With illustrations by Paul Brett Johnson

Sporty Creek is a series of short stories set in the Kentucky hills. Narrated by a young boy (a cousin of the narrator of Still's classic novel River of Earth), the book tells the story of his family during the Great Depression. With work in the coal mines sporadic, they move from place to place, trying to earn a living the best they can. The story is told with gentleness and humor.

First published in 1940, James Still's masterful novel has become a classic. It is the story, seen through the eyes of a boy, of three years in the life of his family and their kin. He sees his parents pulled between the meager farm with its sense of independence and the mining camp with its uncertain promise of material prosperity. In his world privation, violence, and death are part of everyday life, accepted and endured. Yet it is a world of dignity, love, and humor, of natural beauty which Still evokes in sharp, poetic images. No writer has caught more effectively the vividness of...

The people of the Kentucky mountains and the southern Appalachians preserved a language alive with colorful turns of phrase and whimsical wit and for their amusement they created a rich vein of oral lore -- songs, tales, and games. James Still presents a varied and entertaining collection of riddles, whimsies, and verbal pranks, gathered through his long association with the mountain people of eastern Kentucky.

This book includes in one volume two earlier books -- Way Down Yonder on Troublesome Creek and The Wolfpen Rusties -- that have been unavailable for several...

Still's delightful Appalachian retelling of ""ack and the Beanstalk," with illustrations by Margot Tomes, was the New York Times Book Review Judges' Choice for Best Illustrated Children's Book when it first appeared in 1977. This reprint makes available an Appalachian rendition of a beloved children's classic to a new generation of readers.

After keeping school for six years at the forks of Troublesome Creek in the Kentucky hills, James Still moved to a century-old log house between the waters of Wolfpen Creek and Dead Mare Branch, on Little Carr Creek, and became "the man in the bushes" to his curious neighbors. Still joined the life of the scattered community. He raised his own food, preserved fruits and vegetables for the winter, and kept two stands of bees for honey. A neighbor remarked of Still, "He's left a good job, and come over in here and sot down."

Still did sit down and write -- the classic novel River...

James Still first achieved national recognition in the 1930s as a poet. Although he is better known today as a writer of fiction, it is his poetry that many of his essential images, such as the "mighty river of earth," first found expression. Yet much of his poetry remains out of print or difficult to find.

From the Mountain, From the Valley collects all of Still's poems, including several never before published, and corrects editorial mistakes that crept into previous collections. The poems are presented in chronological order, allowing the reader to trace the evolution of...