In the small river town of La Luna, Louisiana, Calla Lily Ponder enjoys a blissful childhood at her mother's side, learns the art of healing through the humble womanly art of "fixing hair," and encounters first love with a boy named Tuck. When Tuck leaves her, Calla transforms her sorrow into inspiration and heads for the wild and colorful city of New Orleans--where she realizes the full power of her "healing hands" and Tuck presents her with an offer...

A group of six women, college friends who have been meeting biannually for thirty years, put aside their individual woes to provide a circle of strength when one of them is diagnosed with a terminal illness.

Georgia Bottoms, a Southern belle who keeps six lovers--none of whom know of the others--so she can maintain a lavish lifestyle, finds her ruse crumbling when a married preacher she has been seeing plans to confess their affair in front of his congregation.

From the author of The Keepers of the House, a “beautiful” novel following a black mother and daughter through the Great Depression and Civil Rights era (The Boston Globe).
Mary is an orphaned, homeless, African American child, abandoned by the rest of her family and left to care for her younger brother. She becomes a “roadwalker,” a nomad who wanders across the rural south and quickly learns to rely...

Clare, a successful divorce coach, is referred to as the Queen of Broken Hearts. Now, preparing to open a permanent home in Alabama for the retreats she leads, she sees things through her clients' eyes for the first time when her own marriage ends in tragedy. Immersing herself in her work, she offers advice daily on how to mend a broken heart, while her own heart is breaking. Falling in love again with a charming burly sea captain is the last thing...

2009-0267.

Two women, one trying to hold on to her family homestead and another struggling to overcome agoraphobia and a failing marriage, forge a friendship in their small Southern community.

It is the early 1970s when Misty Rhodes--from Ferris Beach----and her young, flamboyant parents move in across the street from Katie Burns. Misty and her mother are everything Katie wants to be: daring, outrageous, fun. The two girls become inseparable, sharing every secret, every dream--until one fateful Fourth of July, when their lives change in a way they could never have imagined.

"Opening up a new restaurant with Peter isn't as easy as she had anticipated, and when Leelee's ex-husband returns unexpectedly, everything else goes haywire. Throw her three crazy best friends into the mix; as well as Riley, her meddlesome next-door neighbor; and Kissie, Leelee's beloved second mother, and you have the perfect recipe for a sassy, Southern delicacy. An endearing and chuckle-inducing tale, Southern as a Second Language keeps you guessing...

Like America in the mid-nineteenth century, Emma Garnet Tate is a woman at war with herself. Born to privilege on a James River plantation, she grows up increasingly aware that her family's prosperity is inextricably linked to the institution of slavery. As she tells her story in 1900, she is still prey to her childhood, to the memories of a life that was made bearable in the main by the indomitable family servant Clarice. She secedes from the control...