In the waning years of the 19th century, Bessie Daniels grows up in the small town of Hot Springs in western North Carolina. Secure in the love of her father, resistant to her mother's desire that she be a proper Southern belle, Bessie is determined to forge her own way in life. Or, as her Cherokee great-grandmother Elisi puts it, to be a whistling woman. Life, however, has a few surprises in store for Bessie....

In August 1969, medical student Lizzie Baker sets off on a trip to Woodstock with her boyfriend and two other couples. When their van breaks down outside of Morganton, North Carolina, the group decides to hike up nearby Brown Mountain while they wait for the repairs to be finished. Lizzie's interest in nature prompts her to go on a walk by herself, hoping to get a glimpse of the legendary Brown Mountain Lights. When she unexpectedly encounters one, she naively reaches out to touch it and is thrown back in time to a place and lifestyle she comes to hate.

"I’m a Stranger Here” could be the song title guiding Lizzie Baker’s life. In the five years she spent on Brown Mountain during the Civil War, Lizzie wanted nothing more than to find the light that transported her back in time and return to the 20th century. While fleeing from bushwhackers in 1864, Lizzie, her friend Abbie Collins, and fiancé Josh Hampton encounter a light Lizzie believes is hers. Hoping to get to safety, she pushes Abbie into the light, expecting Josh to follow. She and Abbie wake to find that this is not the Brown Mountain they remember.  

Life is hard for Ruby growing up in poverty on the wrong side of the mountain on her grandfather's farm where literally the sun didn’t shine. The Appalachian setting isn’t her friend as she searches for an easy life at the "tippy-top" with contentment and security. Ruby makes a series of bad decisions, causing her life to tumble into an unexpected outcome.

Matty has had to care for her three younger sisters ever since their mother’s death 10 years ago. She and the girls’ beloved father have worked hard to keep the family together, and now it’s time to celebrate as Matty turns 18. But their joy is short-lived when tragedy suddenly strikes and their father disappears on his way to London. The sisters have no way of knowing what has happened to him – only that he hasn’t returned home. With little money left they’re now forced to battle life’s misfortunes alone.... 

In the South Carolina Hills, along the Savannah River Watershed, in the fall of 1829, 14-year-old, three-quarter Cherokee Sahani, whose Christian name is Charity, sets out on a journey with her 83-year-old white grandfather to Fort Charlotte for what she thinks is a trip to trade the pelts he has accumulated in order to replenish their supplies. However, Charity soon discovers that her grandfather's objective in making this trip is to get her married off and settled somewhere.

For years, the town of Silver Bell, Arkansas has quietly mourned the hospital fire that claimed the lives of nine of its residents—the town doctor, a young expectant mother, and seven infants. So, when journalist Finn Hardwick is assigned the story as part of a national thirtieth anniversary memorial service, he arrives at the town ready to interview its residents, thinking they’ll be ready to share and eager to make headlines. He isn’t prepared for the resistance. Or for what appears to be a collective unwillingness to answer his questions.

MACEY MAY JOHNSON knows something isn't right when her mama puts her alone on a bus to her grandma's farm with strict instructions to wait to be picked up at the station. She's only nine and has never been allowed to travel by herself before, but her daddy is gone and the bills can't be paid. And Macey May knows her family keeps secrets. She can feel it in her bones.

In the heart of rural Maine, in the midst of the Great Depression and the final year of Prohibition, the McGinn family stands at a crossroads. The bond between Alder, Finn, and Lewin McGinn, the oldest sons of a widowed mother raising twelve children, is about to be tested in ways they could never have imagined.

In 1961 Charlotte, North Carolina, the predominantly black neighborhood of Brooklyn is a bustling city within a city. Self-contained and vibrant, it has its own restaurants, schools, theaters, churches, and night clubs. There are shotgun shacks and poverty, along with well-maintained houses like the one Loraylee Hawkins shares with her young son, Hawk, her Uncle Ray, and her grandmother, Bibi. Loraylee's love for Archibald Griffin, Hawk's white father and manager of the cafeteria where she works, must be kept secret in the segregated South.

If Veda’s mama hadn’t pounded religion into her “the way she pounded the dirt out of Papa’s overalls”, she probably wouldn’t have married Raymond in the first place. It’s the Great Depression, and jobs are scarce, but it seems to Veda that Raymond uses religion as an excuse for why he can’t find work. He can’t work on the Sabbath, he can’t work around crude or vulgar men, and he will not join a union. 

Left suddenly penniless, the Honorable Sophia Grafton, a viscount's orphaned daughter, sails to the New World to claim the only property left to her name: a tobacco plantation in the remote wilds of colonial Virginia. Enlisting the reluctant assistance of a handsome young French spy - at gunpoint - she gathers an unlikely group of escaped slaves and indentured servants, each seeking their own safe haven in the untamed New World.

This is a story of a boy called Denny coming of age against all odds. It’s a story of hope for an unwanted child. And it’s a tale of setbacks, resilience, and how adults can positively influence wayward teens and gently guide them towards a more hopeful future. At 13 years old Denny hitchhiked from Detroit, Michigan to San Bernardino, California, where he took control of his own life.

In two run-down houses, at the side of a barren Black Country heath, live six children with no family but each other. Abandoned or orphaned, every day is a fight to find food and keep warm. But they are determined to stay free of the clutches of the workhouse and the horrors that would face them if they were ever torn apart. Dora Parsons lives with her mother, Mary, and her evil grandmother, Edith. Edith’s house may be comfortable and warm, and food is plentiful, but every day, Dora suffers at the hands of her spiteful gran.

New England, 1992. Sophie’s hand trembles as she places the birthday card on to the creamy wood of her dresser—this one postmarked from far away, and signed with a name she’s never forgotten, despite their years apart. Downstairs, guests wait around a colourful pile of gifts—Happy 90th Birthday, Sophie! But Sophie has a gift of her own to give today—a tattered collection of photographs she’s never shown anybody. Holding it to her heart, a single tear slides down her wrinkled cheek.