Southern Fiction Humor

In this entry from Anthony Award winner Charlaine Harris' New York Times best-selling series, the gorgeous and feisty telepath hits the road to find her missing boyfriend, who may have run off with his former lover - a notorious vamp.

Faulkner’s second novel follows a bohemian cast of artists, socialites, and dilettantes as they set sail on a four-day excursion aboard the Nausikaa. Faulkner’s quick wit and endless appetite for satire make this audiobook a fascinating exploration of character, as well as a rare glimpse into the author himself. The novel explores questions of sex and sexuality, as well as the societal role of the artist. Inspired by his own participation in the arts community in New Orleans, Mosquitoes is an engaging and delightful novel from one of America’s greatest writers.

Anthony Award-winning author Charlaine Harris has earned a devoted fan base with her USA Today and New York Times best-selling Sookie Stackhouse mystery series. All Together Dead features more dark but frequently hilarious adventures of buxom, blonde, beautiful, and telepathic cocktail waitress Sookie, who prefers the company of vampires to that of the living.

The unspooling of Toni Lee Wells' Tiffany and Wild Turkey lifestyle begins with a trip to the Luckett County Jail drunk tank. An earlier wrist injury sidelined her pro tennis career, and now she's trading her tennis whites for wild nights roaming the streets of Rose Hill, Georgia. Her wealthy family finally gets fed up with Toni Lee's shenanigans. They cut off her monthly allowance but also make her a sweetheart deal: Get a job, keep it for a year, and you'll receive an early inheritance.

With its ensemble of warm and unforgettable characters, The Faculty Lounge shows listeners a different side of school life. It all starts when an elderly substitute teacher at Baldwin High School is found dead in the faculty lounge. After a bit of a stir, life quickly returns to normal. But when, a week later, the spontaneous scattering of his ashes on the school grounds catches the attention of some busybody parents, it sets in motion a year that can only be described as wild, bizarre, tragic, mundane, beautiful, and humorous all at once.

What would you do if you knew your life's potential? That's the question facing the residents of Deerfield, Louisiana, when the DNAMIX machine appears in their local grocery store. It's nothing to look at, really—it resembles a plain photo booth. But its promise is amazing: With just a quick swab of your cheek and two dollars, the device claims to use the science of DNA to tell you your life's potential. With enough credibility to make the townspeople curious, soon the former teachers, nurses, and shopkeepers of Deerfield are abruptly changing course to pursue their destinies.

Off the coast of Maine, Ruth Thomas is born into a feud fought for generations by two groups of local lobstermen over fishing rights for the waters that lie between their respective islands. At 18, she has returned from boarding school - smart as a whip, feisty, and irredeemably unromantic - determined to throw over her education and join the "stern men" working the lobster boats.

Lou Ann Hunter’s mother, Patricia, has always had a passionate nature, which explains why she’s been married and divorced five times and spooned enough male patients to be ousted from three elderly care facilities. She also has Alzheimer’s, which is why she wants to spend the rest of her life surrounded by childhood memories at Sutton Hall, her family’s decrepit plantation home in Louisiana. Lou Ann, aka Lulu the Love Guru, has built an empire preaching sex, love, and relationship advice to the women of America - mostly by defying the example her mother has set for her.

An Atlanta ex-cop comes to Lake Sackett, Georgia, seeking peace and quiet - but he hasn’t bargained on falling for Frankie, the cutest coroner he’s ever met. Frankie McCready talks to dead people. Not like a ghost whisperer or anything - but it seems rude to embalm them and not say hello. Fortunately, at the McCready Family Funeral Home & Bait Shop, Frankie’s eccentricities fit right in. Lake Sackett’s embalmer and county coroner, Frankie’s goth styling and passion for nerd culture mean she’s not your typical Southern girl, but the McCreadys are hardly your typical Southern family.

On the Ides of March, our hero, Raleigh Whittier Hayes (forgetful husband, baffled father, prosperous insurance agent, and leading citizen of Thermopylae, North Carolina), learns that his father has discharged himself from the hospital, taken all his money out of the bank and, with a young Black female mental patient, vanished in a yellow Cadillac convertible. Left behind is a mysterious list of seven outrageous tasks that Raleigh must perform in order to rescue his father and his inheritance.

