Sharyn McCrumb

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Texas

A Mystery Novel 

Folksinger Lark McCourry retraces the history of a family song, which she had heard from her North Carolina relatives as a child, back to eighteenth-century Scotland to young Malcolm MacQuarry, kidnapped and sent to the American colonies, where he eventually became a lawyer and fought in the American Revolution. 60,000 first printing.

The Songcatcher

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Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Kentucky

Eccentric Eileen Chandler is all set to be married, but someone wants the vows stopped before they are started. Murder has made an uninvited appearance before the wedding and no one in the crazy wedding party is above suspicion.

Sick of Shadows

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#hardcover #fiction #mccrumb ex library 📚 

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

In the wake of a sensationalized 1934 trial involving an Appalachian Virginia teacher's alleged murder of her tyrant father, novice journalist Carl Jennings is denounced by a greedy media determined to portray the defendant as a backwards mountain girl.

The Devil Amongst the Lawyers

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Wear and tear on cover and name written in book… books never been read

New York

In the 1950s, a group of young science fiction writers, dreaming of literary immortality and calling themselves the Lanthanides, buried a time capsule with their stories and relics from the time. Now, in the 1990s, when several of them have become famous, the surviving Lanthanides are getting together at a special convention to dig up the capsule and open it. But the convention is startled by the appearance of a writer who was supposed to have died thirty years ago. Then murder materializes to throw the agenda further into chaos. Now, Jay Omega, author of Bimbos of the Death Sun, and his significant other, Dr. Marion Farley, must separate science fact from fiction -- and unearth a killer with a story of his own to tell.

Zombies of the Gene Pool

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From New York Times bestselling author Sharyn McCrumb comes the fifth novel set in the Appalachian wilderness blending legends and folklore with high suspense.A career lawman will bear witness to the final judgement, as a man he put away twenty years ago is about to be executed for the brutal slaying of two hikers. However, his conscience is no longer clear to the point of absolute certainty about the man's guilt. Also of intense interest to the lawman is the parallel between the current events and a legendary murder and execution over 100 years old-the story of a great injustice, and a woman condemned to die for a crime she didn't commit. Suddenly, the sheriff finds himself in a race against and across time to see that history doesn't repeat itself!

The Ballad of Frankie Silver

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Oklahoma

"Sharyn McCrumb transforms mystery into astonishing literature."--The Cleveland Plain Dealer Forensic anthropologist Elizabeth MacPherson gets a chance to revel in the rites of the old country at the annual Glencoe Mountain Games, the Scottish festival where several hundred like-minded Americans celebrate their ancestors' folkways. But the innocent ethnic fair is cursed when the loathed Colin Campbell is found murdered. Then a second murder silences everyone's bagpipes for good. Enter Elizabeth, who make short work of her search for motive and murderer. "I had a great time at Sharyn McCrumb's inimitable version of the Highland games."--Charlotte MacLeod

Highland Laddie Gone 1695

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A story inspired by a true crime made famous by the Kingston Trio's folk song recording reimagines the events surrounding the murder of North Carolina mountain girl Laura Foster and the hanging of her lover, Tom Dula, in a meticulously researched account that reveals additional information that may prove Dula's innocence. 75,000 first printing.

The Ballad of Tom Dooley

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Louisiana

Obsessed with a nineteenth-century murder in which a young woman was hanged for the crime, Tennessee sheriff Spencer Arrowood suspects that an innocent man is about to die for killing a young couple hiking the Appalachian Trail. 85,000 first printing. Mystery Guild Main, Lit Guild Feat Alt, & Doubleday Alt. Tour.

Withdrawn library book. Proceeds will go to donate books to son’s elementary school. Thank you! 

Maine

A Novel

Suddenly thrust into the role of primary caretaker for her family following the tragic death of her husband, Ellie Robbins is appointed to serve out his term as sheriff of their rural Tennessee mountain town. The year is 1936, and her role is largely symbolic, except for the one task that only a sheriff can do: execute a convicted prisoner. Ellie has long proven she can handle herself. But becoming sheriff is altogether different, and the demands of the role are even more challenging when she is forced to combat society's expectations for a woman. Soon enough, dark secrets come to light, and Ellie must grapple with small town superstitions and the tenuaous ties she shared with a condemned killer as she carves out a place for herself in an uncertain future. --

