Just out of college, something is telling Sydney Lassiter that she needs to return to the town of Stoney Creek, Alabama, where she grew up. She hasn't been there since her father was killed in a boating accident—or was he murdered? She takes a job as a safety consultant at the local sawmill—the same place where her father worked—and sets out to discover the truth about her father's death.

In Stoney Creek, you don't ask the kinds of questions that Sydney is asking. There are too many secrets—secrets that someone will do anything to keep hidden. To complicate matters, she becomes torn in a confusing love quadrangle with two men and another woman, and the "other woman" seems to want both of the men. To make the situation worse, the two men seem to have some connection with the death of her father.

The more Sydney delves, the more it seems that her quest could destroy not only her, but the people and town she has come to love.

Murder is in the air in this fascinating book of romance and deception.

From her earliest days, Jennifer Leigh Youngblood has loved to read. "There have been many times when I would get interested in a book and stay up reading until the wee hours of the morning." She especially loves southern literature. Gone with the Wind, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Cold Sassy Tree are a few of her favorites. Jennifer grew up in a rural town in Alabama where "everybody knows your life story, your brother's life story, your sister's life story, and so on." Growing up in such a small, close-knit community might seem confining to some, but not to Jennifer. She is proud of her southern heritage, believing that, "The oddities that make up the southern culture give it distinction."

Jennifer's love of writing began as a young teenager when she wrote stories for her hi …

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Sandra grew up in a small community in northeast Alabama called Alder Springs, the setting of her (and daughter Jennifer Youngblood's) first novel, Livin' in High Cotton. Sandra developed a deep love for literature in a two-classroom country school. She recalls that every afternoon the teachers would bring their classes together and read such classics as Rip Van Winkle, Moby Dick, The Headless Horsemen, and The Taming of the Shrew while all their students sat on the floor.

When she was very young, Sandra enjoyed listening to her mother and grandmother talk about the "good ol' days" while they canned vegetables and sewed. After she became an adult, she cherished those memories so much that she began to write them down. Livin' in High Cotton is based on …

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