The Brethren / A Painted House

THE BRETHREN: The perfect scam: the wrong victim. — Trumble is a minimum security federal prison, home to drug dealers, bank robbers, swindlers, embezzlers, tax evaders, and three former judges who call themselves The Brethren. They meet each day in the law library where they spend hours writing letters. They are finetuning a mail scam, and it’s starting to really work. The money is pouring in.

Then their little scam goes awry. It ensnares the wrong victim, a powerful man on the outside, a man with dangerous friends, and The Brethren’s days of quietly marking time are over.

A PAINTED HOUSE: The land is as unforgiving as its people.

September 1952. The cotton is almost ready in the fields of Arkansas. The harvest will soon begin. Luke Chandler is a seven-year-old who lives with his family in a small, unpainted house on rented land. In the next six weeks, the Chandlers and a hired band of hill people and Mexicans must bring in the cotton that is their livelihood and the guarantee of their survival on the land.

Soon heat, rain, fatigue, a killing and the unraveling of a family secret threaten to destroy the Chandlers’ hopes and will transport Luke abruptly from childhood innocence to experience.

(from paperbackswap.com)