John Carenen in conversation with Scott Gould | Keeping to Himself

Join us at the bookshop for a conversation with South Carolina authors John Carenen and Scott Gould on September 2nd at 7PM! This event was rescheduled from a virtual event in July, and we are excited to host these authors in-person. We will be celebrating the release of Carenen's newest book, Keeping to Himself, and we look forward to an excellent conversation with John Carenen and Hub City Press author Scott Gould! Our in-person events have limited seating; please sign up to attend.

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Keeping to Himself

by John Carenen

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Deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina, Whit Coombs seeks peace, quiet, and healing. Scarred spiritually by the death of his wife, who died cursing him for not euthanizing her, and physically from an IED in Iraq, he just wants a simple life in his cabin by a lake, miles from a hard road. Then, on a nighttime hike, he witnesses a grisly murder and finds himself with a dilemma: report the crime and lose his privacy-and maybe his life-or let the killers get away with it. As the killers and the attractive female county sheriff get closer to discovering what he saw, he realizes that maybe Keeping to Himself won't give him the peace he needs.

John Carenen is a writer with a keen eye for both serious and humorous work. His by-line columns in the Morganton (North Carolina) News-Herald and the Clinton (South Carolina) Chronicle established his reputation for self-effacing humor, with one column reprinted in Reader's Digest. Other RD credits include Shagger! which won a First Person Award. The National Institute of Mental Health published Son-up, Son-down, his novelized treatment of a successful group home approach, the Teaching-Family Model. He has been a key presenter at a number of Teaching-Family Model national conferences and, more recently, a panelist several times over in Killer Nashville Conferences, including a Claymore Award at the 2019 conference. He has also published pieces in The Sign, McCall's, and Dynamic Years, and his Thomas O'Shea trilogy (Signs of Struggle, A Far Gone Night, and The Face on the Other Side) drew accolades from established authors. Ron Rash, Wendy Tyson, and William Ken Kreuger, among others, have praised his work.

Scott Gould's new memoir, Things That Crash, Things That Fly, was called an “extraordinary work” by author David Shields and “a delight to read” by the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Gould is also the author of the story collection, Strangers to Temptation, and the novel, Whereabouts. A new collection of stories, Idiot Men, is forthcoming from Springer Mountain Press in late summer, 2021; and a new novel, The Hammerhead Chronicles, is set for publication in February 2022 by the University of North Georgia Press. Gould lives in Sans Souci, South Carolina and teaches at the S.C. Governor’s School for the Arts & Humanities.