Showing titles in Southern

Flannery O’Connor’s astonishing and haunting first novel is a classic of 20th-century literature. It is the story of Hazel Motes, a 22-year-old caught in an unending struggle against his innate, desperate faith. He falls under the spell of a “blind” street preacher named Asa Hawks and his degenerate fifteen-year-old daughter. In an ironic, malicious gesture of his own non-faith, and to prove himself a greater cynic than Hawks, Hazel founds The Church of God Without Christ but is still thwarted in his efforts to lose God.

The Guggenheim Fellowship and Whiting Award-winning author Louis Edwards makes his long-awaited comeback with this epic tale of a New Orleans boy whose very creation is so filled with tension that it bedevils his destiny before he is even born. Spanning from the Deep South to the Middle East, Ramadan Ramsey bridges multiple countries and cultures, entwining two families who struggle to love and survive in the face of war, natural disasters, and their equally tumultuous, private mistakes and yearnings.

Rose Mae Lolley is a fierce and dirty girl, long-suppressed under flowery skirts and bow-trimmed ballet flats. As "Mrs. Ro Grandee" she's trapped in a marriage that's thick with love and sick with abuse. Her true self has been bound in the chains of marital bliss in rural Texas, letting "Ro" make eggs, iron shirts, and take her punches.

In her rural Appalachian holler, 10-year-old Misty’s closest friends are the crawdads. Misty can speak to them, to the birds, to the creek, to everything outside, and she understands how they think. She knows that if she could just speak to her parents in the same way, she could stop all the fighting. But it’s too hard. Strange things start to happen in the holler. When her friend William takes their friendship too far, Misty’s need to connect is greater than ever, but it’s hard to talk about what you don’t understand.

Evie Porter has everything a nice Southern girl could want: a perfect, doting boyfriend, a house with a picket fence, a fancy group of friends. The only catch: Evie Porter doesn't exist. The identity comes first: Evie Porter. Once she's given a name and location by her mysterious boss Mr Smith, she learns everything there is to know about the town and the people in it. Then the mark: Ryan Sumner. The last piece of the puzzle is the job. Evie isn't privy to Mr Smith's real identity, but she knows this job will be different.

Sully Raines sets out to find his birth mother, and ends up in Blessings, Georgia. A new surprise awaits him here, but of the best kind - his childhood sweetheart, whom he hasn't seen since she moved away when they were teens, is living in Blessings now. He's not sure she's as happy to see him as he is to see her, but it's been a lot of years, and a lot of water under the bridge... Sully's heartfelt search for answers about his past might just turn out to be the key to his future.

Birdie Fuller's new year is off to a bad start. Her husband has mysteriously disappeared, leaving Birdie to cope with their unmarried daughter's unplanned pregnancy. Birdie and Hannah disagree about the baby. Birdie urges her daughter to consider abortion, but Hannah is determined to see the pregnancy to term. When Hannah returns for her last semester in college, Birdie must face her demons, the problems in her marriage that drove her husband to clean out their bank accounts and run off with another woman.

Lindbergh’s Pharmacy is an Athens, Georgia, institution—the type of beloved mom and pop shop that once dotted every American town but has mostly disappeared. But Lindbergh’s has recently become the object of attention of a local fourth grade teacher Tina Lamm (“Ms. Lamm to my students”). Tina is certain something very, very bad is happening behind its famous black door and she intends to do something about it. Her suspicions—and the drastic actions she plans—are the unlikely glue that will connect her to a group of six employees and customers inside the pharmacy one hot Georgia evening.

Callum, a seasoned horse thief at 15 years old, came to America from his native Ireland as an orphan. Ava, her father and brother lost to the war, hides in her crumbling home until Callum determines to rescue her from the bands of hungry soldiers pillaging the land, leaving destruction in their wake. Ava and Callum have only each other in the world and their remarkable horse, Reiver, who carries them through the destruction that is the South. Pursued relentlessly by a murderous slave hunter, tracking dogs, and rangers, the couple race through a beautiful but ruined land.

Lily has grown up believing she accidentally killed her mother when she was four. She not only has her own memory of holding the gun, but her father's account of the event. Now 14, she yearns for her mother, and for forgiveness. Living on a peach farm in South Carolina with her father, she has only one friend: Rosaleen, a black servant whose sharp exterior hides a tender heart. South Carolina in the '60s is a place where segregation is still considered a cause worth fighting for. When racial tension explodes one summer afternoon, and Rosaleen is arrested and beaten, Lily is compelled to act.

