She finds more comfort playing make-believe in the woods near her house in Roma, Kentucky, than with her classmates, who find her strange and awkward. When she happens upon a dead body hidden in the woods one day, she decides not to tell anyone about her discovery—a choice that begins to haunt her.Susanna Mitchell has always been a good girl, the dutiful daughter and wife. While her older sister Ronnie trolled bars for men and often drove home at sunrise, Susanna kept a neat house, a respectable job, a young daughter. But when Ronnie goes missing, and Susanna realizes that she’s the only person in Roma who truly cares about her sister’s fate, she starts to question her quiet life and its value.The Next Time You See Me is the story of how one woman’s disappearance exposes the ambitions, prejudices, and anxieties of a small southern town and its residents, who are all connected, sometimes in unexpected ways. Emily; Susannah; Tony, a failed baseball star-turned-detective, aspiring to be the county’s first black sheriff; and Wyatt, a fifty-five-year-old factory worker tormented by a past he can’t change and by a love he doesn’t think he deserves. Their stories converge in a violent climax that reveals not just the mystery of what happened to Ronnie but all of their secret selves.

    Alice has learned almost nothing about Olivia, when suddenly Olivia dies, leaving Alice to sift through her belongings. As she pieces together her mother's life, Alice learns how a woman can become so desperate that she leaves her child-- and so courageous that she finds her again. Not since her bestselling book The Friendship Cake has Hinton created characters who are so filled with heartache and fragile hope.

    She wrestles with past demons every night, then wakes to the train’s five-thirty whistle. Exhausted and dreading the day, she keeps her hands busy working in Bryson City’s textile plant, known as the “blue jean plant,” all the while worrying about her teenage daughter, Carole Anne. The whistle of the train, the hum of those machines, and the struggle to survive drives Barbara. When an unexpected layoff creates a financial emergency, the desperate pressure of poverty is overwhelming.Unbeknownst to Barbara, Carole Anne sneaks out at night to walk the tracks so she can work at Hubert’s Bar. She’s hoarding money with plans to drive her mother’s rusty, unused Oldsmobile out of Bryson City, and never return. She only needs one opportunity … if she can just find it.When Carole Anne goes missing, Barbara finds herself at a crossroad—she must put aside old memories and past hurts to rely on a classmate for help finding her daughter. But this is the same man she blames for the incident years ago. Is she strong enough—or desperate enough—to do anything to keep her daughter safe?In Outbound Train, the Parker women struggle to make frayed ends meet in a town where they never quite do … at least, not without expert weaving and a bit of brute force.Here's what others say about Outbound Train. Renea Winchester's storytelling is as real and authentically Southern as the clear water music of an Appalachian creek and the song of Cicadas on a front porch summer evening. Lisa Wingate,#1 New York Times Bestselling author of Before We Were Yours and Before and After.I fell in love with the smart, strong, funny characters in this community of make-do women, and I predict you will, too.Pamela Duncan, Author of Plant LifeWith pitch-perfect dialogue and believable characters, Winchester has crafted a story that will make readers stand up and cheer.Michael Morris, Man in the Blue Moon, A Place Called WiregrassA powerful tale of heartache and healing delivered with the skills of a true southern story tellerJulie Cantrell, New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of PerennialsOutbound Train is a journey you won't want to miss. It is a thrilling and heartfelt journey into the collective soul of the Parker women from the mountains of North Carolina, who will teach you the meaning of courage, strength and, most important, love. Outbound journey is a novel you will not put down or ever forget.Peter Golden, Author of Nothing Is Forgotten

    Respected and admired for her obvious parenting success, she leads a popular mothers’ group at her church, passing along wisdom gained through years of experience. until she woke up in a mother’s worst nightmare. Then the unthinkable happens. Sixteen-year-old Tristan, the quiet “good girl” of the family, disappears–and the search brings to light unpleasant truths that prompt Serena to question nearly everything she believes about her children, her marriage, and her faith. “Where did we go wrong?” Brokenhearted by her daughter’s behavior and her husband’s angry response, Serena struggles to see God’s hand of grace in their lives. Initially determined to rescue Tristan from whatever trouble she’s in, Serena learns the painful lesson that true strength won’t be found in regaining control of her daughter’s choices but in finally learning when to let go.

    Gwyn Hyman Rubio’s beautifully written first novel revolves around Icy Sparks, an unforgettable heroine in the tradition of Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird or Will Treed in Cold Sassy Tree. At the age of ten, Icy, a bright, curious child orphaned as a baby but raised by adoring grandparents, begins to have strange experiences. Try as she might, her "secrets"—verbal croaks, groans, and physical spasms—keep afflicting her. As an adult, she will find out she has Tourette’s Syndrome, a rare neurological disorder, but for years her behavior is the source of mystery, confusion, and deep humiliation.Narrated by a grown up Icy, the book chronicles a difficult, but ultimately hilarious and heartwarming journey, from her first spasms to her self-acceptance as a young woman. Curious about life beyond the hills, talented, and energetic, Icy learns to cut through all barriers—physical, mental, and spiritual—in order to find community and acceptance.

    William Styron traces the betrayals and infidelities—the heritage of spite and endlessly disappointed love—that afflict the members of a Southern family and that culminate in the suicide of the beautiful Peyton Loftis.

    A local redneck was tried, sentenced, and set to fry.Then Ward James, hotshot investigative reporter for the Miami Times, returns to his rural hometown with a death row femme fatale who promises him the story of the decade.  She's armed with explosive evidence, aiming to free--and meet--her convicted "fiancÚ."With Ward's disillusioned younger brother Jack as their driver, they barrel down Florida's back roads and seamy places in search of The Story, racing flat out into a shocking head-on collision between character and fate as truth takes a back seat to headline news...

