Southern Historical Fiction

Rainey’s grandmother makes a startling request: Take me home. To Ireland, the country she fled post-World War II. Though they’re inseparably close, Rainey knows few of her grandmother’s secrets. Until they arrive at Aisling—the majestic estate on the southern coast of Ireland where her grandmother was raised—and Rainey discovers a collection of seventy-year-old letters in a trunk.

Four Southern women are at a turning point in history...and in their own hearts.

The entire MacLeod clan is haunted by secrets, and young Bud MacLeod doesn't realize he carries the biggest secret of all. Growing up poor in Depression-era South Georgia is hard enough, but Bud is also cursed with a stutter and a birthmark that disfigures his face. His hateful father and amoral mother make life worse still, despite his brother's efforts to shield him. To survive, Bud must discover his strengths and confront the sins of his parents. First, though, he'll need to grasp his own truth: that he can't embrace his future until he comes to terms with his past.

A gripping adventure novel set on a deserted island in the South Pacific during the late 19th century. In "Terror and Survival," embark on a journey filled with tension and transformation as Oscar Liam Smith-Jones, a once-privileged intellectual, finds himself marooned on an uncharted island. Stripped of his comfort and security after a harrowing shipwreck, Oscar must confront not only the fierce elements of nature but also the menacing creatures that lurk in the shadows of his new reality. This story is a riveting exploration of resilience, courage, and the indomitable spirit of survival. ...

In Gods of Howl Mountain, award-winning author Taylor Brown explores a world of folk healers, whiskey-runners, and dark family secrets in the high country of 1950s North Carolina. Bootlegger Rory Docherty has returned home to the fabled mountain of his childhood - a misty wilderness that holds its secrets close and keeps the outside world at gunpoint. Slowed by a wooden leg and haunted by memories of the Korean War, Rory runs bootleg whiskey for a powerful mountain clan in a retro-fitted 1940 Ford coupe.

Sixty-something sisters Mary Alice and Patricia Anne head to Florida to relax at a beachfront condo. But when a body washes up on the waves, the sisters find themselves awash in a sea of dirty real estate dealings and evidence of murders.

Coal miner Joshua Morgan managed to do the impossible-he broke away from the stranglehold of the iron-fisted Barton family and the Company Store, to whom all the miners in the Appalachian Mountains are indebted. But it cost him the life of his young daughter, who was run down by a posse led by Thomas Barton while coming to collect Joshua's payment to the store.

When the violent Cape wind blows from the southeast, they say the voices of the unquiet dead can be heard whispering through the deserted valley. Suzanne Joubert, a Huguenot refugee from war-torn France, is here to walk in her cousin’s footsteps. Louise Reydon-Joubert, the notorious she-captain and pirate commander, landed at the Cape of Good Hope more than sixty years ago, then disappeared from the record as if she had never existed. Suzanne has come to find her — to lay the stories to rest. But all is not as it seems . . .

Acclimating to a whole new world, Ellie meets a lonely but intriguing Cajun fisherman named Raphe who introduces her to the legendary white alligator that haunts these waters. Raphe and Ellie have barely found their way to each other when a huge bounty is offered for the elusive gator, bringing about a shocking turn of events that will test their love and their will to right a terrible wrong.

There’s trouble in the land of cotton when a handsome hobo hops off a train bearing a sinister secret capable of ruining lives—including the pristine life of Lizzie Lancaster, a precocious young heiress. When the flirtatious Lizzie offers Kiah Grave a ride in her new Model A, her cousin warns her it isn’t right. What will townsfolk say if they see her picking up a vagrant at the tracks like a common chippy? Besides, Lizzie’s mother already has a beau picked out for her—Oliver Weinberger, the Senator’s son. But the daring Lancaster heiress has never bowed to protocol. Her quick ...

For years, it was called a "deteriorating situation." Now it is war. All over South Africa, mobs of fugitive white people scramble to board departing flights. But Bam and Maureen Smales have no such option. They take up their servant July's suggestion and seek refuge in his remote home village, forever altering the relationship of servant and master. Now it is the Smales who are dependent on their host, their savior - their keeper. Nadine Gordimer is the winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature.

