Family Life Southern

Juana’s life is just about perfect. She lives in the beautiful city of Bogotá with her two most favorite people in the world: her mami and her dog, Lucas. Lately, though, things have become a little less perfect. Mami has a new hairdo and a new amigo named Luis with whom she has been spending a LOT of time. He is kind and teaches Juana about things like photography and jazz music, but sometimes Juana can’t help wishing things would go back to the way they were before.

In 1989, Jodi McCarty is 17 years old when she's sentenced to life in prison. When she's released 18 years later, she finds herself at a Greyhound bus stop, reeling from the shock of unexpected freedom but determined to chart a better course for herself. Not yet able to return to her lost home in the Appalachian Mountains, she heads south in search of someone she left behind, as a way of finally making amends. There, she meets and falls in love with Miranda, a troubled young mother living in a motel room with her children. Together they head toward what they hope will be a fresh start.

Alyssa Weyland was on the brink of sixteen when she ran away from home into the arms of Drew Michaels. She didn't think twice; this was finally her chance to be free. The next six months were a challenging time for the Weyland household as they struggled to pull together as a family unit while desperately attempting to save their own souls. Alyssa's absence cut deep into each family member and exposed sides of their innermost beings that had never surfaced. Her decision created permanent wrinkles in the family she left behind and her own life, wrinkles she wouldn't be able to see or ...

Jerene Jarvis Johnston and her husband, Duke, are exemplars of Charlotte, North Carolina’s high society, a world where old Southern money and the secrets behind it meet the new wealth of bankers, real estate speculators, and carpetbagging social climbers. Steely and implacable, Jerene presides over her family’s legacy of paintings at the Mint Museum; Duke, the one-time college golden boy and descendant of a Confederate general, whose promising political career was mysteriously short-circuited, has settled into a comfortable semi-senescence as a Civil War reenactor.

Through events small and large, thirteen-year-old Harold Stevens grows up during a pivotal summer in the red-dirt backcountry of West Texas. With his friend C.K. Crow, the black field hand who works for Harold’s father, he shoots deer and quail, fishes for catfish, mends fences, grows and learns about marijuana, and tests his emerging manhood against bullies, bulls, and the irresistible charms of his horse-riding older cousin.

While wildfires rage, the married couple make their way through Nevada, California, Arizona, and Utah, tracing the course of the Colorado River, the aquatic artery on which the Southwest depends for survival. Lewis, an artist working for a prominent land art foundation, is grieving the recent death of his mother, while Eloise is an academic researching the past and future of the Colorado River as it threatens to run dry.

You can always go home…but what will you find when you do. Jonathan Hansen is about to find out. For years they’ve hidden a huge secret…an island that was home to their small town, the families and friends who live there, and the secrets they've kept for generations. But danger might be right beyond the water’s edge. Together, two guarded hearts are willing to face the impending threat and the danger it poses to the peaceful tranquility of their home. Ainslin O’Cleary wasn’t the type to over-react but she was beginning to feel a little desperate. She loved her home and ...

Jim Byrd died. Technically. For a few minutes. The diagnosis: heart attack at age 30. Revived with no memory of any tunnels, lights, or angels, Jim wonders what—if anything—awaits us on the other side. Then a ghost shows up. Maybe. Jim and his new wife, Annie, find themselves tangling with holograms, psychics, messages from the beyond, and a machine that connects the living and the dead. As Jim and Annie journey through history and fumble through faith, they confront the specter of loss that looms for anyone who dares to fall in love.

Birtha Blacktail isn’t your average hunting dog. In fact, she’s not much of a hunting dog at all—unless snoring in the sun and philosophizing from the porch count as skills. She’s big, she’s loyal, and she’s got just enough brainpower to wag when necessary. Alongside her 14-year-old human, Jason, Birtha proves that life doesn’t have to be fast-paced or fancy to be downright extraordinary. Set in the quiet rhythms of rural life, this heartwarming and hilarious tale explores friendship, loyalty, lazy afternoons, and the occasional wild adventure (reluctantly participated in, of ...

