"The Powell brothers, Muir and Moody, are as different as Cain and Abel. Muir is an innocent, a shy young man with big dreams and not the slightest idea of what to do about them. Moody, the older and wilder brother--embittered by the death of his father, by years of fighting his mother, and by his jealousy of Muir's privileged place in the family--takes to moonshine and gambling and turns his anger on his brother. Muir escapes, hoping to find something--an...

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.

Seen through the eyes of the youngest daughter, Annie, the Richards family faces triumph and hardships during the Great Depression and World War II.

In the rural town of Big Stone Gap, Virginia, Ave Maria Mulligan MacChesney struggles to deal with change as her daughter enters her teen years, growing more and more strong-willed, and Ave Maria embarks on a journey into her past that she never thought she would take.

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...

When seventeen-year-old Julie Harmond and Hank Richards marry and move to Gap Creek, North Carolina, they must struggle to survive floods, disease, and poverty in late nineteenth century Appalachia.

"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,...

When Clay Spencer fails to arrive home at the expected hour on Christmas Eve of 1933, his family grows concerned. While his seven brothers and sisters and his mother keep vigil the older son, Clay-boy, goes in search of his father. But on his journey through the snowbound Virginia hills, the boy experiences a series of hazardous, touching and hilarious adventures.His life is endangered by an enraged deer, the family's honor is threatened by a well-meaning...