"This novel is sure to join the rich canon of Southern literature." --Anna Jean Mayhew, author of The Dry Grass of AugustFrom Pushcart Prize nominee Danny Johnson comes a powerful, lyrical debut novel that explores race relations, first love, and coming-of-age in North Carolina in the 1950s and '60s.At eight years old, Raeford "Junebug" Hurley has known more than his share of hard lessons. After the sudden death of his parents, he goes to live with his grandparents...

From Pushcart Prize nominee Danny Johnson comes a powerful, lyrical debut novel that explores race relations, first love, and coming-of-age in North Carolina in the 1950s and '60s. At eight years old, Raeford "Junebug" Hurley has known more than his share of hard lessons. After the sudden death of his parents, he goes to live with his grandparents on a farm surrounded by tobacco fields and lonesome woods. There he meets Fancy Stroud and her twin brother, Lightning, the children of black sh...

Set in 1950s Louisiana, Mandy Mikulencak’s beautifully written and emotionally moving novel evokes both The Help and Dead Man Walking with the story of an unforgettable woman whose quest to provide meals for death row prisoners leads her into the secrets of her own past.Many children have grown up in the shadow of Louisiana’s Greenmount State Penitentiary. Most of them—sons and daughters of corrections officers and staff—left the place as soon as they could. Yet G...

Glass Ferry, Kentucky, is bourbon country. Whiskey has been a way of life for generations, enabling families to provide and survive even in the darkest times. Flannery Butler’s daddy, Beauregard “Honey Bee” Butler, was known for making some of the best whiskey in the state, aged in barrels he’d take by boat up and down the Kentucky River until the rocking waters turned the spirits smooth and golden. Flannery is the only person Honey Bee ever entrusted with his recipes before he passed on, ...

A singularly compelling debut novel, about a desert where people go to escape their past, and a truck driver who finds himself at risk when he falls in love with a mysterious woman.Ben Jones lives a quiet, hardscrabble life, working as a trucker on Route 117, a little-travelled road in a remote region of the Utah desert which serves as a haven for fugitives and others looking to hide from the world. For many of the desert’s inhabitants, Ben's visits are their only ...

Atmospheric and searingly honest, GodPretty in the Tobacco Field is Coal Miner’s Daughter meets Winter’s Bone in a gripping tale of tender love and lossNameless, Kentucky, in 1969 is a hardscrabble community where jobs are few and poverty is a simple fact—just like the hot Appalachian breeze or the pests that can wipe out a tobacco field in days. RubyLyn Bishop is luckier than some. Her God-fearing uncle, Gunnar, has a short fuse and high expectations, bu...

From the New York Times bestselling author of Bittersweet comes a novel of suspense and passion about a terrible mistake made sixty years ago that threatens to change a modern family forever.Twenty-five-year-old Cassie Danvers is holed up in her family’s crumbling mansion in rural St. Jude, Ohio, mourning the loss of the woman who raised her—her grandmother, June. But a knock on the door forces her out of isolation. Cassie has been named the sole ...

There are some decisions you can never unmake. You can only atone for them - or try to. During her senior year of college, Clare Michaels takes a spring break trip to Florida with three other girls, including her best friend, Lee. She's hoping for adventure and a few stories to share back at school. Instead, a string of bad choices leads to a horrific encounter, and Lee offers herself up so that Clare can escape. In the weeks and months that follow that fateful incident, Lee, once so dynam...

In this “raw and heartbreaking” novel set in 1950s Louisiana, a compassionate prison cook uncovers the lives of death row prisoners (Historical Novel Review).Ginny Polk has come back to Louisiana’s Greenmount State Penitentiary, the place where her father worked and died, to become a prison cook. She knows the harsh reality of life within those walls. That’s why, among her duties, Ginny has taken on a special responsibility: preparing last meals for prison...

From the New York Timesbestselling author of *The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek*, a haunting story set deep in moonshine country, where love, loss, redemption and atonement intersect in the dark secrets surrounding a 1952 prom night when two teens go missing in rural Kentucky.**“An emotionally resonant tale of secrets, regret, and absolution that held me spellbound. You simply have to read it.” —Sara Gruen, New York Times bestselling aut...

Set in the Carolinas in the 1940s, this riveting novel of historical fiction from the acclaimed and award-winning author of The Saints of Swallow Hill is a beautifully written, evocative account of a young woman reckoning not just with the unforgiving landscape, but with the rocky emotional terrain that leads from innocence to wisdom.For fourteen-year-old Wallis Ann Stamper and her family, life in the Appalachian Mountains is simple and satisfying, though ...

Samantha Foster and Jessica Brown are destined to meet. But one lives in the 20th century, the other in the 21st...It is April 1916 and thousands of men have left home to fight in the war to end all wars. Jessica Brown's father is about to be one of these men. A year later, he is still alive, but Jess has to steal to keep her family from starving. And then a telegram arrives - her father has been killed in action.Four generations later, Sam Foster's father is admitted to ho...