"We didn't call the police right away." Those are the electric first words of this extraordinary novel about a biracial Korean American family in Virginia whose lives are upended when their beloved father and husband goes missing. Mia, the irreverent, hyperanalytical twenty-year-old daughter, has an explanation for everything--which is why she isn't initially concerned when her father and younger brother Eugene don't return from a walk in a nearby...

Phone calls before dawn from the sheriff are rarely good news. When Bell Elkins picks up the phone she already knows she won't like what she's about to hear, but she's still not prepared for this: Lucinda Trimble's body has been found at the bottom of Bitter River-- and she was dead before her body ever hit the water. Searching for the truth, both behind Lucinda's murder and behind her own complicated relationships, will lead Bell down a path that...

The teenage son of an Appalachian single mother who dies when he is eleven uses his good looks, wit, and instincts to survive foster care, child labor, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. "Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival....

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is the story of a dramatic year in Virginia's Blue Ridge valley. Annie Dillard sets out to explore the landscape around her home. What she sees are muskrats, butterflies, coots, snakes, grasshoppers, in addition to other creatures; observing them, they inspire thoughts of other locations and animals.

A young woman, at a crossroad in her life, returns to her maternal grandfather. There she searches for the truth about her mother's mysterious death and her own past.

A biographical novel of Nat Turner, an educated slave, who was condemned to death in 1831 for leading a Negro revolt in Virginia in which more than fifty whites were slaughtered. Narrated by Nat himself, this "story ranges over the whole of Nat's life, reaching its inevitable climax that bloody day in August"

Kay Scarpetta's investigation of the death of scuba diver and investigative reporter Ted Eddings threatens her and her niece Lucy.

Born on a plantation but set apart from the others by her mother's position as a medicine woman, a young slave is forced to leave home at eighteen and unexpectedly finds herself in an infamously cruel jail.

Ten-year-old Benjamin Rome is forced to consider issues far beyond his years when his hometown of Farmville, Virginia becomes caught up in the efforts of Prince Edward County to close the public schools in response to the passage of desegregation laws in 1959, and develop an all-white private school system, effectively robbing his longtime friend Burghardt, and other African-Americans, of an education.