The explosion of racial hate and violence in a small Alabama town is viewed by a young girl whose father defends a black man accused of rape.

The lives of two sister--Nettie, a missionary in Africa, and Celie, a southern woman married to a man she hates--are revealed in a series of letters exchanged over thirty years.

Nonny Frett understands the meanings of "rock" and "hard place" better than any woman ever born. She's got two mothers, "one deaf-blind and the other four baby steps from flat crazy". She's got two men: her husband, who's easing out the back door; and her best friend, who's laying siege to her heart in her front yard. She has a job that holds her in the city, and she's addicted to a little girl who's stuck deep in the country. To top it off, she has...

In the small river town of La Luna, Louisiana, Calla Lily Ponder enjoys a blissful childhood at her mother's side, learns the art of healing through the humble womanly art of "fixing hair," and encounters first love with a boy named Tuck. When Tuck leaves her, Calla transforms her sorrow into inspiration and heads for the wild and colorful city of New Orleans--where she realizes the full power of her "healing hands" and Tuck presents her with an offer...

"Winner of the 1947 Pulitzer Prize, All the King's Men is one of the most famous and widely read works in American fiction. Its original publication by Harcourt catapulted author Robert Penn Warren to fame and made the novel a bestseller for many seasons. Set in the 1930s, it traces the rise and fall of demagogue Willie [Stark] Talos, a fictional Southern politician who resembles the real-life Huey "Kingfish" Long of Louisiana. Talos begins his career...

In 1980 Pass Christian, Mississippi, salvage diver Bobby Western, after a plane crash, discovers that the pilot's flight bag, the plane's black box and the tenth passenger are missing, submerging him in a conspiracy beyond his understanding as he is shadowed in body and spirit by the past and present. 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...

Sarah Jane Pullman is a good cop with a complicated past. From her small-town chicken-farming roots through her runaway adolescence, court-ordered Army stint, ill-advised marriage and years slinging scrambled eggs over greasy spoon griddles, Sarah Jane unfolds her life story, a parable about memory, atonement, and finding shape in chaos. Her life takes an unexpected turn when she is named the de facto sheriff of a rural town, investigating the mysterious...

A devoutly Christian slave becomes separated from his wife and family when he is sold to the brutal planter Simon Legree.