Everything is falling to pieces for Francesca Thayer. Her beautiful old house is full of leaks and in need of total restoration. Then her relationship with lawyer Todd collapses and he moves out. As the owner of a struggling art gallery she can’t possibly manage the mortgage alone, so she is forced to do the one thing she never imagined she would: she advertises for lodgers.
When two lowlifes rob a North Carolina gas station, murder the attendant, and incinerate bystanders, local police quickly arrest the killers at a nearby motel. But a stubborn judge dismisses the case because the suspects were not read their rights, and the sheriff's office and Lieutenant Cam Richter must face the anger of the victims' families.
Cam Richter is back in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, this time in pursuit of the secretive and evil Creigh Clan. Led by Grinny Creigh and her son, Nathan, the gang controls the methamphetamine trade in this part of Appalachia, but they operate a much worse enterprise on the side, involving abandoned and abused children.
Although his work has been restricted to the short story, the essay, and poetry, Jorge Luis Borges of Argentina is recognized all over the world as one of the most original and significant figures in modern literature. In his preface André Maurois writes: "Borges is a great writer who has composed only little essays or short narratives. Yet they suffice for us to call him great because of their wonderful intelligence, their wealth of invention, and their tight, almost mathematical style."
Herself the daughter of a Canadian forest entomologist, Atwood writes in an autobiographical vein about Elaine Risley, a middle-aged Canadian painter (and daughter of a forest entomologist) who is thrust into an extended reconsideration of her past while attending a retrospective show of her work in Toronto, a city she had fled years earlier in order to leave behind painful memories.
