Through the hardships of the era, through birth and death, tragedy and triumph, a young woman seeks to hold on to faith and family; and a lonely man seeks family and faith.

    Secure in the love of her father, bothered with her mother’s desire that she be a proper Southern belle, Bessie’s determined to forge her own way in life. Or, as her Cherokee great-grandmother, Elisi, puts it, a whistling woman.Life, however, has a few surprises for her. First, there’s Papa carrying home a dead man, which seems to invite Death for an extended visit in their home. And shortly before she graduates from Dorland Institute, there’s another death, this one closer to her heart. But Death isn’t through with her yet. Proving another of Elisi’s sayings, death comes in threes, It strikes yet again, taking someone Bessie has recently learned to appreciate and cherish, leaving her to struggle with a family that’s threatening to come apart at the seams.Even her beloved Papa seems to be turning into another person, someone Bessie disagrees with more often than not, and someone she isn’t even sure she can continue to love, much less idolize as she had during her childhood.And when Papa makes a decision that costs the life of a new friend, the course of Bessie’s heart is changed forever.

    Here again she mines the territory of the small town of Zebulon, Mississippi, where even the most seemingly ordinary folks harbor well-disguised heartaches and intricate secrets. Thirteen-year-old Layla Jay was only pretending when she knelt before the preacher to seek salvation. She was hoping to make her grandma happy and get noticed by the cute new boy in town. But religion truly piques her interest when a young, handsome visiting preacher stays at her family’s home. Wallace seems genuinely interested in Layla Jay’s life–until he meets her mama and falls head over heels, like many men have before him. When Wallace marries Frieda, Layla Jay believes she will finally have the father she’s always wanted. But it seems that none of her dreams will come true as Layla Jay wrestles with her mother’s reckless ways, her unsavory stepfather, a best friend’s betrayal, and the longing for love’s first kiss. Yet everything pales in comparison to what happens next as Layla Jay is forced to tell a lie to save her mother’s world from crashing down.

    The son of a stonemason attempts to win the hand of a squire's daughter, in a lush pastoral portrait of nineteenth-century life that depicts the pain of young love and the unpredictable twists of fortune.

    Now comes a reissue of the best-selling debut novel that launched her remarkable career. St. Elizabeth's, a home for unwed mothers in Habit, Kentucky, usually harbors its residents for only a little while. Not so Rose Clinton, a beautiful, mysterious woman who comes to the home pregnant but not unwed, and stays. She plans to give up her child, thinking she cannot be the mother it needs. But when Cecilia is born, Rose makes a place for herself and her daughter amid St. Elizabeth's extended family of nuns and an ever-changing collection of pregnant teenage girls. Rose's past won't be kept away, though, even by St. Elizabeth's; she cannot remain untouched by what she has left behind, even as she cannot change who she has become in the leaving.

    The young girl, Signy, is unaware of the life thread the Norns spin and weave for her, but she is about to find out.It is the year 829 CE, Signy has lived a secluded life in a tiny hamlet on one of the isles in Southern Denmark and knows the outside world only from stories. Events take her to the bustling market town Birka, a vastly different place, and to a new life in the household of the town völva, a Norse shamanic healer and witch.A story of fortitude, friends and foes, völva magic, survival and betrayal set in Viking Scandinavia. Signy Kráka is historical fiction with a twist of Norse mysticism and will also appeal to fantasy fans.Written with attention to historical detail and sweeping imagination, this atmospheric story transports the reader into the culture and beliefs of Viking-Age Scandinavia.Praise from readers:"Great storytelling!""Very vivid and realistic.""Wonderful. I loved every chapter.""Your story is one of my favorites.""I can't wait to see what happens next!!" Signy Kráka is a novel told in three parts. This book is part one and contains 30 chapters.

    Some say the fabled giant tree was once a knee-high seedling brushed by the black boot of Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortez. No other tree along the entire coastal crescent from New Orleans to Apalachicola can rival its majesty or its power to draw people to it. In silence and with dignity, the Ghosthead has served as sentinel to the widow's family land for countless generations. It was a childhood friend and a spirit guide in troubled times. Her father is buried in its shade. So why would the widow walk into a biker bar and hire a man to fire his chainsaw and inflict fatal gashes around its trunk, ending in a few minutes what took five centuries to create? The Widow and the Tree is a tale of dark deeds committed with mercy in mind, provoking the reader to ask: Would I have done the same thing? This book is based on a true story.

    It’s the Great Depression and jobs are scarce, but it seems to Veda that Raymond uses religion as an excuse for why he can’t find work. He can’t work on the Sabbath, he can’t work around crude or vulgar men, and he will not join a union. After years of financial hardship, four babies, and what Raymond calls "Veda's accident”, Veda defies her church and files for divorce. The mysterious loss of her second husband is devastating and in order to raise her kids, she does things she is not proud of. Over the years she has blamed the church, Raymond, fate, and herself for her troubles, but it is Charlie’s recklessness that swallows up every bit of pride she has left.

    A small Kentucky town, known only for its excellent bourbon and passable cement, direct from the factory that gives the town its name. The favored local sons of Cementville’s most prominent families all joined the National Guard hoping to avoid the draft and the killing fields of Vietnam. They were sent to combat anyway, and seven boys were killed in a single, horrific ambush.The novel opens as the coffins are making their way home, along with one remaining survivor, the now-maimed town quarterback recently rescued from a Vietnamese prison camp. Yet the return of the bodies sets off something inside of the town itself —a sense of violence, a political reality, a gnawing unease with the future — and soon, new bodies start turning up around town, pushing the families of Cementville into further alienation and grief.Presented as the Our Town of its time, we’ll meet Maureen, the young sister of a recently returned solider who attempts to document the strange changes going on in her town; Harlan O’Brien, a war hero just rescued from three years in a POW camp whose PTSD starts bending his mind in terrifying ways; Evelyn Slidell, the wealthy icon and oldest woman in town, a descendent of the its founders and no stranger to what grief does to a family; Giang Smith, the ‘war bride’ who flees the violence of Vietnam with her new American husband only to encounter echoes of it in her new home; and the notorious Ferguson clan, led by the violent Levon and his draft-dodging younger brother Byard, who carry a secret that could further tear the town apart.With the Civil Rights Act only a few years old, a restless citizenry divided over the war, and the Women’s Movement sending tremors through established assumptions about family life, Cementville provides a microcosm of a society shedding the old order and learning how to live with grief — a situation with resonant echoes concerning war and community still being confronted today.

    Though family and community support helps, her hold on sanity remains tenuous.

    Four boats. One Grand Canyon. MEN ON BOATS is the true(ish) history of an 1869 expedition, when a one-armed captain and a crew of insane yet loyal volunteers set out to chart the course of the Colorado River.

    Jess Kirkman's grandmother is dying, and Jess remembers the tales she and his mother have passed down to him--a chorus of women's voices that sing and share and celebrate the common song of life.

    When her every attempt to rekindle romance and affection with her husband--a prominent local doctor--fails, she finds herself turning to the friendship of Charlie Cobb, a new man in town. But as their relationship becomes more intimate, smalltown tongues start wagging, and their starcrossed affair leads to a shocking public murder.

    Yet she is passionate about her grandchildren, whom she is raising. She overcomes her abusive upbringing by facing life head on, making no excuses. Always full of surprises, Tucker will inspire you.

    Hungering to make a new kind of life for herself, she marries John Bayley, a man twice widowed, and begins a family amid a difficult and fiery union. Set in the fictional hamlet of Faith, North Carolina, Salt weaves together the lives of Anna's family and friends in a remarkably moving novel of exultation and despair, of grief and ghosts.