Set deep in the mountains of Virginia, the Grundy of Lee Smith's youth was a place of coal miners, tent revivals, mountain music, drive-in theaters, and her daddy's dimestore. When she was sent off to college to gain some "culture," she understood that perhaps the richest culture she would ever know was the one she was leaving. Lee Smith's fiction has always lived and breathed with the rhythms and people of the Appalachian South. But never before...

A young orphaned piano prodigy in 1936 is admitted to a North Carolina mental hospital under the care of a celebrated doctor and receives innovative treatment based on exercise, diet, and art therapies alongside Zelda Fitzgerald.

When Jennifer, a college student, returns to her childhood home of Hoot Owl Holler with a tape recorder, the tales of murder and suicide, incest and blood ties, bring to life a vibrant story of a doomed family that still refuses to give up....

A series of letters, written to family and friends, reveals the life and times of Ivy Rowe, as she grows from girlhood to old age, finds love, dreams great visions, and raises a family.

Everywhere about her, from the traffic on Highway 460 to the river that's gone black with coal dust, Crystal Spangler sees a current flowing from the mountain town of Black Rock into the wider world. As a teenager, she is elected beauty queen, gets good grades, and-despite her many enviable qualities-manages also to be well-loved. Everyone knows that she is destined to leave town and do great things. And she does. But no one expects her return; drawn...

A "book about Smith's process and her life, first as a Southern mountain child and, later, as the parent of a schizophrenic child...Despite being surrounded by loving family and being blessed with an active imagination, Lee copes with a mentally ill mother. Later, her son's mental illness and early death brings her to the breaking point but she is saved by her writing"--Lois Gross for LibraryReads."--NoveList.

Allied soldiers from Belgium, the British Empire and France are surrounded by the German Army, and evacuated during a fierce battle in World War II. Intense war experience and some language.

19-year-old Jimmy finds himself in debt to a local gangster when some gang loot disappears and sets him on the run from thugs. Meanwhile, two street kids start a shopping spree when they find the missing money.

At the height of the First World War, two young British soldiers, Schofield and Blake are given a seemingly impossible mission. In a race against time, they must cross enemy territory and deliver a message that will stop a deadly attack on hundreds of soldiers, Blake's own brother among them.

The story of one of the X-Men's most beloved characters, Jean Grey, as she evolves into her iconic alter ego. During a life-threatening rescue mission in space, Jean is hit by a cosmic force that transforms her into one of the most powerful mutants of all. Wrestling with this increasingly unstable power as well as her own personal demons, Jean spirals out of control, tearing the X-Men family apart and threatening to destroy the very fabric of our...