Publishers Weekly declares that the "leaves of autumn are in full splendor, and so is Maron's talent in her 10th Deborah Knott adventure." Judge Knott is finally ready to marry her long-time friend Deputy Sheriff Dwight Bryant and settle down-or is she? She jumps at a chance to fill in for a judge in the high country of North Carolina. But ugly murder haunts the beauty of the Smoky Mountains.

Barefoot, thirty-something Amber shows up at the door of a Norfolk cottage that the Smarts are renting for the summer, insinuating herself into their family. Dazzled by her seeming exoticism, the Smarts begin to examine the accidents of their lives under the searing lens of Amber's perceptions. When the mother Eve finally banishes her from the cottage, Amber disappears from their sight, but notas they find when they return home to Londonfrom their...

"Terri Rayburn is a girl with a reputation. She doesn't deserve it, but having grown up on the outskirts of Summer Hill, Virginia, she knows how small towns work. The only way to deal with vicious gossip is to ignore it, so she keeps to herself as she runs the summer resort on Lake Kissel. When she returns home from a short trip to find a handsome stranger living in her house, she smells a rat. Someone is trying to fix her up, and she has to admit...

In a tale that spans a long-term twentieth-century marriage, wealthy Sydney Brant marries Danish pianist Laurus Moss on the eve of the Nazi invasion of Denmark and finds their marriage challenged by disparate views of the world.

At their holiday home in Cornwall, a distant lighthouse holds a haunting attraction for the members of an Edwardian family as disillusionment, turmoil, and a world on the brink of war plague the family's relationships.

On a sweltering day in August 1942, Frankie Washburn returns to his family's rustic Minnesota resort for one last visit before he joins the war as a bombardier, headed for the darkened skies over Europe. Awaiting him at the Pines are those he's about to leave behind: his hovering mother; the distant father to whom he's been a disappointment; the Indian caretaker who's been more of a father to him than his own; and Billy, the childhood friend who over...