Book picks similar to
The Coming of Rain by Richard Marius
historical-fiction
tennessee
appalachia
murder
The DI Kate Burrows Trilogy: The Ladykiller / Broken / Hard Girls
Martina Cole - 2017
Perfect for fans of Val McDermid, Karin Slaughter and Patricia Cornwell.'The Queen of Crime' - Woman & Home on Hard GirlsThe deadly DI Kate Burrows trilogy: the only time Martina's written from the Old Bill's perspective.Kate is the hard-but-fair copper whose investigations - and heart - become dangerously entwined with London's most infamous gangster, Patrick Kelly. But when there's a killer on the loose, Kate Burrows is the only woman for the job. THE LADYKILLER. BROKEN. HARD GIRLS.
Tara's Destiny
Geraldine O'Neill - 2007
But for one woman, it seems things have changed too much already. From the bright-eyed girl growing up in a small Irish village, to the confident young woman running a fine English hotel, Tara's life seems to have changed beyond recognition. On the way, she's met love and heartache - from becoming mistress of Ballygrace house and marrying the dashing Gabriel Fitzgerald, to losing that same sweetheart and being left a desperately young widow. But some things remain, and despite her tumultuous life, Tara still carries with her the spark and determination that has brought her this far. With a spirit as fiery as her striking Titian curls, Tara knows she must face the future with a bold heart, wherever it may lead. TARA'S DESTINY is the captivating final part in Tara's story. Filled with the warmth and charm that have won her so many fans, Geraldine O'Neill delivers a stunning saga, full of passion and drama.
The Collier's Wife
Chrissie Walsh - 2020
When Amy visits her husband Hugh at Beckett's Park Hospital, he doesn't recognise her. Broken after serving four devastating years in the First World War, Hugh is a shadow of the man he once was. Can he ever again be the man Amy knew and loved?Barnsborough, 1912. The first time Hugh and Amy meet, the connection between them is instant and electric. While a librarian's assistant and a collier might not be the most conventional pair, the two come together over a love of books that quickly turns into more. Neither suspects their families have secrets that threaten to tear them apart...True love's path is rarely simple... but can Hugh and Amy find their way back to each other?
Garden of Lies
Amanda Quick - 2015
But Miss Clifton has met an untimely end—and Ursula is convinced it was not due to natural causes. Archaeologist and adventurer Slater Roxton thinks Mrs. Kern is off her head to meddle in such dangerous business. Nevertheless, he seems sensible enough to Ursula, though she does find herself unnerved by his self-possession and unreadable green-gold eyes… If this mysterious widowed beauty insists on stirring the pot, Slater intends to remain close by as they venture into the dark side of polite society. Together they must reveal the identity of a killer—and to achieve their goal they may need to reveal their deepest secrets to each other as well…
The Power of Dreams
Rosie Harris - 2006
Unable to cope alone, she teams up with Rhonda Rees, a trained milliner, who also has a young baby. They share rooms in notorious Tiger Bay in Cardiff, struggling to make ends meet. In time, though, they are able to open up a little shop and it seems as if life is looking up for both young women.But fate soon intervenes and they are reduced to living in even greater squalor, barely able to eke out enough money to support themselves let alone their two children. Meanwhile, Merrion's brother and her childhood sweetheart have both gone to sea and she has almost given up hope of ever seeing them alive again...
A Land More Kind Than Home
Wiley Cash - 2012
Adventurous and precocious, Jess is enormously protective of his older brother, Christopher, a mute whom everyone calls Stump. Though their mother has warned them not to snoop, Stump can't help sneaking a look at something he's not supposed to — an act that will have catastrophic repercussions, shattering both his world and Jess's. It's a wrenching event that thrusts Jess into an adulthood for which he's not prepared. While there is much about the world that still confuses him, he now knows that a new understanding can bring not only a growing danger and evil — but also the possibility of freedom and deliverance as well.Told by three resonant and evocative characters — Jess; Adelaide Lyle, the town midwife and moral conscience; and Clem Barefield, a sheriff with his own painful past — A Land More Kind Than Home is a haunting tale of courage in the face of cruelty and the power of love to overcome the darkness that lives in us all. These are masterful portrayals, written with assurance and truth, and they show us the extraordinary promise of this remarkable.
Try a Little Tenderness
Joan Jonker - 1998
Jenny's pretty face and lively sense of humour make her everyone's favourite girl, whereas Laura is mean and moody and she's never out of trouble. Their mother, Mary, loves them both and frets about Laura's behaviour, but soon that's the least of her worries... Her father's new young wife, Celia, is about to bring shame on the family by leading Laura astray. Jenny attracts the attention of two young lads in her street who both want to court her. Mick and John have been mates since they were kids but now war is declared, and it's every man for himself! Meanwhile Laura's resentment begins to build and it's only a matter of time before things come to a head. Who will learn that a little tenderness goes a long way?
Blood Lies: Book One of The Redwing Saga
Sharon K. Gilbert - 2017
When detectives arrive, they find not only the broken body of the victim, but a child who remembers nothing of who she is or how she came to be at the scene. Because the little girl has no known home, a gentle-hearted detective inspector named Charles St. Clair takes her to his home, and from that point on, his life will never be the same. Over the course of the next ten years, he’ll learn not only all about the girl but also about himself. And St. Clair will learn the truth about a supernatural battle that has been raging across England for four hundred years.
