The teenage son of an Appalachian single mother who dies when he is eleven uses his good looks, wit, and instincts to survive foster care, child labor, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival....

In his journal, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called East of Eden "the first book," and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. Set in the rich farmland of California's Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.

A ne'er-do-well exploits his gentle daughter's beauty for social advancement in this masterpiece of tragic fiction. Hardy's 1891 novel defied convention to focus on the rural lower class for a frank treatment of sexuality and religion. Then and now, his sympathetic portrait of a victim of Victorian hypocrisy offers compelling reading.

Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch, "Scout", returns home from New York City to visit her aging father, Atticus. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights tensions and political turmoil that were transforming the South, Jean Louise's homecoming becomes bittersweet when she learns disturbing truths about her close-knit family, the town and the people dearest to her.

"The narrator is a farm boy named Luke Chandler, age seven, who lives in the cotton fields with his parents and grandparents in a little house that's never been painted. The Chandlers farm eighty acres that they rent, not own, and when the cotton is ready they hire a truckload of Mexicans and a family from the Ozarks to help harvest it. For six weeks they pick cotton, battling the heat, the rain, the fatigue, and, sometimes, each other. As the weeks...

True crime writer Wylie Lark, snowed in at an isolated farmhouse where she's retreated to write her new book, finds a small child in the snow outside and, bringing him inside for warmth and safety, learns that the farmhouse isn't as isolated as she thought.

"The rugged and mysterious mountains of Kingdom County are the setting for Howard Frank Mosher's new autobiographical novel, The Fall of the Year. The Fall of the Year celebrates the fiercely independent people of Kingdom County, including such memorable new characters as Foster Boy Dufresne, the local bottle picker and metaphysical savant; the incomparably strange clairvoyant and matchmaker, Louvia the Fortuneteller; Dr. Sam E. Rong, a wayfaring...

A teenage girl has gone missing and everyone is called upon to join the search. The villagers fan out across the English moors as the police set up roadblocks and news reporters descend. Meanwhile, there is still work that must be done: cows milked, fences repaired, stone cut, pints poured, sermons written, a pantomime rehearsed. As the seasons unfold and the search for the missing girl goes on, there are those who leave the village and those who...

Katherine Paterson is back - A new novel from the author of Bridge to Terabithia - based on a completely true historical event. A historical novel about a young Cuban teenager who volunteers for Fidel Castro's national literacy campaign that taught those throughout the impoverished countryside to read.

"Deputy Shelby Lake was abandoned as a baby, saved by a stranger who found her in the freezing cold. Now, years later, a young boy is missing - and Shelby is the one who must rescue a child.The only evidence of what happened to 10-year-old Jeremiah Sloan is a bicycle left behind on a lonely road. After a desperate search fails to locate him, the close bonds of Shelby's hometown begin to fray under the weight of accusations and suspicion. Everyone...