Criminal lawyer Jake Brigance faces the fight of his life when he is asked to defend Carl Hailey, who, in a rage of anger, shot and killed the men on trial for the rape of his daughter.

When wealthy Seth Hubbard hangs himself from a sycamore tree and leaves his fortune to his black maid, Jake Brigance once again finds himself embroiled in a fiercely controversial trial -- a trial that will expose old racial tensions and force Ford County to confront its tortured history.

"In this timeless, mythical tale of unforgiving justice and elusive grace, rural Mississippi townsfolk shoulder the pain of generations as something dangerous lurks in the enigmatic kudzu of the woods." --

Enduring a hardscrabble existence as the children of alcoholic and absent parents, four siblings from a coastal Mississippi town prepare their meager stores for the arrival of Hurricane Katrina while struggling with such challenges as a teen pregnancy and a dying litter of prize pups.

Everyone in Athena, Mississippi, knows Charlie Harris, the librarian with a rescued Maine coon cat named Diesel. He's returned to his hometown to immerse himself in books, but when a feud erupts between the town's richest ladies, the writing on the wall spells murder.

"King Kohl...has a reputation for loving three things: the ladies, closing on properties, and playing bridge...After receiving a mysterious message to hurry to King's home, Wendy almost collides with the man's real-estate rival, running out the front door insisting he found King dead when he arrived. Not just dead, it turns out, but murdered...With her detective husband Ross and her father Bax Winchester, the chief of police, Wendy is determined to...

In 1951, after Sam Vincent disappears while investigating a prison for violent African American convicts in Thebes, Mississippi, Earl Swagger finds himself confronting a town guarded by a private army of brutal, Klan-type thugs.

As the Christmas season gets into full swing in the Mississippi River town of Serenity, Brandy Borne finds herself in the midst of holiday mayhem when Walter Yeager, an old flame of her mother's, becomes a victim of Yuletide homicide..

For fans of Cormac McCarthy and Annie Proulx, a wonderfully cinematic story set in the post-Katrina South after violent storms have decimated the region. It had been raining for weeks. Maybe months. He had forgotten the last day that it hadn't rained, when the storms gave way to the pale blue of the Gulf sky, when the birds flew and the clouds were white and sunshine glistened across the drenched land. The Gulf Coast has been brought to its knees....

Returning to what has become his violently corrupt hometown in Mississippi after a tour in Afghanistan, Army Ranger Quinn Colson investigates his uncle's alleged suicide and uncovers shocking personal secrets.