Southern Crime Fiction

Grace had never been more terrified...the pain was relentless. Nothing in her life prepared her for this. She desperately needed somewhere safe...someplace she could hide. Someone she could trust with her life. It was dark...and getting darker. Ronan Hendricks didn’t recognize her voice. Not family...not friends. Probably not an enemy. But he didn’t need the years he’d spent as a detective to recognize what he did hear... Fear. In a desperate moment of hope, a single number saved her life. Then a complete stranger opened his home offering safety yet Grace knew danger surrounded them.....

SOPHIE O’DAY IS TERRIFIED. A budding young nurse in Post Depression Southeast Missouri, Sophie fears repeating a tragic mistake—at the expense of another life. Sy Hawkins has given up all hope of a career in radio and moved to rural Missouri to care for his aging uncle and tend to the old fellow’s goat farm. Sy’s only focus is on this man to whom he feels he owes everything. When an accident occurs, and Uncle Joe’s life is in jeopardy, the elderly man makes a decision that will affect both Sophie and Sy. Can they pull together in a common quest to make his wish come true before ...

In the backwoods of Millwater County, legends aren’t born—they’re built on burning rubber, whispered deals, and split-second decisions. Calvin “Skipper” Dale is the kind of man who leads with quiet grit and moves faster than the law can write him up. Jason “Jump” Taylor turns any escape into an art form—vaulting rivers, fences, and doubt in a single bound. And Megan “Hop” Lamont? She’s charm in denim cutoffs, with a past more complicated than a CB radio full of static. They don’t just run moonshine. They outrun betrayal, corruption, and a deep-state conspiracy that ...

Waiting to enter a movie theater to see "Dr. No," the first James Bond movie, Simon sees a cute Black girl standing in a separate line that leads to the balcony, the "colored" section. A friend tells him, "You're in the South. Stick with your own kind.” Simon doesn't. It's the steamy summer of 1963. Simon Klein has moved with his family, Jews from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Pickettville, Alabama, where his father has taken a job at a nearby Army base. He is as mystified of the South as Southerners are of a Jew While gathering information for a story he is writing for his school paper, Simon ...

Dan has joined the backpacker trail in far South East Asia. He wants nothing but peace, and to relax. But trouble finds him soon enough. Kimberly Smith is a CIA agent. She is flown into Myanmar to help locate another CIA agent, missing in action. When Dan saves Kim from an ambush, their fates become entwined. Ignoring the instant spark between them, Dan leaves her alone. But when Kim is attacked and abducted before his eyes, he defends her with all his might. They escape, but they are now pawns in a CIA operation that could bring the world's two superpowers to a global conflict.

When rookie Agent Michaela Sanchez receives a tip from her sister that someone has gone missing in the Tucson desert, she thinks she’s searching for a lost immigrant. What she finds is the murdered defendant of a high-profile local trial. Lacy was a humanitarian aid worker, on trial for harboring felons after she sheltered illegal border crossers. When a conflict erupts with a local vigilante group, her murder ignites a political firestorm. Concerned about her sister’s involvement and taking heat at home from her activist daughter, Michaela takes it upon herself to investigate.

After elementary school teacher Nichole Miller discovers the woman's body, she makes two phone calls: first to the police, who call Beverly's death a slip and fall, and second to her best friend, journalist Jenny Martin. Jenny is attempting to revive her flailing marriage and her all-but-DOA career, and she knows foul play when she sees it. The two women enlist the help of Beverly’s daughter-in-law, Robin, who’s eager to expose the truth.

Flooded by memories, poisoned by Agent Orange, Dan Lambert kills a man in a moment of fear and fury - and changes his life forever. Pursued by police and bounty hunters, Dan flees south toward the Louisiana bayous. In the swamplands he meets Arden Halliday, a young woman who bears the vivid burdens of her own past, and who is searching for a legendary faith healer called the Bright Girl. Looking for simple kindness in a world that rarely shows it, bound by a loyalty stronger than love, Dan and Arden set off on a journey of relentless suspense and impassioned discovery....

From the Editor: Night in London is a feast of non-stop action. It moves with the velocity of a breaking wave. And it gains a special impact from the fact that it rings of authenticity. When Casey Christie describes the viciousness and extreme brutality of a criminal gang, he is writing from raw experience. Christie was at the cutting edge of the police drive against criminals in Johannesburg. And we meet again with the colourful crew he assembled in his first novel set in South Africa—the fearsome Black Bastards, so called because they have special police dispensation to wear all-black ...

