The teenage son of an Appalachian single mother who dies when he is eleven uses his good looks, wit, and instincts to survive foster care, child labor, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival....

Working for his mother, the sheriff of an idyllic Midwestern resort town, Eli North, when the body of a teenage boy is found in the lake, is drawn into an investigation related to America's opioid epidemic that becomes much more than just a hunt for a killer. Eli North is not okay. His drinking is getting worse by the day, his emotional wounds after a deployment to Afghanistan are as raw as ever, his marriage and career are over, and the only job...

"When Annie Brown, a fun-loving woman, suddenly dies, her husband, best friend, and her children all struggle to find ways to go on after the loss of the woman who was the center of their lives, and who made life happy, fun, and secure. Her husband is overwhelmed with four children to raise, and turns to his teenage daughter for help, and to an old girlfriend for solace. Annie's best friend struggles again with opioid addiction, having depended on...

While visiting Angela, one her protégées in Kansas, V.I. Warshawski, when Angela's roommate goes missing and V.I. finds her near death in a drug house, is pitched headlong into the country's opioid crisis and a local land-use battle with roots going back to the Civil War.

After a bad fall, Tom, in constant pain and addicted to painkillers at the cost of his relationships with his wife and son, realizes he can never work again and ends up in subsidized housing, where he hatches a scheme to commit convenience-check fraud with neighbors he considers lowlifes.

Irene, a lonely nineteen-year-old in rural North Carolina, works long nights at the local pool hall, serving pitchers and dodging drunks. One evening, her hilarious, magnetic coworker Luce invites her on a joy ride through the mountains to take revenge on a particularly creepy customer. Their adventure not only spells the beginning of a dazzling friendship, it seduces both girls into the mysterious world of pills and the endless hustles needed to...

"Still reeling from her older brother's death, Sadie is looking for answers. It isn't unusual for someone to die young in Cutler county--there have been so many overdoses in recent years that an article in the Kansas City Star bemoaned the decimation of the next generation of farmers. But Sadie's brother wasn't an addict. And though his wife who found him said it was a heart attack, he was only thirty-six years old and has never had any health problems....