Growing up in a small North Carolina town, Jess Hall is plunged into an adulthood for which he is not prepared when his autistic older brother, Stump, sneaks a look at something he is not supposed to see, which has catastrophic repercussions.

Jake, a budding juvenile delinquent, is sent for home schooling to the arty and eccentric Applewhite family's Creative Academy, where he discovers talents and interests he never knew he had.

Miss Julia's investigative work on a possible murder and her financial reputation keeps her buzzing. But the sudden arrival of Hazel Marie's twins during a fierce blizzard brings a whole new set of challenges and a double helping of trouble.

"From modern-day Roanoke Island to the sweeping backdrop of North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains and Roosevelt's WPA folklore writers, past and present intertwine to create an unexpected destiny. Restaurant owner Whitney Monroe is desperate to save her business from a hostile takeover. The inheritance of a decaying Gilded Age hotel on North Carolina's Outer Banks may provide just the ray of hope she needs. But things at the Excelsior are more complicated...

The toughest cases are the ones that hit close to home. When his cousin is accused of a heinous crime, Alex Cross returns to his North Carolina hometown for the first time in over three decades. As he tries to prove his cousin's innocence in a town where everyone seems to be on the take, Cross unearths a family secret that forces him to question everything he's ever known. Chasing a ghost he believed was long dead, Cross gets pulled into a case that...

Eleanor Swift isn't amused when Laughing Luigi?the sketchy frozen pizza dough baron?walks into her Timber Ridge, North Carolina, pizzeria. But the contract for his pizza-making contest seems on the up-and-up. . .and sprucing up her beloved pizzeria, A Slice of Delight, with $25,000 in first-prize money would truly be a dream come true. . .

"A body is found in a barrel of asphalt next to Lowes Motor Speedway near Charlotte just as 200,000 fans are pouring into town for race week. The next day, a NASCAR crew member shares with Tempe a devastating story. Twelve years earlier his sister, Cyndi Gamble, then a high school senior who wanted to be a professional racecar driver, disappeared along with her boyfriend, Cale Lovette. Lovette kept company with a group of right wing extremists known...