The year is 2008 and Samantha Kofer's career at a huge Wall Street law firm is on the fast track -- until the recession hits and she gets downsized, furloughed, escorted out of the building. Samantha, though, is one of the "lucky" associates. She's offered an opportunity to work at a legal aid clinic for one year without pay, after which there would be a slim chance that she'd get her old job back. In a matter of days Samantha moves from Manhattan...

In 1940, tragedy forces Lou, her little brother Oz, and their invalid mother to move to the mountains of southwestern Virginia to live with their great-grandmother, but a courtroom battle could determine the fates of the entire family.

"Two friends travel around Pennsylvania, passing farm debris, mine ruins, and fracking waste. They show why, amidst all the desperation, there is still a community of hope, filled with survivors who offer joy, laughter, good will, and people looking out for their neighbors"--

Randall Stargill's four sons have gathered at their mountain farm to build a coffin for their dying father. His passing causes a dilemma for his sons, who must come to terms with their dysfunctional family, and also decide what to do with the farm, which has been Stargill land since 1790. Only Clayt, the youngest, a naturalist and Daniel Boone reenactor, who loves the land like a latter-day pioneer, wants to save the farm from a real estate developer

...

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 ruggedness of the beautiful Kentucky mountains, Honey Lovett has always known that the old ways can make a hard life harder. As the daughter of the famed blue-skinned, Troublesome Creek packhorse librarian, Honey and her family have been hiding from the law all her life. But when her mother and father are imprisoned, Honey realizes she must fight to stay free, or risk being sent away for good. Picking up her mother's old packhorse library...

Ann Pancake's 2007 novel Strange As This Weather Has Been exposed the devastating fallout of mountaintop removal mining on a single West Virginia family. In Me and My Daddy Listen to Bob Marley, a follow-up collection of eleven astonishing novellas and short stories, Pancake again features characters who are intensely connected to their land--sometimes through love, sometimes through hate--and who experience brokenness and loss, redemption and revelation,...

"Based on true events, a young woman used to the finer things in life arrives in small town Appalachia in 1911 to help her formidable cousin combat adult illiteracy by opening moonlight schools."--Provided by publisher.

Tom Bridger, who is half Melungeon, left his small mountain community to escape the lingering prejudice against the mixed race group. Now, in the face of family tragedy, he has returned and taken on his father's job as a county sheriff's deputy. The bones of a Melungeon woman have surfaced and all evidence points to murder. The victim's poor family and the wealthy white family she married into scramble to protect their secrets from Tom's probing....