Pulitzer Prize-winning author Keller welcomes readers back to West Virginia and a ragged chunk of what was once a high stone wall. This is all that remains of Wellwood, a psychiatric hospital for the poor that burned to the ground decades ago. And it is here that Bell Elkins--prosecutor turned private investigator--makes a grim discovery while searching for a missing teenager: a dead body, marred by a ghastly wound that can only mean murder.

"From the small towns of Appalachia they came, the young men who joined the fight for liberty in World War II. Now they are elderly, and some of them--like Harmon Strayer, father of prosecutor Bell Elkins's former law school classmate--suffer from Alzheimer's. When Harmon dies in an Alzheimer's care facility from what appear to be natural causes, Bell confronts a mystery that brims with questions about memory, grief and the lethal cost of burying...

"In a radiant world of endless summer, the Intercept keeps the peace. Violet Crowley, the sixteen-year-old daughter of New Earth's Founding Father, has spent her life in comfort and safety. Her days are easy thanks to the Intercept, a crime-prevention device that monitors emotion. But when her long-time crush, Danny Mayhew, gets into a dangerous altercation on Old Earth, Violet launches a secret investigation to find out what he's hiding. An investigation...

"The next powerful chapter in Pulitzer Prize-winner Julia Keller's beloved Bell Elkins series sends readers headlong into the thick of a mystery as young as today's headlines -- but as old as the mountains that hold these lives in a tight grip. How far would you go for someone you love? Would you die? Would you kill? After a three-year prison sentence, Bell Elkins is back in Acker's Gap. And she finds herself in the white-hot center of a complicated...

From the night-black depths of a coalmine to the sun-struck peaks of the Appalachian Mountains, from a riveting murder mystery to a poignant meditation on the meaning of love and family, the latest novel in the critically acclaimed series strikes out for new territory: the sorrow and outrage that spring from a real-life chapter in West Virginia history.Royce Dillard doesn't remember much about the day his parents-and one hundred and twenty-three other...

"Grit isn't always great. Perseverance doesn't always pay off. In Quitting: A Life Strategy, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Julia Keller dives into "the neuroscience of nope," and the cultural messaging that drives our reluctance to throw in the towel, to dismantle the myth of perseverance once and for all. Combining reportage from the front lines of scientific research, pop culture, with conversations with people who have made profound change...