepesh finds his world thrown into erotic turmoil by Consuela Castillo, a twenty-four-year-old beauty who ignites in him sexual possessiveness, unreasoning jealousy, and obsessive passion.
Author
Series
Lexile measure
1020L
Language
English
Description
The magnificent second novel from the legendary author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Sailor Song is a wild-spirited and hugely powerful tale of an Oregon logging clan.
A bitter strike is raging in a small lumber town along the Oregon coast. Bucking that strike out of sheer cussedness are the Stampers: Henry, the fiercely vital and overpowering patriarch; Hank, the son who has spent his life trying to live up to his...
A bitter strike is raging in a small lumber town along the Oregon coast. Bucking that strike out of sheer cussedness are the Stampers: Henry, the fiercely vital and overpowering patriarch; Hank, the son who has spent his life trying to live up to his...
17) This rock
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
"The Powell brothers, Muir and Moody, are as different as Cain and Abel. Muir is an innocent, a shy young man with big dreams and not the slightest idea of what to do about them. Moody, the older and wilder brother--embittered by the death of his father, by years of fighting his mother, and by his jealousy of Muir's privileged place in the family--takes to moonshine and gambling and turns his anger on his brother. Muir escapes, hoping to find something--an...
18) In the fall
Author
Language
English
Description
Union soldier Norman Pelham returns from the war with his wife Leah, a runaway slave, and the two begin a life together in Vermont marked by their passionate devotion to one another, the lingering impact of the war, and the racism that haunts three generations.
19) Rose in a storm
Author
Language
English
Description
It's lambing season on the farm and Rose, a sheep dog, must help the farmer save the lambs being born in the winter. She soon has a more urgent task when the farmer is injured and she is left to protect the sheep from circling coyotes, with food supplies dwindling.
20) Joe: a novel
Author
Language
English
Description
"Brilliant . . . Larry Brown has slapped his own fresh tattoo on the big right arm of Southern Lit." -The Washington Post Book World
Now a major motion picture starring Nicolas Cage, directed by David Gordon Green.
Joe Ransom is a hard-drinking ex-con pushing fifty who just won't slow down--not in his pickup, not with a gun, and certainly not with women. Gary Jones estimates his own age to be about fifteen. Born luckless, he is the son of...