Showing titles in Southern

After an airless childhood in Savannah, Smoky O'Donnell arrives in Atlanta, dazzled and chastened by this hectic young city on the rise. Her new job as a writer with the city's Downtown magazine introduces her to many unforgettable people and propels her into the center of momentous events that will irrevocably alter her heart, her career, and her world.

A novel chronicling the strained relationship between two brothers born into the remnants of their parents’ former enslavement. One brother seems to overcome, while the other descends further into adversity. What happens when they are forced to face each other?

An old woman, riddled with dementia, walks off into the woods in the middle of the night. A light in the wood draws her to a campfire with two strange, dangerous men, one young and one old, who are there plotting a crime of as-yet-indeterminate purpose. The two men have a job to do. They are hunting something precious but have only been told: you’ll know it when you see it. When they arrive at the place, an abandoned church cellar in the burned-out countryside, they find an answer they never could have predicted.

Jimmy Hamilton overcame childhood tragedy to become a hero in Vietnam, only to die there in 1967. All but forgotten, Jimmy leaves behind a young wife, an infant son, and a man wracked by guilt. Circumstances allow Becca, his young widow, to be manipulated into an abusive, loveless union with Jimmy’s brother and into raising her son ignorant of his father’s true identity—a wrong she knows must be set right…but how? When?

Hank O'Sullivan, a sixty-five-year-old widower, lives a routine life, nursing his loneliness with cocktails at his favorite local bar in Austin, Texas. After a parking lot brawl lands him in jail, a judge sentences Hank to community service, picking up trash along the highway alongside a sixteen-year-old troublemaker, Luis Delgado. Luis has remarkable artistic abilities, but his penchant for sneaking out late at night and trespassing onto rooftops lands him on the same road crew as Hank.

Alice runs a New Orleans flower shop alongside her aunt, but thoughts of her mother, who went missing during Hurricane Katrina, are never far from her mind. After getting off on the wrong foot with a handsome yet irritating man who comes to her shop, Alice soon realizes their worlds overlap - and the answers they both seek can be found in the same place.

During a hot summer of June moods, grubworms, and dark storms, Sunshine discovers stones in her chest—and learns the dangers her coming of age will bring about in the yellow house she shares with her father. Without the vocabulary to comprehend Billy's actions or her own changing body, Sunshine turns to an apocryphal story passed down from her grandmother: In the dark waters of the Black Bayou lives a crocodile with an insatiable appetite and a woman with a mysterious healing gift.

From the author of the critically acclaimed Jackson Flint mystery novels. An Appalachian noir thriller. Deep in the Appalachian hills, a brother and sister are in trouble. Miller’s ma is gone. His pa is gone. Now they’ve come for him. Miller knows the kind of men who inhabit these hills. He doesn’t want to become one of them. How can he protect himself and his sister without losing his soul?

Rendered paraplegic after a traumatic event four years ago, Cameron Harris has been living his new existence alongside his sister, Tanya, in their battered Biloxi, Mississippi, neighborhood where only half the houses made it through Katrina. One stiflingly hot August afternoon, as Cameron sits waiting for Tanya during their daily run to the Biz-E-Bee convenience store, he suddenly and inexplicably rises up and out of his wheelchair.

Over twenty years ago, a young hunting guide in rural Kentucky was driving his boat in the early morning mist when his peaceful cruise was cut short by a scene so disturbing, he packed up and moved away. Nine women died early that morning, but it was linked to a similar crime in Texas, so the locals quickly wrote it off as having nothing to do with them. Now, all these years later, when everyone has nearly forgotten about that grisly part of their past, one man's accidental death will bring everything back up to the surface.

As a child Gifty would ask her parents to tell the story of their journey from Ghana to Alabama, seeking escape in myths of heroism and romance. When her father and brother succumb to the hard reality of immigrant life in the American South, their family of four becomes two - and the life Gifty dreamed of slips away. Years later, desperate to understand the opioid addiction that destroyed her brother's life, she turns to science for answers. But when her mother comes to stay, Gifty soon learns that the roots of their tangled traumas reach farther than she ever thought.