Robin Drexel is a forty-year veteran of law enforcement on the brink of retirement. Before that can happen, she has one last case that needs to be solved.The case leads her to Land’s End, where she enlists the help of former partner, Sheriff Andy Patrick. She also reunites with Samantha, Andy’s wife, and Mike Taylor, another cop. They were all a part of the horrifying event from 1978 that changed their lives. Unfortunately, Robin’s cold case gets sidelined when a young girl is kidnapped and her family members are murdered. Was it the father or someone else? No one on Land's End was ...

Book #6 of the bestselling John Whicher novels. Midnight in the Chinati Mountains, gunfire flashes out at a remote desert ranch. Deputy US Marshal John Whicher picks up the emergency call to respond. Searching the hills there’s no trace of a gunman. But something more than darkness waits out in the black…

Hank Weinberg is a modern day Atticus Finch, recently retired as a defense attorney in Mobile, Alabama, and a Holocaust survivor, who fled the Nazis as a young child. With his daughter in rehab, he's now taking care of his special needs grandson. Mourning his dead wife, spending mornings fishing on the pier with other octogenarians, he passes the rest of his days watching over his sweet grandson with the help of Lupita, a young Honduran babysitter.

Samantha Patrick's cousin Sarah has lived with an abusive husband for thirty years. After a brutal attack she finally finds the courage to leave. Sarah goes to Land's End looking for safety and comfort with her family on this small, idyllic island but the horror is not over yet. Someone is stalking Sarah. Is it the abusive husband or someone else? Will Land's End be the place where Sarah finds new life, or it will be where it ends?

When Atlanta homicide detectives are called in to investigate the murder of a nineteen-year-old girl found dumped in historic Oakland Cemetery, they immediately begin working the case. But with no leads to follow, and their case log growing larger by the day, the murder quickly grows cold. Desperate to keep the investigation of her deceased sister going, Ginger Baines hires two novice sleuths to solve the case. Widowed, well into their seventies are new to the world of private investigating, Clara Samples and Iris Hadley aren’t your average private eyes. When a second body is found in a ...

Sunset Jones has just killed her husband. Never mind that he was raping her. Pete Jones was constable of a small sawmill settlement called Camp Rapture where no woman refuses her husband. So everyone is angrily surprised when Sunset becomes the new constable and investigates murders in which her late husband might be implicated. Yet, no one is more surprised than Sunset when the murders lead her, not only to the conclusion of the case, but to a well of inner strength she never knew she had.

When one of his colleagues witnesses a robbery in which one of the participants, a child, bears a striking resemblance to a certain Bow Street Runner, John Pickett realizes he has a young half-brother who has been “apprenticed” to a criminal gang. The brutal murder of the pursuing constable makes the crime far more serious than a simple robbery would be - and 10-year-old Kit is linked to the crime by the toy soldier he dropped while fleeing the scene.

She’d known the boy he was and it had never been a secret that she loved him with all her heart...then walked away...her dreams and hopes lost. Years later her life depends on the man he’s become. Dark secrets and twisted truths...hidden clues and unexpected danger...a lost island of dreams and mystery... There was only time to grab her purse and the small keepsake box she couldn’t leave behind. She had no choice but to trust a family friend with his own share of secrets to keep them safe from a mysterious and threatening danger. But was her heart safe from him...was it ever? Addie ...

Hugo Reddick sets out in search of an old hookup. Instead, he finds the woman’s bubbly sister raising what may or may not be his daughter. While trying to figure out how to navigate this potential bombshell, Hugo plans to stay as far away from Everly as possible. But the more he turns the perky woman down, the harder she pursues him, until he can’t resist her for even a second longer.

New Orleans: live music, endless drinks, brightly coloured attractions, the perfect place for a party. The bachelorette begins on a Friday night; all six women are excited for a chance to escape their everyday lives. But then friendly rivalries turn vicious, and a game of truth or dare turns deadly. By the end of the weekend one of them will be dead.

All Mel and Dana wanted was a weekend break... Mel and Dana take a long weekend break with the family on a Lake Erie island, or so they planned. Things just never seem to work out as they plan because crime follows them everywhere. Will they ever get a break? Probably not, but maybe Mel will find the career spark that's been missing for a while. This is a short story featuring Mel and Dana that takes place sometime after Book 12 of the Morelville Mysteries series. You don't need to have read the series to enjoy this story, but it will certainly help you understand Mel and her motivations. ...