On a poor farm near Starkfield in western Massachusetts, Ethan Frome struggles to wrest a living from the land, unassisted by his whining and hypochondrialcal wife Zeena. Zeena's young cousin Mattie Silver is left destitute, and only place she can go is to Ethan's farm. An embittered man and an enchanting young woman meet in such circumstances, unleashing predictable consequences as passions are aroused between the three protagonists.

A thirteen-year-old Ozark boy, unloved by his father, is haunted by desires for his sexually provocative mother, a woman preoccupied with a flashy man who promises to take her away.

Off the easternmost coast of India lies the immense archipelago of tiny islands known as the Sundarbans. Life here is precarious, ruled by the unforgiving tides and the constant threat of attacks by Bengal tigers. Into this place of vengeful beauty come two seekers from different worlds, whose lives collide with tragic consequences. The settlers of the remote Sundarbans believe that anyone without a pure heart who ventures into the watery island labyrinth...

A tale of violence and sex among rural poor in the American South, the novel was highly controversial in its time. It is the story of Georgia sharecropper Jeeter Lester and his family, who are trapped by the bleak economic conditions of the Depression as well as by their own limited intelligence and destructive sexuality. Its tragic ending is almost foreordained by the characters' inability to change their lives. Caldwell's skillful use of dialect...

When small town drifter Sammy Barlach drives into town on the search for his next cold beer and the bunch that'll have him, he gets a lot more than he bargained for. Food, lodging, and the possibility of a better future thanks to redheaded Jamalee and her brother Jason who dream of hitting the big time. But breaks aren't easy to come by if you live in Venus Holler.