13 Books Like Cades Cove

My father’s side of our family is from North Carolina, and I’ve always felt the magic of these mountains, especially within the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I yearned to understand how the people lived and raised children, created an entire community, lived off the land, and handled sickness, despair, and celebrations. I wanted to bring their stories to life and honor and preserve their unique history. We can all learn something from these brave men and women who staked out the land, built, grew, and hunted everything they needed, and created a community full of family, resilience, and perseverance. I proudly honor their stories within my historical fiction novels.

I don’t know how much of who we are is determined by genetics, and how much is from the environment, but I enjoy using characters and stories to explore the question. My scientific and medical background allows me to pull from my training, clinical patients, and scientific studies to create stories that explore characters who are at the precipice of a problem and need to fight against their inner beliefs to learn who they truly are. It’s like a chess game, moving the pieces around the board to see which side will win!

My father’s side of our family is from North Carolina, and I’ve always felt the magic of these mountains, especially within the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I yearned to understand how the people lived and raised children, created an entire community, lived off the land, and handled sickness, despair, and celebrations. I wanted to bring their stories to life and honor and preserve their unique history. We can all learn something from these brave men and women who staked out the land, built, grew, and hunted everything they needed, and created a community full of family, resilience, and perseverance. I proudly honor their stories within my historical fiction novels.

My father’s side of our family is from North Carolina, and I’ve always felt the magic of these mountains, especially within the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I yearned to understand how the people lived and raised children, created an entire community, lived off the land, and handled sickness, despair, and celebrations. I wanted to bring their stories to life and honor and preserve their unique history. We can all learn something from these brave men and women who staked out the land, built, grew, and hunted everything they needed, and created a community full of family, resilience, and perseverance. I proudly honor their stories within my historical fiction novels.

While attending college, I lived in a haunted house. This was before all the ghost-hunting shows and YouTube, so I didn’t know what I was seeing at night. During the year and a half of these experiences, I saw two distinct shadow figures and had other people living in the front of the house, as well as my roommate, confirm they, too, had seen and heard things that were unexplainable. This began my interest in the paranormal. After graduation, I became a law enforcement officer and have been a Police Detective for the last 21 years. I have explored haunted locations and seen spirits and other unexplainable things.  

I am endlessly inspired by the beauty and majesty of our national parks. As a former seasonal ranger at Mount Rainier National Park and Oregon’s Silver Falls State Park, I was frequently surprised by the incredible scrapes that visitors could get themselves into. Of course, I wasn’t immune, and I experienced a few misadventures of my own. These books are great reminders to always respect your limits and be aware of your surroundings. Since I now write novels set in our national parks, I enjoy reading some of these real adventures—it provides great fodder for the imagination. 

I am endlessly inspired by the beauty and majesty of our national parks. As a former seasonal ranger at Mount Rainier National Park and Oregon’s Silver Falls State Park, I was frequently surprised by the incredible scrapes that visitors could get themselves into. Of course, I wasn’t immune, and I experienced a few misadventures of my own. These books are great reminders to always respect your limits and be aware of your surroundings. Since I now write novels set in our national parks, I enjoy reading some of these real adventures—it provides great fodder for the imagination. 

I was raised in a don't-blink-or-you'll-miss-it town in southeast Tennessee. I was embarrassed by where I came from for a long time, and worked on getting rid of my tell-tale accent. Then, as the years went on,  I figured out who I am as a person was shaped by being a small-town Southern girl. So I embraced my Southerness. When I started writing fiction, it never occurred to me to set my books anywhere but small towns, and every one of them is. I’m fact, with the exception of one, all my books are set in Tennessee. At this point, I can't imagine not writing small-town stories.

I am Lynda Rees, The Murder Guru, multi-award-winning author of historical fiction, contemporary mystery, suspense, romance, middle-grade mysteries, and children’s fiction. I love all things historical, especially American history. I am part-Cherokee, a coal miner’s daughter born in the Appalachian Mountains, and I grew up in northern Kentucky when Newport prospered as a gambling, prostitution, and sin mecca under the Cleveland Mob. My fascination with history’s effect on today’s lives works its way into my written pages. Having traveled the world negotiating with heads of industry and foreign governments during a corporate career in marketing and global transportation, this workaholic adventurer has succumbed to my passion for writing.

I think all horror authors have at least one coming-of-age novel inside them. I suppose I have some expertise on the topic because I recently finished my first coming-of-age novel, The Dancing Plague. I’ve written stories from the perspectives of children before. One of the challenges I found is getting the voice right. Kids think and talk differently than adults, so it can be a bit tricky finding the right balance between credibility and readability. Nobody wants to read an adult novel that sounds as though it was written by a kid. Conversely, nobody wants to read a novel that’s narrated by a twelve-year-old that sounds as though it was written by an adult.