THE DAYS BETWEEN THE YEARS

"The Days Between the Years, I have admired it paragraph by paragraph, page by page, and when I came to the end, I felt that surge of happiness and completion you have so carefully designed for your readers to feel."
---Fred Chappell, author of I Am One of You Forever

"The great thing about Austin is how deftly she juggles heartbreaking honesty with subtle Southern-fried humor, much like Lee Smith."
---Jennifer Parker, "The Sun News" (Myrtle Beach, SC)

"Humorous, tender, and uplifting."
---Suzanne W., Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County (NC)

"I finished the book late last night, mostly because I couldn't make myself put it down and go to sleep! Best thing I've read in ages."
---Debbie Cash, "Jonesborough (TN) Herald and Tribune"

WHERE THE WOODBINE TWINES

"Sherry Austin is the author of a scintillating collection of short stories, Mariah of the Spirits and Other Southern Ghost Stories, featuring a number of delicate but powerful ghostly tales set chiefly in the rural South. She has now produced a short novel, and it fulfills every reader’s prediction of her creative development. Once again set in the South, this time in South Carolina, Where the Woodbine Twines introduces us to thirteen-year-old Nan Ayler, who develops a complex, paradoxical friendship with eleven-year-old Catherine Wiley. Can Catherine’s dour hostility to Nan be attributed entirely to her perceived membership in a fading Southern aristocracy? Has she, even at her tender age, suffered a trauma of which she is unwilling to speak? A trip to the beach, with an almost phantasmagoric episode at a carnival that Ray Bradbury could not have surpassed, culminates in . . . what? All we, and Nan, know is that something strange occurred. Where the Woodbine Twines may perhaps be only on the fringe of supernatural fiction, but that is not to deny its extraordinarily fluent prose (“Moonlight lay like giant pearls between the tree trunks”), its subtle but telling character portrayal, and its etching of an anomalous incident that has haunted a young woman for the duration of her life. If one is looking for the perfect antidote to the excesses of contemporary supernatural fiction, this is surely it."
---S.T. Joshi

"The elements of greatness."
---Rob Neufeld, Asheville Citizen-Times

"Austin's prose flows gently until the deeply running currents lure you into a dark and daunting place you're more than willing to go. Her words are simple and few, but each one is written with a purpose that makes this small book feel full."
---Ann Patterson, Spartanburg Herald-Journal

"Sherry Austin has created a masterful Southern Gothic that leaves an otherworldly portal slightly ajar - leading to "where the woodbine twines."
---Suzanne W., Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County (NC)

MARIAH OF THE SPIRITS

"Sherry Austin puts her fascination with the afterlife to effective fictional use in her debut collection, Mariah of the Spirits and Other Southern Ghost Stories."
---Publishers Weekly

"Sherry Austin’s collection of fine, literary tales of interactions between spirits and humans transcends all others..."
---Susanne W., Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County (NC)

"Her voice is lyrical and haunting. Sherry Austin is an author to watch."
--- Joyce Dixon, "Southern Scribe: Our Culture of Storytelling"

"Austin honors the South's eldritch creatures by clothing them in a narrative that flickers and shimmers like heat lightning on a stormy night."
---Gary Carden, author of MASON JARS IN THE FLOOD AND OTHER STORIES

"Sherry Austin's haunted stories are graceful but shivery. Here is a perfect book for the windy midnight and the rainy winter. Well, actually it is a fine book for any sort of day. I loved it."
---Fred Chappell, author of I AM ONE OF YOU FOREVER.

"Austin has her own stories to tell, and every one is a gem, worthy of a long listen."
---Rob Neufeld, Asheville Citizen-Times

Austin's first book, "Mariah of the Spirits," is a collection of ghost stories as well-written as Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." ---Ann Patterson, Spartanburg Herald-Journal

"Whether it's a curio shop in New Orleans or a North Carolina beach in autumn, Austin is an expert at evoking a sense of place where the supernatural seems, well, natural."
---Nancy Pate, Book Critic, Orlando Sentinel

"Austin's tales evoke the faded delicacy of a Mary Wilkins-Freeman, the topographical rootedness of Sarah Orne Jewett… In prose of admirable suppleness and pungency, Ms. Austin can introduce the weird with a subtlety that makes her noisier contemporaries in the horror field seem clumsy and clownish."
---S. T. Joshi, author of THE MODERN WEIRD TALE