Struggling with limited prospects in a small Appalachian town where frustrated teen girls act out by setting arson fires, Kate pursues the education that she hopes will enable her escape and explosively clashes with friends from different cultural backgrounds before resolving to find herself.

Suspected of attacking a boy from town and determined to protect her secrets and her twin sister, Jo flees into the woods, where she discovers the truth behind her mother's disappearance fifteen years ago.

Lochiel Ogle was born with a red-wine birthmark and it put her life in jeopardy from the moment she entered the world. Mountain folks called it "the mark of the devil," and for all the evil that has plagued her nineteen-year existence, Lochiel is ready to believe that is true. And the evil surely took control of the mind of the boy who stole her as an infant, bringing her home for his mother to raise.

Moss McCullen struggles to grow up, take care of his family, and find love, all while searching for the success and respect his father earned in the zinc mines of East Tennessee. In the perilous and exciting zinc mines, Moss and his fellow miners sustain their communities and those who love them by descending each day into the rock below their very farms and houses, deep in the earth.

While moving the old grave of Pearly Johnson, Barry unearths a skeleton lying on top of Johnson's casket with a bullet hole in the skull. In the wallet of the victim, Sammy Calhoun, is a picture of Barry's girlfriend, Dr. Susan Miller. As Barry and his friend, Sheriff Tommy Lee Wadkins, dig for the truth, Susan's status as the prime suspect in Calhoun's murder puts considerable strain on her relationship with Barry. The revelation of past secrets...

A collection of short stories that are a work of love and laughter set in an Appalachian small town today.

"Captured and sold to the Kurian-allied Maynes Conglomerate to work as a slave in the coal mines of Appalachia, Ahn-Kha is angered and appalled by the dangerous working conditions and the brutal treatment inflicted upon his fellow miners. When a protest against shortages is deliberately and bloodily suppressed, Ahn-Kha sets himself against the ruling Maynes family and embarks on a trail of vengeance through the Coal Country. Finally, the people of...

"Rain is a young woman under the influence of a charismatic drifter named Wolf and his other 'wife,' Winter. Through months of wandering homeless through the cities, small towns, and the landscapes of Appalachia, the trio have grown into a kind of desperate family, a family driven by exploitation and abuse. A family that Rain must escape. When she meets Stratton Bryant, a widower living alone in an old east Tennessee farmhouse, Rain is given the chance...