Southern Historical Fiction

Bertie Jenkins has spent forty years serving as a midwife for her community in the Great Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee. Out of all the mothers she’s tended, none affects her more than the young teenager who shows up on her doorstep, injured, afraid, and expecting, one warm June day in 1943. As Bertie and her four sisters tenderly nurture Songbird back to health, the bond between the childless midwife and the motherless teen grows strong. But soon Songbird is forced to make a heartbreaking decision that will tear this little family apart.

When Minerva Jane Jenkins was just 14 years old, she married a man who moved her to the mountains. He carried with him a small box, which he told her was filled with gold. And when he died 50 years later, he made her promise to keep his secret. She is to tell no one about the box or the treasure it contains. Now 94, Minerva is nearing the end of what has sometimes been a lonely life. But she's kept that secret. Even so, rumors of hidden gold have a way of spreading, and Minerva is visited by a reporter, Del Rankin, who wants to know more of her story.

For fourteen-year-old Leah Payne, life in her beloved coastal Carolina town is worlds away from the harsh realities of the day. Loyal to her lumberjack father, she knows only of the familiarity of her small community, the magic of the natural world, and the creative intuition that prompts her to march to the beat of her own drum. But when an accident takes her father's life, leaving her an orphan, Leah finds herself cast into a family of strangers whose welcoming façade hides a terrible secret.

Thelonious "Monk" Ellison's writing career has bottomed out: his latest manuscript has been rejected by seventeen publishers, which stings all the more because his previous novels have been "critically acclaimed." He seethes on the sidelines of the literary establishment as he watches the meteoric success of We's Lives in Da Ghetto, a first novel by a woman who once visited "some relatives in Harlem for a couple of days."

Growing up as the improper son of a wealthy white merchant and his Creole mistress, Randulet Thibodeaux is a street-savvy Southern boy who’s seen more prejudice and hardship than any boy should have to. When his younger brother dies in a tragic accident, Randulet realizes that he’s tougher than the devil by a damn sight, and he’s going to need to be tough to protect himself and his family from the workings of an underground bent on his destruction. As he does what he must to save himself from a plot contrived by greed and carried out by evil, he comes to understand that God has carved...

Storm clouds are approaching Culpeper County, Virginia, in early January 1861. The troublesome Fogarty brothers have been raising havoc across the countryside, and when the local lawman, Will Brannon, returns from another futile attempt to track them down, he finds the townspeople abuzz. South Carolina has seceded from the Union, and rumor has it more states will follow, perhaps even Virginia.

On a Mississippi morning in 1859, Emily Matthews begs her father to save a slave, Nathan, about to be auctioned away from his family. Judge Matthews is an abolitionist who runs an illegal school for his slaves, hoping to eventually set them free. One, a woman named Ginny, has become Emily's companion and often her conscience - and understands all too well the hazards an educated slave must face. Yet even Ginny could not predict the tangled, tragic string of events set in motion as Nathan's family arrives at the Matthews farm.

The Reaper is a legend, more myth than man: the savior of worlds, the leader of the Rising, the breaker of chains. But the Reaper is also Darrow, born of the red soil of Mars: a husband, a father, a friend. The worlds once needed the Reaper. But now they need Darrow. Because after the dark age will come a new age: of light, of victory, of hope.

A drunken mother makes childhood ugly. Jane runs away at sixteen, determined to leave her fraught upbringing in the rearview. Vowing never to return, she hitchhikes to California, right on time for the Summer of Love. Seventeen years later, she looks good on paper: married, grad school, sober, but her carefully constructed life is crumbling. When Mama dies, Jane returns for the funeral, leaving her husband in the dark about her history. Seeing her childhood home and significant people from her youth catapults Jane back to the events that made her the woman she is. She faces down her past ...

July 1995. April and Eddie have taken a wrong turn. They’re looking for the small resort town where they plan to spend their honeymoon. When they spot what appears to a lone hitchhiker along the deserted road, they stop to help. But not long after the hitchhiker gets into their car, they see the blood seeping from her jacket and a truck barreling down Atticus Line after them.

