A man risks his soul and his sanity to save his family from malevolent forces in this brilliant novel of horror and the supernatural from the award-winning pioneer of speculative fiction and author of the classic My Soul to Keep. When Hilton was a boy, his grandmother sacrificed her life to save him from drowning. Thirty years later, he begins to suspect that he was never meant to survive that accident, and that dark forces are working to rectify...

The perfect wife and mother of three grown children, Marilyn Grimes copes with the problems of midlife as she struggles to recall some of her own postponed dreams and reinvent her marriage, friendships, family, and herself.

For Kenzie, growing up in the Lowe home means opening the bottom drawer of her father's dresser to choose which of the three belts she wants to get whipped with; trips to Beehive Liquors for her father's vodka; and dreaming of the day she can escape apartment A5. Over the course of twenty years, she goes to school, holds odd jobs, and develops her own craving for the bottle. Then, when Kenzie learns that her father is dying, she's shocked by her desire...

Ex-slave Sadie Watson reveals to her granddaughter her experiences while in bondage and the love she had for her husband, Jim, who escaped down the Mississippi with Huck Finn when he learned he was to be sold.

A black family disintegrates after the mother, an accountant, begins outshining her husband, an artist. The fights become more frequent, the couple split and the wife hits the bottle. More fights follow, these with her daughters, one of whom is accidentally killed, and the mother goes to jail. The story is told in part by the surviving daughter, a law student. By the author of Do Remember Me.