Family Life Southern

In this grown-ups' version of Little Women, the March family falls on hard times, after Mr. March goes away under murky circumstances. The four daughters are left to reach adulthood under very different conditions from the cushy life they were used to. Wise-cracking but fiercely protective Jo takes over as the man of the house, at the beginning of the story. Older sister Meg starts out struggling with a fixation on status and overdependence on her mother. Beth is sweet but troubled. She has crippling fears and still plays with dolls at fourteen. And sassy Amy is far too savvy for a twelve-...

Dubious diamond devotees and a dead loan shark. With the dad she thought dead suspected of murder, can she keep him from doing hard time? Elizabeth Trout thinks she must have rocks in her head. After receiving a crazy call that the father she never knew is cooling his heels in the local jail, the newlywed graphic designer posts bail and invites him home. But the family reunion loses its luster when she learns her old man is under suspicion for murder after he was found near a corpse. With the sheriff zeroing in on her dad and no other suspects on ice, Elizabeth starts her own investigation ...

From an Award-Winning USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR...A heartwarming Southern Saga about a perfect family in an imperfect world... Laura Wilkes has everything a woman could want when she snaps the picture of her five-year-old daughter on the carousel. Each time the carousel comes around Laura snaps another picture, seven in all. This is a day of unforgettable happiness; one of the few Laura has left. In the months following the stock market crash the family is beset by tragedy. A homicide that goes unpunished. It's the height of the depression and there are hoards of faceless, nameless men ...

Jess Kirkman’s mother is dying of congestive heart failure, and he has come home to be at her bedside. Charged with getting family affairs in order, he faces the daunting task of sorting out the secret workshop that his father left behind when he died 10 years ago. As he investigates his findings—a map littered with the names of strange women and a strange invention of stovepipe and ceramic—Jess discovers an intriguing side of his father.

A young black woman, Jamila Mosely, is killed, but slain even worse by media coverage that refuses to let her be an innocent victim. Per usual, they air her most questionable photo, and hint at sketchy associations to portray her as a victim to her own devices. Detective Sawyer takes it personal. Sawyer becomes obsessed with uncovering the truth and restoring dignity to the name of a young lady not much older than her daughter Star. And yet there is still the unresolved issues with Chosen, Travis, Duke, and even her struggling marriage to contend; Sawyer has a full plate. Under the ...

A mysterious girl birthed him, but couldn’t raise him Armed with an adoption diary written by his father and a picture of a young girl, Gadi searches for his roots in Brazil. He hunts down clues about the identity of his biological mother and wants to know what had happened that made her give him up and what is her life like. Gadi learns about Brazil’s adoption process and retraces the steps of his own adoption journey; from the arms of a young girl who could not raise him, to the arms of his adoptive parents who looked forward to his arrival. While traveling with two friends in Brazil,...

It’s a good thing Sofía Acosta loves dreaming up costumes, because otherwise she’s a ballet disaster - unlike her parents, who danced under prima ballerina Alicia Alonso before immigrating to the suburbs of New York. Luckily, when the Acostas host their dancer friends from Cuba for a special performance with the American Ballet Theatre, Sofía learns there’s more than dance holding her family together. Between swapping stories about Cuba and sharing holiday celebrations, the Acostas have never been more of a team.

Twelve-year-old Caroline is a Hurricane Child, born on Water Island during a storm. Coming into this world during a hurricane is unlucky, and Caroline has had her share of bad luck already. She's hated by everyone in her small school, she can see things that no one else can see, and - worst of all - her mother left home one day and never came back. With no friends and days filled with heartache, Caroline is determined to find her mother. When a new student, Kalinda, arrives, Caroline's luck begins to turn around. Kalinda, a solemn girl from Barbados, seems to see the things Caroline sees, too.

Siblings Bert, Willet, and Pansy know better than to go swimming at the old rock quarry. According to their father, it's the Devil's place, a place that's been cursed and forgotten. But Mississippi Delta summer days are scorching hot, and they can't resist cooling off in the dark, bottomless water - until the day six-year-old Pansy vanishes...not drowned, not lost, simply gone. When their father disappears as well, Bert and Willet leave their childhoods behind to try and hold their broken family together.