Prayers the Devil Answers

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1715

"In an earlier life, McCrumb must have been a balladeer, singing of restless spirits, star-crossed lovers, and the consoling beauty of nature. . . . The overall effect is spellbinding." --The Washington Post Bestselling author Sharyn McCrumb is "a born storyteller" (Mary Higgins Clark) who astonishes readers and reviewers with the power and scope of her talent, prompting the San Diego Union-Tribune to declare: "There is no one quite like her among present-day writers. No one better, either." Foggy Mountain Breakdown, the first-ever collection of Sharyn McCrumb's short fiction, is a literary quilting of old and new, humorous and heartfelt, offering award-winning works--and two stories never before published, contrasting mountain childhoods past and present. Chilling tales of suspense alternate with evocative character portraits and compelling narratives that embrace the southern Appalachian locales and themes of McCrumb's acclaimed Ballad Novels. Within this cornucopia of two dozen stories, Old Rattler, a mountain healer, skirmishes with a serial killer . . . Princess Di investigates long-kept secrets within the House of Windsor . . . A reincarnated murder victim seeks delicious revenge . . . And while honeymooning in the bridegroom's ancestral hilltop homeplace, two newlyweds harbor second thoughts. The author's perfect-pitch ear for dialogue and ability to illuminate the dark side of human nature merge with her brilliant artistry to make Foggy Mountain Breakdown a virtuoso collection for devotees of Sharyn McCrumb--and for the legion of new readers who will find themselves caught under her spell.

Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories

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Sheriff Spencer Arrowood keeps the peace in his small Tennessee town most of the time. Every once in a while, though, something goes wrong. When 1960s folksinger Peggy Muryan moves to town seeking solitude and a career comeback, and she receives a postcard with a threatening message, her idyll is shattered. Then a local girl who looks like Peggy vanishes without a trace. Although she was once famous, Peggy has no fondness for the old times. Those days are best left forgotten for Spencer Arrowood, too. But sometimes the past can't rest, and those who try to forget it are doomed to relive it....

If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy O  1694

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An Anthology of Original Traditional Mystery Stories

A thrilling collection of the most befuddling mysteries includes contributions from such masters of the genre as Stephanie Barron, Dean James, Amy Myers, and Michael Bond, and presents such cases as a deadly seance that brings about horrible truths and a spurned lover who takes the ultimate revenge. Original.

Malice Domestic  1689

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Folksinger Lark McCourry is haunted by the memory of a song. As a child she heard it from her relatives in the North Carolina mountains, and she knows that the song has been in her family since 1759, when her ancestor, nine-year-old Malcolm MacQuarry, kidnapped from the Scottish island of Islay, learned it aboard an English ship. The song accompanied young Malcolm when he made his way to Morristown, New Jersey, where he apprenticed with an attorney, became a lawyer himself, and fought in the American Revolution. The song went with Malcolm in 1790, when he left his family and traveled the Wilderness Road to homestead in western North Carolina, where he remarried and raised a second family. The song, passed down through the generations, carries Malcolm's descendants through the settling of the frontier, the Civil War, the coming of the railroads, and into modern times, providing both solace in the present and a link to the past. Over the years, though, the memory of the old song has dimmed and Lark McCourry's only hope of preserving her family legacy lies in mountain wisewoman Nora Bonesteel, who talks to both the living and the dead.

Virginia

When someone buys the old Honeycutt house, Nora Bonesteel is glad to see some life brought back to the old mansion, even if it is by summer people. But when they decide to stay through Christmas, they find more than old memories in the walls. On Christmas Eve, Sheriff Spencer Arrowood and Deputy Joe LeDonne find themselves on an unwelcome call to arrest an elderly man for a minor offense. As they attempt to do their duty, while doing the right thing for a neighbor, it begins to look like they may all spend Christmas away from home. In a story of spirits, memories, and angels unaware, Sharyn McCrumb revisits her most loved characters who know there is more to this world than the eye can see, especially at Christmastime.

Nora Bonesteel's Christmas Past

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Summoned to the scene of a ghastly crime in her remote Appalachian village, Laura Bruce, the new minister's wife, realizes that Sunday school teacher Nora Crumb's dark visions have come true.

The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter

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Minnesota

Folksinger Lark McCourry retraces the history of a family song, which she had heard from her North Carolina relatives as a child, back to eighteenth-century Scotland to young Malcolm MacQuarry.

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. McCrumb for her inspired chronicles of forensic anthropologist Elizabeth MacPherson. In her newest tale in the MacPherson saga, McCrumb examines society's fascination with beauty--and the deceptiveness of outer appearances. Elizabeth herself, hospitalized for depression over her missing husband, learns that insanity liberates one from polite hypocrisy, enabling a "crazy lady" to remark: "Anorexia is not a disease; it's a career move." Out in the real world, Elizabeth's brother Bill has bought a stately old mansion to use as his law office, only to find that the house comes with a charming codger-in-residence who is far too old to be a dangerous outlaw. . . isn't he? Meanwhile, the steel magnolia who is Bill's law partner is trying to track down the PMS Outlaws--an escaped convict and her fugitive attorney--who are cruising pickup joints and wreaking a peculiar vengeance on lust-crazed men. Sharyn McCrumb's incisive wit and her genius for mirroring everyday life are once again on full display. The PMS Outlaws is an outrageous parable of modern mores, where beauty is the weapon, and nobody is safe. *The New York Times Book Review

