Edgar and Macavity Award-winning author Sharyn McCrumb transports you to legend-rich Appalachia with her suspense-packed Ballad series. In The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, a young minister's wife struggles to understand a sudden, unexplained death. Laura Bryce has lived in the small east Tennessee community such a short time that she still feels like an outsider. But when there is violence on the Underhill farm, the sheriff calls on her to represent the church. He will handle the bodies, but she must comfort the bereaved. However, the unspeakable carnage she confronts in the farmhouse will push her down a rocky pathway of danger and heartache. Sharyn McCrumb, compared by critics to William Faulkner, Joyce Carol Oates, and Eudora Welty, creates evocative tales and strong, complex characters. Narrator Sally Darling provides the perfect voice for the beleaguered but resilient people who inhabit the hills and valleys of Appalachia.