Bøger af 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, yet for reasons she does not even understand herself, she is compelled to offer them a home.Suddenly, the two boys go from living in a small, run-down house on a gravel road to a stately mansion filled with sumptuous furnishings and beautiful artwork-artwork that's predominantly centered, oddly, on bullfighting. And then there's Miss Jack's real-life bull: Ventisco-a regal, hulking, jet-black beast who roams the land she owns with fiery impudence. Kyle adjusts more easily to the transition. A budding artist, he finds a kindred spirit in Miss Jack. But local baseball hero Klint refuses to warm up to his new benefactress and instead throws himself into his game with a fierceness that troubles his little brother. Klint is not just grieving his father's death; he's carrying a terrible secret that he has never revealed to anyone. Unbeknownst to the world, Candace Jack has a secret too-a tragic, passionate past in Spain that the boys' presence threatens to reveal as she finds herself caring more for them than she ever believed possible. From the muted, bruised hills of Pennsylvania coal country to the colorful, flamboyant bull rings of southern Spain, Tawni O'Dell takes us on a riveting journey not only between two completely different lands, but also between seemingly incompatible souls, casting us under her narrative spell in which characters and places are rendered with fragile tenderness.

With her eagerly awaited second novel, Tawni O'Dell takes readers back to the coal-mining country of western Pennsylvania. Set in a town ravaged and haunted by a mine explosion that took the lives of 96 men, Coal Run explores the life of local deputy and erstwhile football legend, "The Great Ivan Z.," as he prepares for a former teammate's imminent release from prison. As the week unfolds and Ivan struggles to confront his demons, he reveals himself to be a man whose conscience is burdened by a long-held and shocking secret.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Back Roads, "a no-holds-barred, page-turning, perfectly crafted thriller" (Heather Gudenkauf, author of The Weight of Silence) following a small town police chief who's forced to dig into her own shadowy past as she investigates the murder of a teenage girl.On the surface, Chief Dove Carnahan is a true trailblazer who would do anything to protect the rural Pennsylvanian town where she has lived all fifty of her years. Traditional and proud of her blue-collar sensibilities, Dove is loved by her community?but she hides a dark and self-destructive streak, fed by a secret she has kept since she was sixteen. When a girl is beaten to death and her body tossed down a fiery sinkhole in an abandoned coal town, Dove is faced with solving the most shocking crime of her law enforcement career. She identifies the girl as a member of a local family of petty criminals. To further complicate things, the man convicted of killing Dove's mother is released from prison and reveals a startling accusation. Dove now must face the chilling parallels between her own family's trauma and that of the dead girl's. "A darkly compelling look into how the past colors the present, this psychological thriller will linger" (RT Book Reviews) with you long after you turn the final page.

Set in the fictional mining town of Jolly Mount, Pennsylvania, Sister Mine is told in the wry, honest and sometimes heartbreakingly poignant voice of Shae-Lynn Penrose, an offbeat ex-cop and now sole proprietor of the local cab company. Two years previously, five of Shae-Lynn's friends were catapulted into media stardom when the pit in which they were working exploded. They survived five days underground and emerged as heroes - but neither they nor their town have been the same since.Still, things are fine - until Shae-Lynn's kid sister Shannon, presumed dead, walks back into town. Where has she been for the last seventeen years? Who is the father of her unborn baby? And why is the mob on her heels? Shae-Lynn herself, beaten black and blue as a child by her brute of a miner father, has plenty of her own demons to confront - and one or two secrets she's never told... With all the heartache of Jodi Picoult, but served up with a blackly humorous twist and set in the sort of small working-class town that Karin Slaughter has made so familiar, Sister Mine is redemptive, embracing - and, above, all, unputdownable.