Southern Crime Fiction

They're out there, under the salt - the bodies of German seamen who used to lie in wait at the mouth of the Mississippi for unescorted American tankers sailing from the oil refineries of Baton Rouge out into the Gulf of Mexico. As a child, Dave Robicheaux had been haunted by the sailors' images. Years later, Robicheaux, a detective with the New Iberia sheriff's office, finds himself and his family at serious risk, stalked for his knowledge of a watery burial ground by a mysterious man named Will Buchalter - a man who believes that the Holocaust was one big hoax.

Private Investigator James Benoit Heatley, "Heat" to those few he calls friends, has a reputation for being a bit rough around the edges. Heat's reputation for doing what he believes is just is well deserved, even if his brand of justice happens to be illegal. His reputation for not taking women as clients is equally well deserved. Some say there is a woman to blame and they would be right to do so. It is with great reluctance that Heat takes the case of a wife desperate to find her kidnapped husband, a case that forces Heat to confront his bitter past. Murder, kidnapping, and broken hearts...

No one has seen Antoine since he left to play European basketball a decade ago. It's disconcerting when he shows up claiming he needs to protect me from the "gray ones." I think he's a card short of a full deck. Lee and I are moving to Baltimore next month. I haven't found the right time to tell Mama and Daddy the exciting news. No, there's no ring yet. Still, I'm sure Lee has just been too busy to propose. Right? I need to clear out my caseload before leaving town. My clients are not being helpful. I'm running all over North Alabama searching for my client's scorned wife to stop her from ...

A demented killer believes he’s doing God’s work — and a teenage boy with dreams of getting his license becomes his next target. Elliot Cross doesn't just hate ambitious dreaming — he sees it as sin. In his twisted mind, anyone reaching for more is disobeying the First Commandment: Thou shalt have no other gods before me. When he volunteers to give Timmy, his daughter’s fatherless classmate, a driving lesson, it’s not a gift — it’s a trap. And the road ahead leads nowhere safe. The Driving Lesson is a short story of religious delusion, power, and cruelty — a standalone ...

Even in the chill of February, no place touches Harper McClain's heart like Savannah. She should be walking beneath the historic city's towering oaks, surrounded by graceful mansions. Instead, she's hiding miles away on Tybee Island after a mysterious voice on the phone warned her that someone wanted her dead. The call was too specific to ignore. The caller knew everything about her. But that was months ago, and she's getting tired of being scared.

Alexandra Haywood and her sister Neely have always loved Whistledown, the family's Shelby County horse farm. After their billionaire father's sudden and tragic death, Alex returns to find the family fortune in shambles, and Whistledown has to go. But Joe Welch, the sexy farm manager, refuses to cooperate. Sparks of rage give way to a fiery attraction when Joe and Alex meet head-on. But just as a volatile passion flares between them, the discovery of a shocking murder with ties to the past rocks the county.

When you’ve got no job and you’ve just made a big change in your life with a decision to leave the police force when a national tennis pro seeks you out to help her with a stalker, what do you do? You take the case. Too bad you’re unprepared to do any kind of investigative or detective work that involves something like what you used to do as a cop, but is nothing like being a private dick. I make a lot of mistakes, and being in a new relationship too, I keep falling back into that by default. Lots of changes all at once in my life, but I’ll bring this case to a close one way or ...

A website offering underage girls. A missing informant. When a body turns up, Sgt. Cory Marin, head of homicide and five months pregnant, is thrust into an investigation of the shady world of strip clubs and sex for sale. Cory Marin turns up multiple suspects: the girl’s ‘manager’ and two prominent men she was blackmailing. As the case heats up, the discovery of a leak casts suspicion on the law enforcement agencies involved. As she investigates, Cory must juggle pressure from the DA not to ‘ruffle feathers’ with pressure from the FBI to keep her investigation quiet while the FBI ...

THE RYO LODGE is an outrageous comedy/drama that takes place in 1969 in the sleepy, yet strange town of Cowchip Alabama. It is the story of a criminal with a dream, driven from his lair in Tennessee, who winds up in old Cowchip town. This character driven story of one criminal's desire to rule them all is so rich in characters and description that you'll wonder if Cowchip is real...and you wouldn't be the first. The hero, Norm, (No relation to the author) who himself is a Yankee, comes to Cowchip in the dead of the night and sets about to build the greatest crime organization the world has ...

