Jesse Braddock is trapped in a tiny cabin deep in the Everglades with her infant daughter and her ex-boyfriend, a wannabe reality TV star who turned out to be a lot prettier on the outside than on the inside. Broke and desperate for a way out, Jesse stumbles across a long-lost treasure, which could solve all her problems{u2014}if she can figure out how to keep it. The problem is, some very bad men are also looking for the treasure, and they know Jesse...

"Ever since her father was killed when she was just a child, Miranda Crabtree has kept her head down and her eyes up, ferrying contraband for a mad preacher and his declining band of followers to make ends meet and to protect an old witch and a secret child from harm. But dark forces are at work in the bayou, both human and supernatural, conspiring to disrupt the rhythms of Miranda's peculiar and precarious life. And when the preacher makes an unthinkable...

The main characters, Bles Alwyn and Zora, are two young black rural Alabamians of the early 20th [century] who struggle against white supremacy, peon-masters, robber barons, political corruption--and in Zora's case, extreme misogyny--to improve their lives and those of their brethren and sistren. Everyone in the novel is wonderfully rendered in three full dimensions--especially among the supporting cast, Mary Taylor, Northern white schoolteacher cum...

"The year is 1703. The place: the Carolina settlement of Charles Town. Matthew Corbett, professional "problem solver," has accepted a lucrative, if unusual, commission: escorting a beautiful woman to a fancy dress ball. What should be a pleasant assignment takes a darker turn when Matthew becomes involved in a murder investigation. A sixteen-year-old girl has been stabbed to death on the grounds of a local plantation. The suspected killer is a slave...