Southern Suspense Thriller

For the Temple women, the winds of change are blowing. And if they're not careful, it could sweep them all away. After rising from Temple servant to tea shop owner, Violet finally feels in charge of her destiny. While learning Gullah folk magic from her aging grandmother, she worries much of her cultural heritage will be lost to the grave. Is there enough time for Old Sally to pass down all her special wisdom? Bride-to-be Queenie has never felt younger at heart.

The grid is down and electric bikes are the transportation of choice for the coming apocalypse, but where do you find one in this deserted beach town? The prepper couple forages for food and other supplies in the looted-out vacation spot and lucks up on a restaurant supply truck. A small group of people still living at the marina seems to hold the key to reforming society but closely guards its secrets and turf against strangers.

Terminal Exposure is the story of Chance Barkley and Jack McCoy, two trouble shooters hired by the Texas Syndicate to take down a dirty federal agent, who is involved in a ten-million-dollar cocaine buy that is traded for ten million dollars' worth of heroin. The multi-faceted story follows the load as it heads north into the USA near Douglas, Arizona. Deep-cover CIA agent Pablo Morales is brought in to help Barkley and McCoy. If successful, the newly formed strike team will have their first advantage over the Mexican cartels in their fight for control of the Southern border.

A funeral, a ghost, a murder. It's all in a day's work for Emma Lee Raines...especially when the ghost turns out to be someone very dear to her heart. Psychic Debbie Dually is the one who informed local undertaker Emma Lee Raines that she wasn't crazy, she was a Betweener, someone who can communicate with ghosts of the not-so-dearly departed. In fact, she told Emma Lee how she was the only one that could help solve their murders to help them rest in eternal peace. This time Debbie Dually finds herself needing Emma's help. This means solving her own murder.

Only a handful of people know that Emma Lee Raines, proprietor of a small-town Kentucky funeral home, is a "Betweener." She helps ghosts stuck between here and the ever-after - murdered ghosts. But Emma Lee's own sister refuses to believe in her special ability. In fact, the Raines sisters have barely gotten along since Charlotte Rae left the family business for the competition. After a doozy of an argument, Emma Lee is relieved to see Charlotte Rae back home to make nice. Until she realizes her usually snorting, sarcastic, family-ditching sister is a...ghost.

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?

Mardi Gras has secrets. Like why would Felix's brother, a well-off and successful doctor, let the midnight train roll over him? Especially just as his new Carnival Krewe prepares for their inaugural parade? Felix has had an easy life, coasting by as the black sheep of a wealthy family. He spends his time under the green canopies of Uptown New Orleans, whiling away his days in leisure and mediocrity.

When a popular youth pastor is accused of a grisly crime, MacLaren Yarbrough won't rest until she finds the truth. Her gut instinct tells her Luke Blessed is innocent. Still, how could the dream he had on the night a young woman was murdered depict the crime with such chilling accuracy? As MacLaren tracks down clues from all corners of Hopewell, GA, four like suspects emerge. But the police aren't buying her theories. Even her husband, local magistrate Joe Riddley, resists her amateur sleuthing. This case, he feels, is too dangerous.

Pastor James Elba loses more than his faith when his daughter perishes in a tragic murder. After moving back to his hometown of Savannah, Georgia, his wife is now at the mercy of his own dark past, locked away in the forgotten shadows of a derelict rice plantation seeped in bloody history. But will his renovations stir up more than just long suppressed memories of a childhood dare, an incantation that summoned...what?

Private Investigator Liz Talbot thinks she’s seen another ghost when she meets Calista McQueen. She’s the spitting image of Marilyn Monroe. Born exactly fifty years after the iconic bombshell, Calista's life is a déjà vu of Hollywood tragedy. And with the anniversary of Marilyn's death looming, Calista fears she's next in line for a tragic finale.

Caroline McAlister, college professor and lifelong skeptic, is reeling from the loss of her father and her marriage. Her once promising career has come to a standstill. When her father bequeaths the family cabin to her, it comes with a ghost who haunted her childhood. When she discovers a century-old journal in the attic, she awakens the voice of Carson Quinn. The journal reveals Carson's love for the same hollow that enthralled Caroline growing up. A little sleuthing uncovers rumors that the kind, curious boy in the journal grew up to murder his brother.

Ava, 14 years old and totally on her own, has still not fully processed her mother’s death when she finds herself on a train heading to New Orleans, to stay with Lane, the grandmother she barely remembers. Lane is a well-known artist in the New Orleans art scene. She spends most of her days in a pot-smoke haze, sipping iced coffee, and painting. Her grip on reality is shaky at best, but her work provides a comfort. Ava’s arrival unsettles Lane. The girl bears an uncanny resemblance to her daughter, whom she was estranged from before her death.

When 16-year-old Emily Halliwell ran away from home, she agreed to send her half sister a photo every week to prove she was okay. And she did. For a while. But then the photos stopped coming. Nicole Carrington, Emily's half sister and the newest permanent resident of the Gull Island Writer's Retreat, decides to ask the Mystery Mastermind Group for help. The trail has gone cold, but Nicole is desperate, so the group decides to accept the challenge in spite of the staggering odds of finding Emily alive after all of this time.

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.

With an extraordinary gift for suspense, McKissack brings us 10 original, spine-tingling tales inspired by African-American history and the mystery of that eerie half hour before nightfall—the dark-thirty.

Just when Jaymee Ballard's life seems to be on track, a massive derecho attacks the Delta Crossroads, sowing destruction in its path. Her boyfriend, investigative journalist Nick Samuels, comes up missing, and she fears the worst.

Nick's abandoned car contains evidence of his involvement uncovering a controversial case mired in political power and greed.

Uneasiness permeated Chattanooga where Mary Beth Roper grew up. Every conversation she overheard is heated, yet her banker-father was hesitant to reveal the facts. Will Tennessee secede and force them into a war? She was an adult and demanded he tell her the truth, yet she feared the heated politics she’d seen. Then she learned a rogue customer threatened their bank. Somehow, she must find a way to work with Peter Chandler, her father’s partner, even though she can’t bear to be near him. As she unraveled an impossible puzzle, she learned to value her faith.

A little sex. A little death. Most people would kill to live in glamorous Palm Beach, with its beautiful women, five-star resorts, and dazzling coast. But most people don't know what really goes on in the bedrooms of the rich and famous....Mark Durand did - and now the handsome high-class "walker," who escorted the wealthiest women to posh affairs, is dead, his beheaded corpse found in an abandoned cattle pen.

Iggy Guerra is out of prison, but his homecoming is anything but smooth. His beloved mother is gone, his grief-stricken father Armando is deep in debt, and they are about to lose the butcher shop that has been in their family for generations. Iggy must earn his father’s lost trust in order to save La Carnicería Guerra from the threats imposed by a new rival business, a vigilante activist, and big-game hunter Orin, who has dragged Armando into his dangerous money-making schemes deep in the Everglades, where more than secrets are buried.

For seventeen years, a serial murderer has used the Presley, Arkansas, Annual Hunt for the Golden Egg to find prey. Or at least that’s what some people believe. Others, like the town’s devoted “Eggheads,” relish the tradition and think the deaths are just unfortunate accidents. But for Nell Holcomb, the town’s annual Hunt dredges up a particularly painful memory: her brother’s death, long believed to be “the Hunter’s” first kill.