In 1982 Buncombe County, North Carolina, sixteen-year-old Alex Stromm writes of the aftermath of the accidental drowning of a friend, as his English teacher reaches out to him while he and a fellow boarding school student try to cover things up.
Great changes are in store for the highly creative and somewhat eccentric Applewhite family when money problems force them to open a summer camp for gifted children, who almost immediately begin to rebel, while a mysterious interloper watches from the woods.
Despite the misgivings of her best friend, Joe, nine-year-old Mandie Shaw of the small town of Charley Gap, North Carolina, investigates strange sounds and shadows coming from the woods, and along the way makes a new acquaintance.
Mimi fascinates Christina and Grant as she recounts the mystery of the lost colony of Roanoke Island, where a group of settlers vanished, with few clues as to what happened to them.
Jim, living with his mother and three uncles in the small hamlet of Aliceville, North Carolina, comes of age in the Depression years and begins to realize the largeness of the world outside his happy home.
Because living with "modern-hippy" parents on a goat farm means fourteen-year-old Janie Gorman cannot have a normal high school life, she tries joining Jam Band, making friends with Monster, and spending time with elderly former civil rights workers.
In 1918, caring for her family's homing pigeons while her father is away fighting in World War I, twelve-year-old Pam comes to suspect that a mysterious stranger in her small North Carolina town is a German spy.
In 1775, Elspeth Monro struggles to adapt to life in North Carolina after leaving behind her native Scotland, but her new-found comfort is shattered by the brewing Revolution.
Successful Manhattan science journalist Jeremy Marsh is invited to the tiny town of Boone Creek, North Carolina, to investigate a sighting of strange lights in a local cemetery and meets librarian Lexie Darnell, who causes the smitten Jeremy to make some difficult choices about his life.
