Southern Fiction Mystery

Best friends Lindsey, Kendra, and Dani endure every parent’s nightmare when a tragic accident befalls their teenage boys, leaving one dead, another in a coma, and a third too traumatized to speak. Reeling from the worst night of their lives, the three mothers plunge into a desperate investigation of the bizarre incident. How could something so horrible happen in their wealthy Southern California suburb? They soon discover that the accident was just the beginning, and troubling discoveries lead to chilling questions: Do they really know their children? Do they even know each other?

Mae West is getting settled into the RV lifestyle as the owner of a Happy Trails Campground in Normal, Kentucky. Betts Hager is desperate for help with her cleaning business, and Mae offers her services. Heiress Tammy Jo Bentley's mansion is the first one on her schedule, and Mae makes sure Tammy Jo's house is spotless because the Kentucky Kennel Association's annual meeting is going to be held at the mansion. Fifi, Tammy Jo's high pedigree, insured poodle, is going to be on display, but before the annual meeting, Camille Braun, Fifi's nanny, is stabbed to death.

One year ago, Isabelle Drake's life changed forever: her toddler son, Mason, was taken out of his crib in the middle of the night while she and her husband were asleep in the next room. With little evidence and few leads for the police to chase, the case quickly went cold. However, Isabelle cannot rest until Mason is returned to her—literally. Except for the occasional catnap or small blackout where she loses track of time, she hasn’t slept in a year. Isabelle's entire existence now revolves around finding him, but she knows she can’t go on this way forever.

The second novel by Donna Tartt, best-selling author of The Goldfinch (winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize), The Little Friend is a grandly ambitious and utterly riveting novel of childhood, innocence, and evil. The setting is Alexandria, Mississippi, where one Mother’s Day a little boy named Robin Cleve Dufresnes was found hanging from a tree in his parents’ yard. Twelve years later Robin’s murder is still unsolved. So Robin’s sister Harriet - unnervingly bright and insufferably determined - sets out to unmask his killer.

The Southern sisters have just returned from a trip to Europe, but they barely have time to get over jet lag before they are involved in another mystery. An anguished cousin has lost his wife to a snake-handling preacher, and when the sisters travel to a remote mountain settlement to find her, they discover a corpse instead. An award-winning novelist and poet, Anne George has entertained millions of fans with her Agatha Award-winning mysteries.

Defense attorney Leland Monroe lost it all: his big-city job, his reputation, and, worst of all, his loving wife. Now he’s back in his hometown to hit restart and repair the relationship with his troubled son. But the past is always present in a small town. Leland returns to find his high school sweetheart hasn’t had the easiest of lives - especially now that her son faces a death sentence for murdering his father.

Carmen Sanchez is a tough Homeland Security agent who plays by the rules. But when her sister is attacked, revealing a connection to a series of murders across Southern California, she realizes a conventional investigation will not be enough to stop the ruthless perpetrator. With nowhere else to turn, Sanchez enlists the aid of Professor Jake Heron, a brilliant and quirky private security expert who, unlike Sanchez, believes rules are merely suggestions. The two have a troubled past, but he owes her a favor and she’s cashing in.

If Tipsy Collins learned one thing from her divorce, it’s that everyone in Charleston is a little crazy - even if they’re already dead. Tipsy, a gifted artist, cannot ignore her nutty friends or her vindictive ex-husband, but as a lifelong reluctant clairvoyant, she has always avoided dead people. When Tipsy and her three children move into the house on Bennett Street, she realizes that some ghosts won’t be ignored. Till death do us part didn’t pan out for Jane and Henry Mott, who have haunted the house for nearly a century.

Ruby Mae Jewell's talents to pick the best bargains for her family's business are hotter than the hinges on the gates of Hades! But when one of her friends gets stabbed at his own wedding reception, her abilities to solve the mystery go completely cold. There are a lot more questions than answers, and with more than the groom's life in the balance, Rue might need a lot of help to stitch things back together. Will Ruby Mae's five-alarm fire powers help her find the culprit who hurt her friends or will they disappear in a puff of smoke?

"Mom seems off." Her brother's words echo in Sam Montgomery's ear as she turns onto the quiet North Carolina street where their mother lives alone. She brushes the thought away as she climbs the front steps. Sam's excited for this rare extended visit, and looking forward to nights with just the two of them, drinking boxed wine, watching murder mystery shows, and guessing who the killer is long before the characters figure it out. But stepping inside, she quickly realizes home isn’t what it used to be.

