Tawni O'Dell

When their hard-drinking but loving father dies in a car accident, teenage brothers Kyle and Klint Hayes face a bleak prospect: leaving their Pennsylvania hometown for an uncertain life in Arizona with the mother who ran out on them years ago. But in a strange twist of fate, their town's matriarch, an eccentric, wealthy old woman whose family once owned the county coal mines, hears the boys' story. Candace Jack doesn't have an ounce of maternal instinct,...

"On the surface, Chief Dove Carnahan is a true trailblazer who would do anything to protect the rural Pennsylvanian countryside where she has lived all fifty of her years. Traditional and proud of her blue-collar sensibilities, Dove is loved by her community. But beneath her badge lies a dark and self-destructive streak, fed by a secret she has kept since she was sixteen. When a girl is beaten to death, her body tossed down a fiery sinkhole in an...

Tawni O'Dell once again returns to the coal-mining country of western Pennsylvania. In the town of Coal Run, the local deputy, Ivan Zoschenko, a permanently-injured one-time football legend branded for life as "The Great Ivan Z," spends a week seemingly preparing for an old teammate's imminent release from prison. He is surrounded by a rich cast of characters: his wise and comic ex-beauty-queen sister; his former idol, Val Claypool; and the young...