Showing titles in Southern

Pulsating with menace and narrated with hypnotic lyricism, Girls with Long Shadows is an electrifying literary thriller that captures how female teenage angst can turn lethal when insecurities are weaponized and sibling bonds are severed. Tense, lush, and painfully beautiful, it forces us to consider the lengths to which we will go to claim our own personhood.

In this bewitching debut novel, a sensitive teen, newly arrived in Alabama, falls in love, questions his faith, and navigates a strange power. While his German parents don't know what to make of a South pining for the past, shy Max thrives in the thick heat. Taken in by the football team, he learns how to catch a spiraling ball, how to point a gun, and how to hide his innermost secrets.

The gravy train hasn’t stopped in the hollers of western Virginia for more than 30 years when Stony Shelor starts his junior year at Jubal Early High. Class divides and racism are still the hardened norms as the Eisenhower years draw to a close. Violence lies coiled under the calm surface, ready to strike at any time.

Cora faces death, abandonment, bullying, family struggles, attempted rape, loss of a child, and finally, redemption. Cora’s Story follows the adventurous life of Cora Crawford. Born in the early 1900s and raised on a small mountain in rural Eastern Tennessee, Cora shares the tale of her young life with the listener. This historical, inspirational coming-of-age fiction will entertain and encourage as Cora finds her way to a life filled with God’s grace.

When Chad Greer is convicted of murdering his girlfriend Megan, he's only 17, and of course he insists he didn't do it. When he's still insisting fifteen years later, he is denied parole. But by then his beloved sister Sawyer is a brand-new assistant district attorney, determined to prove his innocence, and Sawyer won't take no for an answer. Digging into the case, she turns up Mason Walcott, a war-scarred journalist who mysteriously appears and offers to help vindicate her brother.

By fall of 1863, Union forces had taken control of Tidewater Virginia and established a toehold in eastern North Carolina, including along the Outer Banks. Thousands of freed slaves and runaways flooded the Union lines, but Confederate irregulars still roamed the region. In December, the newly formed African Brigade, a unit of these former slaves led by General Edward Augustus Wild—a one-armed, impassioned abolitionist—set out from Portsmouth to hunt down the rebel guerrillas and extinguish the threat.

The Labasques aren’t like other families. Living in a shack out in the swamps, they made do by hunting down alligators and other animals. To the good people of Jacknife, Louisiana, they are troublemakers and outcasts, the kind of people you wouldn’t want in your community. So, when Cutter Labasque is found face down in the muddy swamp, no one seems to care, not even her two brothers. The only person who questions the official verdict of suicide is Cutter’s childhood friend, Loyal May, who has just returned home to care for her mother.

Alice always thought she'd see her brother again. Rob ran away when he was 15, with so many years left to find his way home. But his funeral happened first. Now that she has to clear out her childhood home in Georgia, the memories come flooding in, bringing with them an autopsy report showing her family's lies - and sealed, addressed letters from Rob.

Fueled by tomato sandwiches and green milkshakes, and obsessed with cars, Philbet struggles with life and love as a gay boy in rural Georgia. He’s happiest when helping Grandaddy dig potatoes from the vegetable garden that connects their houses. But Philbet’s world is shattered and his resilience shaken by events that crush his innocence and sense of security; expose his misshapen chest skillfully hidden behind shirts Mama makes at home; and convince him that he’s not fit to be loved by Knox, the older boy he idolizes to distraction.

Natchez is a stunning saga by NY Times bestselling author, Pamela Jekel, the second in her Southern trilogy. Spanning four generations of proud, strong-willed women, Natchez tells the story of hardships of frontier life, the glitter and opulence of plantation balls, the ravages of the Civil War, and the Great Flood of 1885.

Reverend Sabre Winfrey, shepherd of the Seven Seals Baptist Church, believes in God, his own privilege, and enterprise. Besides the barbershop and radio station he owns, he has an iron hand on every aspect of Dominion, Mississippi, society. 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. After a surprising encounter with a stranger, Wonderboy finds himself confronted by questions he’d never imagined, and his response will send shockwaves through the entire community.

Rennie King's life isn't at all what she expected when she married the hotshot baseball player from her small town of Spark, Tennessee. Reeling from the loss of her most recent pregnancy, she desperately needs the support of her husband, but instead of comfort, she finds he is increasingly angry and often turns that anger on her. When a bee lands on her arm one day, Rennie knows she needs to go check on her beloved uncle. How she knows, well, she doesn't really want to explore that just yet. Sure enough, when she arrives, she finds him collapsed on the ground.

Birdie Fuller doesn't like change. And a lot of change is happening at once. Her daughter, Hannah, finally cutting the apron strings, is moving with her three-year-old grandson to a nearby city. Facing a lonely empty nest, Birdie joins a dating website to find companionship. She meets the seemingly perfect man, but is their relationship too good to be true? When the past comes back to haunt Birdie, she struggles to maintain the sobriety she's worked so hard to achieve.

Ginny Pickering Boyden can’t wait for her last day of work, when she’ll be free to pursue a lifelong ambition through a master gardener apprenticeship. But an unexpected letter brings shocking news: Ginny has inherited her family’s Christmas tree farm, a dream she’d long ago given up.

Fifty-six-year-old Neena Lee is desperate to revive her travel writing career, though panic attacks have disrupted her work, and the new upstart editor has fired everyone else over the age of forty.

Set against the backdrop of the antebellum South, this compelling work of historical fiction follows the harrowing journey of a young man, stolen from his family and thrust into the merciless world of slavery. The story unfolds with the abduction of IDI, a bright and resourceful young man who is cruelly torn from his family and homeland. His journey takes him to the American South, where he is subjected to the dehumanizing horrors of servitude. Driven by an unshakable determination to regain his freedom, David befriends a group of fellow slaves who share his longing for escape.

Back in uniform, Mick is chafing at the sudden dissolution of his retirement plans, wearied by the petty squabbles of Rocksalt’s townsfolk. It’s all business as usual, until the murder of a local bar owner draws an unlikely suspect who threatens to fan the flames of Mick’s past. When two more bodies turn up, seemingly unconnected to the first, Mick is forced to reckon with the mysterious circumstances of a case not so open-and-shut as everyone believes.

A middle-aged woman feed slots at a secret back-room parlor. A new mother descends into a devastating postpartum depression, wracked with the fear that she is unable to protect her children. A daughter returns home to join the other women in her family waging spiritual combat with the ghosts of their past.

From the author of the critically acclaimed Jackson Flint mystery novels. An Appalachian noir thriller. Deep in the Appalachian hills, a brother and sister are in trouble. Miller’s ma is gone. His pa is gone. Now they’ve come for him. Miller knows the kind of men who inhabit these hills. He doesn’t want to become one of them. How can he protect himself and his sister without losing his soul?

Cutter, a hard-working woman who makes her living waiting tables and writing obits, is determined to sabotage the sale of her family's dilapidated ancestral home. Every time a potential buyer comes calling, she makes every effort to play down any possible charm that might be found within the crumbling walls.