Family Life Southern

Sharyn McCrumb is the New York Times best-selling author of the Ballad novels, which celebrate the rich history of Appalachia. An elegant saga set against the American Revolution, King' s Mountain features John Sevier and his legendary Carolina Overmountain Men, who find themselves defending their families and farms against the troops of a haughty British major.

The entire MacLeod clan is haunted by secrets, and young Bud MacLeod doesn't realize he carries the biggest secret of all. Growing up poor in Depression-era South Georgia is hard enough, but Bud is also cursed with a stutter and a birthmark that disfigures his face. His hateful father and amoral mother make life worse still, despite his brother's efforts to shield him. To survive, Bud must discover his strengths and confront the sins of his parents. First, though, he'll need to grasp his own truth: that he can't embrace his future until he comes to terms with his past.

Avalee Preston tries to silence the demons from her past and takes a chance at love with Ty Jackson, a man 12 years her junior and the brother to her long-dead fiance. As if she needs another complication in her life, his parents resent her, and he has grown children. Is love really enough for them to build a life together or is she confusing it with a fairy tale? Just what is love anyway? Maybe love was never intended for her after all. Ty deserves better.

Overcome by "the pall", Henry seeks escape in a quest for love and purpose occasioned by a crisis in his company's fortunes. Dodging an Iago-like rival, he finds love with a colleague in his department, endangers his bond with his family, and finally confronts the single urgent question of his life.

Peyton is not ready to share her widowed father with anyone, let alone a barely remembered cousin who just rolled into town. However, her father seems to like Nora well enough, and prim Aunt Augusta hates her, which raises Nora slightly in Peyton's esteem. Maybe Nora is just what quiet Lytton, Georgia, needs this summer.

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.

Michael Vargas is living the life of a celebrity architect when his world collapses. He walks away from the glamorous career of the star architect and begins a quest that will take him 23 years back in time. The challenge his mentor presented at the time is beckoning Michael back to the South - his home, a place he loved and hated.

Sylvie Snow knows the pressures of expectations: a woman is supposed to work hard, but never be tired; age gracefully, but always be beautiful; fix the family problems, but always be carefree. Sylvie does the grocery shopping, the laundry, the scheduling, the schlepping, and the PTA-ing, while planning her son’s Bar Mitzvah and cheerfully tending her husband, Paul, who’s been lying on the sofa with a broken ankle.

In a suburban LA neighborhood, neighbors keep wary distance and at times collide, propelled by desire, fury, and mischief. Precocious Korean-American sisters Mira and Rosemary find their world rocked by a suicide; a charismatic and creepy drama teacher grooms his students; an aging gay horror novelist fights loneliness; and a white mother and her adopted Vietnamese daughter deal with lifelong anger issues.

Thirteen years ago, Jori Trahan’s boyfriend vanished without a trace. Now, after moving back home to Alabama to care for her ailing grandmother and autistic brother, she comes face-to-face with the deadly mystery behind his disappearance. Jori has a rare form of synesthesia, meaning she can “hear” colors; to her, tones of voice are as unique as fingerprints. With the help of this ability and a sympathetic cop, Jori comes dangerously close to uncovering the truth. But those responsible will go to any length - including murder - to keep their dark secrets buried.

In 1868, on the barren shores of post-war Outer Banks North Carolina, the once wealthy Sinclair family moves for the summer to one of the first cottages on the ocean side of the resort village of Nags Head. Seventeen-year-old Abigail is beautiful, book smart, but sheltered by her plantation life and hemmed in by her emotionally distant family. To make good use of time, she is encouraged by her family to teach her father's fishing guide, the good-natured but penniless Benjamin Whimble, how to read and write.

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.

When Jack Parker’s father dies, Jack knows one thing: Tom Parker was a good man. Beyond that, decades of distance and silence had kept the two men from truly knowing each other. Jack attends the funeral with the hope he can shovel some dirt onto Tom’s casket, collect a few commiserations, and put miles between himself and the questions he’d let simmer since he’d left home years before. But when a group of strangers appears at the funeral, Jack realizes he has more questions than answers about how his father actually lived his life.

Eve Mann arrives in Ideal, Georgia, in 1972 looking for answers about the mother who died giving her life. A mother named Mercy. A mother who for all of Eve’s 22 years has been a mystery and a quest. Eve’s search for her mother, and the father she never knew, is a mission to discover her identity, her name, her people, and her home. Eve’s questions and longing launch a multigenerational story that sprawls back to the turn of the 20th century.

A family emergency brings former rapper and current real estate mogul Ivan Spencer back to his long-abandoned hometown. While there, he must deal with his confused mother, his elderly, philandering father, his flaky sister, an unreliable aunt, and a face from the past who makes him question some of his earlier decisions. All he wants to do is to get things squared away and return to his life, but as it turns out, he must deal with his own issues first.

At 12, Peyton McKenzie isn't ready to share her widowed father with anyone, let alone Nora, her redheaded, cigarette-smoking cousin who just rolled into town behind the wheel of a pink Thunderbird. But her father seems to like Nora, and she does make for good conversation with her friends at the Losers Club, and prim Aunt Augusta hates her, which means she can't be all bad. In fact, maybe Nora is just what quiet Lytton, Georgia, needs this summer.

At 12, Emily Parmenter is left mostly to herself after her mother disappears and her beloved older brother dies. Emily has built a life around the faded plantation where her remote father and hunting-obsessed brothers raise hunting spaniels. It is a meager, masculine world, but to Emily it has magic. And then comes Lulu Foxworth, troubled daughter of a truly grand plantation, who has run away from her hectic Charleston debutante season.

Decades after the Vietnam War and Toby’s life-changing summer with Zachary Beaver, Toby’s daughter, Rylee, is at a crossroads - her best friend, Twig, has started pushing her away just as Ben, a new kid from New York, settles into their small town of Antler. Rylee befriends Ben and learns that Ben’s father was a first responder on 9/11. The two unlikely friends soon embark on a project to find Zachary Beaver and hopefully reconnect him with Rylee's father almost 30 years later.

The gang from the Gull Island Writers Retreat take on the case of a man who is currently doing time for the murder of a woman he swears he did not kill. After speaking to the man, Alex determines that he is most likely telling the truth, so he enlists the help of the gang to prove it. As they work together to sort fact from fiction, they realize there may be a lot more going on than they originally thought.

Gussie, Ina Mae, and Blanche have been best friends for more than sixty years. From their humble beginnings of founding the Sunshine Club when they were girls to becoming the matchmaking queens of Newton, Texas, these three were inseparable. When Blanche passes away, Gussie and Ina Mae feel the best way to honor their dearly departed is with a shot of whiskey, some good music, and making a match for Blanche’s niece, Sissy.