"Mick Hardin, a combat veteran now working as an Army CID agent, returns home on a leave that is almost done. His wife is about to give birth, but they aren't getting along. His sister, newly risen to sheriff, has just landed her first murder case, and local politicians are pushing for city police or the FBI to take the case. Are they convinced she can't handle it, or is there something else at work? She calls on Mick who, with his investigation experience...

"Country Dark is a taut, compelling novel set in rural Kentucky from the Korean War to 1970. Tucker, a young veteran, returns from war to work for a bootlegger. He falls in love and starts a family, and while the Tuckers don't have much, they have the love of their home and each other. But when his family is threatened, Tucker is pushed into violence, which changes everything. The story of people living off the land and by their wits in a backwoods...

"Mick Hardin is back in the hills of Kentucky. He'd planned to touch down briefly before heading to France, marking the end of his twenty-year Army career. In Rocksalt, his sister Linda the sheriff is investigating the murder of Pete Lowe, a sought-after mechanic at the local racetrack. After another body is found, Linda and her deputy Johnny Boy Tolliver wonder if the two murders are related. Linda steps into harm's way just as a third body turns...

Stories about working-class people. In Two-Eleven All Around, a man is locked out for the night by his wife, while in Tough People, a woman enters a boxing contest to raise money for her man.

Short stories capture the lives of such offbeat characters as a delusional schizophrenic, an egg donor with second thoughts, and a young girl who discovers a portal to another, ghostly world.