FICTION · RURAL POOR
Janice Daugharty
Janice Daugharty, artist in residence at Abraham Baldwin Agriculture College, in Tifton, Georgia, is the author of 7 print novels and two story collections. Her newest novel, "The Little Known," is now available in ebook and print. Daugharty is in the process of uploading e-stories to Smashwords for your reading pleasure. For more on this author visit www.janicedaugharty.com See "Fans of Janice Daugharty" on Facebook and author profile at HarperCollins.com. I have a new print and ebook novel coming out at the end of Feb 2011. The title is "Heir to the Everlasting."
Caitlyn O'Malley was a lass, but none would have known it who saw her swaggering along Dublin's narrow cobbled laneways on that misty April afternoon in 1784.
— from Dark of the moon
Most acclaimed
Dark of the moon
Virgil Flowers-tall, lean, late thirties, three times divorced, hair way too long for a cop's-had kicked around for a while before joining the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. First, it was the army and the military police, then the police in St. Paul, and finally Lucas Davenport had brought him into the BCA, promising him, "We'll only give you the hard stuff."He'd been doing the hard stuff for three years now-but never anything like this. In the small town of Bluestem, where everybody knows everybody, a house way up on a ridge explodes into flames, its owner, a man named Judd, trapped inside. There is a lot of reason to hate him, Flowers discovers. Years ago, Judd had perpetrated a scam that'd driven a lot of local farmers out of business, even to suicide. There are also rumors swirling around: of some very dicey activities with other men's wives; of involvement with some nutcase religious guy; of an out-of-wedlock daughter. In fact, Flowers concludes, you'd probably have to dig around to find a person who didn't despise him.And that wasn't even the reason Flowers had come to Bluestem. Three weeks before, there'd been another murder-two, in fact-a doctor and his wife, the doctor found propped up in his backyard, both eyes shot out. There hadn't been a murder in Bluestem in years-and now, suddenly, three? Flowers knows two things: This wasn't a coincidence, and this had to be personal.But just how personal is something even he doesn't realize, and may not find out until too late. Because the next victim . . .may be himself.Filled with the audacious plotting, rich characters, and brilliant suspense that have always made his books "compulsively readable" (Los Angeles Times), Dark of the Moon is vintage Sandford, further proof that he "is in a class of his own" (The Orlando Sentinel).
Necessary lies
Set in the poverty-ridden backwoods of south Georgia, this novel tells the story of Cliffie Flowers, a courageous seventeen-year-old girl who becomes pregnant. Cliffie fears the rage and disappointment of her defeated father, but secretly hopes that her pregnancy might represent an escape from the oppressive, tight-knit community in which she is trapped. Those hopes are shattered when violence erupts and Cliffie is accused of murders she did not commit. In order to keep hidden the shameful secrets of her father's past, she is forced to hide her own innocence and stand by the necessary lies that will torment her. Despite the poverty and despair of her life, Cliffie refuses to succumb to the overwhelming bleakness as she faces her fate with a courage and hope that make her one of the most remarkable heroines in recent fiction. Written in a distinctive voice that captures the tone and texture of rural Georgia and full of remarkably human characters, Necessary Lies marks the emergence of an important new voice in Southern literature.