In the fall of 1962, twenty-seven-year-old Jemma Barker is desperate to escape her life in Chicago—and the spirits she has always been able to see. When she receives an unexpected job offer from the Duchon family in New Orleans, she accepts, thinking it is her chance to start over. But Jemma discovers that the Duchon family isn’t what it seems. Light enough to pass as white, the Black family members look down on brown-skinned Jemma.

In segregated High Cotton, Texas, in 1964, the racial divide is as clear as the railroad tracks running through town. It’s also where two girls are going to shake things up. This is the last summer of thirteen-year-old Corky Corcoran’s childhood, and her family hires a Haitian housekeeper who brings her daughter, America, along with her. Corky is quick to befriend America and eager to share her favorite new “grown-up” novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. America’s take on it is different and profoundly personal.

Carly Dugan’s life took a drastic turn when her husband lost his arm in a tragic sawmill accident. Depression twisted this fun-loving, considerate man into a bitter and intolerable wreck. Their marriage is falling apart. But Julian has lost more than an arm. He’s lost his way. The old house is falling apart, yet he sits in a rocker all day, feeling like half a man. The meager savings in the sugar jar will soon be gone. When Carly gets a letter from a former neighbor inviting them to Alabama to live with her and her husband, even offering Julian a job in their feed store, Carly is sure ...

It’s the 1960s in North Carolina, and Lorraine Delford has it all—an upstanding family, a perfect boyfriend, and an idyllic home complete with a white picket fence. Yet every time she looks through her father’s telescope, she dreams of leaving it all behind to go to space. It’s ambitious, but Lorraine has always been exceptional.

Journeyman: A Brighter Sunshine of Their Own is the fourth novel in the award-winning Journeyman Chronicles of the American Revolution. In the fall of 1780, the American cause in the South is teetering on the edge of collapse. The Continental Army has been shattered at Camden, and the future of the Revolution hangs by a thread. Lieutenant Colonel Will Yelverton and his loyal companion Charles Cuthbert answer the call of duty. Their mission: to support the daring guerrilla campaign of the legendary Swamp Fox, Lieutenant Colonel Francis Marion. Will and Cuth ride with Marion’s rag-tag ...

Clyde and Neville, a pair of middle-aged Englishman who have worked behind enemy lines since the start of W.W. II as Coast Watchers and all-around mischief makers. Often accused of being unwitting agents of the Japanese their activities often border on the insane as they go about waging war on their own terms. Switching from deadly serious to humorous at the drop of a hat, our heroes go always about their activities with an eye to making some money and finding something to drink, preferably beer.Having helped with the invasion of Leyte, they are off on another adventure fighting storms and ...

Present Day: Julia Baxter’s wedding veil, bequeathed to her great-grandmother by a mysterious woman on a train in the 1930s, has passed through generations of her family as a symbol of a happy marriage. But on the morning of her wedding day, something tells her that even the veil’s good luck isn’t enough to make her marriage last forever. Overwhelmed, she escapes to the Virgin Islands to clear her head.

Five years after the Battle of Waterloo, Sharpe’s peaceful retirement in Normandy is shattered. An old friend, Don Blas Vivar, is missing in Chile, reported dead at rebel hands – a report his wife refuses to believe. She appeals to Sharpe to find out the truth. Sharpe, along with Patrick Harper, find themselves bound for Chile via St. Helena, where they have a fateful meeting with the fallen Emperor Napoleon. Convinced that they are on their way to collect a corpse, neither man can imagine that dangers that await them in Chile…

Castle Marlowe is an artist who travels to small South Alabama towns in 1914, preaching in rural schools, where he illustrates his sermons with chalkboard sketches. After his wife drowns, he finds it difficult to balance his responsibilities. How can he continue his ministry and take care of five children? An old-maid parishioner suggests her niece in North Alabama could be a great help to him. He assumes she’s suggesting marriage. Why not? The children need a mother and plenty of men marry mail-order brides they’ve never met. It would solve his problem. He sends money for the woman’s...