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.

Twenty-two years ago, Claire Campbell’s older sister, Natalie, disappeared shortly after her eighteenth birthday. Days later, her blood was found in a car, a man was arrested, and the case was swiftly closed. In the decades since, Claire has attempted to forget her traumatic past by moving to the city and climbing the ranks as an investigative journalist... until an unexpected call from her father forces her to come back home and face it all anew.

An'gel and Dickce Ducote, busy with plans for the Athena Garden Club's spring tour of grand old homes, are having trouble getting the other club members to help. The rest of the group is all a-flutter now that dashing and still-eligible Hadley Partridge is back to restore his family mansion. But the idle chatter soon turns deadly serious when a body turns up on the Partridge estate after a storm . . .As the Ducotes begin uncovering secrets, they discover that more than one person in Athena would kill to be Mrs. Partridge.

Part love story and part ghost story, this is an unforgettable New York Times best seller about a science journalist and a North Carolina librarian who dare to believe in the impossible. As a science journalist with a regular column in Scientific American, Jeremy Marsh specializes in debunking the supernatural - until he falls in love with the granddaughter of the town psychic. When Jeremy receives a letter from Boone Creek, North Carolina, about ghostly lights appearing in a cemetery, he can't resist driving down to investigate.

When a young woman dies in a late-night restaurant fire, the owner, Bobby Carter, is charged with arson and murder. The evidence is stacked against him, but something doesn’t add up. And his only chance for justice rests on the shoulders of small-town lawyer Leland Munroe… Leland is convinced someone’s out to frame his client. But as the trial heats up, he realizes that he's facing more than just a legal battle.

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.

Joey Green has returned to Beaufort, South Carolina, with its palmettos and shrimp boats, to look after his ailing father, who is succumbing to dementia, while his overstressed mother takes a break. Marshall Green’s short-term memory has all but evaporated, but his oldest memories are more vivid than ever. His mind keeps slipping backward in time, retreating into growing up in Beaufort as a boy. At first, this seems like a blessing of sorts, but Joey grows increasingly anxious as his father’s hallucinatory arguments with figures from his youth begin to hint at deadly secrets.

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.

For Southern girl Verity Long, friendship means sitting down to stories and sweet tea on the front porch. For her gangster ghost housemate, it means dragging Verity out to a remote haunted asylum during a raging thunderstorm to do a favor for a long-dead mob boss. But Verity is always ready to help out a friend, even one as eternally eccentric as Frankie. And in the case of Mint Julep Manor, the stakes are too high to refuse.

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.

It is 1997, and someone is slaughtering young women in Burdon County, Arkansas. But no one in the Dirty South wants to admit it. In an Arkansas jail cell sits a former NYPD detective, stricken by grief. He is mourning the death of his wife and child, and searching in vain for their killer. Obsessed with avenging his lost family, his life is about to take a shocking turn.

Pepper Dunn is ready to celebrate New Year's. She’s been hard at work creating a potion for the annual potion-making contest. All she must do is present her creation. Pepper’s plans go awry when a sorceress claims she can turn a witch into a toad—all she needs is a volunteer.

Callahan Garrity is the owner of House Mouse, a cleaning service that tidies up after Atlanta's elite. She's also a former cop and a part-time sleuth. She and her coterie of devoted helpers can ransack a house for clues faster than it takes a fingerprint to set. Some people might call Callahan Garrity nosy, but she prefers to think of her tendency toward snooping as a healthy interest in the truth. So when news reaches her of her cousin Patti's death during a carjacking, Callahan shakes off her House Mouse cleaning uniform to don her detective's cap.

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.

Sarah Booth has traded in hosting this Christmas season for a road trip with her besties. Each little Delta town has a special Christmas activity, and Sarah Booth’s BFF and detective partner, Tinkie, has arranged to rent a limo for the gang and drive to Columbus, MS, to stay in a B&B. Visions of Christmas shopping, parade floats, and romantic rendezvous are already dancing in their heads. But Christmas cheer soon turns to Christmas fear when, at one event after another, people keep getting hurt. Christmas karaoke gets ugly when one singer’s microphone gives her an electric shock.

After his son is convicted of capital murder, Vietnam War veteran Jeremiah Fitzjurls takes over the care of his granddaughter, Joanna, raising her with as much warmth as can be found in an Ozark junkyard outfitted to be an armory. He teaches her how to shoot and fight, but there is not enough training in the world to protect her when the dreaded Ledfords, notorious meth dealers and fanatical white supremacists, come to collect on Joanna as payment for a long-overdue blood debt.

Maggie Crozat, proprietor of a historic Cajun Country B&B, prefers to let the good times roll. But hard times rock her hostelry when a new cell phone app makes it easy for locals to rent their spare rooms to tourists. With October-and Halloween-approaching, she conjures up a witch-crafty marketing scheme to draw visitors to Pelican, Louisiana.

Toya Gardner, a young Black artist from Atlanta, has returned to her ancestral home in the North Carolina mountains to trace her family history and complete her graduate thesis. But when she encounters a still-standing Confederate monument in the heart of town, she sets her sights on something bigger.

Cheyenne Ashby knows the dark and disturbing history of her hometown of Blue Cliff, Virginia, all too well. It’s why she left. Growing up deep within the woods with her eccentric mother, Constance, she was raised on the unusual customs and generational superstitions linked to the local legend of an evil entity that haunts the forest. Five years ago, the bodies of three children were found in the woods. It was a man—not a mythical beast—named Jasper Clinton who was convicted of these heinous crimes.

Mail carrier Bernadette (Bernie) Butler, along with the Front Porch Ladies, are curious about their new neighbor, Courtney Gaines, who is the niece of Florence Gaines, the wealthiest widow in Sugar Creek Gap. Florence lets it be known that she is seeing Zeke Grey, which doesn't set well with the Front Porch Ladies. They were all in competition for Zeke's attention. While delivering the mail, Bernie overhears what could be the couple's first marital spat. When Florence turns up dead in mulch, Bernie can't help but want to get involved.