Judith Kratt inherited all the Kratt family had to offer - the pie safe, the copper clock, the murder that no one talks about - and she knows in her old bones that it's time to make an inventory of her household and its valuables. But she finds that cataloging the family belongings - as well as their misfortunes - won't contain her family's secrets, not when her wayward sister suddenly returns, determined to expose skeletons that the Kratts had hoped to take to their grave.

For generations, the Windsors have lived on the family's grand estate in Crestwood, South Carolina, as intertwined with local life as sweet tea and pecan pie. Now, on the anniversary of her daughter Emily's death, Sarabess Windsor believes she may be the last to carry the family name - unless she can find her second daughter, Trinity, who disappeared 15 years ago.

For twelve-year-old Martha "Sonny" Creech, there is no place more beautiful than her family's cotton farm. She, her two brothers, and her parents work hard on their land - hoeing, planting, picking - but only Sonny loves the rich, dark earth the way her father does. When a tragic accident claims his life, her stricken family struggles to fend off ruin - until their rich, reclusive neighbor offers to help finance that year's cotton crop.

The moment I first gazed into Alex's soulful gray eyes, I knew I'd met the man I wanted to spend my life with. And I was right. When my beloved sister vanished, Alex put up posters and wiped away my tears after bad dream—she put me back together. But when police pull a crumpled photo from my dead sister's pocket, and I see my husband's familiar face smiling back at me, my perfect world shatters.

Cheyenne Ashby knows the dark and disturbing history of her hometown of Blue Cliff, Virginia, all too well. It’s why she left. Growing up deep within the woods with her eccentric mother, Constance, she was raised on the unusual customs and generational superstitions linked to the local legend of an evil entity that haunts the forest. Five years ago, the bodies of three children were found in the woods. It was a man—not a mythical beast—named Jasper Clinton who was convicted of these heinous crimes.

In this number one New York Times best-selling novel of first love and second chances, former high school sweethearts confront the painful truths of their past to build a promising future - together. "Everyone wanted to believe that endless love was possible. She'd believed in it once, too, back when she was 18". In the spring of 1984, high school students Amanda Collier and Dawson Cole fell deeply, irrevocably in love. Though they were from opposite sides of the tracks, their love for one another seemed to defy the realities of life in their small town in North Carolina.

Most people think the reason Prudy Millings married the best-looking preacher in the Carolinas—who inexplicably turned psychotic and mowed her down with the church van—is that she was raised all wrong. So not true. Prudy's reclamation of her life begins two years after the crime spree that nearly stopped her heart. She packs up her two precocious children and settles in her parents' South Carolina hometown where she deals with a delightful Proverbs-spewing mama who pretends her grown daughters are virgins.

Charlie Garner has a bad feeling. His ex-wife, Meg, has been missing for over a week and one quick peek into her home shows all her possessions packed up in boxes. Neighbors claim she’s running from bill collectors, but Charlie suspects something more sinister is afoot. Meg was last seen working at the local donut shop, a business run by a shadow group most refer to as ‘The Saucer People’; a space-age, evangelist cult who believe their compound to be the site of an extraterrestrial Second Coming.

From beyond the grave, Ashton’s mother leaves a mysterious legacy that upends her world. Eileen Darby, the heiress to the Merriweather fortune, has entrusted her oldest daughter with the family's waterfront estate on Catawba Sound in South Carolina's Lowcountry, bequeathing virtually nothing to her other three children. This lavish bequest is more than a gift; it's a cryptic message, a puzzle interlaced with the troubled history of their dysfunctional family. As Ashton embarks on renovating the old home, she finds herself haunted by secrets lurking in the shadows of her memory. What is ...

Dove Jarrod was a renowned evangelist and faith healer. Only her granddaughter, Eve Candler, knows that Dove was a con artist. In the eight years since Dove’s death, Eve has maintained Dove’s charitable foundation - and her lies. But just as a documentary team wraps up a shoot about the miracle worker, Eve is assaulted by a vengeful stranger intent on exposing what could be Dove’s darkest secret: murder.... Tuscaloosa, 1934: a wily young orphan escapes the psychiatric hospital where she was born.