Asheville Collection


Book Description

Dive into the world of small-town love with this collection of standalone rom-com stories featuring friends and neighbors in Asheville, North Carolina. Each story has a tie-in to Sylvie's brand-new Love on Tap series, so you'll enjoy seeing these characters make special appearances throughout that series. Playing by Heart: Kat and Grady - Music lover Kat has spent a lifetime hiding in the shadows. When her hot guitar-playing crush needs a songstress to save his show, can he convince her to give life under the spotlight a try? The Switch Up: Daphne and Wyatt - Daphne has everything under control—including her dating life. Having found her perfect match through a carefully calculated process, there’s only one thing left to do: meet him. What could possibly go wrong? Booby Trapped: Rylee and Dean - Today is the day for Dean to finally tell his sister's best friend how he feels about her. Too bad she’s got him running around town on a mad charity scavenger hunt and looking like a complete fool. He'll never win Rylee's heart this way, will he? Crushing on Casanova: Mel and Will - When life gives you lemons, you… work at your aunt’s escort business? Scheduling dates and fielding phone calls from horny customers may not be Melanie’s dream, but the job does have its perks. A sweet hottie named Will, in particular. But she could never date an escort… right? Taunted: Jade and Pete - Jade is a tough-as-nails chick with a plan, and she’ll do whatever it takes to secure her future. But someone—or something— seems hell-bent on interrupting her life in the most unnerving of ways.




Asheville's River Arts District


Book Description

In the early days, the River Arts District was home to Cherokees; the estate of Asheville's first millionaire, James McConnell Smith; and the Southern Railroad Depot. It was also known as Asheville's first industrial district; one of the area's most vibrant African American communities, which has since been decimated by urban renewal; and the base of prominent grassroots organizations such as RiverLink, Mountain Housing Opportunities, the West-End Clingman Avenue neighborhood, and the River District Artists. In 1989, Asheville's citizens developed a long-range revitalization plan for the city. As Asheville boomed in the early 1990s, the River Arts District lagged behind. In 1995, fire destroyed the district's most prominent landmark, the Asheville Cotton Mill, prompting a phoenix-like renaissance.




A Southern Collection


Book Description

A Southern Collection presents select masterworks from the permanent collection of the Morris Museum of Art on the occasion of the institution's inaugural exhibition. Drawn from a comprehensive survey collection of painting in the South from the late eighteenth century to the present day, the museum's opening exhibit explores an artistic terrain as rich and diverse as the South itself, arranged in categories that reflect critical chronological developments in the art world. A survey of painting activity in the South begins with the travels of itinerant portrait artists working prior to the Civil War. At the same time, landscape painting encompasses a sensitive response to the swamps, bayous and fertile fields of the South. Late in the nineteenth century strong and vivid genre painting competes with the nostalgic effects realized by Southern impressionists, whose shimmering, liquid images are invested with an elusive spirit of place. In this century, those strains of realism and naturalism that characterize the classic body of Southern writing appear in the representational art of painters who defied the modern abstract dictum. And finally, the exciting, compelling works of a current generation of both self-taught artists and sophisticated contemporary painters complete this fascinating, though sometimes neglected, chapter in American art history.




The Wyeths


Book Description

N. C. Wyeth was one of America's greatest illustrators and the founder of a dynasty of artists that continues to enrich the American scene. This collection of letters, written from his eighteenth year to his tragic death at sixty-one, constitutes in effect his intimate autobiography, and traces and development and flowering of the "Wyeth tradition" over the course of several generations. -- Amazon.com.




Asheville's Albemarle Park


Book Description

Albemarle Park was envisioned as a picturesque mountainside resort in north Asheville. It was a great success due to the collaborative efforts of railroad executive William Greene Raoul and his son Thomas; Bradford Gilbert, architect of New York City's first skyscraper; and Samuel Parsons Jr., landscape architect for the City of New York. The Manor and its surrounding cottages served as an alternative to standard late-19th-century Asheville hotels and boardinghouses. Dances, plays, bowling, archery, golf, motoring, and equestrian events were available for guests to enjoy, and meals were sourced from The Manor's own farm. Notable guests of The Manor included Eleanor Roosevelt and Grace Kelly. It was also a film set for The Last of the Mohicans. Consisting of enchanting architecture and romantic landscaping, Albemarle Park was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1977 and as a local historic district in 1989. Through family archives, private collections, and ephemera, Asheville's Albemarle Park showcases the history of this significant Asheville neighborhood.




