Southern Fiction Thrillers

Maxine Bloom has always wanted to try her hand at acting, and when Loretta Bebe is desperate for someone to fill a role in the local play she's directing for the Honey Springs Theater Company, she asks Maxi to fill in. Aunt Maxi leaps at the chance for a big theatrical debut in the charming play. When the producer of the play turns up dead, the play comes to a complete halt until Sheriff Spencer Shepard lets Loretta reopen after the crime scene is fully swept. Roxy finds that she just can't stop from trying to figure out who killed the amateur actress...after all, the show must go on!

Within the deep woods of rural Alabama, along the forgotten southern course of the Black Warrior River, lies an unseen world long feared by the residents of the tiny town of Carlsdale. Down through the centuries, few people have survived a visit to this hidden place long enough to talk about it. Among these fortunate souls is Jack Kenney. Thirteen years old at the time of the event, Jack and his family were forced to flee Carlsdale in the aftermath and head north to the larger city of Tuscaloosa. Mercifully, the menace from their former home left them in peace for nearly eight years.

Southern California is where dreams come true—or so Scarlett Gardner thought. When she moved there and opened the Palm Trees and Page Turners bookshop, she thought her boyfriend and business partner would be part of the story. When he leaves her for a better job, Scarlett finds herself struggling to keep her new business afloat. And that’s not the only thing she has to worry about—she discovers something underneath the pier by her bookshop that she didn’t outline for her life’s story: the dead body of a book-buying customer.

Legal investigator Finley O’Sullivan has dealt with her share of shady characters, but the firm’s latest client has an even darker past than most. In fact, Nashville Metro Police seems to think he’s a murderer. Finley isn’t so sure. Her investigation into Ray Johnson’s history focuses on the unsolved murder of a teenager who died thirteen years earlier. The case went cold, but questions remain. After the girl’s death, people close to her started disappearing—Ray’s brother first, then the girl’s mother. But why?

Marci thinks mouthwatering pastries are just what her small Southern hometown needs. Most residents agree, saying that her baked goods are magical, creating love and good fortune all over town. When Kelly Lowry is shot in front of the shop, it gives the pastries a new meaning behind “to die for.” Who killed her, and why was her murder followed by a strange Frenchman’s appearance? When Antoine Dubois wanders into her quaint shop, Marci is smitten immediately. But soon, more questions arise than answers: How did Antoine end up in Kentucky? And what was his connection to the dead woman?

Old wars, new battles. Fighting ghosts, witches, and curses is nothing new for Max and Sandra Porter. But when a Civil War ghost gets tethered to their teenage son, J, everything is new. And terrifying. With the help of their partner and ghost, Marshall Drummond, the team will be up against serious and deadly problems - dealing with the head witch of North Carolina, raising ancient bones from the bottom of lake, breaking forgotten curses, and far more. But worse than that, they will have to face the most difficult challenge of all - J starts dating.

Not the typical spy murder mystery, Southern Cross is a unique tale of double agents, espionage, revenge, and murder leading investigators from a morgue in Manhattan to the SS Southern Cross, a passenger liner sailing from New York to Cuba. Forced to use limited resources, a doctor from San Francisco and a young Paris police inspector scramble to uncover a vicious murderer before another passenger is killed, and before the ship docks in Havana and 500 travelers flood the pier.

Dale and Deloris Justen have searched for weeks for the perfect place for a long delayed honeymoon. When the messages start showing up in Deloris' business emails, the one she uses only for her book sales under the name of Deloris Blue, she wondered if the last name had something to do with the fantastic offers and coupons for the Bonnie Blue Lakeside Lodge. She never considered for a second the final decision to go there was anyone's but her own.

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.

It's early October - time for the Fall Folk Art Festival and Bake Sale in Lilyvale, Arkansas. Every business along the town square will benefit from the event, including the craft store run by Leslee Stanton Nix - a.k.a. Nixy - and the Silver Six, a group of retirees. In charge of making the festival go smoothly, Nixy is confident that it will be a success.