     When Claire Bennett's husband died, she felt directionless. Their thriving antiques business and beautiful house in the Hamptons, the social scene and her volunteer work -- all seemed empty without Phillip. Estranged from her adult daughter and son, Claire knows that in the depths of her heart she still mourns a terrible loss from a tragic accident years ago. Fleeing her memories, Claire moves to a condo in Florida, then impulsively leaves to visit her engaged daughter in North Carolina. From the sandy beaches of Boca Raton to a tiny farm tucked high in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Claire gains self-awareness through the unexpected kindness of strangers, and finally forces herself to confront some hard truths from the past. Finding a joy in life that has been missing for many years, Claire at last reaches out to her son and daughter. And when the healing of old wounds leads her to a new love, Claire realizes that her travels have brought her to a place where she will never again walk alone.

    She is caught off-guard by a young hunter who invades her most private spaces and confounds her self-assured, solitary life. On a farm several miles down the mountain, Lusa Maluf Landowski, a bookish city girl turned farmer's wife, finds herself unexpectedly marooned in a strange place where she must declare or lose her attachment to the land that has become her own. And a few more miles down the road, a pair of elderly feuding neighbors tend their respective farms and wrangle about God, pesticides, and the possibilities of a future neither of them expected.Over the course of one humid summer, these characters find their connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with whom they share a place. Prodigal Summer demonstrates a balance of narrative, drama and ideas that is characteristic of Barbara Kingsolver's finest work.

    The disintegration of this group, a process that has been slowly occurring now for more than forty years, has been reported with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.’s grandparents were “dirt poor and in love,” and moved north from Kentucky’s Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually one of their grandchildren would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of success in achieving generational upward mobility. But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that J.D.'s grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, never fully escaping the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. With piercing honesty, Vance shows how he himself still carries around the demons of his chaotic family history.A deeply moving memoir, with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.

    But when eighteen-year-old Harlowe’s older brother is killed by the Praters, the family who runs everything—from the mines to the law—in his rural Appalachian town, he learns that loss is the one thing that’s never in short supply.Then Harlowe meets Tennessee on her first day in town, and for the first time he feels that something good might happen, that he might’ve found the rarest thing of all: hope. Even as she struggles to protect her younger brother from their father’s abuse, Tennessee makes Harlowe believe that they can dare to forge their own path—if they only give it a shot.But with his mother sliding back into her pill addiction, Harlowe’s reality only feels more fixed. And as he searches to uncover the reasons behind his brother’s death, he discovers truths about the people he loves—and himself—that are more difficult to confront than he ever expected. Now, Harlowe realizes, there’s no turning back.A striking and complex portrait of poverty and addiction, Kristin Russell’s powerful debut novel asks a universal question: when hope seems lost, is love worth the risk?

    David's voice is perfectly calibrated, disarmingly funny, sad, shrewd, gathering force from page to page with an emotional directness that never lapses into sentimentality. Through it we share his awkward, painful, universally recognizable encounter with first love, we participate in boy evangelist Bobbie Lee Taylor's revival, we meet the pious, bigoted townspeople. From the opening lines of The Neon Bible, David is fully alive, naive yet sharply observant, drawing us into his world through the sure artistry of John Kennedy Toole.John Kennedy Toole, who won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for his best-selling comic masterpiece A Confederacy of Dunces, wrote The Neon Bible for a literary contest at the age of sixteen. The manuscript languished in a drawer and became the subject of a legal battle among Toole's heirs. It was only in 1989, thirty-five years after it was written and twenty years after Toole's suicide at thirty-one, that this amazingly accomplished and evocative novel was freed for publication.

    The crowds that gathered outside Sand Cave turned the rescue site into a carnival. Collins's situation was front-page news throughout the country, hourly bulletins interrupted radio programs, and Congress recessed to hear the latest word. Trapped! is both a tense adventure and a brilliant historical recreation of the past. This new edition includes a new epilogue revealing information about the Floyed Collins story that has come to light since the book was first published.

    The town of Sewardville, Kentucky teeters on the edge of a violent abyss, overrun with methamphetamine and prescription drug abuse. The Slone family controls everything. Patriarch Walt Slone is the town’s mayor and head of one of the largest crime syndicates in the eastern United States. His son metes out justice from behind his sheriff’s badge, while his daughter handles all the numbers for the family business. Business for the Slones is good, too – at least until Walt orders his son-in-law Boone to kill his own brother. That becomes the first link in a chain of events that threatens not just the livelihood of all involved, but their lives as well. While the Slones move to strengthen their empire, Boone moves to break free and take his little daughter with him. Will he escape from one of America’s most heartbroken regions, or will his dark past bury him forever in the place they call Sewerville?

    Or so the townsfolk of Mars Hill believe - just as they know that Laurel Shelton, the lonely young woman who lives within its shadows, is a witch. Alone except for her brother, Hank, newly returned from the trenches of France, she aches for her life to begin. Then it happens - a stranger appears, carrying nothing but a beautiful silver flute and a note explaining that his name is Walter, he is mute, and is bound for New York. Laurel finds him in the woods, nearly stung to death by yellow jackets, and nurses him back to health. As the days pass, Walter slips easily into life in the cove and into Laurel's heart, bringing her the only real happiness she has ever known. But Walter harbors a secret that could destroy everything - and danger is closer than they know. Though the war in Europe is near its end, patriotic fervor flourishes thanks to the likes of Chauncey Feith, an ambitious young army recruiter who stokes fear and outrage throughout the county. In a time of uncertainty, when fear and ignorance reign, Laurel and Walter will discover that love may not be enough to protect them. This lyrical, heart-rending tale, as mesmerizing as its award-winning predecessor Serena, shows once again this masterful novelist at the height of his powers.