Meet Jane. Newly arrived to Birmingham, Alabama, Jane is a broke dog-walker in Thornfield Estates—a gated community full of McMansions, shiny SUVs, and bored housewives. The kind of place where no one will notice if Jane lifts the discarded tchotchkes and jewelry off the side tables of her well-heeled clients. Where no one will think to ask if Jane is her real name. But her luck changes when she meets Eddie Rochester. Recently widowed, Eddie is Thornfield Estates’ most mysterious resident.

Thatcher Hutton, a war-weary soldier on the way back to his cowboy life, jumps from a moving freight train to avoid trouble...and lands in more than he bargained for. On the day he arrives in Foley, Texas, a local woman goes missing. Thatcher, the only stranger in town, is suspected of her abduction, and worse. Standing between him and exoneration are a corrupt mayor, a crooked sheriff, a notorious cathouse madam, a sly bootlegger, feuding moonshiners...and a young widow whose soft features conceal an iron will.

When Pepper Dunn purchases a cat figurine at a yard sale, she has no idea what she’s in store for. First, a crazy woman tells Pepper that owning the item will get her killed, then Pepper discovers the item is haunted by the spirit of a dead cat. As if things couldn’t get worse, when a murder is traced back to the cat figurine, it looks like owning the object may in fact, get Pepper killed. But Pepper is no coward—she won’t back away from a situation simply out of fear.

Key West is paradise - unless you're the dead woman in the Toucan Suite. The Hemingway cats, Megs and Bartholomew, who wander the grounds of the B&B, think Liberty Anderson was a spy. But spying on whom? And why? Trouble, the black cat detective, must decipher their cryptic communications and piece together a motive for murder.

On the evening of November 24, 1971, D. B. Cooper hijacked Flight 305—Portland to Seattle—with a fake bomb, collected a ransom of $200,000, and then parachuted from the rear of the plane, disappearing into the night...and into history. Fifty years later, Agent Pendergast takes on a bizarre and gruesome case: in the ghost-haunted city of Savannah, Georgia, bodies are found with no blood left in their veins—sowing panic and reviving whispered tales of the infamous Savannah Vampire.

Part love story and part ghost story, this is an unforgettable New York Times best seller about a science journalist and a North Carolina librarian who dare to believe in the impossible. As a science journalist with a regular column in Scientific American, Jeremy Marsh specializes in debunking the supernatural - until he falls in love with the granddaughter of the town psychic. When Jeremy receives a letter from Boone Creek, North Carolina, about ghostly lights appearing in a cemetery, he can't resist driving down to investigate.

All Rob wanted was a normal life. She almost got it, too: a husband, two kids, a nice house in the suburbs. But Rob fears for her oldest daughter, Callie, who collects tiny bones and whispers to imaginary friends. Rob sees a darkness in Callie, one that reminds her too much of the family she left behind. She decides to take Callie back to her childhood home, to Sundial, deep in the Mojave Desert. And there she will have to make a terrible choice.

Vivvy Bouchet, daughter of a known psychic, was ten when she saved a boy’s life by making an impossible prediction. Now she’s an astrophysicist in Texas, devoted to science, but the boy she saved has become a cop who continues to believe she can see things no one else can. When he begs for help on the high-profile cold case of a kidnapped girl, Vivvy steps back into the ocean of voices that once nearly drowned her.

Sinister in Savannah is a fictional podcast exploring the city's most nefarious crimes with Southern-fried snark. The best-selling trilogy is now available in one collection. When the Sinister in Savannah team delves into the thirty-eight-year-old murder of a drag queen, they quickly discover that the story doesn't end with the alleged killer's confession in 1995. In Mr. Perfect, the podcast is back to investigate allegations that a local businessman is dabbling in money laundering. Pretty Poison follows Tess, a woman accused of killing her three husbands.

Ethan Wate used to think of Gatlin, the small Southern town he had always called home, as a place where nothing ever changed. Then he met mysterious newcomer Lena Duchannes, who revealed a secret world that had been hidden in plain sight all along. A Gatlin that harbored ancient secrets beneath its moss-covered oaks and cracked sidewalks.