Rash, Ron

It's 1951 in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. Blackburn Gant, his life irrevocably altered by a childhood case of polio, seems condemned to spend his life among the dead as the sole caretaker of a hilltop cemetery. It suits his withdrawn personality, and the inexplicable occurrences that happen from time to time rattle him less than interaction with the living. But when his best and only friend, the kind but impulsive Jacob Hampton, is conscripted to serve overseas, Blackburn is charged with caring for Jacob's wife, Naomi, as well. Sixteen-year-old Naomi Clarke is an outcast in Blowing Rock, an outsider, poor and uneducated, who works as a seasonal maid in the town's most elegant hotel. When Naomi eloped with Jacob a few months after her arrival, the marriage scandalized the community, most of all his wealthy parents, who disinherited him. Shunned by the townsfolk for their differences and equally fearful that Jacob may never come home, Blackburn and Naomi grow closer and closer until a shattering development derails numerous lives.

Enduring the mistakes and tragedies that have shaped their lives in contemporary Appalachia, a sheriff on the brink of retirement and a haunted park ranger confront violent forces when an elderly local is accused of poisoning a trout stream.

Traveling to the mountains of 1929 North Carolina to forge a timber business with her new husband, Serena Pemberton champions her mastery of harsh natural and working conditions but turns murderous when she learns she cannot bear children.

A collection of thirty-four short stories by American writer Ron Rash.

George and Serena Pemberton negotiate the terrain of love and betrayal in the mountainous wilderness of North Carolina, where they build a timber business; when Serena learns that she will not bear a child, she plots to murder the illegitimate son George previously fathered in the area.

After stumbling into a bear trap surrounding a large marijuana grove on his neighbor's property, Travis Shelton finds himself drawn into a world of subtle evils and danger as he struggles to free himself from his neighbor's influence and protect his close friends from a painful conflict.

Living deep within a cove in the Appalachians of North Carolina during World War I, Laurel Shelton finally finds the happiness she deserves in Walter, a mysterious stranger who is mute, but their love cannot protect them from a devastating secret.

Travis Shelton stumbles into a bear trap located in a large marijuana grove on his neighbor's property and finds himself drawn into a world of evil and danger as he tries to free himself from his neighbor's influence.