The PMS Outlaws 3926

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The PMS Outlaws 3911

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Maryland

A Ballad Novel

John Sevier had not taken much interest in the American Revolution. Homesteading in the Carolina mountains, Sevier was too busy fighting Indians and taming the wilderness to worry much about a far-off war, but when an arrogant British officer sends a message over the mountains, threatening to burn the settlers' farms and kill their families, the Revolutionary War becomes personal. That abrasive officer is British Army Major Patrick Ferguson, who is both charmingly antagonistic and surprisingly endearing. The younger son of a Scottish earl, Ferguson suffers constant misfortunes, making his dedication and courage count for nothing. When he loses the use of his arm from an injury at Brandywine, his commander sends him south, away from the war—which, in 1780, George Washington and the Continental Army are losing. Ordered to recruit wealthy Southern planters to the British cause, Ferguson courts disaster by provoking the frontiersmen, and suddenly the far-off war is a sword's length away. The British aristocrat on a fine white horse is the antihero to Sevier's American pioneer spirit. Two Tory washerwomen, Virginia Sal—whose lucid voice lends humor and mysticism to the pages—and Virginia Paul, a mysterious woman too well-acquainted with death, portray the human side of the king's army. With a regiment of British regulars and local Tory volunteers, Ferguson believes he's an indomitable force. Threatened by the Loyalists with invasion and the loss of their land, Sevier knows that Ferguson has to be stopped. In response, Sevier and his loyal comrades—many of whom would play key roles in later parts of American history—raise an unpaid volunteer militia of more than a thousand men. Bringing their own guns, riding their own horses, and wearing just their civilian clothes, the Overmountain Men ally themselves with other states' militias and march toward Charlotte in search of Ferguson's marauding army. On a hill straddling the North and South Carolina lines, in what Thomas Jefferson later called "the turning point of the American Revolutionary War," the Overmountain Men triumph, proving that the British forces can be stopped. Their victory at King's Mountain inspired the colonies to fight on, ending the war one year later at Yorktown. Peppered with lore and the authentic heart of the people in McCrumb's classic Ballads, this is an epic book that paints the brave action of Sevier and his comrades against a landscape of richly portrayed characters. Harrowing battle descriptions compete with provoking family histories, as McCrumb once again shares history and legend like no one else. Both a novel of war and family, crafted with heart and depth, King's Mountain celebrates one of Appalachia's finest hours.

King's Mountain

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Kansas

"In an earlier life, McCrumb must have been a balladeer, singing of restless spirits, star-crossed lovers, and the consoling beauty of nature. . . . The overall effect is spellbinding." --The Washington Post Bestselling author Sharyn McCrumb is "a born storyteller" (Mary Higgins Clark) who astonishes readers and reviewers with the power and scope of her talent, prompting the San Diego Union-Tribune to declare: "There is no one quite like her among present-day writers. No one better, either." Foggy Mountain Breakdown, the first-ever collection of Sharyn McCrumb's short fiction, is a literary quilting of old and new, humorous and heartfelt, offering award-winning works--and two stories never before published, contrasting mountain childhoods past and present. Chilling tales of suspense alternate with evocative character portraits and compelling narratives that embrace the southern Appalachian locales and themes of McCrumb's acclaimed Ballad Novels. Within this cornucopia of two dozen stories, Old Rattler, a mountain healer, skirmishes with a serial killer . . . Princess Di investigates long-kept secrets within the House of Windsor . . . A reincarnated murder victim seeks delicious revenge . . . And while honeymooning in the bridegroom's ancestral hilltop homeplace, two newlyweds harbor second thoughts. The author's perfect-pitch ear for dialogue and ability to illuminate the dark side of human nature merge with her brilliant artistry to make Foggy Mountain Breakdown a virtuoso collection for devotees of Sharyn McCrumb--and for the legion of new readers who will find themselves caught under her spell.   From the Hardcover edition.

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Sharyn McCrumb

The Songcatcher

Sharyn McCrumb

Sick of Shadows

Sharyn McCrumb

The Devil Amongst the Lawyers

Sharyn McCrumb

Zombies of the Gene Pool

Sharyn McCrumb

The Ballad of Frankie Silver

Sharyn McCrumb

Highland Laddie Gone 1695

Sharyn McCrumb

The Ballad of Tom Dooley

Sharyn McCrumb

The Ballad of Frankie Silver

Sharyn McCrumb

Prayers the Devil Answers

Sharyn McCrumb

Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories

Sharyn McCrumb

If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy O 1694

Sharyn McCrumb

Malice Domestic 1689

Sharyn McCrumb

The Songcatcher

Sharyn McCrumb

The Ballad of Frankie Silver

Sharyn McCrumb

Nora Bonesteel's Christmas Past

Sharyn McCrumb

The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter

Sharyn McCrumb

The Ballad of Frankie Silver

Sharyn McCrumb

The Songcatcher

Sharyn McCrumb

The PMS Outlaws 3926

Sharyn McCrumb

The PMS Outlaws 3911

Sharyn McCrumb

King's Mountain

Sharyn McCrumb

The Songcatcher

Sharyn McCrumb

Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories

Sharyn McCrumb

The Ballad of Frankie Silver