“An authentic cry of American innocence . . . The author seizes the reader with a Southern gift for storytelling and never lets go.”—Time Magazine It is the mid-1950s in Quarrytown, Georgia. In the slum known as the Ape Yard, hope’s last refuge is a boardinghouse where a handful of residents dream of a better life. Earl Whitaker, who is white, and Tio Grant, who is black, are both teenagers, both orphans, and best friends. In the same house live two of the most important adults in the boys’ lives: Em Jojohn, the gigantic Lumbee Indian handyman, is notorious for his binges, his rat-catching prowess, and his mysterious departures from town. Jayell Crooms, a gifted but rebellious architect, is stuck in a loveless marriage to a conventional woman intent on climbing the social ladder. Crooms’s vision of a new Ape Yard, rebuilt by its own residents, unites the four—and puts them on a collision course with a small-town Machiavelli who rules the community like a feudal lord. Jeff Fields’s exuberantly defined characters and his firmly rooted sense of place have earned A Cry of Angels an intensely loyal following. Its republication, more than three decades since it first appeared, is cause for celebration. “A humdinger . . . even better than To Kill a Mockingbird . . . funny, touching, and gripping.”—Chicago Daily News “Heartwarming . . . We find ourselves wondering why delightful novels like this aren’t written anymore, and grateful that this one has come along to fill the void.”—The New York Times “A flooded-with-life novel with a story to tell and characters to be cherished.”—Boston Sunday Globe

Sex, love, and forgiveness—can they coexist, and can romance author Sarah write them into her life? Although bestselling author Sarah O’Malley is sure her next erotic-romance novel will be another hit, she finds it near to impossible to replicate the same results in her personal life. At forty-five years old, Sarah now finds herself divorced and a single mother of two. Sarah journeys back to her childhood home to nurse her mother who is suffering from Alzheimer’s, and she inevitably encounters the ghosts of her past—the death of a child, its devastating effect on family relations, youthful sexual exploration, and an unplanned pregnancy. However, the haunts of the past open up a whole new world to Sarah as she learns to forgive the traumas that had happened before. Amid a great awakening, Sarah also comes to terms with being a sexually active middle-aged woman, and begins to accept sex again, even in the most inappropriate but titillating circumstances. As she unlocks her own physical desires, she also stumbles upon a heavy secret that her mother had been hiding from her for the past fifty years. This trip might prove to be a better story than anything Sarah could have possibly hoped to write. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

It is 1974 and the country is still struggling to come to terms with the Vietnam War. In the small town of Conners, Georgia, Darcy has just started high school, her older sister Adel goes to weekend dances at the local Army base, and their mother tends her beautiful garden–the biggest and best in town. But Darcy’s world is soon changed forever when her mother goes to Atlanta for tests. The diagnosis is not good–breast cancer. There is so much Darcy wants to talk to her mother about: the war and what happened to the soldiers who were there; the feelings she is having for the new (and troubled) boy in school. But she can’t. So she finds solace in her mother’s garden. There she can help the flowers her mother planted bloom.

When rain begins to fall after his mother scolds him, Albert is convinced that he really made the angels cry.

From romance in a bomb shelter to a 45-year-old man struggling to contribute to the defense of his country, the stories of "Do Angels Cry?" illuminate the love and dedication of the Croatian people.