Southern Literary Fiction

Sometimes wishes come true. Known as an unquiet, discontent girl, Madeline Becquerel dreams of travel to exciting places. A colonial girl with ideas ahead of her time. And a longing for something more than being trapped in her family’s country home. Psychologist Wyatt Guillory is a modern man summoned to find his missing sister. Though he is a psychologist, firmly grounded in the present, he soon comes to question reality as he knows it. When a mysterious man shows up in her home, Madeline finds herself drawn to the unattainable. And traveling becomes something so much more than she ever ...

Leaving behind them a Europe still taking stock after the definitive battle of Waterloo, Jack Aubrey and his friend Stephen Maturin set sail for Chile. But even with the newly minted peace, life at sea remains beset with danger and imminent disaster, and the political turmoil of the South American continent is equal to any threat they have yet faced.

When Margaret Hale's father leaves the Anglican Church in a crisis of conscience, she and her family are uprooted from their comfortable home in Hampshire to move to the north of England. At first repulsed by the hideousness of her new surroundings in the industrial town of Milton, Margaret becomes aware of the suffering and poverty of the local mill workers and is stirred by a passionate sense of social justice. This is complicated by her tempestuous relationship with the mill's owner and self-made man, John Thornton.

Beth is a creative, contemplative soul and a loving mom. She is at a crossroads in her marriage and without a clear sense of her gifts and inherent worth. When her spirited Aunt Ro falls while turning to toss a coin in the Trevi Fountain in Rome, Beth embarks on a journey that leads to her ancestral village in Italy, the discovery of a family secret, and a new understanding of herself.

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.

Washed in the Water: Tales from the South offers vignettes of folks living the best they know how as they reach out for redemption. Set between 1950 and 1980, each tale stares at an individual as unique as the humid landscape of the South. Hard lives, daily survival, and lessons about getting on with the business of living reverberate among the characters.

Life gets crowded on the open road. Jason loves the open spaces of the western US. There is contemplative quiet that comes with crossing the endless miles. And that's his job, traveling, doing mobile repair and maintenance work for an office equipment company. When they send him into New Mexico, an overnight stay at a motel that is haunted changes his life. Who knew spirits could be so tenacious or complicate your life so much? A short, fantastic adventure in surreal New Mexico.

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

The Path of Light is a collection of short stories nothing if not a mirror to the phenomenal range of human behavior. Taken from the Upanishads to the Jatakas to South Asian folklore, these simple but contemplative tales reveal how people are capable of both extreme cruelty and inordinate kindness.