Southern Fiction Mystery

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.

An'gel and Dickce Ducote, busy with plans for the Athena Garden Club's spring tour of grand old homes, are having trouble getting the other club members to help. The rest of the group is all a-flutter now that dashing and still-eligible Hadley Partridge is back to restore his family mansion. But the idle chatter soon turns deadly serious when a body turns up on the Partridge estate after a storm . . .As the Ducotes begin uncovering secrets, they discover that more than one person in Athena would kill to be Mrs. Partridge.

It's Labor Day weekend in Normal, KY, and if you know anything about camping and RVing, you know it's one of the busiest times of the year. Unfortunately, Daniel Boone National Park is in danger of being closed due to a drought and local businesses are scrambling for ideas to survive a possible shutdown. Happy Trails Campground is at the center of a murder in which campers as well as locals are suspects.

Old wars, new battles. Fighting ghosts, witches, and curses is nothing new for Max and Sandra Porter. But when a Civil War ghost gets tethered to their teenage son, J, everything is new. And terrifying. With the help of their partner and ghost, Marshall Drummond, the team will be up against serious and deadly problems - dealing with the head witch of North Carolina, raising ancient bones from the bottom of lake, breaking forgotten curses, and far more. But worse than that, they will have to face the most difficult challenge of all - J starts dating.

When former Klansman and piney-woods outcast Aaron Crown is finally imprisoned for a decades-old murder, it is to Detective Dave Robicheaux that he proclaims his innocence loudest. Crown seems to be a lightning rod for every kind of trouble that the state of Louisiana can unearth. A documentary film writer seeking to prove Crown's innocence is found murdered; a button man for the New Orleans mob accuses Robicheaux of taking a pay-off to ignore Crown.

But it is when Buford LaRose -- scion of an old Southern family and author of a book on the Crown case -- is elected governor that Dave Robicheaux's involvement with Aaron Crown deepens to a level he can barely fathom. And it is Buford's social-climbing wife, Karyn, with whom Robicheaux had an affair years before, who proves to be his most poisonous adversary.

Filled with thrilling adventure, lightning-paced action, and street smart realism, Cadillac Jukebox is a brilliant addition to Burke's standout Dave Robicheaux series.

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.

Twenty-two years ago, Claire Campbell’s older sister, Natalie, disappeared shortly after her eighteenth birthday. Days later, her blood was found in a car, a man was arrested, and the case was swiftly closed. In the decades since, Claire has attempted to forget her traumatic past by moving to the city and climbing the ranks as an investigative journalist... until an unexpected call from her father forces her to come back home and face it all anew.

Axel’s parents are visiting for the holiday and Pepper wants things to go smoothly. But when his mom insults the town Scrooge things turn rocky fast. Worse, when the town Scrooge is murdered, fingers quickly point to Axel’s mom.

When Max and Sandra moved to North Carolina, they walked into a world of ghost, witches, and curses. Over the years, and with the help of the ghost of 1940s detective Marshall Drummond, they have fought to build a life for themselves. But now, it all goes on the line. No fight from their past can match what awaits when the Hull family and the Magi Group go to war. Caught between the magic and muscle of these groups, Max and Sandra will have to call in all the help they can find if they are to survive.

It’s a stormy summer day when Ottawa coroner Dr. Cate Spencer is called to the scene of an alleged suicide. Inside a narrow vault in the Dominion Archives’ nitrate film storage facility—kept separate from the rest of the collection due to its dangerous combustibility—officers pressure her to rule the death a suicide. When parts of the scene don’t add up and a deliberately set spark threatens her life, she suspects that this death might be a murder.

It’s Pepper Dunn’s first Thanksgiving in the magical town of Magnolia Cove, Alabama. The entire town is ready to celebrate—except Pepper, who’s still yearning for her boyfriend, Axel Reign, to return. But she has little time to mourn. When a new baker sets up shop across the street from Pepper’s cousin and starts stealing customers, it’s all out war. But when the storeowner ends up murdered and Pepper’s cousin becomes suspect number one, it’s up to Pepper to help.

