One of the country’s most-acclaimed and popular novelists offers a selection of a dozen short stories set in James Lee Burke’s most beloved milieu, the Deep South.“America’s best novelist” (The Denver Post), two-time Edgar Award winner James Lee Burke is renowned for his lush, suspense-charged portrayals of the Deep South—the people, the crime, the hope and despair infused in the bayou landscape. This stunning anthology takes us back to where Burke's heart...

Borden Watson goes to the giant redwood forest for one reason: to shoot spotted owls. They are the reason his dad has lost his job as a logger, and Borden hates them. But when he comes across a baby owl who has fallen out of its nest, Borden can't resist the tiny elf-like creature. And luckily, this owlet doesn't have spots, so it must be a barred owl-not the enemy. Borden takes the little owl home and names it Bardy. Before long, Bardy wins over each member of Borden's owl-hating family. ...

Monty Roberts has traveled the world working with difficult horses. He has trained Queen Elizabeth's yearlings, jittery stallions on movie sets, and million-dollar race horses. In each case, he controls the animal without using force or inflicting pain. Monty's father, a traditional horse trainer, had taught his son to dominate a horse in order to "break" it. But when he was 13, Monty made a discovery that changed his life. As he watched a mare tame a rebellious colt, Monty saw that she wa...

In 1838, thirteen thousand Cherokee were forced to leave their homeland in the Southeast and walk 900 miles to present-day Oklahoma. Hunger, cold, fatigue, and disease threatened their very survival. Their grueling relocation trek-the Trail of Tears-takes on new immediacy and meaning with this stunning work of fiction. Maritole loses not only her home and her settled life in North Carolina, but also many of the people closest to her. A chorus of voices joins hers to vividly recreate the tr...

Acclaimed author Robert Olmstead's Far Bright Star "packs a potent emotional wallop" (Booklist). In 1916, aging cavalryman Napoleon Childs leads an expedition into Mexico to capture Pancho Villa and bring him to justice. But Childs' troops are wiped out, and he is left to die alone in the Mexican desert. "[This] brilliantly expressive, condensed tale of resilience and dusty determination flows with the kind of literary cadence few writers have mastered."-Publishers Weekly

This gripping novel is not only one of the best books written about Vietnam; it is also one of the most powerful anti-war novels in American literature. Walter James has no face. Braiden Chaney has no arms or legs. They lost them 22 years ago, in Vietnam. Now, in the course of one long night in a V.A. hospital, these two soldiers-one black, the other white-reveal how they came to be where they are and what they can only hope to become.

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children's Book Award (Vermont)This contemporary classic explores the role of boys who fought in the Civil War. No reader’s vision of America’s most brutal and bloody war will be the same after reading this book.**“This wrenching look at our nation’s bloodiest conflict through the eyes of its youthful participants serves up history both heartbreaking and enlightening.”—**Publishers Weekly

A riveting evocation of the Civil War, drawn from the true family history of "America's best novelist" (The Denver Post), JAMES LEE BURKETwo young Southerners, friends despite their differing political views and backgrounds, enlist in the 18th Louisiana regiment of the Confederate Army: Robert Perry, wealthy and privileged, and irreverent Willie Burke, the son of Irish immigrants, face the trials of battle and find redemption in the love...

From seven-time Spur Award winner Elmer Kelton comes a riveting tale befitting the Western Writers of America's Greatest Western Writer of all time. When Comanches slaughter his parents in 1855 West Texas, eight-year-old Jeff buries their scalped bodies-and the charred remains of his younger brother. Taken in by a homesteading family, Jeff ekes out an existence. But as he dons Confederate gray, he never dreams his brother is alive-or that he's wearing Union blue.

A dusty box discovered in the wreckage of a once prosperous plantation on Agate Hill in North Carolina contains the remnants of an extraordinary life: diaries, letters, poems, songs, newspaper clippings, court records, marbles, rocks, dolls, and bones. It's through these treasured mementos that we meet Molly Petree. Raised in those ruins and orphaned by the Civil War, Molly is a refugee who has no interest in self-pity. When a mysterious benefactor appears out her father's past to rescue h...

The Big Wander is a trip 14-year-old Clay Lancaster and his older brother Mike have planned for years. It's Clay's dream to find his ex-rodeo star uncle, who quit the tour and disappeared somewhere in the vast and colorful Monument Valley. But Mike-heartbroken and unfocused after losing his girlfriend-soon heads for home. Clay, however, will not give up. He finds a job in a remote trading post, and follows a lead on his uncle's whereabouts that takes him deep into Navajo country. There he ...

Before he won stunning acclaim as one of today's most gifted southern writers, Larry Brown was a firefighter with the Oxford, Mississippi Fire Department. On Fire, his powerful and unflinching account of this experience, catapults listeners into the daily trauma all firefighters face-from the blistering heat of burning homes to the crunch of broken glass at crash scenes. As a gritty autobiography of a firefighter and as a lyrical exploration of one man's burning desire to write, this audio...