Sharyn McCrumb

In Depression-era Appalachia, a desperate sheriff’s widow takes on her late husband’s job and discovers that a prayer the devil answers comes at a terrible price. The year is 1936 and society provides no safety net for newly widowed Ellie Robbins, a woman in a small mountain town who...

The Kingston Trio’s folk song “Tom Dooley” tells the story of the murder of Laura Foster, a simple country girl involved with returning Confederate soldier Tom Dula. But Tom was also engaged in a passionate affair with his childhood sweetheart, the beautiful - and married - Ann Melton. One...

Bestselling author Sharyn McCrumb, internationally acclaimed for the "quiet fire"* of her Appalachian Ballad novels, clearly has a dark side—a wicked, sardonic wit that has prompted critics to compare her to Jane Austen and Jonathan Swift. Readers and reviewers alike also have lauded Ms...

One hundred years after a woman is hanged, the search for justice reveals a story of faith, obsession, and murder. In 1832, 18-year-old Frankie Silver was charged with murdering her young husband. In 1833, she became the first woman in the state of North Carolina to be hanged for murder. But was...

From the New York Times bestselling author of Prayers the Devil Answers and The Ballad of Tom Dooley, a “fascinating historical fiction novel you won’t be able to put down” (Bustle) based on one of the strangest murder trials in American history—the case of the Greenbrier Ghost. Lakin...

In 1934 all the national publications sent their star reporters to remote Virginia to cover the trial of Erma Morton: a beautiful 21-year-old mountain girl with a teaching degree, accused of murdering her father – a drunken tyrant of a man. Four seasoned journalists descend upon the small town...