EN| ES

Featured Local Authors

Our area contains a wealth of talent and creativity. Fairview Public Library is pleased to share a few local authors whose work might interest you.

John Glatt

John Glatt is an investigative journalist with more than thirty years experience. In the last fourteen years he has written 19 true crime books and 4 biographies. With more than one million books currently in print all over the world, Glatt is acknowledged to be one of the best true crime writers working today. A native of London, England, Glatt left school at sixteen and worked in a variety of jobs – including tea boy and messenger – before joining a small weekly newspaper outside London, where he honed his keen news sense. Over the next few years he freelanced for many national English newspapers, including The Daily Express, The Sunday People, The Daily Mail and Woman Magazine.

Books at FPL:

    • The Doomsday Mother: Lori Vallow, Chad Daybell, and the End of An American Family
    • The Perfect Father: The True Story of Chris Watts, His All-American Family, and A Shocking Murder 
    • Live at The Fillmore East and West: Getting Backstage and Personal with Rock’s Greatest Legends 
    • The Lost Girls: The True Story of the Cleveland Abductions and the Incredible Rescue of Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Gina Dejesus

Bill Birns

Bill Birns has lived and worked in the Catskills for 40 years. He taught a couple of generations of Catskill Mountain kids at Margaretville Central School and Onteora Central School. A graduate of Union College, Bill holds a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Linguistics from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. His 1986 dissertation was a study of the dialect of the Catskills.


Books at FPL:

  • A Catskill Catalog
  • Fleischmanns in Verse
  • I Was Corning A Beaver, Like You Do
  • The Myth in the Mountain

Diane Galusha

Diane Galusha is a former journalist with a passion for history. She was the editor of the Catskill Mountain News in Margaretville, NY from 1989 to 1996, when the NYC Watershed Memorandum of Agreement was being negotiated by federal, state, city, environmental and watershed representatives. She worked as communications director and education coordinator for the Catskill Watershed Corporation until her retirement. Galusha is the president of the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown.

Books at FPL:

  • Liquid Assets: A History of New York City’s Water System
  • Another Day, Another Dollar: The Civilian Conservation Corps in the Catskills
  • When Cauliflower Was King
  • Through A Woman’s Eye: Pioneering Photographers in Rural Upstate
  • As the River Runs: A History of Halcottsville, New York
  • Build Strong: The History of Camp Wawayanda/Frost Valley YMCA: 100 Years of Building Strong Kids, Strong Families and Strong Communities

Teddy Slater

Teddy Slater is the author of over 100 children’s books, including Smooch Your Pooch, The ABC Sing-Along, Llamas in Pajamas, The Wrong-Way Rabbit and N-O Spells No. Her latest book is Dottie and the Dog Show. Teddy and her husband, Fred, live on a farm in upstate NY with their good dog, Barkly. They are often visited by grandchildren Max, Tillie, Maggie, and Sylvie–some names you’ll find sprinkled throughout many of her books.

Books at FPL:

  • Amanda’s Perfect 10
  • Black Cat Creeping
  • Dana’s Best Friend
  • Dottie and the Dog Show
  • Katie’s Big Move
  • Llamas in Pajamas
  • The Luckiest St. Patrick’s Day Ever!
  • N-o es no!
  • Pigs in Love
  • Smooch Your Pooch
  • Walt Disney’s Lady and the Tramp
  • Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Tracey West

Tracey West went to Rutger’s University, where she studied English and Journalism. During her stay at Rutger’s University, she worked on the college newspaper. After graduating, West became the editorial assistant at a small publishing house. Soon after, she became a worker for a children’s book “packaging company” and wrote her first book, Spies and Lies (Nancy Drew). Today she lives in the Catskills mountains with her husband, Bill; four dogs; and a whole lot of chickens. When she is not writing books (which is most of the time), she likes to work in her garden, walk in the woods, read books, and watch cartoons and food shows on TV.

Books at FPL:

  • Heat of the Lava Dragon
  • Fortress of the Stone Dragon
  • Tough Enough
  • The Pet Store Sprite

Mitch Keller

Mitch Keller has worked as a reporter or editor for five daily newspapers in five states. He spent the last seventeen years of his newspaper life at the New York Times, where he was desk head and then managing editor of the New York Times News Service and wrote for the City section.His work has also appeared in Newsday, Outdoor America magazine, the Woodstock (N.Y.) Times, and the collection More New York Stories: The Best of the City Section of The New York Times (New York University Press, 2010). He divides his time between New York City and his home near Margaretville.


Books at FPL: 

  • East Branch: Six Years On a Catskill Trout Stream

Norman Van Valkenburgh

Norman J. Van Valkenburgh grew up on a farm in West Kill in Green County. He went to college in Maine but left after three years for a position with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. From 1973 to 1975 he was Director for the Department’s seven-county Region 3 encompassing the lower Hudson Valley in 1976 and 1977. From 1978 through 1986 he was the Director of the Division of Lands and Forests with direct responsibility for the “care, custody and control” of the Adirondack Park and the Catskill Preserve. In his 32 years with for the DEC, one of his responsibilities was surveying tracts of land the State of New York was considering purchasing. Combining his knowledge of surveying and his passion for writing, Norman Van Valkenburgh has penned a series of thrilling whodunits about mayhem in the mountains.

Books at FPL:

  • Murder in the Catskills
  • Mayhem in the Catskills
  • Old Stone Walls: Catskill Land and Lore
  • The Catskill Park: Inside the Blue Line, the Forest Preserve & Mountain Communities
Scroll to Top