Josef Albers


Book Description

Published in book form for the first time, a collection of woodcuts, sandblasted glass pictures, and oil paintings offers insight into the late artist's use of abstractions, color, and perception effects, in a volume that shares key passages from his personal writings.




Asheville's Historic Architecture


Book Description

Asheville: an architectural gem of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Known for its architectural diversity and intriguing Art Deco style, Asheville has been fortunate in attracting brilliant architects who have created lasting testaments in brick and stone with imaginative foresight and design expertise. Local architectural enthusiast Richard Hansley recounts the history behind dozens of Asheville's most prominent buildings and historical neighborhoods in Asheville's Historic Architecture. Discover how Douglas Ellington, Richard Sharp Smith, James Vester Miller and Tony Lord influenced this busy metropolis, as landmarks like the Jackson Building, the Grove Park Inn and the Art Deco City Building were constructed along the city's thriving streets. These buildings have stood the test of time and remain as breathtaking in concept and appearance today as when first completed.




Murder at Asheville's Battery Park Hotel


Book Description

Did the phrase "That's what I was wondering..." solve a murder? In the morning hours of July 16, 1936, Helen Clevenger's uncle discovered her bloodied body crumpled on the floor of her small room in Asheville's grand Battery Park Hotel. She had been shot through the chest. Buncombe County Sheriff Laurence Brown, up for reelection, desperately searched for the teenager's killer as the public clamored for answers. Though witnesses reported seeing a white man leave the scene, Brown's focus turned instead to the hotel's Black employees and on August 9 he arrested bell hop Martin Moore. After a frenzied four-day trial that captured the nation's attention, Moore was convicted of Helen's murder on August 22. Though Moore confessed to Sherriff Brown, doubt of his guilt lingers and many Southerners feared that justice had not, in fact, been served. Author Anne Chesky Smith weaves together varying accounts of the murder and investigation to expose a complex and disturbing chapter in Asheville's history.




The Violent World of Broadus Miller


Book Description

In the summer of 1927, an itinerant Black laborer named Broadus Miller was accused of killing a fifteen-year-old white girl in Morganton, North Carolina. Miller became the target of a massive manhunt lasting nearly two weeks. After he was gunned down in the North Carolina mountains, his body was taken back to Morganton and publicly displayed on the courthouse lawn on a Sunday afternoon, attracting thousands of spectators. Kevin W. Young vividly illustrates the violence-wracked world of the early twentieth century in the Carolinas, the world that created both Miller and the hunters who killed him. Young provides a panoramic overview of this turbulent time, telling important contextual histories of events that played into this tragic story, including the horrific prison conditions of the era, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, and the influx of Black immigrants into North Carolina. More than an account of a single murder case, this book vividly illustrates the stormy race relations in the Carolinas during the early 1900s, reminding us that the legacy of this era lingers into the present.




Moonshiners and Prohibitionists


Book Description

Homemade liquor has played a prominent role in the Appalachian economy for nearly two centuries. The region endured profound transformations during the extreme prohibition movements of the nineteenth century, when the manufacturing and sale of alcohol—an integral part of daily life for many Appalachians—was banned. In Moonshiners and Prohibitionists: The Battle over Alcohol in Southern Appalachia, Bruce E. Stewart chronicles the social tensions that accompanied the region's early transition from a rural to an urban-industrial economy. Stewart analyzes the dynamic relationship of the bootleggers and opponents of liquor sales in western North Carolina, as well as conflict driven by social and economic development that manifested in political discord. Stewart also explores the life of the moonshiner and the many myths that developed around hillbilly stereotypes. A welcome addition to the New Directions in Southern History series, Moonshiners and Prohibitionists addresses major economic, social, and cultural questions that are essential to the understanding of Appalachian history.