"The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance, and silence. Through a series of letters spanning twenty years, first from Celie to God, then from the sisters to each other, the novel draws readers into the experiences of Celie, Nettie, Shug Avery, and Sofia"--

"Nineteen years old, broke, and effectively an orphan, Magnolia doesn't have much to look forward to. She feels stuck and haunted: by her overdrawn bank account, by her predatory landlord, by the ghost of her late grandmother Mama Brown. One night while working at her dead-end gas station job, a mysterious, slick stranger named Cotton walks in and offers to turn Magnolia's luck around. He offers her a lucrative "modeling" job at his family's funeral...

Not only do Southerners talk slowly, but sometimes they're hard to understand. No one realizes that more than Memphis belle Leelee Satterfield, who debuted in Whistlin' Dixie in a Nor'easter. Watching her tackle life and love in Vermont was only the tip of the iceberg. Back in Memphis and starting a new relationship with the Yankee chef from her New England inn, you'd think she'd sit back and enjoy life in Dixie. But that just wouldn't be as much...

On a beautiful June day in 1965, a dozen girls-classmates at a picturesque Blue Ridge women's college-launched their homemade raft (inspired by Huck Finn's) on a trip down the Mississippi. It's Girls A-Go-Go Down the Mississippi read the headline in the Paducah, Kentucky, paper.

Thirty-five years later, four of those "girls" reunite to cruise the river again. This time it's on the luxury steamboat, The Belle of Natchez, and there's no publicity.

...

On the Caribbean island of Saint Domingue, an island consumed by the flames of revolution, a senseless attack leaves only one survivor-- an infant girl who falls into the hands of two French émigrés. They take the beautiful child they call Ruth to the bustling American city of Savannah. What follows is the sweeping tale of Ruth's life as shaped by her strong-willed mistress and other larger-than-life personalities she encounters in the South. At...

"Eleanor's practical plans for the new home for Civil War widows and orphans at Belmont Mansion, in Nashville, conflict with architect Marcus' artistic vision. Will they ever manage to find common ground?"--

"Four Southern women are at a turning point in history. and in their own hearts. To Mend a Dream by Tamera Alexander The Civil War cost Savannah Darby everything--her family and her home. When Aidan Bedford, an attorney from Boston, buys the Darby estate, he hires Savannah to redecorate. Can she find a mysterious treasure before her job is finished? An Outlaw's Heart by Shelley Gray When Russell Stark returns to Fort Worth, he's determined to begin...

Generations of Southern women deal with hard times and heartless men in this "joyous" novel by the New York Times–bestselling author of Ellen Foster (The Washington Post Book World).

In "a witty and explosive story about men and women, bad girls and good girls, love and laundry," Kaye Gibbons paints a portrait of shrewd, resourceful women prevailing through hardships and finding unexpected pleasures along...

Shocked when her husband leaves, taking all their money with him, Mary Bliss opts to fund her mortgage, expensive teenage daughter, and eccentric mother-in-law's nursing home by staging her husband's death in order to claim his insurance money.

"Beth McKenzie's attempt to turn an old Southern mansion into a Bed and Breakfast called The Dixie Dew is thwarted when her first guest is found dead in bed. Murdered, it turns out. Three days later a young priest who looks better in tennis whites than clerick black, is found strangled in his chapel. The whole town of Littleboro is abuzz, and Ossie Delbardo, the town cop whose job heretofore mainly involved controlling football traffic on Friday nights,...