Ah yes, it's time for another season of tennis... They have been together for years, the girls, on the same team, lolling through the seasons-such a pleasant way to socialize and at the same time get some exercise. The perfect excuse for lunch and a glass of wine afterward. But this season, there seems to be a slight fly in the ointment. There is a new member on the team who, ridiculous as it may seem, wants desperately to win...at any cost. And damn, the team has made the colossal mistake of electing her captain. Halfway through the season, the girls can see that they might have to take matters into their own hands. They might even have to take the law into their own hands. Devoto is the author of four critically acclaimed novels that have nothing whatsoever to do with tennis. But she couldn't resist this one foray into the daunting perils of women in tennis.

Aggie's world is defined by the length and breadth of Tripoli Circle, with its sturdy houses and solid families who have willingly given their sons to one war and then another and then another. Aggie's father, Daniel, is a hero. Five years after coming home from World War II, he is still drowning in its memories. The more fragile he becomes, the more Sara, Aggie's mother, is desperate to create a safe haven for their four children. To distract them from Daniel's bizarre behavior, Sara weaves such comical, outlandish tales that the children are hard-pressed to distinguish the real from the imagined. When the body of a neighbor is discovered in the house across the street, it is like unearthing the end of a string they are powerless to refrain from pulling until little by little it is impossible for any of them-Sara, Daniel, Aggie, the whole of Tripoli Circle-to ignore the shattering truth. A tale of war's aftermath and the toll it takes -as relevant today as it was those many years ago.

Tab and Tina have lived sheltered lives, but when their progressive aunt Eugenia comes for her yearly visit, things are never to be the same again. Taken from their conservative town in Alabama to the Highlander Folk School, a place where blacks and whites live together while working for integration, Tab and Tina see just how similar people really are. A graduate of the Highlander school, Maudie has always known that she wanted to be involved in voter registration and literacy training. When she takes a job in a congregation determined to stonewall her, she has her work cut out. But she's determined to change their minds, especially Jessie who isn't her student by choice but who ends up teaching her more than she could ever have dreamed.

John McMillan was only eight-years-old when his mother died and he was ripped, without warning, from his sheltered world of books and gentility. Now on his aunt's run-down tenant farm in southern Alabama, abused by his alcoholic uncle, and completely bereft, John longs for escape—his only hope for survival. He's about to get his wish in a way no one could ever predict...

A twist of fate will bring John to the Bend, a black settlement that has become a refuge for outcasts, where he'll join Tuway, a black man who helps others leave the South and find a new life in Chicago. But neither will be ready for the brutal confrontation about to change their lives, challenge the prejudice of an era, inspire the courage of a people, and most of all, touchingly reveal the secrets of one boy's heart.

In an Alabama town in the early 1950s during the last polio summer before the Salk vaccine, ten-year-old Tabitha "Tab" Rutland is about to have the time of her life. Although movie theaters and pools have been closed to stem the epidemic, Tab, a tomboy with a passion for Roy Rogers, still seeks adventure with her best friend Maudie May, "the lightest brown colored person" she knows. Now as they meddle with the local bootlegger, Mr. Jake, row out on the Tennessee River to land the biggest catfish ever, and snoop into the town's darkest secrets, Tab sets out to be a hero...and comes of age in an unforgettable confrontation with human frailty, racial injustice, and the healing power of love.

Special Reading Group Guide Inside