Southern Crime Fiction

Even in the chill of February, no place touches Harper McClain's heart like Savannah. She should be walking beneath the historic city's towering oaks, surrounded by graceful mansions. Instead, she's hiding miles away on Tybee Island after a mysterious voice on the phone warned her that someone wanted her dead. The call was too specific to ignore. The caller knew everything about her. But that was months ago, and she's getting tired of being scared.

This coming-of-age tale set in the mountains of post-WWII North Georgia features a fourteen-year-old Zeb Barton, his irascible surgeon father, and Thelka, the gun-toting maid who mentors Zeb through progressively dangerous times. Even though the book is set in the 1960's, many of the characters are still reeling from the damages of WWII combat while others are being haunted by dead family members.

After a decade of exile precipitated by the tragic death of his mother, Will Seems returns home from Richmond to rural Southside Virginia, taking a job as deputy sheriff in a landscape given way to crime and defeat. Impoverished and abandoned, this remote land of tobacco plantations, razed forests, and boarded up homes seems stuck in the past in a state that is trying to forget its complex history and move on.

Graham Greene's first published novel tells the story of Andrews, a young man who has betrayed his fellow smugglers and fears their vengeance. Fleeing from them, with no hope of pity or salvation, he takes refuge in the house of a young woman, also alone in the world. Elizabeth persuades him to give evidence against his accomplices in court, but neither she nor Andrews is aware that to both criminals and authority, treachery is as great a crime as smuggling.

In Denton, Arkansas, the fate of the high school football team rests on the shoulders of Billy Lowe, a volatile but talented running back. Billy comes from an extremely troubled home: a trailer park where he is terrorized by his unstable mother's abusive boyfriend. Then Billy's abuser is found murdered in the Lowe family trailer, and all evidence points toward Billy. Now nothing can stop an explosive chain of violence that could tear the whole town apart on the eve of the playoffs.

A 60-year-old cold case and a big city sheriff seeking redemption—it’s time for the dead to rise. A thwarted youthful romance blends with the blues and Mama Cheche’s mojo. Controversy ensues when a blues singer groom goes missing in Cleveland, Mississippi. All becomes a tangled web. Paula and Mary have written this redemptive tale in such a way that transports you to the Delta. You can feel the gentle breeze coming across the Sunflower River and hear the mellowed notes jumping off the blues man’s guitar.

When one of Hannah Huntsford's friends goes missing, the private investigator starts a frantic search to find her. Hannah is determined to find her friend at all costs. She's willing to risk life and limb to get answers.

The shocking disappearance of a young woman and a suspicious death put Hanna and Alex back in the crosshairs of the ruthless Dellahousaye crime family. Hanna and Alex again find themselves in the troubled waters of love and commitment. Alex returns to South Carolina with the promise of a new start, but with strings attached that Hanna may never be able to live with. The story plays out against the compelling backdrop of Charleston, Pawleys Island, and the fictional Dugganville, South Carolina.

What if the faith you were raised in, professed to love, and thought would protect you from all evil turned out to be the very thing you now feared? And what if public servants, sworn to protect and serve, kept and withheld secrets, both professional and personal, too horrifying to even be known? Sariah could have never known what was to be discovered after simple inquiries of her polygamous faith.

In a poor West Virginia town decimated by the opioid epidemic, teenagers Jane and Henry have it even worse than most: Their father is Hollis Lusher, a convicted serial killer known as “the Blind Spot Slasher”. However, despite being bullied at school, the siblings still believe in their father’s innocence. And now a popular true-crime podcast is coming to town and stirring things up.

To what lengths will a woman go to save her family? Web-radio personality Bo Riccardi is pushed beyond her mental and physical limits when her husband, Oscar, is kidnapped by a man from her dark past. The abductor commands her to interview him live on her show, with Oscar’s life on the line. Giving in, though, creates an endless nightmare for Bo, as Oscar’s captor begins to destroy her career and alienate everybody she loves. Bo’s secret asset is chromesthesia, seeing colorful shapes that reveal the intentions behind anyone’s speech. She can literally watch what they say.

