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.

You can be beautiful, even more beautiful than before. This is the seductive promise of Dr. Nzinga's clinic, where anyone can get their lips thinned, their skin bleached, and their nose narrowed. A complete demelanization will liberate you from the confines of being born in a black body-if you can afford it. In this near-future Southern city plagued by fenced-in ghettos and police violence, more and more residents are turning to this experimental...

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.

"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...

A best-selling author of books for adults and children, Mark Childress pens his most outrageous work yet with Georgia Bottoms. The titular heroine is the epitome of the church-going Southern belle, except for one teeny-tiny aspect of her life. Georgia's family inheritance has long since evaporated, and to maintain her genteel lifestyle, Miss Bottoms has taken six affluent lovers-the fly in the ointment being that one is a married preacher who's about...