Small States

When March Briscoe returns to East Texas two years after he was caught having an affair with his brother's wife, the Briscoe family becomes once again the talk of the small town of Olympus. His mother, June, hardly welcomes him back with open arms. Her husband's own past affairs have made her tired of being the long-suffering spouse. Is it, perhaps, time for a change? Within days of March's arrival, someone is dead, marriages are upended, and even the strongest of alliances are shattered. In the end, the ties that hold them together might be exactly what drag them all down.

Ryder is the small town's local college boy. It's summertime, and he's at the beach where he sees a young college girl. Their eyes lock. Intrigued, he wants to approach her, but she quickly disappears. Disappointed, he returns home, but he sees her the next day in his summer class.

In the hurricane-ravaged bottomlands of South Mississippi, where stores are closing and jobs are few, a fierce zealot has gained a foothold, capitalizing on the vulnerability of a dwindling population and a burning need for hope. As she preaches and promises salvation from the light of the pulpit, in the shadows she sows the seeds of violence.

Although she was an unusual child with some startling abilities, she never considered herself special or gifted any more than the next person. An incident on the Spenser Creek bridge changed all that, and brought about an end to childhood. She learned her quirky gifts were part of a great power: the power of vision. She must learn now how to control it.

Nothing much ever seems to change in the small Southern town of Delphi. The bag boys still take customers’ groceries out to their cars, the churches still frown on rock and roll, and every now and then...a dead body is dragged out of the Delphi River. Sam, Pete, Tommy, and Bill are lifelong friends who grew up in Delphi. They’ve all found their perfect matches, but looks can be deceiving. A chance encounter changes everything, and in an instant the bonds of friendship and fidelity are pushed to the ultimate limits. And someone...won't get out alive.

Jo and Bethie Kaufman were born into a world full of promise. Growing up in 1950s Detroit, they live in a perfect 'Dick and Jane' house, where their roles in the family are clearly defined. Jo is the tomboy, the bookish rebel with a passion to make the world more fair; Bethie is the pretty, feminine good girl, a would-be star who enjoys the power her beauty confers and dreams of a traditional life.

Nothing ever happens in a sleepy American town like Middlebrook. Until the shocking events of one hot Saturday afternoon when, at a back-to-school party, nine children sneak off to a barn. And one child is shot by another. The press are asking questions. About the type of parents who let their children play unsupervised in a house with guns. About how damaged a child must be to commit this kind of atrocity. Two questions are the most urgent, and the most baffling. Of the nine children who were present in that barn, which one actually pulled the trigger?

Gli alberi che non hanno radici sono gli abitanti di Ensenada de Barragán, il paese argentino dove arrivano, partono, ritornano emigranti di diverse generazioni, provenienti soprattutto dall'Istria italo-croata. Ma non si tratta di sradicati, perché non si sentono strappati alla loro terra, piuttosto animali randagi che amano ogni luogo in cui sostano, per breve tempo, a lungo o per sempre, aperti a nuovi incontri, mescolanze, congedi. Questo universo gagliardo e malinconico è pieno di personaggi e di storie comiche o tragiche, sempre epicamente vissute come radicali svolte di vita.

In Summer over Autumn, Howard Mansfield sifts through the commonplace and the forgotten to discover stories that tell us about ourselves and our place in the world - in this case, Hancock, New Hampshire.

The body of a young man has been found in the woods outside Newberg, dead from a close-range shotgun blast. The gun - his own - lies beside the body. Certain things don’t add up for Detective Tia Suarez. Where did the fat envelope of cash in his pocket come from? Who called the police to report the body, then disappeared before the cops arrived? The trail leads Tia to an institution for juvenile incarceration and to the leader of a local mega-church, a political and economic powerhouse in the region. Newberg’s mayor and the medical examiner keep trying to close the case.

The last thing Sandy Coker needs is love. In the 1990s, she's one of very few women tapped by the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department to be a lead inspector in the lonesome, cutthroat world of heavy construction. Contractors she minds are transforming the rugged Ozarks and driving new interstate through mountains, treacherous and wild. She holds the key to millions of dollars in compensation for work that can cost not only livelihoods, but lives. When she meets dirt foreman Wayne Sheridan of Missouri, stars collide and, for both of them, the timing could not be worse.

In this sassy and sweet coming-of-age story full of laughs, tears, and everyday strangeness, an unusual child finds a home—and love—with her feisty Great-great-aunt Magnolia Rose McClellan.

High Skies recounts the collision of devastating weather, Cold War suspicion, tense race relations, and the unintended consequences of good intentions in a small West Texas town in the 1950s, changing the futures of the families there and altering their perceptions of America. At the center of this perfect storm is Raymond “Flyboy” Seaker, a respected military veteran, now the vice principal of a school in which Troy, who tells the story, and his disabled friend Stevie will have their lives upended forever.

Jordan Bishop loves her job as a US Park Ranger patrolling the New Jersey side of the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation area. She’s fascinated by the Delaware View House. The former inn built 1837, is a victim of the Tocks Island Dam project that devastated the area in the mid-sixties. As a single mother, she spends her free time leading her daughter Emma on adventures where Jordan snags pictures of the old inn. She doesn’t know what she expects to find in developing her latest photos, but it’s not the apparition in the attic window or the onset of dreams about the same young ...

Her family was to be her legacy, until an angry mob murdered her only son.