Leslee Stanton Nix-a.k.a. "Nixy" - thought moving to small-town Lilyvale, Arkansas, would be about as thrilling as watching paint dry. But keeping up with her retired Aunt Sherry and her troublemaking housemates - collectively known as the Silver Six - has proven to be as exciting as it is exasperating. To kick off the grand opening of their craft shop, the Handcraft Emporium, Nixy and the Silver Six invite Doralee Gordon to teach a gourd painting class.

Only 24 years old, Naomi Scott was just getting started. A law student, tending bar to make ends meet, she wanted to change the world. Instead, her life ended in the dead of night at the hands of an unseen gunman. There are no witnesses to the crime. The police have three suspects. All three men claim to love her. Could one of them be her killer?

Trapped in a dead-end town, Justin Warren has had his life defined by the suspicious deaths of his grandparents. The unsolved crime happened long before Justin was born, but the ripple effects are still felt after thirty-eight years. Justin always knew he wouldn’t have much of a future. He just never imagined that his life might take him backward.

Private investigator, Gideon Baker, is on the trail of a missing husband. A tip about the man’s car sends him to the Savoie Salvage yard in steamy southern Louisiana, but the owner is dead and his daughter, Jessica, is trying to sort out the mess her father left behind. Jessica would rather be anywhere than dealing with the debris left behind by the father she never met. Gideon and Jessica strike sparks—the good kind—as they find themselves following a trail of murder, betrayal, and classic cars. Can they survive the Louisiana heat and the gunshots long enough to fall in love?

Siblings Bert, Willet, and Pansy know better than to go swimming at the old rock quarry. According to their father, it's the Devil's place, a place that's been cursed and forgotten. But Mississippi Delta summer days are scorching hot, and they can't resist cooling off in the dark, bottomless water - until the day six-year-old Pansy vanishes...not drowned, not lost, simply gone. When their father disappears as well, Bert and Willet leave their childhoods behind to try and hold their broken family together.

Jimmy is a kid growing up fast on the poorest street in town. He tries to do everything right and look out for his mum and his younger brother. His older brother is in jail, so it's up to Jimmy to hold things together. But small-town life is unforgiving if you're from the other side of the tracks.

On one Indian summer Friday night, things happen that change the course of hundreds of lives. In Winston-Salem, a tobacco and mill town in central North Carolina, people like to relax as the weekend comes nigh, and depending on whether they sit above or below the salt, they'll do so in different ways. Both the well-to-do and the less-thans are wizened practitioners of the art of steam blowing, all in the name of fun and respite. And in doing so, violence and deceit and sadness mingle with money and alcohol to create a dangerous, crackling third rail of despair.

Late one night, a car burns on a lonely rural road, and the discovery of a body - charred beyond recognition - in the driver's seat sets in motion a series of deadly events. And when the wife of the supposedly deceased driver demands her husband's million-dollar life insurance payout before the autopsy can be completed, fraud investigators Julia Jackson and Mark Vincent must determine exactly how the victim died and at whose hands.

When Max and Sandra moved to North Carolina, they walked into a world of ghost, witches, and curses. Over the years, and with the help of the ghost of 1940s detective Marshall Drummond, they have fought to build a life for themselves. But now, it all goes on the line. No fight from their past can match what awaits when the Hull family and the Magi Group go to war. Caught between the magic and muscle of these groups, Max and Sandra will have to call in all the help they can find if they are to survive.

When Max and Sandra Porter moved down to North Carolina, they thought they were getting a new beginning - good job, good pay, and a lovely little place in Winston-Salem. But the family that hired him to research land deals in North Carolina is not all that they seem. And when Max discovers that his office is haunted by Marshall Drummond, PI - a ghost from the 1940s - what started as a simple research job sinks him neck-deep in a world of old mysteries and dangerous enemies.