Leaving home was the best decision Chrys Pickett ever made. She lost her rural accent, got a PhD and made something of herself, promising she’d never go back to her roots. But when your Nanny needs you and your heart has been smashed to pieces, promises are easily dismissed.The loud, affectionate family welcome and simple Appalachian life—cookouts and church, chickens and dogs in the yard—are just what Chrys needs. Family is what matters. She doesn’t mind caring for Nanny…just for ...

Miranda Jasper just wants her life to go back to normal. For Miranda, "normal" means living in a spooky old house in tiny Wilder, Kentucky, with her mom and granny who, like her, share a mysterious power called The Sight. It also means hanging out with her two best friends, Adam, a city kid who's had to adjust to small-town life, and Abigail, the ghost who haunts Miranda's room. But things are changing.Miranda's mom has a new boyfriend, which changes things at home, and Adam announ...

In a small Kentucky college town in 1953, two married women desperately fall in love with each other, until a moment of indiscretion threatens to destroy both their lives.In her new adult novel, award-winning author Julia Watts creates a compelling, emotional queer tale of power and passion. Colleagues and neighbors of Samuel and Boots are more than willing to accept their married status, even though Samuel “dresses like a boy” and the pair’s relat...

Miranda Jasper is different from the other kids in the small town of Wilder, Kentucky. Like all the women in her family, she has the Sight the ability to see into other people's thoughts.Though her granny assures Miranda that the Sight is a gift, it often feels like a curse especially when Miranda's middle-school classmates start calling her "the witch girl." Miranda has only one real friend her age, Abigail, who just happens to be the ghost of the girl who haunts Miranda's ...

In a small Kentucky college town in 1953, two married women desperately fall in love with each other, until a moment of indiscretion threatens to destroy both their lives.In her new adult novel, award-winning author Julia Watts creates a compelling, emotional queer tale of power and passion. Colleagues and neighbors of Samuel and Boots are more than willing to accept their married status, even though Samuel “dresses like a boy” and the pair’s relat...

Okay, you’re a lesbian. Now what??? That’s the question that newly out Kentucky graduate student Jess Hamlin tries to answer in this heartwarming and hilarious account of her southern days and nights. From making and losing acquaintances, to finding and keeping real friends. Through bars and coffee houses, school and work. Surviving family drama and ex-lover trauma. Dealing with well-intentioned matchmakers and dates from hell. Having crushes and getting crushed. Coping—and sometimes not c...

**The essential read on disability, spirituality, and social justice that won the 2025 Grawemeyer Award in Religion, the 2024 National Jewish Book Award, and moreA transformative spiritual companion and deep dive into disability politics that reimagines disability in the Bible and contemporary culture**“What’s wrong with you?”Scholar, activist, and rabbi Julia Watts Belser is all too familiar with this question. What’s wrong isn’t her wheelchair, though—it’...

Vermillion, Georgia, is the small town that time forgot, or at least that's how it feels to fifteen-year-old Rufus. As if being a scrawny ginger called "Matchstick" isn't bad enough, Rufus is also gay, an artist, and the son of conservative religious fanatics. He doesn't have a prayer of fitting in in the Bible Belt—at least not until he meets Syd, a spiky-haired girl in black eyeliner. Sick of being the adult her mother can't seem to be, Syd hides behind a snarky attitude and takes refuge...

This book borrows from the intellectual labor of queer theory in order to unsettle—or “queer”—the discourses of “religion” and “science,” and, by extension, the “science and religion discourse.” Drawing intellectual and social cues from works by influential theorists such as Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and Eve Sedgwick, chapters in this volume converge on at least three common features of queer theory. First, queer theory challenges givens that on occasion still undergird religiously a...

When sixteen-year-old Ruby Pickett and her family move to the new, government-built city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Ruby knows that her daddy’s new job will help the war effort, but she has no idea how. Ruby is not alone in her lack of knowledge, as the city’s true purpose is a carefully guarded secret. A thinker and a reader, Ruby has always been restless, and she finds Oak Ridge a much more stimulating environment than her old home in rural Southeastern Kentucky.

Set in rural Tennessee, QUIVER, a YA novel by Julia Watts, focuses on the unlikely friendship between two teens from opposite sides of the culture wars. Libby is the oldest child of six, going on seven, in a family that adheres to the "quiverfull" lifestyle: strict evangelical Christians who believe that they should have as many children as God allows because children are like arrows in the quiver of "God's righteous warriors." Meanwhile, her new neighbor, Zo is ...

Twelve-year-old Miranda Jasper has the Sight, a gift that allows her to see into other people's thoughts. Most regular kids are scared of Miranda and avoid her; however, Miranda does have two friends who definitely aren't regular kids: horror-movie obsessed Adam who has moved to Wilder from the big city, and Abigail, the ghost of a girl who died in the 1800s.Lately the kids' hometown of Wilder, Kentucky, has been going through some changes. A meat-packing plant has opened, bringing...