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.

One last chance. Almost fired for insubordination, Detectives Benny Griessel and Vaughn Cupido find themselves demoted, exiled from the elite Hawks unit and dispatched to the leafy streets of Stellenbosch. Working a missing persons report on student Callie de Bruin is not the level of work they are used to, but it's all they get. And soon, it takes a dangerous, deeply disturbing turn.

From the courtroom to the bedrooms in Atlanta, one fateful day in October finds the lives of lawyers, cops, and criminals intersecting in ways unforeseen. Some of those lives will be cut violently short. Intersection of Lies, the latest fast-paced thriller from author Tonya Sharp Hyche, weaves a complex web of greed, corruption, and romance that is certain to enthrall anyone who likes their murder mysteries to keep them guessing until the final pages through brilliant twists, love triangles, and the sharpest minds in one southern city. At age twenty-nine, the gorgeous, blonde city ...

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.

Federal Probation Officer Earl Kade suffers a devastating loss at the hands of a meth addict trying to score a few dollars in a holdup. A rage that won’t be denied builds inside him. He’s spent his career on the side of the law, doing his best to steer criminal offenders along straight paths, but he sets that aside to embark on a secret one-man crusade against those who destroy countless thousands of lives by pushing deadly drugs, and soon finds himself in too deep to back out alive.

Elizabeth had always believed there was nothing more magical than the precious gift of love...even now, in the heart of danger, she still believed it...she always would. After telling the story of Simon's magical cowboy ranch for more years than she cared to count, Elizabeth Fountaine wondered if there might be more to the fanciful fairy-tale than being an elaborate bedtime story to tell children. More than ever before, she very much needed for even just a small piece of the fairy-tale to be real. If it was, Simon's magical cowboy ranch could be the answer to their dilemma... This women's ...

Ranna Abramson wants to disappear. But she knows she can’t keep running when a former enemy tracks her down in Mumbai with dire news: her onetime lover, journalist Alex Derksen, has disappeared back home in South Africa. Torn between her desire for him and fear of a homecoming, Ranna knows she’s the only one who can find him. But only two things in South Africa would welcome her - the inside of a cell or the bottom of a grave. There, to the police she’s the prime suspect of three murders. To the press she’s the serial killer Black Widow.

Family meant everything to Ayden Stratton. It always had even when he didn’t always allow it to show. Because of that, he understood the fury in Tobias Blaise’s eyes when they learned that his sister had been dragged out the backdoor of her restaurant despite every effort to stop her from being kidnapped. Fury didn’t begin to describe what he saw in his brother’s face. Cassidy Blaise might be Tobias’s sister, but she was Benjamin’s entire world. Tobias Blaise never expected to find any woman he wanted to spend his life with, let alone one who looked at him the way Ellis did, ...

Tracking and capturing bank robbers, murderers, and smugglers is just a way of life for the Bayou Banditos. Whatever the terrain, they like hunting where no one else will even when their prey shoots back. Law enforcement despises them but respects their considerable talents. So the Banditos aren’t exactly surprised when the FBI comes looking for help dealing with a gun-smuggling motorcycle gang crossing the Mexican border into the United States. Little do they know that hell's about to break loose. The Bayou Bandits are Buck and his sons Bubba, JRod, and Portagee. Each one has their ...

Lucas Bennett hasn’t been able to catch a break lately. At the top of his growing list of disasters is the ongoing feud with Jake, his former best friend. It hasn’t helped that the two are also prospects competing against each other for the single spot with the Savage Kings MC. Lucas thought his luck was finally changing after he made the courageous rescue of a beautiful woman from two huge guards and the evil man holding her hostage. But as it turns out, he saved the wrong woman. The girl he helped escape just so happens to be the younger sister of the club’s current enemy.

In this first installment of the Miami Crime Trilogy, Don Donovan spins a sprawling noir tale of three hardened individuals whose lives are woven together in a web of money, betrayal, and murder.