Enrolled in school after her mother's death, Possum resolves to preserve her mother's homeschooling lessons by proving she already knows everything, an unsuccessful endeavor complicated by her teacher's attraction to Possum's father.

"In the ruggedness of the beautiful Kentucky mountains, Honey Lovett has always known that the old ways can make a hard life harder. As the daughter of the famed blue-skinned, Troublesome Creek packhorse librarian, Honey and her family have been hiding from the law all her life. But when her mother and father are imprisoned, Honey realizes she must fight to stay free, or risk being sent away for good. Picking up her mother's old packhorse library...

Twenty years after her childhood friend Lauren disappeared, Nicola returns to her Appalachian hometown where she, driven by a desperate need to know what happened to Lauren, obsessively searches for the truth in a place where the answers are tucked in the hollows and valleys of this small Blue Ridge community. The last time Nicola Bennett saw Lauren Ballard she was scraping a key along the side of a new cherry-red Chevy Silverado. That was the night...

"Avery Robinson decided to be a physician after helplessly watching her mother lose a battle with a terrible disease. Now at risk of developing the same illness, Avery guards her heart from love. She's driven to protect her loved ones as a workaholic doctor in the tiny mountain town of Riverbend Gap, North Carolina. Contractor Wes Garrett is hiking the Appalachian trail, in memory of the man who died saving his life, when an illness racks his body....

Turkey vultures, the most widely distributed and abundant scavenging birds of prey on the planet, are found from central Canada to the southern tip of Argentina, and nearly everywhere in between. In the United States we sometimes call them buzzards; in parts of Mexico the name is aura cabecirroja, in Uruguay jote cabeza colorada, and in Ecuador gallinazo aura. A huge bird, the turkey vulture is a familiar sight from culture to culture, in both hemispheres....

Uncovers the sobering resurgence of black lung disease in Appalachia, the cover-up activities of the coal mining industry, and the awareness activities of regional mining communities. In a devastating and urgent work of investigative journalism, Pulitzer Prize-winner, Chris Hamby, uncovers the tragic resurgence of black lung disease in Appalachia, its Big Coal cover-up, and the resilient mining communities who refuse to back down. Decades have passed...