In 1931, the creation of the new Great Smoky Mountains National Park threatens Rosie McCauley’s home. Rosie vows the only way the commission will get her land is if they haul her off in a pine box. When a compromise offers her and her disabled sister the opportunity to stay for Rosie’s lifetime, her acceptance sets her apart from the other mountain folk. And the bond she’s forming with ornithologist and outsider Benton Fuller only broadens the rift. Eighty-five years later, Kieran heads back to the national park to find answers to her great-grandmother’s mysterious death.

Miss Ollie has returned due to popular demand from her readers and beloved followers of the Maxwell Saga. Hope Maxwell, who came to live on the Maxwell ranch when she was only three, pleads with Miss Ollie to tell about her childhood. Miss Ollie sits in her rocking chair on the porch, closes her eyes and tells what she remembers from the beginning. Her story comes alive from the time she is four-years-old with slave’s parents on the Waverly Plantation. A master storyteller, Miss Ollie will grab your attention as she weaves her life stories. Her words will wrap your heart so tight that you...

Cora Miller, a recent widow, moves to St. Augustine in 1875 with her young daughter Emily to start life over as a single mother. She opens a fine millinery shop to court the tastes of the wealthy and become part of the town’s social elite. She succeeds in gaining the hat business of tourists Pamela Worthington and her daughter Judith, as well as, the attention of their family friend, extravagant Sterling Cunningham. But aloof Daniel Worthington, Pamela’s son, is more interested in the Indian captives recently brought to the fort. Daniel Worthington has escorted his mother and sister to ...

At 26, Bushrod Carter is already an old soldier, a veteran of all his regiment's campaigns since Shiloh. Now, on an Indian summer afternoon in 1864, Bushrod finds himself in the line of battle once again, on a plain below the obscure village of Franklin, Tennessee. The dark flower of his destiny is opening in the twilight, just as it has on other fields, and Bushrod must pass once again under its shadow if he is to see tomorrow.

The luck of a gambling hand had changed his fate and now the young cowboy was ready to start a new life. Bud After serving time in the Louisiana State Prison, Bud Downey spent many months winning a small fortune as a gambler. Feeling confident that he had won enough money, he packed up his stake to begin his journey to Limason, Texas—Home. After his last winning hand at the gambling table, a couple of disgruntled cowboys were angry that they had lost all their money to the smooth-talking young man. As Bud traveled near the border of Lafayette, Louisiana, he was ambushed, shot and left for...

A storm is on the horizon. America’s days are numbered. A Chinese submarine has gone rogue and is navigating towards the continental United States, putting its nuclear missiles within striking distance of the West Coast.

As the Civil War sweeps across the country, it finds the most wayfaring member of the Brannon family of Culpeper County, Virginia, working as a wharf rat at the Mississippi River port of New Madrid, Missouri. Caught up in a bar fight he tried to avoid, Cory Brannon is rescued by Captain Zeke Farrell, of the riverboat Missouri Zephyr, who offers him a job as part of his crew.

Will she be safe, or will he find her? After physical abuse from her fiancé, Rose’s aunt convinces Rose to find refuge for the summer at her South Carolina beach house. At another time, Rose might have welcomed the incredibly handsome handyman, Frank, to repair her water heater. However, still reeling from her wounds and having total mistrust of all men, she seeks only solitude during her island summer. Frank is instantly attracted to Rose but finds her defenses forbidding. He senses how close she is to crumbling and will do anything to protect her. If her ex-fiancé finds her, can Frank...

Julie Capshaw and Robby Montagna are victims of the historical divide between coal miners and those who owned and ran the mines. Set in a candidly depicted rural West Virginia coal mining community in 1955, this story tells of their attempt to cross that divide. “Jo Huddleston’s characters come to life, as does this sweet and wonderful mid-century love story about two young people who come from different spectrums of society. This author writes with colorful detail, setting us body and soul into the story.” –Sharlene MacLaren, author of the historical series “Tennessee Dreams.” ...

—Southern Historical Fiction at Its Best... A Visit to the Rural South that will Bless Your Heart— —VOLUME 6 ANTHOLOGY (6 volumes in all). Faith & Family Friendly— - The Egg Wagon (novella 1): There are some things that just do not burn. Gold and silver, for instance. Fire and water only purify, and tumultuous earthquakes can just make these metals rise closer to the surface. Some human persons fit that description. Adversity and pain seem to peel away the chaff of life, leaving only the nucleolus of survival. Like being in a slippery simply refuse to die and manage to claw their ...