Southern Thrillers

Ethan Wate has spent most of his life longing to escape the stiflingly small Southern town of Gatlin. He never thought he would meet the girl of his dreams, Lena Duchannes, who unveiled a secretive, powerful, and cursed side of Gatlin, hidden in plain sight. And he never could have expected that he would be forced to leave behind everyone and everything he cares about. So when Ethan awakes after the chilling events of the Eighteenth Moon, he has only one goal: to find a way to return to Lena and the ones he loves.

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.

After years of self-exile, Jacinda “Jac” Brodie is back in Brook Haven, South Carolina. But the small cliffside town no longer feels like home. Jac hasn’t been there since the beloved chief of police fell to his death—and all the whispers said she was to blame. That chief was Jac’s father. Racked with guilt, Jac left town with no plans to return. But when her granddad lands in the hospital, she rushes back to her family, bracing herself to confront the past.

With a four-legged companion and no food in the pantry, Grant Walton faces an uphill battle. His wife is still missing; downtown is a smoldering crater; and radiation is killing more people every day. Torn between searching for his wife and gearing up for what's sure to come, Grant is forced to put more than his morals to the test. Leah Walton escaped a nuclear bomb that flattened her hospital and vaporized her friends. Now she's racing to find her husband miles away. She'll have to rely on the kindness of strangers to survive and hope none of them kill her in the process.

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.

Graham Greene's first published novel tells the story of Andrews, a young man who has betrayed his fellow smugglers and fears their vengeance. Fleeing from them, with no hope of pity or salvation, he takes refuge in the house of a young woman, also alone in the world. Elizabeth persuades him to give evidence against his accomplices in court, but neither she nor Andrews is aware that to both criminals and authority, treachery is as great a crime as smuggling.

Realtor Chelsea O'Connell is found dead in a model home of the new development in Normal. She was not popular in the small tourist town located in the Daniel Boone National Park because the last thing this town wants is for more development to come in to take away anymore of the forest.

Detective Dave Robicheaux becomes entangled in the affairs of the Fontenot family, descendants of sharecroppers whose matriarch helped raise Dave as a child. They are in danger of losing the land they've lived on for more than a century. As Dave tries to discover who wants the land so badly, he finds himself in increasing peril from a lethal, rag tag alliance of local mobsters and a hired assassin with a shady past.

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.

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.

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....

It's Halloween season in Mississippi as Sarah Booth and the gang gather to decorate and gush over Tinkie's new baby, Maylin. Sarah Booth is just about to refresh the cocktails when she hears a knock on the door and opens it to find a woman named Frankie, distraught at the disappearance of her daughter, Christa, a young journalist. Christa had been investigating the disappearance of young women in New Orleans over a five-year period—one every year around Halloween. Now Christa herself is missing, and Frankie fears it may be connected to a cult based in the Garden District.

When it comes to solving cold cases, nothing is ever cut and dried…. Quilter Beatrice Coleman is enjoying the sleepy peace of a tranquil afternoon…until it’s interrupted by her friend, Miss Sissy. The elderly lady is making wild claims about narrowly escaping an intruder. And intruders are unusual in tiny Dappled Hills.

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.

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.

Marine biologist Doc Ford has been known to help his friends out of jams occasionally, but he's never faced a situation like this. His old pal Carl Fitzpatrick has been chasing sunken wrecks most of his life, but now he's run afoul of the Florida Division of Historical Resources. Its director, Leonard Nickelby, despises amateur archaeologists, which is bad enough, but now he and his young "assistant" have disappeared - along with Fitzpatrick's impounded cache of rare Spanish coins and the list of uncharted wreck sites Fitz spent decades putting together.

Ghost hunter Verity Long is no stranger to scandal. In fact, it seems to follow her around like her pet skunk, Lucy. But Verity is as shocked as anybody when a town relic discovered in a time capsule unleashes a torrent of secrets that lead to murder. Trouble is, the only residents in Sugarland who know the truth behind the scandal also happen to be very dead themselves. With a killer on the loose and a town in crisis, Verity braves a side of Sugarland she's never seen before.

Things are finally looking up for Sarah Blair following her unsavory divorce. Settled into a cozy carriage house with her sassy Siamese cat, RahRah, she has somehow managed to hang on to her modest law firm receptionist job and - if befriending flea-bitten strays at the local animal shelter counts - lead a thriving social life. For once, Sarah almost has it together more than her enterprising twin, Emily, a professional chef whose efforts to open a gourmet restaurant have hit a real dead end. The president of the town bank and city council is murdered after icing Emily's business.

When a quilting event falls to pieces, Beatrice works to patch things up. Dappled Hills quilters are eagerly anticipating new events at the Patchwork Cottage quilt shop. The shop’s owner, Posy, has announced "Sew and Tell" socials and a mystery quilt group project. But one day, instead of emailed quilt instructions, the quilters receive a disturbing message about a fellow quilter. When that quilter mysteriously meets her maker, Beatrice decides to use her sleuthing skills to find the killer before more lives are cut short.

As Sheriff Clayton Burroughs tries to juggle fatherhood, his job, and his recovery from being shot in the confrontation that killed his two criminally inclined brothers last year, he’s doing all he can just to survive. Yet after years of carefully toeing the line between his life in law enforcement and his family, he finally has to make a choice. When a rival organization makes a first foray into Burroughs' territory, leaving a trail of bodies and a whiff of fear in its wake, Clayton is pulled back into the life he so desperately wants to leave behind.