Life-long friendships, class differences, terrible mistakes, and the beauty of unspoiled nature are all the ingredients that make

Whispering Winds of Appalachia

so special.

Nestled between the smoky, rolling peaks of Southern Appalachia lies the town of Brevard, North Carolina. When Chris Avery’s family moves to Brevard in the early 1970s, Chris quickly becomes immersed in a world untouched by the mire of life outside the mountains.As a young boy, Chris meets the son of the struggling dairy farmer next door, Walker Davis, and Walker’s best friend, Brook Palmer. The three of them become inseparable, bonded to each other as they are to the vibrant world in which their lives unfold. They spend the formative years of their childhood wandering in the woods chasing waterfalls and brook trout. However, they soon find out that life isn’t always so simple.What once seemed like Heaven is hopelessly ripped apart at the seams when one of the characters commits an irrevocable mistake that challenges friendship, love, and Chris’s understanding of even himself. Grasping at straws of a fractured past, Chris is forced to pit his conscience against the people he loves, all while listening to the subtle, haunting voices laced in the wind.Author John Ellington presents a heartfelt work of literary fiction, where readers will experience the sheer agony of irreversible choices and the consequences we must all face, set against Appalachian peaks towering over small, forgotten mountain towns.

Whispering Winds of Appalachia

is the winner of the

2024 Gold Medal Southern Fiction IPPY Book Award

and is a finalist for the

2024 Next Generation Indie Book Award

.This book is one of the most emotional and heartfelt fiction novels you will come across.

A married woman’s affair makes her reconsider the nature of love in this “beautiful, wise novel” (Edmund White).

Maria Jameson is having an affair—a passionate, life-changing affair. Yet she wonders whether this has to mean an end to the love she shares with her husband.   For answers to the question of whether it is possible to love two men at once, she reaches across the centuries to George Sand, the maverick French novelist. Immersing herself in the life of this revolutionary woman who took numerous lovers, Maria struggles with the choices women make, and wonders if women in the nineteenth century might have been more free, in some ways, than their twenty-first-century counterparts.   As these two narratives intertwine—following George through her affair with Frédéric Chopin, following Maria through her affair with an Irish professor—this novel explores the personal and the historical, the demands of self and the mysteries of the heart.   “This is not so much a story about having a love affair as it is a study of the nature of love itself. I was absolutely knocked out by it.” —Elizabeth Berg

Lucy Hickey-Rios is a strong woman. As Executive Director of Mercy Animal Shelter, she devotes her time and energy towards improving the lives of the animals in her central New York community. And things had been going well. A successful fund raiser brought in desperately needed funds. Out of the blue, an opportunity arose to replace their outdated shelter. Then, just as quickly, things turned sour. Vandalism, the murder of a beloved family member and the confiscation of twelve horses on their way to auction, and the kill buyers, were nearly more than Lucy could handle. Nearly.

Will, the narrator of this powerfully charged novel, discovers that his father, a political activist and local hero in their South African town, has become involved with a white woman. Wrenching, passionate, deeply resonant, My Son's Story evokes the inexorable yoking of the personal life and politics with uniquely moving force.

Two people raised in an end-times sect reunite years later: “A stunning novel about faith and disillusionment and the lingering power of the past.” —Tom Perrotta,

New York Times

bestselling author of

The Leftovers

Written by a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist and inspired by true events,

The Shelter Cycle

tells the story of two children, Francine and Colville, who grew up in the Church Universal and Triumphant, a religion that predicted the world could end in the late 1980s. While their parents built underground shelters to withstand the impending Soviet missile strike, Francine and Colville played in the Montana wilderness, where invisible spirits watched over them. When the prophesied apocalypse did not occur, the sect’s members resurfaced and the children were forced to grow up in a world they believed might no longer exist.Twenty years later, Francine and Colville are reunited while searching for an abducted girl in Idaho. Haunted by memories and inculcated beliefs, they must confront the Church’s teachings. If all the things they were raised to believe were misguided, why then do they suddenly feel so true?“Eerie [and] engrossing.” —

Publishers Weekly

(starred review)“A metaphysically haunting, shape-shifting novel that keeps the reader off balance and can’t be fully appreciated until its climax.” —

Kirkus Reviews

(starred review)