Reverend Sabre Winfrey, Jr., shepherd of the Seven Seals Missionary Baptist Church, believes in God, his own privilege, and enterprise. He owns the barbershop and the radio station, and generally keeps an iron hand on every aspect of society in Dominion, Mississippi. He and his wife, Priscilla, have five boys; the youngest, Emanuel, is called Wonderboy—no one sings prettier, runs as fast, or turns as many heads. But Wonderboy, his father, and all the structures in place that keep them on top are not as righteous as they seem to be.

In the years after World War II, the bleak yet beautiful plains of South Dakota still embody all the contradictions - the ruggedness and the promise - of the old frontier. This is a place where you can eat strawberries from wild vines, where lightning reveals a boundless horizon, where descendants of white settlers and native Indians continue to collide, and where, for most, there are limited options. René shares a home, a family, and a passion for dance with her older brother, Leon. Yet for all they have in common, their lives are on remarkably different paths.

An outstanding primary source of Southern life during the Yankee blockade, the book is a memoir of daily life on a Southern plantation during the Civil War. The narrative provides details on a wide spectrum of issues of historical interest.

After his wife suffers a serious injury in a train wreck, Chen must find a place to live in Santa Cruz. He lands a job at Powder Works, where workers risk their lives manufacturing gunpowder. During their years in Santa Cruz, the unusual couple confront discrimination, catastrophic fires, and help introduce surfing to the thriving seaside community. Powder Works is the final volume in a trilogy about a Chinese immigrant family's life in 19th century America. China Grade is volume one, and Wrights is volume two. The complete trilogy is available as a Kindle ebook called Broken Tools. Also ...

Sylvie Snow knows the pressures of expectations: a woman is supposed to work hard, but never be tired; age gracefully, but always be beautiful; fix the family problems, but always be carefree. Sylvie does the grocery shopping, the laundry, the scheduling, the schlepping, and the PTA-ing, while planning her son’s Bar Mitzvah and cheerfully tending her husband, Paul, who’s been lying on the sofa with a broken ankle.

At 12, Emily Parmenter is left mostly to herself after her mother disappears and her beloved older brother dies. Emily has built a life around the faded plantation where her remote father and hunting-obsessed brothers raise hunting spaniels. It is a meager, masculine world, but to Emily it has magic. And then comes Lulu Foxworth, troubled daughter of a truly grand plantation, who has run away from her hectic Charleston debutante season.

Janie Treeborne lives on an orchard at the edge of Elberta, Alabama, and in time she has become its keeper. A place where conquistadors once walked and where the peaches they left behind now grow. Elberta has seen fierce battles, violent storms, and frantic change - and when the town is once again threatened from without, Janie realizes it won’t withstand much more.

Amanda “Mandy” Kirkpatrick was once a rising star in the art world. But when she fell in love with pastor Owen Douglas, she put her dreams on hold and her paints to one side. Mandy focused all her energies on supporting her husband and creating for their children the loving, stable home-life she herself had lacked. She planned to return to her career when the kids started school, but as the years passed her brushes remained dry. Then came a move that changed everything. Owen’s new congregation has rigid ideas of how their pastor and wife should behave. He throws himself into the work ...

A family emergency brings former rapper and current real estate mogul Ivan Spencer back to his long-abandoned hometown. While there, he must deal with his confused mother, his elderly, philandering father, his flaky sister, an unreliable aunt, and a face from the past who makes him question some of his earlier decisions. All he wants to do is to get things squared away and return to his life, but as it turns out, he must deal with his own issues first.

Owen Cross’s father is a hard man, proud in his brokenness, who wants nothing more than for Owen to succeed where he failed. With his innate talents and his father’s firm hand guiding him, Owen goes to college with dreams of the major leagues—and an emptiness full of a girl named Micky Dullahan. Owen loved Micky from the first time they met on the hill between their two worlds: his middle-class home and her troubled Shantytown. Years later he leaves her for the dugouts and the autographs, but their days together follow him.

In cosmopolitan Johannesburg, three high-flying couples form the core of the elite Khula Society: part investment group, part social club, with meetings where the champagne flows, the dresses are designer and the one-upmanship is off the scale. Noma, Moshidi, Lerato and their husbands are living the dream—or so it appears from the outside. In reality, the cut and thrust of ‘keeping up with the Khulas’ is taking its toll on all three couples.