Ballad

Written in grease pencil on a tourist postcard, the lyrics are winsome and innocent. But for famous folk singer Peggy Muryan, who has moved recently to the rural community of Hamelin, Tennessee, they are a chilling reminder of a troubled moment in her past.

Award-winning Southern writer Sharyn McCrumb is a best-selling author who's won widespread critical acclaim for her Appalachian Ballad novels. In The Rosewood Casket, a farmer named Randall Stargill has fallen into a coma. As his family gathers to prepare for the inevitable, his four sons work on a handmade casket and their wives sew a quilt to line it. Complications arise, however, when clairvoyant neighbor Nora Bonesteel brings her own disturbing contribution to the coffin: a small box containing a child's skeleton.

One hundred years after a woman is hanged, the search for justice reveals a story of faith, obsession, and murder. In 1832, 18-year-old Frankie Silver was charged with murdering her young husband. In 1833, she became the first woman in the state of North Carolina to be hanged for murder. But was she guilty? More than 100 years later, Tennessee sheriff Spencer Arrowood is determined to reveal the truth behind this unanswered question. A spellbinding story that sweeps from the drawing rooms of early aristocracy to the ruins of a one-room cabin deep in the Appalachian wilderness, “The Ballad of Frankie Silver” flawlessly weaves past and present, truth and fiction, folklore and legend.

Sharyn McCrumb is the New York Times bestselling author of the Ballad novels, which celebrate the rich history of Appalachia. An elegant saga set against the American Revolution, King's Mountain features John Sevier and his legendary Carolina Overmountain Men, who find themselves defending their families and farms against the troops of a haughty British major.

Sharyn McCrumb, New York Times bestselling author of the acclaimed Ballad series, examines one of the most famous public executions in US history in her stunning and powerfully written Depression-era novel. Years later, after the tragedy, someone remembered the Dumb Supper and what had happened there. That was the cause of it, they said, because the ritual wasn't a game after all. It really was magic, but magic has rules, and she broke them. Suddenly thrust into the role of primary caretaker for her family following the tragic death of her husband, Ellie Robbins is appointed to serve out his term as sheriff of their rural Tennessee mountain town. The year is 1936, and her role is largely symbolic, except for the one task that only a sheriff can do: execute a convicted prisoner. Ellie has long proven she can handle herself. But becoming sheriff is altogether different, and the demands of the role are even more challenging when she is forced to combat society's expectations for a woman. Soon enough, dark secrets come to light, and Ellie must grapple with small town superstitions and the tenuous ties she shares with a condemned killer as she carves out a place for herself in an uncertain future. The Age of Reinvention is an intriguing tale about the wonderful possibilities and terrible costs of remaking oneself.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Prayers the Devil Answers and The Ballad of Tom Dooley, a "fascinating historical fiction novel you won't be able to put down" (Bustle) based on one of the strangest murder trials in American history-the case of the Greenbrier Ghost. Lakin, West Virginia, 1930: Following a suicide attempt and consigned to a segregated insane asylum, attorney James P.D. Gardner finds himself under the care of Dr. James Boozer. Testing a new talking cure for insanity, Boozer encourages his elderly patient to share his experiences as the first black attorney to practice law in 19th-century West Virginia. His memorable case: defending a white man on trial for the murder of his young bride-a case that the prosecution based on the testimony of a ghost. Greenbrier, West Virginia, 1897: Beautiful, willful Zona Heaster has always lived in the mountains. Despite her mother's misgivings, Zona marries the handsome Erasmus Trout Shue, Greenbrier's newest resident and blacksmith. Her mother learns of her daughter's death weeks later. A month after the funeral, Zona's mother makes a chilling claim to the county prosecutor: her daughter was murdered, and she was told this by none other than Zona's ghost... With her unique and "real knack for crafting full-bodied characters and using folklore to construct compelling plots" (Booklist), Sharyn McCrumb effortlessly demonstrates her place among the finest Southern writers at work today.