Jerica and Jesse settle into Summerleigh and count themselves lucky to start their family in the beautiful old home. With the renovations nearly complete, Jerica uncovers Loxley Belle's name carved into a wooden desk in a forgotten shack near the old home. Along with the discovery comes the feeling that the last Belle girl needs her help. Jerica and Jesse do their best to piece together the past and find that the youngest Belle had secrets of her own.

“An all-consuming and exhilarating read…highly recommend.” –BookSirens "A heart-pounding, action-packed novel filled with suspense, drama and twisty turns...[with] a well-crafted storyline." - Robin's Reviews While tracking a drug shipment in Savannah, surveillance expert Mack Abbott gets tangled up in a deadly underworld filled with ruthless smugglers who will stop at nothing to protect their product. Abbott's one connection in town is an exotic dancer named Avery Calloway, who has questionable motives and a taste for the smugglers' product. Their relationship deepens as the ...

The "Last Best Class" of Fish River Community School had lost one of its members every year since the second grade. Waffle Houses were popping up throughout small-town Alabama with one corporate rule: "Good Food Fast." Struggling to cope with the tragedy that shadowed him most of his life, Dr. Jimmy Ryan dedicated himself to bringing people back from the brink, driven by his own guiding principle "Ain't Dead Yet." Not until Jimmy's own death did the folks at the Waffle House in Penelope, Alabama, learn the full extent of the secrets buried with the dead.

Most people think the reason Prudy Millings married the best-looking preacher in the Carolinas—who inexplicably turned psychotic and mowed her down with the church van—is that she was raised all wrong. So not true. Prudy's reclamation of her life begins two years after the crime spree that nearly stopped her heart. She packs up her two precocious children and settles in her parents' South Carolina hometown where she deals with a delightful Proverbs-spewing mama who pretends her grown daughters are virgins.

Architect Maxwell Devers is laser-focused on winning the contract to build a new cultural arts center - his biggest project yet. But as a single dad of a beautiful baby girl, he has to find some help if he's going to stay on track. Yvonne Markham is thrilled to get her first nanny assignment. She knows the high-paying job will speed her progress toward owning a child-care center of her own. Maxwell's daughter is a delight, and she quickly comes to love the bouncing baby girl. Falling for her handsome new boss, however, was not part of the plan....

Bells for Eli is Adeline (Delia) Green’s first person narrative of her relationship with her first cousin Ellison (Eli) Winfield throughout their childhood into their young adult lives. The novel opens in 1978 in Green Branch, SC, with Delia appearing inert from an unknown sorrow. The story then flashes back to 1959 when Eli drinks Red Devil Lye, the chemical his father used to blow up balloons for Eli’s third birthday celebration and negligently left in a Coca-Cola bottle.

The past never stays buried forever... The past caught up with Harper Carrington in the cruelest way. After tragedy summoned her home to Virginia's Blue Ridge mountains, she was confronted with another twist of the knife – Wyck, her first love who abandoned her fifteen years before and disappeared off the map. Wyck Ward never planned to see Harper again after her powerful father exiled him from Carrington Ridge. Consumed by the desire for revenge, Wyck spent over a decade systematically destroying the man's corrupt legacy. But with his enemy suddenly dead, Wyck realizes his all-consuming ...

Present Day: Julia Baxter’s wedding veil, bequeathed to her great-grandmother by a mysterious woman on a train in the 1930s, has passed through generations of her family as a symbol of a happy marriage. But on the morning of her wedding day, something tells her that even the veil’s good luck isn’t enough to make her marriage last forever. Overwhelmed, she escapes to the Virgin Islands to clear her head.

Open House is about vulnerable, strong, sometimes misguided individuals struggling to adapt to change. It explores the undercurrent of beliefs and privilege that carry the seeds of violence. But at its heart is Margaret, who, armed with a sharp wit and a healthy sense of the ridiculous, navigates the societal chaos around her.