Shay Benson adored her younger brother, Caden, and that got her into trouble. When he owed money, Shay realized she would do anything to help him avoid the men who were threatening him, and she crossed lines she never should have crossed. Now, determined to start fresh, she finds herself in search of a place to stay and wanders into a church to escape from the cold. Pastor Drew Douglas adored his wife. But when he lost her, it was all he could do...

Caught between two worlds, Caleb Stoltz is bound by a deathbed promise to raise his orphaned niece and nephew in Middle Grove, where life revolves around family, farm, faith - and long-held suspicions about outsiders. When disaster strikes, Caleb is thrust into an urban environment of high-tech medicine and the relentless rush of modern life. Dr. Reese Powell is poised to join the medical dynasty of her wealthy, successful parents. Bold, assertive,...

King David sings his psalms. A world away, King Henry plots. And courtier Thomas Wyatt sees them both, his beloved falcon Lukkes on his arm. David wants Bathsheba. Henry too must have what he wants. He wants Ann, a divorce, a son. He looks up at his tapestry of David and sees a mighty predecessor who defended his faith and took what he liked. But he leaves it to others to count the costs. Among those counting is the poet Wyatt, who sees a different...

Emmy is West Texas through and through: she loves the land, she loves her hometown, she loves football, both professional and her town's high school team, the 'Stangs. She also knows she's a lesbian, and in her Southern Baptist evangelical community, that's going to be an issue, both for Emmy and her amicably separated parents, Lucy and Steve. After a disastrous conversation with her dad, Emmy meets Cameron, a whip-smart grad student from Massachusetts...

"Spanning two thousand years, The Everlasting follows four characters whose struggles resonate across the centuries: an early Christian child martyr; a medieval monk on crypt duty in a church; a Medici princess of Moorish descent; and a contemporary field biologist conducting an illicit affair. Outsiders to a city layered and dense with history, this quartet separated by time grapple with the physicality of bodies, the necessity for sacrifice, and...

The passengers on the train to Taulkinham show mixed reactions when Haze questions their belief in Jesus. "Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor's astonishing and haunting first novel, is a classic of twentieth-century literature. It is the story of Hazel Motes, a twenty-two-year-old caught in an unending struggle against his inborn, desperate fate. He falls under the spell of a "blind" street preacher named Asa Hawks and his degenerate fifteen-year-old...

Ancient pagan beliefs, the great Greek epics, and the Bible all inform this extraordinary novel by Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck, which occupied him for more than five difficult years. While fulfilling his dead father's dream of creating a prosperous farm in California, Joseph Wayne comes to believe that a magnificent tree on the farm embodies his father's spirit. His brothers and their families share in Joseph's prosperity, and the farm flourishes-until...