"De Castrique offers original plots, strikingly human characters, and a heartwarming portrait of American culture. His writing is to be savored." -Library Journal STARRED review When Barry Clayton's father developed Alzheimers, Barry gave up his career in law enforcement to return to the North Carolina mountain town of Gainesboro and run the family funeral home. But even a small town in the Appalachians is not immune to crime. At a summer street...

"Gracetown, Florida. June 1950. Twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens, Jr., is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, a reformatory, for kicking the son of the largest landowner in town in defense of his older sister, Gloria. So begins Robbie's journey further into the terrors of the Jim Crow South and the very real horror of the school they call The Reformatory. Robbie has a talent for seeing ghosts, or haints. But what was once a comfort...

Helen Hawthorne's ex-husband arrives back in her life aboard the yacht of his new lady, Marcella, known as the Black Widow for her string of dead spouses, and when he goes missing and Helen is blamed, she and Marcella investigate.

Andy Zorn finds himself falling in love - and with the help and gentle jabs from his more mature friends, he discovers a wonderful new purpose in life.

Bruce Cable owns a popular bookstore in the sleepy resort town of Santa Rosa on Camino Island in Florida. He makes his real money, though, as a prominent dealer in rare books. Very few people know that he occasionally dabbles in the black market of stolen books and manuscripts. Mercer Mann is a young novelist with a severe case of writer's block who has recently been laid off from her teaching position. She is approached by an elegant, mysterious...