Headstrong, independent, and devastatingly beautiful Lucy Bondurant Chastain Venable will never become the demure Southern lady her family requires--while her older cousin, Sheppard Gibbs Bondurant III, is too shy and bookish, a far cry from the suave, gregarious Southern gentleman he's expected to be. In the Bondurants' sprawling home on Atlanta's Peachtree Road, these two will be united by a fierce tainted love--and torn apart by a smoldering rage fanned by the cruelty of years and the unbending demands of privilege.

A masterful tale of love, hate, and rebellion set in an elite...

Thirtysomething Colquitt and Walter Kennedy live in a charming, peaceful suburb of newly bustling Atlanta, Georgia. Life is made up of enjoyable work, long, lazy weekends, and the company of good neighbors. Then, to their shock, construction starts on the vacant lot next door, a wooded hillside they'd believed would always remain undeveloped. Disappointed by their diminished privacy, Colquitt and Walter soon realize something more is wrong with the house next door. Surely the house can't...

In Montgomery, Alabama, Martin Luther King Jr. has organized a bus boycott. In Tuscaloosa, outrage surrounds the entrance of the state university's first black student. But at little Randolph University, sweltering in the summer heat, life remains dreamily the same. At Kappa House, the sorority sisters talk of who has pinned whom, and whether they can sneak past their housemother so they can party at an out-of-town bar. Even among this privileged group,...

In 1904, Ruth Yancey is only ten years old when she is brought to live at the magnificent mansion called Fox's Earth. But the impoverished daughter of an abusive mill worker has already internalized her mother's steely code: Men may hold all the power, but a woman possesses one thing that can get her anything in the world she wants...if she's prepared to make certain sacrifices. Deserted by her mother in order to give her a better chance...

They came together as sorority sisters on a Southern campus is the '60s: Elegant Kate, walking a tightrope over an abyss of lies ... Sensitive, sensible, self-contained Cecie ... Ginger, the sexy, vibrant heiress, richer than sin ... and poor, hopeless, brilliant Fig.

Four young women bound by rare, blinding, early friendship -- they spend two idyllic spring breaks at Nag's Head, North Carolina, the isolated strip of barrier islands where grand old weather-beaten houses perch defiantly on the edge of a storm-tossed sea. Now, thirty years later, they are coming back. They are coming...

From childhood, Molly Bell Redwine was taught by her charismatic, domineering mother that "family is everything." But no one warned Molly that family can change unexpectedly. In rapid succession, her husband of more than twenty years abandons her for a younger woman, her mother dies, and her Atlanta clan scatters to the four winds. Molly is set adrift in a heartbeat.

With her old world crumbling, Molly takes refuge with a friend on Martha's Vineyard, hoping to come to terms with who she truly is. When the summer season ends, Molly decides to stay on, renting a small cottage on a...