"The intertwining stories of two Louisiana families--three generations of African-American men--and their struggles to make a place for themselves in a country deeply divided in the aftermath of the Civil War and beyond"--Provided by publisher.

YA-YAS IN BLOOM reveals the roots of the Ya-Yas' friendship in the 1930s and roars with all the raw power of Vivi Abbott Walker's 1962 T-Bird through sixty years of marriage, child-raising, and hair-raising family secrets.

Olivia Morrison, raised by her affluent, well-born step-father John Archer on a lavish estate in Louisiana, enjoyed a life of privilege until she ran off with a cowboy and left the Archers behind. Years later, with he eight-year-old, Sara, in tow, Olivia returns to that long-ago estate. Olivia thinks she is prepared for a chilly reception, but she doesn't expect the emotions that churn when she comes face to face again with Seth, her older step-cousin,...

"Valerie Martin's Property delivers an eerily mesmerizing inquiry into slavery's venomous effects on the owner and the owned. The year is 1828, the setting a Louisiana sugar plantation where Manon Gaudet, pretty, bitterly intelligent, and monstrously self-absorbed, seethes under the dominion of her boorish husband. In particular his relationship with her slave Sarah, who is both his victim and his mistress. Exploring the permutations of Manon's own...

Teenager Pearl Andreas dreams of becoming a doctor. She gets a summer job at the hospital as a nurse's aid and finds friendship with a handsome intern. But Pearl's happiness is clouded by nightmarish memories and questions about the dark secrets that have tainted her family. When a series of tragedies befalls those close to her, and her mother disappears, Pearl flees back into the bayou of her childhood, seeking the long-buried truths of her heritage....

The twister that touches down in Bordelaise, Louisiana, not only destroys the calm of a summer Sunday, it pierces the soul of Katie Earle, whose young son Bobby goes missing...and it wasn't the storm that took him. Katie's first thought is that her estranged husband, J.R., saw his chance and grabbed Bobby to spite her. But the reality goes beyond that to truly horrifying, and now her nightmare is only just beginning. The real terror will begin when...

Driven from the ornate Dumas Mansion back to her beloved bayou, Ruby struggles to begin her life anew in this atmospheric and thrilling novel. Living again in a humble shack, Ruby is determined to make a secure and happy home for her precious daughter, Pearl. At her side once more is Paul Tate, her first love, now a man of dazzling wealth. Whisked away to his grand house, it seems Ruby can forget the shocking reason she and Paul must wed in secret...

When Texas oilman Tom Huff uses underhanded methods and extortion to force a pipeline through Justin Pitre's Louisiana wetland paradise, Justin and his wife Grace launch a desperate campaign to stop the project.

Jacqueline Guidry's debut novel set in 1950s Louisiana was selected for the PEN/Faulkner Writers in Schools program and has been favorably compared to To Kill a Mockingbird. Ten-year-old Vivien Leigh wants more than anything to understand the adult world. But when two black nuns come to teach at her all-white Catholic elementary school, everything begins to change. She and her sister are suddenly exposed to the harsh realities of racial segregation....

"The lyrics of a Cajun waltz may be dark as midnight with heartache and trouble, but still the music swings. The same goes for what happens after a shifty musician and a lonely shopgirl let destiny sweep them into an ill-suited marriage in swampy southwest Louisiana on the eve of the Depression. Love doesn't much figure between Richie Bainard and Esther Block. They build a business together while dreaming opposite dreams of fulfillment. But like a...