Misty Valley Books is known for its excellent selection of books by Vermont authors as well as books on Vermont history. Recent additions to our collection include:


Kingdom Mountain by Howard Frank Mosher

The story of Miss Jane Kinneson, an endearing as she is odd librarian, bird carver, avid hunter and fisherman, and her heroic attempts to save her ancestral mountain from development. Delightful!






Searching for Thoreau: On the Trails & Shores of Wild New England by Tom Slayton

Slayton has written ten vivid essays that transport the reader to places in New England which were important to Thoreau. He retraces Thoreau’s steps from Cape Cod to the deep Maine Woods while attempting to encounter and understand Henry David Thoreau through place. “An unfailingly entertaining literary memoir’, says Howard Frank Mosher. At the bookstore.

Go With Me by Castle Freeman, Jr.

Newfane , Vermont author Freeman has written a gripping tale of determination set in the Vermont hill country. The local villain, Blackway, is making life hellish for Lillian, a woman from away. She finds unlikely allies- Lester, a crafty old-timer, and Nate, a powerful, naïve young man. A fascinating fable-like story of a community and the nature of choices. At the bookstore.

A Peculiar Grace by Jeffrey Lent

A touching story of Vermonter Hewitt Pearce, a 43 year-old blacksmith living alone,safeguarding his late father’s small art collection. With the arrival of a troubled young woman, Jessica, Hewitt is forced to confront his own dark history, his lost love, and comes to a realization that redemption is within reach. One of Lent’s best yet.

Last Flag Down: The Epic Journey of the Last Confederate Warship by Ron Powers and John Baldwin

Powers (Flags of Our Fathers, Mark Twain) has written (with John Baldwin) another true tale that reads like one of the best novels. This is the story of the Shenandoah, a Confederate raider whose mission was to sink as many Yankee ships as possible in a desperate attempt to shatter the U.S. economy. The shocking discovery: after many moths of successful raiding, the captain and his crew learned that the war had been over for months. A poignant portrait of courage, nobility, and comradeship during one of the most difficult times in our nation’s history.

Everyday Herbs in Spiritual Life: A Guide to Many Practices by Michael Caduto

A Chester resident and co-author of the Keepers of the Earth series, Caduto invites the reader to share in the creative power of herbs through hands-on suggestions of rituals, ceremonies, and aplications across many traditions. An inspiring journey through the ancient and modern world of sacred herbs. With an introduction by Rosemary Gladstar.

The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian

When college sophomore Laurel Estabrook is attacked while riding her bicycle through Vermont’s back roads, her life is changed forever. She withdraws into her photography and begins to work at a homeless shelter where she meets Bobbie Crocker, a man with a history of mental illness and a box of photographs he won’t let anyone see. When Bobbie dies, Laurel discovers that although he was homeless, he had been a successful photographer who had worked with Robert Frost, Chuck Berry & Eartha Kitt. A literary thriller and Bohjalian at his best.

The Notebooks of Robert Frost, edited by Robert Faggen

This exceptional book offers Frost’s notebooks, transcribed and presented in their entirety for the first time and gives unprecedented insight into Frost’s complex and often contradictory thinking about poetics, politics, education, science, religion, Marxism, World Wars, Yeats, Pound, Santayana & William James. Edited by the preeminent Frost scholar Robert Faggens.

Devotion by Howard Norman

Norman demonstrates with marveling deliberation how devotion is its own romantic adventure. He lays bare the inventive stupidities people are capable of when wounded and confused and constructs an elegant examination of love: romantic love (and its flip side, hate), filial love at its most tender, and love for the vast open spaces of Nova Scotia.

The Myth of Progress: Toward a Sustainable Future by Tom Wessels


Wessels compellingly demonstrates how our current path toward progress, based on economic expansion and inefficient use of resources, runs absolutely counter to three scientific laws that govern all complex natural systems. Wessels, a professor of ecology at Antioch New England Graduate School makes an impassioned argument for cultural change.

Two Vermonts: Geography & Identity 1865-1910 by Paul Searls

Vermont’s fascination with tourism as a savior for a suffering economy is more than a century old and has always been controversial. An interesting account that is just as true today as in the 19th century.

The Outside Story. Chuck Wooster, editor

A wonderful collection of essays by local writers (including Grafton’s own Nora Lake) exploring the nature of Vermont & New Hampshire. From Northern Woodlands magazine.

Deer Camp by John Miller

Miller’s classic photographic essay on hunting in the Northeast Kingdom documents the rituals and traditions of hunting. The oral histories and photographs are especially moving.

Still As Death by Sarah Stewart Taylor

Taylor’s fourth Sweeney St. George mystery finds our heroine caught between solving a mystery & moving to London to be with her beau, Ian. When a museum housekeeper is found murdered and valuable piece of Egyptian jewelry is missing, Sweeney gets to work on the case which may be related to an unsolved murder of a museum intern back in the seventies. There’s also the problem of her attraction to detective Tim Quinn!

Weathersfield Tales edited by Steve Aikenhead

A delightful collection of stories of Weathersfield. Real Vermontiana.

