Southern Fiction Family

It’s been years since Dr. Imani Kemp has returned home to Peachtree Cove, Georgia. As Tallahassee’s most sought-after OB-GYN, she doesn’t have much time for anything else. But when her mom announces she’s marrying a man she just met on a dating app, Imani knows she has to put a stop to it immediately. Let her mom be hurt again after the disastrous way her last marriage ended? Absolutely not. Always her protector, Imani won’t rest until her mom sees reason. She just never expected sparks to fly with the groom’s son.

Sloane’s world crumbles after receiving the news that her military husband is missing in action. She can barely climb out of bed, much less summon the strength to be the parent her children deserve. Her mother, Ansley, provides a much-needed respite as she puts her personal life on hold to help Sloane and her grandchildren wade through their new grief-stricken lives. But between caring for her own aging mother, her daughters, and her grandchildren, Ansley's private worry is that secrets from her past will come to light.

Since childhood, identical twins Leona and Fiona Dunbar have been getting in—and out—of trouble by pretending to be each other. Yet underneath, they couldn’t be more different. Outspoken Leona lives to break rules, have a good time, and scandalize their respectable hometown of Lexington. Fiona is a seemingly demure churchgoing girl who is the apple of her domineering, widowed mother Mavis’s eye. But together, the twins have fooled teachers, boyfriends, bosses, racist police—and most importantly, straitlaced Mavis.

On the Ides of March, our hero, Raleigh Whittier Hayes (forgetful husband, baffled father, prosperous insurance agent, and leading citizen of Thermopylae, North Carolina), learns that his father has discharged himself from the hospital, taken all his money out of the bank and, with a young Black female mental patient, vanished in a yellow Cadillac convertible. Left behind is a mysterious list of seven outrageous tasks that Raleigh must perform in order to rescue his father and his inheritance.

Conceived in love and possibility, Bonaventure Arrow didn't make a peep when he was born, and the doctor nearly took him for dead. No one knows that Bonaventure's silence is filled with resonance - a miraculous gift of rarified hearing that encompasses the Universe of Every Single Sound.

When Charlie Boykin was young, he thought his life with his single mother on the working-class side of Nashville was perfectly fine. But when his mother arranges for him to be admitted as a scholarship student to an elite private school, he is suddenly introduced to what the world can feel like to someone cushioned by money. That world, he discovers, is an almost irresistible place where one can bend—and break—rules and still end up untarnished.

The coming of spring usually means renewal, but for Linnea Rutledge, this spring is a season of challenge. Linnea faces another layoff, this time from the aquarium she adores, and her family’s finances, emotions, and health teeter on the brink. To complicate matters, her new love interest, Gordon, struggles to return to the Isle of Palms from England. Meanwhile, her old flame, John, turns up from California and is quarantining next door.

For twelve-year-old Martha "Sonny" Creech, there is no place more beautiful than her family's cotton farm. She, her two brothers, and her parents work hard on their land - hoeing, planting, picking - but only Sonny loves the rich, dark earth the way her father does. When a tragic accident claims his life, her stricken family struggles to fend off ruin - until their rich, reclusive neighbor offers to help finance that year's cotton crop.

On a rainy October night in Kentucky, recently divorced therapist Tallie Clark is on her way home from work when she spots a man precariously standing at the edge of a bridge. Without a second thought, Tallie pulls over and jumps out of the car into the pouring rain. She convinces the man to join her for a cup of coffee, and he eventually agrees to come back to her house, where he finally shares his name: Emmett.

The recipe for forgiveness begins with an open heart and a full belly. Sisters Rose Tillman and her sister Marvina Nash haven't spoken in decades—not since Rose sent Marvina $40 to register their business and Marvina used that money for her own personal purposes. Now retired, Rose wants to open the restaurant they'd once dreamed of. But, to her horror, Rose realizes she's forgotten their mother's secret spice mix recipe, known to only one other person in the world.

In small towns between the North Carolina Piedmont and the coast, the best scenery is often in the sky. On flat sweeps of red clay and scrub pine, the days move monotonously, safely, but above, in the blink of an eye, dangerous clouds can boil out of all four corners of the sky. The flat slow land starts to shiver and anything can happen. In such a storm, on Annie Peregrine’s seventh birthday, her father gave her the airplane and minutes later drove out of her life.

For Grace Dalton, her sister, Sarah, and her cousin Macy, the Devine Doughnut Shop is a sweet family legacy and a landmark in their Texas town. As the fourth generation to run the Double D, they keep their great-grandmother’s recipe secret and uphold the shop’s tradition as a coffee klatch for sharing local gossip, advice, and woes. But drama brews behind the counter, too.

The Lowcountry of South Carolina is where By Invitation Only begins, at a barbecue engagement party thrown by Diane English Stiftel, her brother Floyd, and her parents to celebrate her son’s engagement. On this gorgeous, magical night, the bride’s father, Alejandro Cambria, a wealthy power broker whose unbelievably successful career in private equity made him one of Chicago’s celebrated elite, discovers the limits and possibilities of cell phone range.

Now that attorney Jason Rich has returned home to Guntersville, Alabama, the “In an accident? Get rich!” lawyer is anxious to leave his checkered past behind. Jason hopes this next chapter in his life will be a chance to confront his personal troubles while making amends with his family. But when a former high school football star stands accused of killing a police officer, Jason is unwillingly thrust into the chaos.

After 60 years of marriage and five daughters, Lynn "Lovey" White knows that all of us, from time to time, need to use our little white lies. Her granddaughter Annabelle, on the other hand, is as truthful as they come. She always does the right thing - that is until she dumps her hedge fund manager fiance and marries a musician she has known for three days. After all, her grandparents fell in love at first sight....

Peyton is not ready to share her widowed father with anyone, let alone a barely remembered cousin who just rolled into town. However, her father seems to like Nora well enough, and prim Aunt Augusta hates her, which raises Nora slightly in Peyton's esteem. Maybe Nora is just what quiet Lytton, Georgia, needs this summer.

Fifteen years ago, a family member stole the money Hunt Knox had saved for college, while three of his siblings and his father hid the truth and told him to get over it. Betrayed by their lies and thievery, Hunt joined the army and wound up flying Apache helicopters in Iraq. Now, he's a chopper pilot for an oil company in Houston, Texas; his father has been dead for six years; and he's finally returning home to Blessings at his mother's dying request.

In this warm and moving anthology, a group of best-selling authors and writers pay tribute to legendary, larger-than-life New York Times best-selling author Dorothea Benton Frank and her literary legacy, capturing her unforgettable spirit, joy, and humor in stories of reunions and love. Infused with Dorothea Benton Frank’s remarkable spirit, Reunion Beach is a literary homage and beautiful keepsake that keeps this dearly missed writer’s flame burning bright.

In this number one New York Times best-selling novel of first love and second chances, former high school sweethearts confront the painful truths of their past to build a promising future - together. "Everyone wanted to believe that endless love was possible. She'd believed in it once, too, back when she was 18". In the spring of 1984, high school students Amanda Collier and Dawson Cole fell deeply, irrevocably in love. Though they were from opposite sides of the tracks, their love for one another seemed to defy the realities of life in their small town in North Carolina.

In Beneath The Willow Tree, the eighth book in the South Carolina Sunsets series, listeners are introduced to two women who have inherited a beachfront home in Seagrove. These two women were raised by the same foster mother but despised each other. The twist is that the foster mother's will states that the two women must work together and use the home for a good cause to inherit it. They must then decide whether to keep the home and live there together or sell it and split the proceeds.