Southern Fiction Mystery

Mason Fitzgerald is your average teenage boy. Until recently, his life has been fairly mundane: He's about to start his sophomore year of high school, hangs out with his best friend, and just went through his first breakup. All of these things seem normal, but what Mason doesn't know is that the nightmare he's had throughout his life is about to become more than just a bad dream.

It’s August in Chattanooga, Tennessee and moonshiner Hattie Hayes has collaborated with a nearby vineyard to serve her moonshine at a Wine and 'Shine event. Not only is this an opportunity for Hattie to gain more moonshine fans, but she’s also excited to hear the Bootlegging Brothers, a popular bluegrass band. But not every attendee is looking for harmony. When one of the brothers disappears and is presumed dead, Hattie realizes her grace note gathering has suddenly turned more sour than her mash.

Based on true crime, Jar of Pennies follows the story of how a murderer was brought to justice in small town east Texas. A book as much about east Texas culture deep in the pine forests of the state as it is about a chain of murders and the gathering of evidence, this riveting narrative has elements of both humor and noir as it rockets to its conclusion.

The fact that Katrina Pomeroy had been murdered was in and of itself a newsworthy event. The fact that she had been murdered on Friday October 13 exactly 11 years after she’d been one of five teenagers to survive the Friday the 13th Massacre made her passing worthy of notice by the national news agencies Jillian Hanford used to work for. When an old editor of Jillian's offered her the chance to write a human interest piece about Katrina’s life and subsequent death, she jumped at the chance to relaunch her currently defunct career.

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.

Proprietor of the Eternal Slumber Funeral Home, Emma Lee can see, hear, and talk to ghosts of murdered folks. And when her high school nemesis is found dead, Jade Lee Peel is the same old mean girl - trying to come between Emma Lee and her hot boyfriend, Sheriff Jack Henry Ross, all over again. There's only one way for Emma Lee to be free of the trash-talking ghost - solve the murder so the former prom queen can cross over.

Andy Buckland is no stranger to TV. The worst moment of her career happened when a live studio audience got food poisoning from one of her dishes. But when the pasta guru is given a slot in the televised cooking competition Diced Showdown, she sees her chance at redemption. In exchange for the shot at vindication, Andy and her fiancé, Malcolm Jones, are tasked to find the identity of a mysterious blogger who has a nasty habit of revealing detrimental secrets of the show’s top celebrity chefs.

Andy Buckland has always dreamed of being a chef. But after a live studio audience is stricken with food poisoning during her debut cooking show, she finds herself blacklisted in the culinary community. The only job open to her is working in her family's Southern pasta shop, and her first assignment is serving baked ziti to her former lover and his spoiled bride-to-be at their engagement party! But that's the least of Andy's troubles when she discovers a dead body. Andy will prove that she has what it takes to not only cook the best dish in town but also catch a killer, too!

Bopped on the head from a falling plastic Santa, local undertaker Emma Lee Raines is told she's suffering from "funeral trauma." It's trauma all right, because the not-so-dearly departed keep talking to her. Take Ruthie Sue Payne - innkeeper, gossip queen, and arch-nemesis of Emma Lee's granny - she's adamant that she didn't just fall down those stairs. She was pushed. Ruthie has no idea who wanted her pushing up daisies, but she can't cross over until the matter is laid to eternal rest. Emma Lee's high-school crush, Sheriff Jack Henry Ross, isn't ready to rule out foul play.

Retired school teacher Patricia Anne has a knack for landing right in the middle of murder investigations, but this time she is fighting to clear the accused. Patricia Anne has been good friends with her neighbor Mitzi for 40 years. She’s surprised when she sees Mitzi’s husband Arthur having lunch at the Hunan Hut with an attractive woman. She’s positively shocked when that same woman drops dead moments later. Then Arthur is accused of murder, their home catches fire, and he gets shot in the butt.

I told you I was sick, reads the headstone above Mamie Sue Preston's grave. She was the richest woman in Sleepy Hollow, Kentucky, and also the biggest hypochondriac. Ironic, considering someone killed her - and covered it up perfectly. And how does Emma Lee, proprietor of the Eternal Slumber Funeral Home, know all this? Because Mamie Sue's ghost told her, that's how. And she's offering big bucks to find the perp.

When she runs into her friend's deadbeat dad at the local deli, undertaker Emma Lee Raines can't wait to tell Mary Anna Hardy that he's back in Sleepy Hollow, Kentucky, after five long years. Cephus Hardy may have been the town drunk, but he didn't disappear on an epic bender like everyone thought: He was murdered. And he's heard that Emma Lee's been helping lost souls move on to that great big party in the sky. Why do ghosts always bother Emma Lee at the worst times?

In 17th-century Peru, St. Martin de Porres was torn from his body after death. His bones were pillaged as relics, and his spirit was said to inhabit those bones.

When the small North Carolina mountain town of Eli was flooded in the early 1940s to make way for a TVA dam and lake, the homes and businesses were buried beneath the water - but buildings weren’t the only things buried. There are hushed stories of a spirit that lingers beneath the murky waters, hiding a dark secret. Judy and her husband Craig journey to the area to care for her ailing adopted grandfather. The elderly man reveals some interesting anecdotes about his own life in Eli, but the sharing of this information is more than mere storytelling.

Jake believes he has found happiness, but a devastating blow sends him back into the world of evil that lies beneath tropical beauty. He begins a path of revenge, carefully crafting a plan to ensure the end of Santiago and Group 45.

In this new series by number one best-selling—and critically acclaimed—mystery and suspense author Kate Bold, Camille Grace, a rising star in the FBI’s BAU unit, is dispatched to the one place she vowed to never return: the deep South. When bodies turn up on steamboats on the Mississippi River, Camille realizes she is up against a diabolical serial killer—one who will not stop until she finds him.

Constantly moving, from South Africa to the Persian Gulf, to Rhodesia, to England, and ultimately to suburban New Jersey, the Laments are a quirky and lovable family who live by the motto "anywhere but here." The main character, Will Lament, whom the Laments take home from the hospital as a result of a bizarre mix-up, grows up feeling that he doesn't belong.

Photographer Clare Porterfield's once-happy marriage is coming apart, unraveling under the strain of a family tragedy. When she receives an invitation to direct an exhibition in her hometown of Galveston, Texas, she jumps at the chance to escape her grief and reconnect with the island she hasn't seen for ten years. There Clare will have the time and space to search for answers about her troubled past and her family's complicated relationship with the wealthy and influential Carraday family.

Fifteen-year-old Mattie Lee Watson dreams of men, not boys. So when James T. Cullowee, the Kudzu King, arrives in Cooper County, North Carolina, in 1941 to spread the gospel of kudzu—claiming that it will improve the soil, feed cattle at almost no cost, even cure headaches—Mattie is ready. Mr. Cullowee is determined to sell the entire county on the future of kudzu, and organizes a kudzu festival, complete with a beauty pageant. Mattie is determined to be crowned Kudzu Queen and capture the attentions of the Kudzu King.

Five years ago, award-winning actor Rhett Crawford threw a Halloween party. On the third night of the party, the groundskeeper found the body of one of the guests bludgeoned and left in the toolshed. It was eventually determined that the victim’s date had most likely killed the woman before fleeing the scene of the crime.