Burr Morse, Sweet Days and Beyond

Seventh generation Vermonter Burr Morse is a maple sugarer par excellence and a storyteller who brings crowds to his East Montpelier sugarhouse. His handsome illustrated book is a compilation of distilled Vermontiana- as sweet as his syrup-tales of his sugarhouse experiences.

John Morton, A Medal of Honor: An Insider Unveils the Agony & Ecstasy of the Olympic Dream- a novel

John Morton has participated in seven Winter Olympic Games as Nordic athlete, coach, and biathlon team leader. He uses his experiences to draw readers into the crushing disappointments and euphoric victories that are part of the Olympic dream.







Vermont Gathering Places by Peter Miller. Author and photographer Peter Miller completes his Vermont trilogy with this collection of 38 stories of Vermonters and their gathering places.

A Guide to Fiction Set in Vermont
by Ann McKinstry Micou 

A comprehensive summary of descriptions of novels and short stories set in the Green Mountains from 1835 to today. Micou has produced an overview of the fiction inspired by the mystique that is Vermont. An invaluable resource.







Letters to a Young Doubter
by William Sloane Coffin

Modeled after Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, Coffin's latest book is in the form of letters to a young student, Tom, and offers Coffin's cumulative wisdom from his tenure as minister at Riverside Church in New York City and as chaplain at Yale University during the tumultuous 60's.

Sarah Stewart Taylor
Judgment of the Grave

Gravestone expert Harvard art professor Sweeney St. George arrives in Concord, MA to study an 18th century stonecutter. Touring the burial site of Revolutionary War victims, she meets Pres Whiting, a precocious young boy who seems to know a lot about battlefield reenactment.On the way home, they come across a dead man clad in a Revolutionary War-era soldier's uniform. As in all of Sarah Stewart Taylor's novels, there are eerie coincidences for which only Sweeney St. George can find explanations. Stewart Taylor's best yet!

Marc Estrin
The Education of Arnold Hitler

A brilliant and imaginative satire in which Estrin introduces a baby boomer unfortunately named, who must navigate an absurd world of activists, academics, street warriors, and their meaningless words. Estrin's cutting intellect along with his powerful sense of humor examines the darkest issues of the age: the persistence of war and racism, the intractable forces of history and the lies that words conceal. Estrin is the author of Insect Dreams, Rehearsing With Gods, and is a cellist and activist as well as a successful writer.

The Art of Teaching by Jay Parini

Middlebury professor and author, Jay Parini, looks back over his decades of trials, errors, and triumphs in an intimate memoir that brims with humor, encouragement, and hard-won wisdom about the teacher's craft. He explores facets of teaching that include the theatrical, the sartorial, and the political. An eloquent look at teaching and its role in our civilization.

Life With History, John Morton Blum

A splendid memoir by one of America's most distinguished historians and
an Andover, Vermont resident as well.

All Those in Favor, Rediscovering the Secrets of Town Meeting &
Community by Susan Clark and Frank Bryan

A timely book that explores ways for improving and preserving town
meetings across the state.

Chris Bohjalian
Before You Know Kindness

A nightmarish accident tests the values and changes the lives of the members of this privileged family. Bohjalian is a master at exploring family loyalty and love.

Howard Frank Mosher:
Waiting for Teddy Williams

In this funny, heart-felt book Mosher has the Red Sox beat the Yankees and then the Mets to win the World Series. E.A. (for Ethan Allen), a Vermont home- schooled boy in northern Vermont, longs to play baseball and find his long-lost father. When a drifter named Teddy shows up at the farm, he teaches E.A. to pitch and more. Another rollicking, not to be missed Mosher book.

Gael Shephard:
Tranquil Vermont

Shephard’s pastels of Vermont capture the exquisite beauty of our state.

Sarah Stewart Taylor:
Mansions of the Dead

Taylor’s second novel promises to be as good as O’Artful Death, with Sweeney St. George and funereal jewelry!

Ronald Simon & Marc Estrin:
Rehearsing with Gods: Photographs
& Essays on The Bread & Puppet Theater

A wonderful tribute to The Bread and Puppet Theater with stunning photographs by Ron Simon and essays by Marc Estrin.

Freedom & Unity, A History of Vermont
by Michael Sherman, Gene Sessions,
& P. Jeffrey Potash

At last, a readable history of Vermont from prehistory to the present, with maps and illustrations.

Civil Wars, A Battle for Gay Marriage
by David Moats

Moats has documented Vermont’s historic struggle to create civil unions.

Idyll Banter
by Chris Bohjalian

Bohjalian’s collection of columns from the Burlington Free Press is a wonderful glimpse into small town Vermont life.

M is for Maple Syrup, A Vermont Alphabet
by Cynthia Furlong Reynolds/Ginny
Joyner, ill

A Cow's Alfalfa-Bet
by Woody Jackson

Mirror Lake
by Thomas Christopher Greene

Log Drives on the Connecticut River by Bill Gove;

Writing for Her Life,
a biography of Grafton writer
Mildred Walker, written by her
daughter, Ripley Hugo

O'Artful Death by Sarah Stewart Taylor

Sweeney St. George spends Christmas in Byzantium Art Colony (loosely based on the Cornish Colony) and becomes involved in a 100 year-old mystery.

and histories of Townshend, Vt, Grafton, Vt and Weston, VT.

home