Southern Thrillers

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.

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.

More than a decade ago, Mira fled her small, segregated hometown in the south to forget. With every mile she traveled, she distanced herself from her past: from her best friend Celine, mocked by their town as the only white girl with black friends; from her old neighborhood; from the eerie Woodsman plantation rumored to be haunted by the spirits of slaves; from the terrifying memory of a ghost she saw that terrible day when a dare-gone-wrong almost got Jesse—the boy she secretly loved—arrested for murder. But now Mira is back to attend Celine's wedding at the plantation.

A haunted library is no place for a girl who can see ghosts, but when Verity Long stumbles on a dead body in the middle of the main reading room, she has to believe someone...even a dead someone...must have witnessed the crime. Her ghostly sidekick, Frankie, warns her to stay out of it. The very alive, very handsome deputy sheriff, Ellis Wydell, inadvertently places her directly in the middle of it. And her ex-fiancé, Ellis' brother, is back with an agenda of his own.

After everyone returns from Charleston, Honeysuckle Hollow has been growing by leaps and bounds with new residents seeking magical sanctuary. All the residents of the Southern supernatural small town try their best to be welcoming. Unfortunately, one of the most important people in Charli Goodwin's life is teetering on the brink. Just when things are looking their bleakest, Charli notices that small changes in everyone's normal lives are adding up to bigger problems and has to hurry to find out who's behind the chaos.

In 1956, Kitty Cunningham disappeared on the way to the Starlite Drive-In. Now the first real evidence of foul play is coming to light in the ghostly realm—and it links directly to a modern crime. Only a sleuth with one foot in the past can solve the mystery and make things right.

Melanie Middleton has grown accustomed to renovating old houses, but she never imagined she'd have to renovate her own life to include her estranged mother. Ginnette Prioleau Middleton left Charleston 35 years ago. She's returned wanting to protect the daughter she's never really known after receiving an ominous premonition. Melanie never wanted to see her mother again, but with some prodding from her partner, Jack Trenholm, she agrees. With their combined psychic abilities, they find a vengeful dark spirit whose strength has been growing for decades.

Jack Parker knows all too well how treacherous turn-of-the-century East Texas can be. His parents did not survive a smallpox epidemic. His grandfather was murdered. Now his sister Lula has been kidnapped by a criminal who may believe wearing a dead man's clothes protects them both from death. With bounty hunter Shorty, a charismatic and cunning dwarf, and Eustace, a gravedigging son of an ex-slave, the heartbroken young Jack sets off on an epic quest to rescue his sister from the corrupt men who control much of the new territory.

A secret dark past and a string of messy affairs haven't stopped self-made millionaire Jamison Jackson from becoming mayor of Atlanta. But while he may have a gorgeous new wife and new alliances, he can't quite escape his past and those who want to see him fail. There's his jilted first wife, a lover he'd rather forget, and a ruthless faction of old guard politicians and power lords who have no problem getting blood on their hands. And the fact that Jamison's ambitious current wife, Val, schemed and blackmailed her way into his arms - despite his mother's not-so-subtle warnings - is far from the least of his problems.

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.

Charli Goodwin's leaving Honeysuckle Hollow again...but only temporarily. Led by her grandmother, she and her friends from their small Southern supernatural town are headed to Charleston for a special witch convention. Charli hopes that the short time away from her home will help her figure out how to navigate the new changes in her life. Unfortunately, fate has no intention of giving her a break. When the grand dame of the Charleston magical society drops dead, the local witches close ranks against the outsiders.

In a suburban LA neighborhood, neighbors keep wary distance and at times collide, propelled by desire, fury, and mischief. Precocious Korean-American sisters Mira and Rosemary find their world rocked by a suicide; a charismatic and creepy drama teacher grooms his students; an aging gay horror novelist fights loneliness; and a white mother and her adopted Vietnamese daughter deal with lifelong anger issues.

It’s a hot and sticky Sunday in Lafayette, Louisiana, and Glory has settled into her usual after-church routine, meeting gamblers at the local coffee shop, where she works as a small-time bookie. Sitting at her corner table, Glory hears that her best friend—a nun beloved by the community—has been found dead in her apartment. When the police declare the mysterious death a suicide, Glory is convinced that there must be more to the story and, with her reluctant daughter in tow, launches a shadow investigation in a town of oil tycoons, church gossips, and a rumored voodoo priestess.

Addison McKellar isn’t clueless—she knows she and her husband Dean don’t have the perfect marriage—but she’s still shocked when he completely vanishes from her life. At first Addison is annoyed, but as days stretch into a week and she’s repeatedly stonewalled by Dean’s friends and associates, her frustration turns into genuine alarm. When even the police seem dismissive of her concerns, Addison turns to her father’s old friend, legendary Memphis PI Porter Hayes.

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.

When Pepper teaches a class at the Southern School of Magic, she expects a run of the mill experience. But when a gaggle of mean teachers invades her classroom, Pepper is on high alert. These women are nasty and they make no bones about disliking Pepper. Pepper does her best to stay far away from them, but when one of the witches is murdered in broad daylight, everyone's a suspect, including Rufus Mayes, who's moved back into town.

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.

Ghost hunter Verity Long is overdue for a little R&R (rest and romance) with her boyfriend, Ellis, and a vintage train trip through the Tennessee mountains seems like just the ticket. The Sugarland Express carries history and nostalgia in every compartment, and Verity is determined to enjoy it - without ghostly interference. But the ghosts have other plans… On a dark, desolate night nearly a century ago, the train was stranded in the mountains, and a young woman was found stabbed to death in her locked compartment.