Great Reads from Great Places

Every year the South Carolina Center for the Book makes an adult and a youth “Great Reads from Great Places” selection. Books may be written by authors from the state, take place in the state, or celebrate the state’s culture and heritage. These selections are highlighted at the annual Library of Congress National Book Festival as part of the Roadmap to Reading along with the other 55 affiliate Centers for the Book.

2026 Great Reads from Great Places Selection

The South Carolina State Library's Center for the Book has selected as 2026’s Great Reads from Great Places Backcountry Resistance: South Carolina’s Militia and the Fight for American Independence by Carl P. Borick and An Army of a Different Kind: The Battle of the Great Savannah, August 25, 1780 by Eric K. Barnes.

Cover of Backcountry Resistance.
Adults

Backcountry Resistance

Carl P. Borick

The extraordinary story of a war fought by ordinary people.

In Backcountry Resistance, Carl P. Borick delivers a groundbreaking account of the citizen militias that defied British forces in South Carolina's volatile Backcountry during the pivotal Southern campaign of the Revolutionary War. When Charleston fell in May of 1780 and the Continental Army retreated, many assumed the Patriot cause in the South had collapsed. In the state's rugged interior, though, partisan militias waged a brutal insurgency that challenged British control and changed the course of the war.

Focusing on rank-and-file militiamen, Borick explores how these ordinary men were recruited, armed, fed, and motivated. Drawing on underused pension records and state claims, he reconstructs their everyday realities and their battlefield experiences. He also examines the war's devastating effects on civilians, including enslaved people and women, who played crucial roles in the struggle.

Richly detailed and grounded in the human experience of warfare, Backcountry Resistance offers the most comprehensive portrait to date of South Carolina's militia during the decisive years of the American War of Independence.
 

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Cover of An Army of a Different Kind
Kids

An Army of a Different Kind

Eric K. Barnes

Historyman Comics presents a graphic novel set during Revolutionary War times in South Carolina. Each novel is inspired by historical record. In An Army of a Different Kind, Francis Marion takes command of local militia and fights for survival against the British. Continental General Horatio Gates becomes the new hope for the Americans after the British are victorious at Charleston, South Carolina. Francis Marion and a handful of men and boys link up with the American army as they head toward Camden, South Carolina. Gates sends Marion and his men behind enemy lines to rally the militia, while he confronts the larger portion of the British Army under General Cornwallis. But the Americans lose at Camden and are thrown into confusion. Marion and the militia under his command are surrounded and unsupported. What will they do? Francis Marion's legend is born when he decides to attack!

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Past Annual Selections

2025

Cover of How To Sell A Haunted House.
Adults

How To Sell A Haunted House

Grady Hendrix

New York Times bestselling author Grady Hendrix takes on the haunted house in a hilarious and terrifying new novel that explores the way your past-and your family-can haunt you like nothing else.... Louise's parents have passed away, and she's returning to the small Southern town where she grew up to get their house ready to sell. It means she'll have to spend time with her younger brother-and their old grudges make that a terrifying prospect. But childhood hurts pale in comparison to the dangers posed by what still lives inside the house.

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Cover of Okra Stew: A Gullah Geechee Family Celebration
Kids

Okra Stew: A Gullah Geechee Family Celebration

Natalie Daise

Papa has something special planned for tonight's family dinner-and Bobo can't wait! Excited to learn how to make okra stew like his ancestors, Bobo helps Papa pick veggies from the garden, catch shrimp from the creek, rain down rice in the pot, simmer the stew, and even make a tasty side of cornbread. When the stew begins to bubble and pop, Bobo and his family gather around for a mouthwatering feast.

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2024

Cover of The Big Game is Every Night.
Adults

The Big Game is Every Night

Robert Maynor

Grady Hayes is a young high school football player being raised by his hard working single mother. His life revolves around football, until-in a game against cross-county rivals-he breaks his leg. Cut off from his teammates, Grady is lost. He takes prescription pills to dull the pain and pass the time. But when his leg finally heals and Grady tries to return to the team, his spot has been filled and he can't relate to his teammates anymore. Grady takes up with Hambone, a brooding older boy, and they start hunting together in the swamp at night. Their relationship is volatile, fueled by alcohol and pills, and their hunting ritual quickly turns dark and carelessly violent. Feeling helpless and out of ways to stop her son's downward spiral, Grady's mother asks his estranged father to pay them a visit to set Grady straight, leading to a tragic family reckoning. Told in the keen, honest voice of a young man growing up in the rural American South, The Big Game is Every Night is a literary novel that explores the cultural forces that shape contemporary blue-collar America.

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Cover of The Parker Inheritance
Kids

The Parker Inheritance

Varian Johnson

Twelve-year-old Candice Miller is spending the summer in Lambert, South Carolina, in the old house that belonged to her grandmother, who died after being dismissed as city manager for having the city tennis courts dug up looking for buried treasure--but when she finds the letter that sent her grandmother on the treasure hunt, she finds herself caught up in the mystery and, with the help of her new friend and fellow book-worm, Brandon, she sets out to find the inheritance, exonerate her grandmother, and expose an injustice once committed against an African American family in Lambert.