After a political scandal, fledgling lobbyist Dempsey Jo Killebrew is left almost broke, unemployed, and homeless. She reluctantly accepts to refurbish Birdsong, the old family place in Guthrie, Georgia. But, oh, is Dempsey in for a surprise. "Bird Droppings" would more aptly describe the moldering Pepto Bismol - pink dump. There's also a murderously grumpy old lady who has claimed squatter's rights and isn't moving out. Ever.

Meg Langslow’s in for a busy summer. Her husband is directing a production of Macbeth, and most of the cast and crew are occupying spare bedrooms in their house. She also has to keep an eye on Camp Birnam, where a group of medieval reenactors are commemorating the real-life Macbeth by setting up what they fondly believe is an authentic medieval Scottish military camp. And then there’s Damien Goodwin, a filmmaker who has been hanging around, trying to document the production.

Meet the women of American Housewife: They wear lipstick, pearls, and sunscreen, even when it's cloudy. They casserole. They pinwheel. They pump the salad spinner like it's a CPR dummy. And then they kill a party crasher, carefully stepping around the body to pull cookies out of the oven. These 12 irresistible stories take us from a haunted prewar Manhattan apartment building to the set of a rigged reality television show, from the unique initiation ritual of a book club to the getaway car of a pageant princess on the lam.

Southern belle BeBe Loudermilk has lost all her worldly possessions, thanks to a brief but disastrous relationship with the gorgeous Reddy, an "investment counselor" who turns out to be a con man. All that's left is a ramshackle 1950s motel on Tybee Island, an eccentric beach town that calls itself a drinking village with a fishing problem.

On paper, Jazmine, Judith, Erin, and Sara have little in common - they’re very different people leading very different lives. And yet at book club meetings in an historic carriage house turned bookstore, they bond over a shared love of reading (and more than a little wine) as well as the growing realization that their lives are not turning out like they expected.

Miss Julia feels a little wistful when Hazel Marie, once her late husband's paramour and now her best friend, prepares to move out and live in sin with that marriage-shy Mr. Pickens. Suddenly, to Miss Julia's delight, a wedding is in the offing: Handsome Deputy Coleman Bates and attorney Binkie Enloe announce their plans to run down to the courthouse and tie the knot. But Miss Julia insists they have a real wedding ceremony. When a missing preacher, a crowd of uninvited guests, and a queasy bride threaten the happy event, Miss Julia is there to restore order.

Guy Grand, an eccentric billionaire prankster, is rich enough to do whatever he likes. And what he likes is to carefully execute projects where he can cauterize by ridicule what the rest of the world ignores: Complacency, greed, corruption, and idiocy. Determined to "make it hot for people," Grand spends his billions staging a series of hilarious, sometimes bewildering stunts, lampooning along the way the American holy cows of money, status, power, beauty, media, and stardom.

When Miss Julia burst on the scene in her debut, Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind, this proper lady of a certain age found her orderly world turned upside down when Hazel Marie Puckett appeared with her nine-year-old son, Little Lloyd, who looked disturbingly similar to Miss Julia's late husband. Now, in Miss Julia Takes Over, with her sharp tongue and iron backbone intact, Miss Julia must tackle another disruption when Hazel Marie doesn't return from a dinner date. Miss Julia hires J. D. Pickens to investigate, despite her reservations about his taste for beer and women.

Returning home to Ditto, Texas, is bittersweet for Lila Matthews. Her dear and feisty aunt Gracie has passed away, leaving Lila her estate. That includes a centuries-old house, a field of the freshest strawberries in Atascosa County, more money than Lila can count, and a secret Aunt Gracie took to her grave. All the angels in heaven won’t be able to pry it out of her.

With her phenomenally popular Miss Julia series, author Ann B. Ross has graced the New York Times and other best seller lists on her way to capturing the hearts of her many dedicated fans. Miss Julia, a graceful Southern lady with impeccable manners and a penchant for problem solving, has become a beloved heroine for countless admirers.