Southern by Design

By: Grace Helena Walz

Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

Sweet Magnolias meets Fixer Upper in this delightfully refreshing debut about a woman bravely chasing her dreams, building a life on her own terms, and maybe even discovering a second chance at love.

Magnolia "Mack" Bishop is staring down the barrel at single motherhood—thanks to an unsolicited personal picture her husband texted another woman that quickly went viral among every mom group in town. But she's determined to not let it distract her from the professional victory she's inches away from: securing Charleston's prestigious Historic Preservation Design Fellowship, the apple of every local designer's eye.

But when the final house tour is undone by a host of calamities, Mack's shot at the fellowship goes up in flames. Smelling blood in the water, Mack's mother, the original Magnolia Bishop, breezes in with a project lead—strings attached. If there's one thing Magnolia lives for, aside from maintaining her station atop the Southern social ladder, it's to control Mack's life . . . and that includes keeping the identity of the absentee father Mack never knew in the shadows.

While working for her mother is the professional equivalent of moving into one's parent's basement, Mack spots an opportunity to make it her own when a television network puts a call out for local designers. Pitching the home renovation TV pilot of her dreams—one with a historic preservation twist—might just be the way to finally prove herself. Still, she'll have to do it covertly to avoid her mother's interference.

Just when Mack finds her professional footing, at home she spots an impossibly familiar figure unloading his moving truck into the newly sold house next door. She is furious, floored, and regrettably flustered because Lincoln Kelly is the one who got away. Fifteen years earlier he was a summer romance she inadvertently fell in love with, and when he left, following his dreams to New York, Mack was broken-hearted.

Filled with characters who could step out of the book and a reminder that nothing worth saving is beyond repair, this charming and delightful debut novel will resonate with listeners of Southern women's fiction by Mary Kay Andrews and Kristy Woodson Harvey.

©2025 Grace Helena Walz (P)2025 Harper Muse