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2023

Cover of The Blue Line Down.
Adults

The Blue Line Down

Maris Lawyer

From debut novelist Maris Lawyer, The Blue Line Down is a breakneck tale of betrayal, loyalty, and unexpected homecoming. Jude Washer wants to run: away from the coal mines where he is destined to work, away from his father's abuse of his little brother, away from the prison-like confines of his village. Whispers of unionizing ripple through the small West Virginia mining town. When the mines take Jude's brother away from him, Jude takes matters into his own hands. With nowhere else to go, Jude joins the Baldwin-Felts Agency, a band of violent men dedicated to stamping out unionizers across the mountains. It is 1922, and the Baldwin-Felts are poised to raid a mining town in Virginia. When the coal miners fight back against the agents, Jude, now twenty-four, and Harvey, a new recruit, take an opportunity to flee amid the bloodshed. With the Baldwin-Felts on their tail, Jude and an injured Harvey make their way down the mountains, where they are intercepted in South Carolina by a ragtag gang of bootleggers who put them to work to pay off a debt. Jude is desperate for a place to call home, but can he find it in these hardscrabble hills among strangers?

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Cover of Indigo Dreaming.
Kids

Indigo Dreaming

Dinah Johnson

A young girl living on the coast of South Carolina dreams of her distant relatives on the shores of Africa and beyond. Indigo Dreaming is a poetic meditation between two young girls--on different sides of the sea--who wonder about how they are intricately linked by culture, even though they are separated by location. The girls' reflections come together, creating a vision of home, as well as a celebration of the Black diaspora.

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2022

Cover of The Islanders.
Kids

The Islanders

Mary Alice Monroe

Jake's life has been turned upside down. His dad was wounded in Afghanistan, and his mom is going to help care for him. That means Jake's going to have to spend the summer on Dewees Island with his grandmother. Dewees is a nature sanctuary--no cars or paved roads, no stores or restaurants. To make matters worse, Jake's grandmother doesn't believe in cable or the internet. Which means Jake has no cell phone, no video games ... no friends. But then he meets two other kids - one is also visiting the small island, and the other lives there. Forced together by circumstance and loneliness, they become inseperable. but when they find what they think is an abandoned boat, their adventure lands them in hot water! Their punishment? Turtle duty. Daily beach patrols at dawn checking for loggerhead sea turtle tracks initially sound pretty boring, but then a nest is destroyed. The three friends are determined to protect "their" nest. Can they save the loggerhead eggs from predators? And can Jake's growing love for the island and its inhabitants (be they two-legged, four-legged, feathered, of finned) help his father get well?

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2021

Cover of Root Magic.

Root Magic

Eden Royce

In 1963 in South Carolina, eleven-year-old twins Jez and Jay Turner begin lessons in rootwork, and their uncle's training offers them healing, protection, and a connection to their heritage even as they face threats from the local police deputy, school bullies, and others.

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2020

Cover of This is the Rope: A Story from the Great Migration.

This is the Rope: A Story from the Great Migration

Jacquline Woodson

 A rope passed down through the generations frames an African American family's story as they journey north during the time of the Great Migration, 1910-1930. A little girl in South Carolina finds a rope under a tree one summer. She has no idea the rope will become part of her family’s history. But for three generations, that rope is passed down, used for everything from jump rope games to tying suitcases onto a car for the big move north to New York City, and even for a family reunion where that first little girl is now a grandmother.

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2019

Cover of How High the Moon.

How High the Moon

Karyn Parsons

 In the small town of Alcolu, South Carolina, in 1944, 12-year-old Ella spends her days fishing and running around with her best friend Henry and cousin Myrna. But life is not always so sunny for Ella, who gets bullied for her light skin tone and whose mother is away pursuing a jazz singer dream in Boston.So Ella is ecstatic when her mother invites her to visit for Christmas. Little does she expect the truths she will discover about her mother, the father she never knew and her family's most unlikely history.And after a life-changing month, she returns South and is shocked by the news that her schoolmate George has been arrested for the murder of two local white girls.Bittersweet and eye-opening, How High the Moon is a timeless novel about a girl finding herself in a world all but determined to hold her down.

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2018

Cover of He Said/She Said.

He Said/She Said

Kwame Alexander

When a popular football 'playa' and ladies man and the smartest girl in school lead a school protest, sparks fly as their social media-aided revolution grows.

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2017

Cover of Ants ‘n’ Uncles.

Ants ‘n’ Uncles

Clay Rice

What happens when Uncle steps on an ant hill? The ants in his pants make him dance, of course, and his dancing skills become famous around the world. From award-winning author and silhouette artist Clay Rice comes the rhyming tale of an accidental hero. Filled with scenes from countries and cultures around the globe, this lively, silly story is sure to delight children and parents.

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2016

Cover of Dog Diaries: Secret Writings of the WOOF Society.

Dog Diaries: Secret Writings of the WOOF Society

Betsy Byars, Betsy Duffy & Laurie Myers

At the first annual meeting of WOOF--Words of Our Friends--assorted dogs preserve their heritage by sharing tales of canines throughout history, including Abu, who ruled all of Egypt except for one pesky cat, and Zippy, who simply must find the squeaky toy.

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