Ava Maria Mulligan has been married to Jack MacChesney for eight years. They have a daughter and have lost a son to disease. Ava Maria feels distance growing between herself and her husband, and she doesn't know how to bring closeness back to their marriage. A summer trip to her father's home in Italy will bring further challenges and fresh visions into what she wants her life to be.

When Clay-Boy's father fails to return home on Christmas Eve, Clay-Boy takes to the snowy Virginia hills in search of him, leaving his worried family to keep watch at the homestead. Along the way, he meets an irate deer, a threatening county sheriff, a congregation of African-American churchgoers, and two elderly women who happen to be bootleggers. The story of Clay-Boy's search for his father is told with warmth and intensity. Along with its prequel,...

They busted out of prison, armed and ready to wreak havoc in the high country. Outrunning and outfighting the U.S. Cavalry, more than thirty murderers and thieves would leave a trail of burned out ranches, robbed trains, and slaughtered innocents. Now, Smoke Jensen is going back to the place where his legend was born, to wipe out a plague of low life vermin that have flooded the land he loves. But at the center of darkness stands a killer who has...

"Thor Norgaard hasn't spoken to anyone in his twenty-eight years, but when the young widow he loves crosses an ocean to live on his Appalachian farm, this reclusive alcoholic will brave much more than words to heal her heart.-- When Aven Norgaard leaves Norway to serve as housekeeper to her late husband's cousins in Appalachia, she expects lads in need of care, not three grown men--each in need of a wife and bound by a powerful brotherhood. As the...

Publishers Weekly declares that the "leaves of autumn are in full splendor, and so is Maron's talent in her 10th Deborah Knott adventure." Judge Knott is finally ready to marry her long-time friend Deputy Sheriff Dwight Bryant and settle down-or is she? She jumps at a chance to fill in for a judge in the high country of North Carolina. But ugly murder haunts the beauty of the Smoky Mountains.

Smoke Jensen has journeyed up to the Colorado Rockies to sell a prized bull to a local rancher. Instead, the rancher and his wife have been mercilessly slaughtered by outlaws only moments before Smoke's arrival.

The train taking nineteen-year-old teacher Christy Huddleston from her home in Asheville, North Carolina, might as well be transporting her to another world. The Smoky Mountain community of Cutter Gap feels suspended in time, trapped by poverty, superstitions, and century-old traditions. But as Christy struggles to find acceptance in her new home, some see her - and her one-room school - as a threat to their way of life. Her faith is challenged and...

Milk Glass Moon, the third book in Adriana Trigiani's bestselling Big Stone Gap series, continues the life story of Ave Maria Mulligan MacChesney as she faces the challenges and changes of motherhood with her trademark humor and honesty. With twists as plentiful as those found on the holler roads of southwest Virginia, this story takes turns that will surprise and enthrall the reader...

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.

"When greed overtakes men's souls, it falls to the righteous mountaineer known as Preacher to rain fire and brimstone upon them from the barrels of his guns ... Preacher has agreed to escort Barnaby Cooper through Dakota Territory's hills to establish a trading post. Accompanied by his friends Lorenzo and Tall Dog, the mountain man hopes they'll be able to protect Cooper from Sioux warriors who don't want any white man trespassing on their sacred...