After seven long years in prison, Colt Hudson is finally returning to Blake County, Georgia. But in his hometown, he's treated like just another criminal—with good reason. The scion of a tight-knit southern clan, Colt's family is deeply involved in one of the most dangerous meth operations in Georgia. Colt's early release from prison comes with strings attached—a deal with narcotics squad commander Tim Dawson, who wants information that could help bust the family business. But when the drug agent who put Colt away seven years ago turns up dead, a dangerous conspiracy begins to unravel.

Mandy Rose Bokum wanted to go home. Her mind and body were getting sicker. Three lonely years living in one room in California were enough. She yearned for peace. She craved love. She wanted answers. Why was her child stolen? Did the thief know her? Was it somehow her fault? The townies blamed her. Accused her of murder. It was time to tell Clyde Boudreaux that he was Hannah's daddy. Clyde fought his own demons. He was seven when he'd watched his granddaddy get lynched. Mandy struggled for years with her own dark secrets. Maybe two halves could make a whole.

Iggy Guerra is out of prison, but his homecoming is anything but smooth. His beloved mother is gone, his grief-stricken father Armando is deep in debt, and they are about to lose the butcher shop that has been in their family for generations. Iggy must earn his father’s lost trust in order to save La Carnicería Guerra from the threats imposed by a new rival business, a vigilante activist, and big-game hunter Orin, who has dragged Armando into his dangerous money-making schemes deep in the Everglades, where more than secrets are buried.

Kat James enjoys a successful criminal defense practice in a small city in the South. Her Yankee upbringing is undeniable as she shares a frank, and sometimes humorous, perspective on lawyering. After she accepts a judge’s request to represent a young, black boy charged as an adult with the robbery and murder of a local state trooper’s wife in an outlying, rural jurisdiction, the trial unfolds with gripping suspense and gritty realism.

After driving through a violent storm, young married couple Riley and Jake Marshall wind up stranded with a flat tire off the I-95 near Yemassee, South Carolina. They thought this would be the worst part of their day. They were wrong. When the tow truck arrives ahead of schedule, Riley and Jake think their luck may have changed. Wrong again. Jakes’s expensive car is loaded onto the flatbed, and the unsuspecting couple climb aboard. What begins as a car theft and mugging turns much darker when the backwoods car thieves discover Jake’s family is worth millions.

Cantankerous Cat Touchette and his friend and employee, Tee Man, stumble upon Cat’s murdered neighbor, Ovey LaCourier. Cat later learns that the old man’s son, Ari, is in town and meets with him. Ari, an Army sniper, is near retirement eligibility, and in the process of investigating his father’s murder with Cat, his involvement with a childhood friend’s sister, and a general affinity for his new friends, gives retirement serious consideration. Meanwhile, once again, Cat cannot keep himself from landing in the middle of someone’s problem.

Thirteen years ago, Jori Trahan’s boyfriend vanished without a trace. Now, after moving back home to Alabama to care for her ailing grandmother and autistic brother, she comes face-to-face with the deadly mystery behind his disappearance. Jori has a rare form of synesthesia, meaning she can “hear” colors; to her, tones of voice are as unique as fingerprints. With the help of this ability and a sympathetic cop, Jori comes dangerously close to uncovering the truth. But those responsible will go to any length - including murder - to keep their dark secrets buried.

Los Angeles TV journalist Beatrice Middleton has lost her job. With a possible employment offer in Atlanta, she heads home to Savannah, Georgia, to reconnect with her contentious African-American family, arriving to find that her 15-year-old nephew has been murdered. This begins the unraveling of a cloak of family secrets surrounding another devastating crime, one that shattered Bea's world when she was a teen. The traumatic memory has been buried so deep it almost feels like it never happened - almost.

On one Indian summer Friday night, things happen that change the course of hundreds of lives. In Winston-Salem, a tobacco and mill town in central North Carolina, people like to relax as the weekend comes nigh, and depending on whether they sit above or below the salt, they'll do so in different ways. Both the well-to-do and the less-thans are wizened practitioners of the art of steam blowing, all in the name of fun and respite. And in doing so, violence and deceit and sadness mingle with money and alcohol to create a dangerous, crackling third rail of despair.