Just out of prison after serving time on a drug charge, Roper Rackard comes across a woman's body while mowing the tall grass at the far end of his new boss's property, and although he is innocent of her death, Roper panics. Terrified that he will be charged with murdering a white woman and sent back to jail, he decides to hide the body where it won't be found. As days and then weeks pass, and the search for the missing woman continues, Roper begins to doubt himself. Did he do the right th...

Lonliness and rejection switch Beebee from a cry-baby to a cold-hearted killer. After his parents divorced they gradually changed from fighting about who would get to keep Beebee to fighting about who would have to keep Beebee. Then his mother forgot his thirteenth birthday and something flipped on inside Beebee's head to ignite a deadly anger.

Following a family reunion, Gransallie learns that her favorite niece, Ophelia, ia a not only a school teacher but a nudist. Hating to be proved wrong, Gransallie tries to defend Ophelia to her granddaughters, who "don't care where they are going or what shape they arrive in as long as they are going." Gransallie is their driver and chapperone on trips to Florida, or just anywhere.

No longer a Paul-Newman playboy type, who used to leave his family waiting and wondering, Elec now prides himself on "making trades" at the various houses along the rural routes where he works. For instance, at the home of June Bug and Candy, while June Bug is away, Elec talks Candy into giving him her dead mother-in-law's hated chickens. This odd couple breaks Elec of his bad habits.

Rural mail carrier, Tammy, bumps heads in a nightmare during a rare spring snow storm. Twenty years before, she was kidnapped and shot by a drug addict she met along her route. Now she picks up another stranger along her route and the memories come flooding back. Is she about to be kidnapped and shot again? No, she tells herself, because the odds against it are so great.

A little girl learns from her grandmother about the natural cycles of life and death. They watch the moon waxing and waning; they watch the tomatoes in the garden grow from tiny yellow flowers to red, ripe orbs. The little girl sees herself in comparison to her grandmother--one new and the other old. They watch as the moon returns to new again and the starting-over.

What if you returned to your hometown after a decade of shock treatments in a lock-up away from everything and everybody you knew? When you come home, with no memory, only sensations, everything is new. Gradually, as sensation gives way to memory, you venture out but everybody shuns you. What have you done to them? Cammie Short finds answers better left hidden.

Where did the Dixie Chics disappear to for a while, and why did they disappear? Who decides who get to be little and big in entertainment? Here's what this author thinks...

Two teenage girls, out scouting the Alapaha River, in South Georgia, happen up on two escaped death-row prisoners. One girl is killed and the other, Ruth, is taken hostage on a boat ride downriver for an extended nightmare of torture and sacrifice. At the end of the river, Ruth witnesses the most shocking of all sacrifices--THE sacrifice. Janice Daugharty, author of 7 published novels.

(Companion story to "Jesus Bus")Dot Knight's car is brand-new in this story and she aims to keep it that way. Problem is, she has been enlisted by her adored preacher to drive those nasty Odums' kids to Vacation Bible School halfway across the county. Then her car breaks down along a remote road, and the kid's turn her car into a wreak...

Adam's notions on hard work, sacrifice, crime and punishment are tested when he meets one of the juvenile delinquents from a govenment-funded rehab program crossing country with a wagon train. Vision Quest was created to keep young criminals from getting into further trouble. To Adam, at first, the program seems geared more toward reward than punishment.

General Norton receives a visit from a thief, and he is in for the time of his life. An invalid with nothing to do, General has advertised a goat on a radio exchange program, which "the Hippie" picks up on. The odd pair go out to see the goat and get into a fight about religion, among other things. Despite their differences, the General decides that bad company is better than no company.