Southern Fiction Mystery

Crime is a rarity in the small town of Wyattsville, so when one occurs it is headline news. Grocery store owner Sidney Klaussner, shot in the course of the robbery, is lying in the hospital unconscious. In the room across from him the young man assumed to be the shooter. Although no one knows the truth of what happened inside that store, Sidney's wife is determined to see the boy punished. The lad's only hope is his sister Jubilee. She knows whey he was there but is anyone going to believe a seven-year-old?

On a chilly November morning at the University of Georgia, a fraternity brother steps off a busy crosswalk and is struck dead by an oncoming car. More than a dozen witnesses all agree on two things: the driver looked identical to the victim, and he was smiling. Detective Marlitt Kaplan is first on the scene. An Athens native and the daughter of a UGA professor, she knows all its shameful histories, from the skull discovered under the foundations of Baldwin Hall to the hushed-up murder-suicide in Waddel.

They're out there, under the salt - the bodies of German seamen who used to lie in wait at the mouth of the Mississippi for unescorted American tankers sailing from the oil refineries of Baton Rouge out into the Gulf of Mexico. As a child, Dave Robicheaux had been haunted by the sailors' images. Years later, Robicheaux, a detective with the New Iberia sheriff's office, finds himself and his family at serious risk, stalked for his knowledge of a watery burial ground by a mysterious man named Will Buchalter - a man who believes that the Holocaust was one big hoax.

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.

Callahan Garrity is the owner of House Mouse, a cleaning service that tidies up after Atlanta’s elite. She’s also a former cop and a part-time sleuth. She and her coterie of devoted helpers can ransack a house for clues faster than it takes a fingerprint to set. When Callahan Garrity gets caught in a liquor store holdup on the way home from a St. Paddy’s Day party, one of her best friends is shot.

What's a witch to do when the meanest man in the county drops dead in his coleslaw during her shift at the local barbecue joint? Noelle does what any good Southern girl would do: She flicks a wrist to clean up the mess, then thanks the stars for doing the world a favor. Until she becomes a suspect.

As Sarah Booth sees it, Easter weekend is a time to celebrate life in all its many forms. So when the newly-pregnant Tinkie invites her and Cece on a girls’ trip to Lucedale, Missisippi to celebrate that spring has official sprung, Sarah Booth can’t resist. Plans include facials, food, and a trip to the incredible Garden of Bones - a miniature Holy Land with recreations of all parts of the Middle East - for their Sunrise Easter Services led by biblical scholar, gardener, and creator of the Gardens Daniel Reynolds.

In 1913, on a summer's day at Half Moon Lake, Louisiana, four-year-old Sonny Davenport walks into the woods and never returns. The boy's mysterious disappearance from the family's lake house makes front-page news in their home town of Opelousas. John Henry and Mary Davenport are wealthy and influential, and will do anything to find their son. For two years, the Davenports search across the South, offer increasingly large rewards, and struggle not to give in to despair.

When Dr. Alala Diakos, a visiting professor of Greek literature, comes to teach at Ole Miss in Oxford, Mississippi, it doesn't take long for controversy to follow. With her fervent feminist ideals and revolutionary leanings, she quickly earns the admiration of many - and the ire of others. During a speech in the park, in which Alala tries to organize the women of Zinnia to demand equal pay, the crowd gets unruly, with men heckling the professor. And then PI Sarah Booth Delaney finds a sniper rifle and scope in the bushes....

The vintage seaside town of Camellia Beach, South Carolina, seems like the perfect place for romance with its quiet beach and its decadent chocolate shop that serves the world's richest dark chocolates. The Chocolate Box's owner, Charity Penn, falls even further under the island's moonlit spell as she joins Althea Bays and the rest of the turtle watch team to witness a new generation of baby sea turtles hatch and make their way into the wide ocean. Before the babies arrive, gunshots ring out in the night.

Chocolate shop owner Charity Penn is finally settling into life in the quirky South Carolina seaside town of Camellia Beach cooking up chocolate treats. She's even helped organize the town's lively beach music festival which has brought rollicking crowds eager to dance the Carolina shag. That is, until one of the band's lead singers is found dead beside a beach bonfire.

When Charity Penn receives a letter saying she won a trip to Camellia Beach, South Carolina, complete with free cooking lessons at the town's seaside chocolate shop, The Chocolate Box, she's immediately skeptical. She never entered any contest. Her former prep school friend offers to look into the phony prize - only to end up drowned in a vat of chocolate. Struck with guilt, Penn heads to the southern beach town to investigate why he was killed.

Sophia, proprietress of For Goodness Cakes, has been commissioned to cater the Heart of the Town Library charity fundraiser at Grape Valley Winery. She's spent all her dough to make this a successful event, raise her profile, and win more plum catering jobs. At first, the going is as smooth as an elegant chocolate ganache. After nibbling Sophia's tasty treats, Ray Peel, the winery's landlord, announces he will pay off Rumford's library loan. But the evening soon turns decidedly frosty when Ray is murdered - before he can make good on his promise, and before he can pay Sophia.

Crime analyst and newly disgraced deputy police chief Vera Boyett doesn’t visit home often, and she certainly doesn’t venture back into the cave on her family land. But when the remains of her long-missing stepmother are discovered, Vera will have to face a past that threatens all she is. She and her sister Eve had a fairy-tale childhood: good until it was tragic, with a stepmother they never found a bond with. At least they had each other, a baby half-sister, and a mutual devotion that would have them do the unthinkable.

Ever since her father was killed when she was just a child, Miranda Crabtree has kept her head down and her eyes up, ferrying contraband for a mad preacher and his declining band of followers to make ends meet and to protect an old witch and a secret child from harm. But dark forces are at work in the bayou, both human and supernatural, conspiring to disrupt the rhythms of Miranda’s peculiar and precarious life.

Charli Goodwin's future seemed to be nothing but smooth sailing...until the last spell she cast changed the course of everything! Now, it's not only her life but the lives of others she cares deeply for that are tied up in her fate. Not even help from the creepy and mysterious soothsayers, the Weird Sisters, can give her a clue how to get out of the mess she's in. If Charli can't figure out a way to fix what she's done and get things back on track, according to the premonitions from the sisters, the future for herself and all of Honeysuckle Hollow is at stake.

As the winds of change sweep through South America, chaos and uncertainty reign. A radical political takeover looms, threatening to plunge the entire Western Hemisphere into turmoil. And the unrest doesn't stop there. Seeing the destabilization, China moves to exert its influence economically and politically—further threatening peace and freedom in the region. But hope is not lost-a team of elite Navy SEALs and one submarine race to determine and then confront the threat. With the fate of the region hanging in the balance, they embark on a dangerous—and likely impossible—mission.

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.

It's the week before Christmas, and antiques dealer Weezie Foley is in a frenzy to deck out her shop for the Savannah historical district decorating contest, which she intends to win. Weezie is ready to shoot herself with her glue gun by the time she's done, but the results are stunning. She's certainly one-upped the owners of the trendy shop around the corner, but suddenly things start to go missing from her display and there seems to be an uninvited midnight visitor to her shop.

A city of antebellum architecture, picturesque parks, and cobblestone streets, Savannah moves at a graceful pace. But for Harper McClain, the timeless beauty and culture that distinguishes her home’s Southern heritage vanishes during the dark and dangerous nights. She wouldn’t have it any other way. Not even finding her mother brutally murdered in their home when she was 12 has made her love Savannah any less.