The coming of summer to Appalachia's Zebulon Mountain brings a blossoming in nature as well as in the lives of reclusive wildlife biologist Deanna Wolfe, young hunter Eddie Bondo, transplanted city-girl Lusa Landowski, and a pair of elderly, feuding neighbors.

Nestled in the lush Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, the town of Big Stone Gap has been home to Ave Maria Mulligan MacChesney and her family for generations. She's been married to her beloved Jack for nearly twenty years, raised one child and buried another, and run a business that binds her community together, all while holding close her tight circle of family and friends. But with her daughter Etta, having flown the nest to Italy, Ave Maria has...

God was going to save her marriage, Allison was sure of it. But neither her husband nor her marriage had been saved. What had become of His promise? Tony Kavanagh had been Allison's dream-come-true. They were in love within days, engaged within weeks, married and pregnant within a year. Her cup bubbled over with joy . . . but years later, that joy had been extinguished by unexpected trials. The day Allison issued her husband an ultimatum, she thought...

"After his mother is killed, four-year-old Clay Sizemore finds himself alone in a small Appalachian mining town. At first, unsure of Free Creek, he slowly learns to lean on its residents as family. There's Aunt Easter, who is always filled with a sense of foreboding, bound to her faith above all; quiltmaking Uncle Paul; untamable Evangeline; and Alma, the fiddler whose song wends it way into Clay's heart. Together, they help Clay fashion a quilt of...

"In one of the most dazzling books of his celebrated career, Dean Koontz delivers a masterwork of page-turning suspense that surpasses even his own inimitable reputation as a chronicler of our worst fears-and best dreams. In The Taking he tells the story of a community cut off from a world under siege, and the terrifying battle for survival waged by a young couple and their neighbors as familiar streets become fog-shrouded death traps. Gripping, heartbreaking,...

"In a North Carolina mountain town filled with moonshine and rotten husbands, Sadie Blue is only the latest girl to face a dead-end future at the mercy of a dangerous drunk. She's been married to Roy Tupkin for fifteen days, and she knows now that she should have listened to the folks who said he was trouble. But when a stranger sweeps in and knocks the world off-kilter for everyone in town, Sadie begins to think there might be more to life than being...

In this sequel to Big Stone Gap (LJ 4/1/00), it's now the late 1980s, and Ave Maria and Jack MacChesney have been married 11 years. They have a ten-year-old daughter, Etta, but lost their younger child, Joe, a few years earlier. This loss and other marital stresses have tested their relationship, but the summer brings on the biggest trial yet. As Jack tries to launch a new construction business in Big Stone Gap, VA, Ave Maria and Etta take off for...

Set in the 1850s Smoky Mountains, Rivers tells the gripping tale of a girl who's desperate to remove the guilt of her sister's death and anxious to absolve her departed grandmother of sins. While seeking the elusive Sin Eater, she uncovers a hideous secret and finds the truth.

The works of Thomas Wolfe cemented his legacy as one of the very best of the American Southern writers. Wolfe's largely autobiographical novel features Eugene Gant, who pines for a more expansive life after being born to a father whose bouts of maniacal raving are fueled by a prodigious appetite for drink.

It's 1978, and 35-year-old Ave Maria Mulligan is about to discover a skeleton in her own family's tidy closet that will blow the lid right off her quiet, uneventful life.