When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy. I would figure out this or that way and run it down through my head until it got easy. So begins the tale of Ellen Foster, the brave and engaging heroine of Kaye Gibbons's first novel, which won the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

Thirty-five years after a trip down the Mississippi on a raft with their classmates, four women are reunited to cruise the river once again where they plan to release the ashes of a fellow rafter, Margaret "Baby" Ballou.

"In 1790, Lavinia, a seven-year-old Irish orphan with no memory of her past, arrives on a tobacco plantation where she is put to work as an indentured servant with the kitchen house slaves. Though she becomes deeply bonded to her new family, Lavinia is also slowly accepted into the world of the big house, where the master is absent and the mistress battles opium addiction. As time passes she finds herself perilously straddling two very different worlds...

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.

"Pass Christian, Mississippi, 1980: It is three in the morning when Bobby Western zips up the jacket of his wet suit and plunges from a Coast Guard tender into darkness. His dive light illuminates the sunken jet, nine bodies still buckled in their seats, hair floating, eyes devoid of speculation. Missing from the crash site are the pilot's flight bag, the plane's black box, and the tenth passenger. But how? A collateral witness to machinations that...

Clyde Edgerton's ear for regional voices and his eye for life's small but significant details enable him to create characters who are charming and utterly convincing. Beginning with an engagement announcement and ending with the birth of a son, Raney is a snapshot of the first few years of a modern Southern marriage. Newly married, Raney is a Southern Baptist who has lived her whole life in her tiny home town. Her husband Charles is a newcomer, a...

"From the PEN/Faulkner finalist and critically acclaimed author of Hold it 'Til it Hurts comes a dark and socially provocative southern-fried comedy about four liberal UC Berkeley students who stage a mock lynching during a Civil War reenactment--a fierce, funny, tragic work from a bold new writer"--

Carter Coleman delivers a novel about the Rutledge brothers: Cage, the golden boy, Nick, slow to blossom but full of potential, and Harper, struggling to live up to his brothers. When the tragedy of Nick's death throws Cage into the vicious cycles of manic depression, Harper and his family discover the true strength of love in their attempt to hold together a broken home.

Just after her mother's funeral, five-year-old Holly is dropped off by her father at her grandfather's South Carolina dairy farm. It will be 30 years before Holly sees her father again-plenty of time to develop a fondness for drinking and video poker. And also plenty of time to contemplate why her father abandoned her.

"Conjure Women is a sweeping story that brings the world of the South before and after the Civil War vividly to life. Spanning eras and generations, it tells of the lives of three unforgettable women: Miss May Belle, a wise healing woman; her precocious and observant daughter Rue, who is reluctant to follow in her mother's footsteps as a midwife; and their master's daughter Varina. The secrets and bonds among these women and their community come to...