After spending years in North Carolina, Max and Sandra thought they knew how the world of ghosts, witches, and curses worked. With the aid of a ghost, they had defeated the dreaded Hull family. Now, without the Hulls, control of magic in North Carolina is in free fall. When graves from the 1700s start breaking through to the surface, Max and his team find themselves caught in the middle of the fight, and every decision he makes could have consequences that reverberate through the entire magic world.

The sheriff's deputy at the front door brings hard news to Ree Dolly. Her father has skipped bail on charges that he ran a crystal meth lab, and the Dollys will lose their house if he doesn't show up for his next court date. Ree's father has disappeared before. The Dolly clan has worked the shadowy side of the law for generations, and arrests (and attempts to avoid them) are part of life in Rathlin Valley.

For Max and the gang, the idea that dead is not the end has become second nature. But the idea that a ghost who has moved on could be ripped back into the world? That is new. And terrifying. When a woman hires the Porter Agency to help with this very problem, she doesn’t know half of what she’s roping them into. Now, it is up to Max, Sandra, and Drummond to find who is behind this atrocity and stop them. Plus, there’s a spirit to return to the Beyond, a missing girl who might have been murdered, and a possible murderer who happens to be the new client.

Tis the season...for ghosts. Verity Long has come to terms with the fact that she can see spirits, and talk to them, and...she's actually making cookies for one of them. But she's drawing the line at any more ghost hunting or mystery solving. Until a dear friend needs help locating a missing antique at the party of the year. Not one to leave a friend in need, Verity straps on her sparkly heels and sneaks in to see what she can find - only to uncover a startling secret that will change everything.

As Beatrice’s wedding day approaches, murder finds a way to make her pressed for time. Beatrice and Wyatt’s days are spent planning their cozy, chapel wedding. Both widowed, they mean to keep their wedding an intimate, family affair. But everyone in Dappled Hills still wants to celebrate the happy couple. Beatrice and Wyatt find themselves at dinners, picnics, and barbeques in their honor.

Verity Long doesn't want to see ghosts, and she'd rather not let anyone know her little secret, either. But when a restless spirit stirs up trouble in her friend's resale shop, Verity and her very new, very dead gangster friend team up to learn what is really happening. They discover an age-old secret and must learn the truth behind a mysterious disappearance...before it's too late.

A white woman has been bludgeoned to death with an altar cross in a rural church on Cicada Road in Walterboro, South Carolina. Sam Jenkins, a Black man, is found covered in blood, kneeling over the body. In a state already roiling with racial tension, this is not just a murder case: it's a powder keg. Two young women are murdered on quiet Edisto Beach, an hour southeast of Walterboro, and the killer disappears without a trace. Thirty-four years later, the mystery remains unsolved. Could there be a connection to Stander's case?

After striking out on her own as a teen mom, Madi Price is forced to return to her hometown of Brandywine, Virginia, with her seventeen-year-old daughter. With nothing to her name, she scrapes together a living as a palm reader at the local farmers market. It’s there that she connects with old high school flame Henry McCabe, now a reclusive local fisherman whose infant son, Skyler, went missing five years ago. Everyone in town is sure Skyler is dead, but when Madi reads Henry’s palm, she’s haunted by strange and disturbing visions that suggest otherwise.

For Max and Sandra Porter, building a family seemed unattainable. But since moving to Winston-Salem and starting a business with the ghost of a 1940s detective, the unattainable did not sound so far-fetched. Over time, they brought two homeless boys into their work and eventually to their home. But this ad hoc family has a lot of unknown histories. Dark secrets that threaten to crawl to the surface. When one of those secrets breaks through, Max finds himself in a fight - not only for his own survival, but for the survival of his family as well.