The entire MacLeod clan is haunted by secrets, and young Bud MacLeod doesn't realize he carries the biggest secret of all. Growing up poor in Depression-era South Georgia is hard enough, but Bud is also cursed with a stutter and a birthmark that disfigures his face. His hateful father and amoral mother make life worse still, despite his brother's efforts to shield him. To survive, Bud must discover his strengths and confront the sins of his parents. First, though, he'll need to grasp his own truth: that he can't embrace his future until he comes to terms with his past.

When a black boy named Paris saves Trudy from being crushed by a runaway Sunbeam Bread truck, they become friends. Navigating a multi-racial friendship in 1964 is no easy thing, however. The racism they encounter inspires them to go on an audacious adventure: to take down the Confederate flag that flies atop the South Carolina State House. And they can't do it without the help of Trudy's grandmother, Ida.

The Best of Me: Booktrack Edition adds an immersive musical soundtrack to your audiobook listening experience! Get swept up in a timeless story of lost dreams and redemption, in which former high school sweethearts get a second chance at first love - from the number one New York Times best-selling author of The Notebook.

In this powerful, edgy, and funny debut novel about making right and wrong choices, Bump gives us an unforgettable and lovable protagonist, Claude McKay Love. Claude is a young black man in search of a place where he can fit; born on the South Side of Chicago, he is raised by his civil rights-era grandmother, who tries to shape him into a principled actor for change. After a riot consumes his neighborhood, Claude decides to escape Chicago for another place, to go to college, to find a new life and identity. But he discovers, there's no escaping the people and places that made him.

From drinking and running away from her problems to finding redemption, healing, forgiveness, and independence, Ethel Mae's life takes a dramatic turn in 1950 as she embarks on her last train ride. Facing yet another failed marriage, despite harsh judgment from family and community, she drops her children off at her mama’s small mountain farm one last time because she plans to bring their daddy home. During a train ride from the mountains of North Carolina, bound for New York, she reflects on and shares her miraculous birth, mountain raising, and tumultuous coming of age with fellow ...

A coming-of-age story told from the point of view of a boy growing up in Virginia during the Great Depression. Set in 1933 and 1934, the stories of his family’s struggles to survive are both heartbreaking and inspiring as we watch them go from the heights of peace and serenity to the depths of scarcity and hopelessness. Will they be able to rise together, or will the brutal realities of the rural world they live in separate them and destroy their hopes and dreams?

A timely and urgent novel following a young married couple on a road trip through the American southwest as they grapple with the breakdown of their relationship in the shadow of environmental collapse.

In the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains, one family walks the line between survival and scandal. It's 1948 in Revival Cove, a tight-knit town nestled deep in Western North Carolina. Corinth Mayer is counting down the weeks until her wedding, but doubts keep creeping in. Her fiancé dreams of fast-paced city life, while she clings to the simple, rooted world she has always known. Worse still, gossip whispers that she’s not good enough for him—especially with her last name. The Mayer family’s reputation precedes them. While Corinth and her mother hold fast to their faith, her daddy ...

Peyton is not ready to share her widowed father with anyone, let alone a barely remembered cousin who just rolled into town. However, her father seems to like Nora well enough, and prim Aunt Augusta hates her, which raises Nora slightly in Peyton's esteem. Maybe Nora is just what quiet Lytton, Georgia, needs this summer.

Parker Colthorpe has arrived unexpectedly in Summit Falls to attend one of Jonah Sutherland’s week long symposiums. Or at least that’s what he’s telling everyone…including himself.Adam isn’t the only resident of Summit Falls who is surprised by the unexpected arrival of his former boss when he shows up. But he knows better than most that Parker has always been more at home in the middle of a newsroom than anywhere else and Summit Falls wasn’t the nation’s capital where there was never any shortage of what to cover next. But there was at least one person in Summit Falls who ...

When Charlie Boykin was young, he thought his life with his single mother on the working-class side of Nashville was perfectly fine. But when his mother arranges for him to be admitted as a scholarship student to an elite private school, he is suddenly introduced to what the world can feel like to someone cushioned by money. That world, he discovers, is an almost irresistible place where one can bend—and break—rules and still end up untarnished.