Fourteen-year-old Luli and her family face tragedy after failing to tell their slaves that President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation made them free.

The author "takes readers back to Jacobsville, Texas, where Hayes Carson is a lawman on a search for justice. His brother had been the only family he had left in the world. Hayes, a long, tall and serious Texan, has long been suspicious of the blond-haired, bright-eyed Minette Raynor, who is both mysterious and beautiful. And now he's convinced that Minette was involved in giving his brother the drugs that killed him. As far as Hayes is concerned,...

Danny Owens is dedicating his seventh-grade football season to his recently-deceased father, an NFL legend, but the pressure to succeed is magnified by his inability to read.

When Hank the Cowdog hears reports that coyotes are planning to go after the chickens, he manages to resist the temptation to join them and instead thwarts their attack, earning Sally May's forgiveness, and persuading Loper to stop feeding him Cheapo brand dog food.

Ben Crowell remembers the Great Caddo Lake Pearl Rush of 1874. He was fourteen that year, and his home, the riverboat community of Port Caddo, was dying. By the end of the summer, the pearl boom was over, Port Caddo was doomed, and the mystery over who killed Judd Kelso began. It took Ben forty years to solve the mystery, and once he did, the proof came only for him to witness. He is the only living soul who will know what happened that September...

Little Alfred, who hopes to become a professional explorer, skips his nap and hitches Hank to his wagon and the two travel west until a sudden storm and a flooded creek strand them far from home, and Hank must rely on his instincts and wits to keep them safe.

Noah Benton, a teenager with a great memory, a head for arithmetic, and dreams of excitement, is hired along with his older brother to help drive a herd of Texas longhorns to Abilene, Kansas. But Noah's trail boss happens to be John Wesley Hardin, a notorious killer who thinks Texas lawmen won't look for a fugitive in a crew of hard-working cowboys. After Hardin sees a profit in Noah's ability to count and memorize cards in gambling dens, Noah's dreams...

Leah Brennan has always been the good girl of the Brennan family, groomed to become the matriarch of the clan. When a dark-eyed, tattooed, ponytailed bad boy saunters into her life, Leah knows he's off-limits-but his mesmerizing gaze makes her forget everything she used to think was important. As town-wide tension rises, Leah wonders if love really can conquer all. When Rhett O'Donnell roars into Burnt Boot on a hot July evening, the first thing he...

Between the herb shop, the catering business, and a weekend paper-making class, China Bayles has her work cut out for her. And now China's half-brother is opening up old wounds, trying to investigate their father's supposedly accidental death, and he

Billie, matriarch of the Coleman family, is dying and tries to heal the rifts that separate her family.