Will I have the chance to explain to little Erin why I had to go? Even if I do find the strength to return, what will my mother have told her? Only one person really knows what happened and why I had to do what I did. I know the truth will come out some day. I don’t expect forgiveness. The only thing I hope is that my family can survive the fallout....

Del Wensley, wife of the most celebrated preacher in Harlan County, tries to mind her place. Until her husband’s infidelity pushes an already strained marriage to a breaking point. Clinging to her last hope for self-respect, Del turns her back on the rigid life she’s known. A coal train is rolling through the valley. With her eyes wide open to the unfamiliar, and to the freedom she craves, Del takes to the rails.

After the deaths of her white father and mixed-race mother, young Eliza is left with neither home nor family in the newly forming frontier of Texas. Enslaved by men who treat her body as their property, she eventually escapes, marries, becomes a mother, and realizes her dream of having a small farm. But she must fight and kill to keep it—even if it does mean welcoming others who have been shunned or forgotten by society. Living and laboring together, will these outcasts find the strength and community they need to survive and flourish?

Set during the Depression in the South Chicago neighborhood of Sinclair's The Jungle, Betty O'Leary's family struggles to scrape by in this harsh, foul-smelling, yet compassionate area. The youngest in her Irish Catholic family, Betty is overshadowed by her pretty sister, Maureen, and when tragedy threatens to shatter her world, Betty is sent away to stay with relatives.

It’s the hottest day of the 1976 heatwave and there’s not a breath of fresh air in the labour ward at Lincoln County Hospital. Michelle is having her fourth child, a girl, while beloved husband Dean is sipping a cold pint in the pub. Their little house is already bursting at the seams, but Michelle is sure they’ll find a way to stretch their budget and continue life as a blissfully chaotic happy family. They name their new baby Donna.

England, 1940. Opening the box with trembling hands, she couldn’t believe it–a tiny baby lay inside. She gently lifted the newborn as it started to cry. Cradling the little one to her chest, she searched the darkness for any sign of whoever left it here. And as she rocked the child, something fluttered to the ground...a ration book.

Dolores Claiborne is suspected of killing Vera Donovan, her wealthy employer, and when the police question her, she tells the story of her life, harkening back to her disintegrating marriage and the suspicious death of her violent husband 30 years earlier. Dolores also tells of Vera's physical and mental decline and how she became emotionally demanding in recent years.

There is a torture mom in this collection whom many true crime audiences still can’t forgive and forget even till today. Together with six other serial killers, they have done it all, from torturing to cannibalism to killing hundreds.

Germany, 1941: I stroke the blonde curl away from my daughter’s face, and my heart swells. I never imagined having children, and I never thought I’d love someone this much. Clara is the most precious thing to me. I whisper to her that I will do everything I can to keep her safe.

1917—Sofiya and her friend Alina are forced to flee Russia as Tsar Nicholas II abdicates and the Bolsheviks take control of St. Petersburg. Their parents send them to America where Alina's distant cousin lives, but soon the girls learn they have traded one danger for another. They are forced to earn a living in the most terrible way, and once again, both girls flee for their lives in separate directions. Years later, trapped in a bitter marriage, Sofiya once again finds herself running away to protect her son and the secret she's been hiding since leaving Russia.

Eastern Kentucky, 1937. After the death of her husband, Ada Donovan returned home to live again with her aging parents. She does all she can to help them keep the small family farm going. But times are hard, and there’s never enough. During one of her infrequent visits to town, she sees a help-wanted notice for the Pack Horse Librarian Project, seeking librarians to ride up high in the mountains and bring books to the people there. Before her marriage, Ada was a teacher, and the thought of returning to the work she loved is impossible to resist.

Mary Thomson is no ordinary woman. She works alongside her husband William cutting firewood to sell in the city, earning the nickname “The Woodcutter’s Wife”. The one thing she cannot seem to handle is the melancholy that has enveloped her...Her world flies apart when William disappears, leaving her with the arduous task of tending their farm by herself...she finds help in the form of a freed slave who offers his help. But fate throws her another dramatic curve, forcing her to make the most difficult choice of her life.

The cattle car is dark, except for the light filtering through the boarded windows. There are too many of us to count, crushed up against each other. The air is stuffy, carrying the scent of our terror—none of us know what awaits us when this train stops. I cling onto Mama’s hand and Nora, my twin sister, clutches Papa’s.

Paolo and Gianna and their two young children, forced to leave their home country, arrive in Chicago's Little Sicily on a freezing night at the dawning of the Roaring Twenties. They quickly learn that they are not welcome or wanted in their new home and that the streets are not paved with gold. The streets and businesses are, in fact, run by dirty politicians, mobsters, and crooked cops. Times are tough; the young immigrants must learn to be tougher to survive.

Drawing from the magical world of her iconic Sundance award-winning film, Julie Dash’s stand-alone novel tells another rich, historical tale of the Gullah-Geechee people: a multigenerational story about a Brooklyn College anthropology student who finds an unexpected homecoming when she heads to the South Carolina Sea Islands to study her ancestors.