Laura House

Novalee Nation is a 17-year-old Tennessee transient who has to grow up in a hurry when she's left pregnant and abandoned by her boyfriend on a roadside, and takes refuge in the friendly aisles of Wal-Mart. Eventually, some eccentric but kindly strangers 'adopt' Novalee and her infant daughter, helping them buck the odds and build a new life.

The last thing Eddie Mills wants to do is go home to deal with his dying Dad. But the Catholic guilt gnaws at him, and he returns home to his crazy family, an overbearing step-mother, and his bear of a father. Once there, Eddie is confronted with a revelation that forces him to deal with the past he has always avoided.

Residents of an East Texas town react strangely when a serial killer invades their small town world.

An imaginative 15-year-old is stubbornly determined to lose her virginity despite the pathetic pickings in the outskirts of Houston in the early '90s.

A conservative Iowa housewife's personal and political convictions are severely tested as she seeks answers from the Republican presidential candidates leading up to the 2012 Iowa Caucuses.