The Redwing Saga
presents an alternative telling of history, pulling back the veil of secrecy put into place by those who would deceive and destroy. Geopolitics, criminal investigation, and science merge with secret societies, angelic warfare, and human free will. Book One of the series,
Blood Lies
, introduces the characters—both human and non-human—as well as their backstories, and it starts us on a journey that will eventually lead from Whitechapel to World War.
Shepherds & Butchers
Chris Marnewick - 2008
At nineteen, he is a Death Row warder at Maximum Security Prison in Pretoria, South Africa: a shepherd who cares for the condemned - and a butcher who escorts them to the gallows. In the summer of 1987, after thirty-two men were hanged in two weeks (all real cases), Leon loses control, with tragic results. And now he's the one facing the death penalty. Only the most precarious line of legal argument stands between Leon and the gallows. Chasing a defense, his advocate trawls the deepest recesses of life in the Pot - the twilight world of Death Row - in order to determine the effect of multiple executions on his young client. In 1987, 164 people were executed at Maximum Security. Two years later, the last man went to the gallows, after more than four thousand hangings in Pretoria in that century. Shepherds & Butchers portrays legal execution in unprecedented detail, revealing its devastating impact on all those involved. At the same time, it exposes the callous violence on the other side of the noose, where murderers reign. Chris Marnewick's first novel is a gripping courtroom drama steeped in the factual.
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
David Grann - 2017
After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.Then, one by one, they began to be killed off. One Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, watched as her family was murdered. Her older sister was shot. Her mother was then slowly poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more Osage began to die under mysterious circumstances.In this last remnant of the Wild West—where oilmen like J. P. Getty made their fortunes and where desperadoes such as Al Spencer, “the Phantom Terror,” roamed – virtually anyone who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. As the death toll surpassed more than twenty-four Osage, the newly created F.B.I. took up the case, in what became one of the organization’s first major homicide investigations. But the bureau was then notoriously corrupt and initially bungled the case. Eventually the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including one of the only Native American agents in the bureau. They infiltrated the region, struggling to adopt the latest modern techniques of detection. Together with the Osage they began to expose one of the most sinister conspiracies in American history.A true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history.
The Moonshiner's Daughter
Donna Everhart - 2019
. .Generations of Sassers have made moonshine in the Brushy Mountains of Wilkes County, North Carolina. Their history is recorded in a leather-bound journal that belongs to Jessie Sasser's daddy, but Jessie wants no part of it. As far as she's concerned, moonshine caused her mother's death a dozen years ago.Her father refuses to speak about her mama, or about the day she died. But Jessie has a gnawing hunger for the truth--one that compels her to seek comfort in food. Yet all her self-destructive behavior seems to do is feed what her school's gruff but compassionate nurse describes as the "monster" inside Jessie.Resenting her father's insistence that moonshining runs in her veins, Jessie makes a plan to destroy the stills, using their neighbors as scapegoats. Instead, her scheme escalates an old rivalry and reveals long-held grudges. As she endeavors to right wrongs old and new, Jessie's loyalties will bring her to unexpected revelations about her family, her strengths--and a legacy that may provide her with the answers she has been longing for.
The Shadow of Celene
Carol Sanders - 2018
Livy Prescott is a young wife dependent upon,beholden to, and manipulated by Celene, a slave. In 1860, Edward Prescott gallops into Livy Taylor’s life racing his carriage down the main street of her tiny Pennsylvania town, winning a bet and her heart. After they wed, Livy is swept away to Merrywood, Edward’s home in the hills of North Carolina. There Livy faces the daunting task of adjusting to her new life as Mistress of Merrywood and slave-owner. And there Livy encounters Celene, the beautiful slave cook of Merrywood, skilled in the healing arts and privy to the deepest secrets of the Prescotts. Gradually Livy learns the extent of Celene’s influence and the hold she maintains over her master, causing Livy to question who is the real mistress of Merrywood.
Season of the Raven
Denise Domning - 2014
Saddled with a clerk who names Faucon his ‘penance', the shire’s first Crowner must thread the tangled relationships between the sheriff, the village of Priors Holston and the priory that once ruled it. As a simple task takes a turn to the political, what seems obvious isn’t and what appears safe turns out to be more dangerous than he could imagine.
The Giants Look Down
Sonja Price - 2016
It is the late 1960s and the family enjoy an idyllic life in the Vale of Kashmir, despite the area being riddled with conflict and poverty. But after a devastating earthquake wipes out her entire family, Jaya is taken into the care of relatives in Delhi, who attempt to marry her off and keep secret from her the possibility that Tahir, her younger brother, has survived the earthquake. After escaping from the arranged marriage Jaya is put through medical training in Scotland, as she had always dreamed, and where she develops feelings for her foster family’s eldest son, Alastair, who is engaged to someone else. In the meantime, Tahir has been abducted by a band of Kashmiri freedom fighters, who have made him one of their own. Jaya finally returns to her troubled homeland to find him and come to terms with the loss of her family. Alastair, who arrives in Kashmir to announce his love for Jaya, is kidnapped by the freedom fighters, forcing her to risk everything to get him back.
Advent
Kevin Wignall - 2013
It's a time of year that brings bittersweet memories for this young man, reminders of all the things he's lost. But tonight he'll strike back against the bad luck that's slowly claimed his family. Tonight he's determined he'll kill the drug dealer, Mohr. Tonight, also, Karsten Groll knows that he will die himself.