"In a small American town still living in the shadow of a terrible coal mine accident, the disappearance of a teenage boy draws together a surviving miner, the lonely wife of a mine executive, and a local boy in a web of secrets." --

Throughout his day, a young boy thinks of his father who is working in the coal mine that is located underneath the ocean.

"Anna May Jones is the daughter of a coal miner, but a sickly constitution has kept her confined to the house for most of her life. Hoping to improve her daughter's health - and lessen the burden on their family - Anna's mother sends her to live with her Aunt Jinny, a witchy-woman and an Elemental Master, in a holler outside of Ducktown. As she settles into her new life, Anna learns new skills at Aunt Jinny's side and discovers that she, too, has...

A ninth-grader who works with his father in the local supermarket describes the plague of meth addiction that consumes many people in his Pennsylvania coal mining town from 9/11 and the nearby crash of United Flight 93 in Shanksville to the Quecreek Mine disaster in Somerset the following summer.

Fans of Downton Abbey now have a go-to resource for fascinating, real-life stories of the spectacular lives led by England's aristocrats. With the novelistic flair and knack for historical detail that Catherine Bailey displayed in her New York Times bestseller The Secret Rooms, Black Diamonds provides a compelling chronicle of the Fitzwilliam coal-mining dynasty and their breathtaking Wentworth estate, the largest private home in England. When the...

"In the depths of the Knight Hawk, one of the last working collieries in downstate Illinois, the body of a reporter is found, his mini-recorder tied around his neck and a notepad stuffed in his mouth. The Knight Hawk's owner, Matthew Luster, isn't happy. He wants answers -- and he doesn't want the cops or any more press poking into his business. To protect himself and the operation, he turns to Slim, a mine employee with a reputation for "bloodhounding"...

Robert Fenwick is a miner, and so are his three sons. His wife is proud that all her four men go down the mines. But David, the youngest, is determined that somehow he will educate himself and work to ameliorate the lives of his comrades, who ruin their health to dig the nation's coal, and are treated with such inhumanity when they try to better their miserable wages or the apalling conditions in which the work. The conflicts and tensions are dramatic...

Agatha Award-winner Sarah Strohmeyer's Bubbles Ablaze is the third installment in her popular Bubbles Yablonsky series. In the tradition of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum, Bubbles is a hairdresser/investigative reporter whose eye-catching wardrobe is only matched by her knack for outrageous adventures. When Bubbles' dream weekend with jet-setting photographer Steve Stiletto is interrupted by a series of circumstances that finds them careening down...

"There's something sinister under the surface of the idyllic, suburban town of Wesley Falls, and it's not just the abandoned coal mine that lies beneath it. The summer of 1995 kicks off with a party in the mine where six high school students witness a horrifying crime that changes the course of their lives. The six couldn't be more different. Maddy, a devout member of the local megachurch. Kelly, the bookworm next door. James, a cynical burnout. Casey,...

When a block of coal the size of a stove shoots out of the wall, miner Amos Blevins barely has time to react before the entire area is flooded with water. He frantically tries to rescue his crewmates, but in an underground space that is pitch black and too cramped to even stand up, he can barely crawl to safety himself. Inspector Will Murphy is sent to investigate, ordered by his superiors to clear things up quickly so the mine can reopen. After all,...