Southern Fiction Mystery

When Max and the gang are hired by an art forging ghost to find a lost painting, Max thinks it'll be easy money. But villains old and new come out, and the race is on for the painting and the secrets it contains. A race that will lead Max into a mess of magic spells, haunted houses, ancient curses, and even Blackbeard the Pirate.

Ethan Wate has spent most of his life longing to escape the stiflingly small Southern town of Gatlin. He never thought he would meet the girl of his dreams, Lena Duchannes, who unveiled a secretive, powerful, and cursed side of Gatlin, hidden in plain sight. And he never could have expected that he would be forced to leave behind everyone and everything he cares about. So when Ethan awakes after the chilling events of the Eighteenth Moon, he has only one goal: to find a way to return to Lena and the ones he loves.

The award-winning and critically-acclaimed master of horror returns with a pair of chilling tales - both never-before-published in print or audio - that examine the violence and depravity of the human condition. Bringing together his acclaimed novella The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky and an all-new short novel My Heart Struck Sorrow, John Hornor Jacobs turns his fertile imagination to the evil that breeds within the human soul.

Paranormal investigator Wyatt Thomas treks into the dangerous Honey Island Swamp in search of a forbidden convent where all the sisters are vampires When French Quarter detective Wyatt Thomas is awakened from a dark dream by his cat Kisses, he witnesses an eerie funeral procession from the balcony of his Chartres Street apartment. Riding in the limousine ahead of a hearse is his former lover, Desire Vallee - the first time he’s seen her since she became a nun and entered a convent. Desire’s skin is ashen, her once dark hair now ghostly white. He's left with a single clue. Is Desire in ...

"America's best novelist" ( The Denver Post), two-time Edgar Award winner James Lee Burke is renowned for his lush, suspense-charged portrayals of the Deep South – the people, the crime, the hope and despair infused in the bayou landscape. This stunning anthology takes us back to where Burke's heart and soul beat -- the steamy, seamy Gulf Coast -- in complex and fascinating tales that crackle with violence and menace, meshing his flair for gripping storytelling with his urbane writing style.

A story of family, friends, and strangers who are drawn together by forces over which they have no control.The small town of Clare Harbor has always been home for Sara Merryn even though in recent years her visits have been few and far between because of her busy schedule. Now she’s returning for another reason. There is a storm coming and she has to somehow convince her grandparents to leave their home just outside the small southern city of Clare Harbor. That seemingly simple task is made more difficult by her grandmother’s disabling fears. Sara is determined that between the two of ...

It’s 1999 in Southeast Texas and the Evans women, owners of the only funeral parlor in town, are keeping steady with…normal business. The dead die, you bury them. End of story. That’s how Ducey Evans has done it for the last eighty years, and her progeny—Lenore the experimenter and Grace, Lenore’s soft-hearted daughter, have run Evans Funeral Parlor for the last fifteen years without drama. Ever since That Godawful Mess that left two bodies in the ground and Grace raising her infant daughter Luna, alone.

Max thought he had enough trouble dealing with one witch in Winston-Salem. But a new case brings to light an entire coven of witches - angry, cursed, dead witches. Lucky for Max he has the aid of his partner, the ghost of 1940s detective Marshall Drummond, and his sharp-witted wife, Sandra. Together, they'll face enemies at every turn, and things only get worse when the mysterious Hull family and the FBI start poking into Max's life. He'll need all his team can give with a case that involves the theft of a cursed bell, dark magic, spirit possession, and ghastly murders.

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.

The next in the hot, new series featuring Max Holt and Jamie Swift, filled with even more fast-paced action, crazy characters, steamy sex, suspense, and nonstop hilarity. This time Beaumont, South Carolina, is going to hell in a handbasket. It all starts when Jamie decides to increase revenues for her newspaper by starting a personal ads section. Suddenly, the town gets "all sexed up." A trashy lingerie shop opens. The bakery starts making pornographic pastries. Everyone gets the idea that sex sells.

These shivery tales were collected from the oral tradition, from people all over the Southwest, and represent the rich cultural diversity of the region, from the Ozarks to the Rio Grande, California to the Big Thicket.

Max’s mother has been suffering from the debilitating effects of multiple sclerosis for several years now. Unable to find relief, she turns to the world of witches for an answer. In particular, a Granny Witch from the Appalachians.

Charli Goodwin's future seemed to be nothing but smooth sailing...until the last spell she cast changed the course of everything! Now, it's not only her life but the lives of others she cares deeply for that are tied up in her fate. Not even help from the creepy and mysterious soothsayers, the Weird Sisters, can give her a clue how to get out of the mess she's in. If Charli can't figure out a way to fix what she's done and get things back on track, according to the premonitions from the sisters, the future for herself and all of Honeysuckle Hollow is at stake.

When the Porter Agency takes on a case involving hex bags, magic stones, and a tragic train crash from the 1890s, the last thing Max Porter expects is to face changes in his family, too. But the Sandwich Boys are growing older and Max’s mother is getting sicker. While he attempts to juggle the needs of his loved ones with stopping an amateur witch from harming innocent people, he will have to reconcile these new realities against what he had expected his life to be.

Everyone thinks fourteen-year-old Violet is a murderer. After a summer-night swim with her best friend, Ainsley, Violet is found confused, wandering in the forest - and Ainsley’s never seen again. But without a body, murder charges won’t stick, so Violet is sent away. After more than a decade in a psychiatric ward, Violet returns to her broken-down hometown of Normal, Alabama, to claim her dead mother’s inheritance and help her overworked sister care for their unstable, alcoholic father.

In Miss Julia Hits the Road, she is becoming increasingly concerned about her gentleman friend, Sam, who has suddenly started wearing cowboy boots, sending her flowers, and writing bad poetry. And when he shows up on a Harley-Davidson Road King and asks her to hop on, she's convinced he's lost his mind. Meanwhile, her invaluable housekeeper, Lillian, has been evicted from her home by her greedy landlord. Deciding that Lillian's need is greater than her own fear (not to mention loss of dignity), Miss Julia takes Sam up on his offer and sets off on a motorcycle Poker Run.

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.

Ever since her father was killed when she was just a child, Miranda Crabtree has kept her head down and her eyes up, ferrying contraband for a mad preacher and his declining band of followers to make ends meet and to protect an old witch and a secret child from harm. But dark forces are at work in the bayou, both human and supernatural, conspiring to disrupt the rhythms of Miranda’s peculiar and precarious life.

In the fall of 1863, the Union army is in control of the Mississippi river. Much of Louisiana, including New Orleans and Baton Rouge, is occupied. The Confederate army is in disarray, corrupt structures are falling apart, and enslaved men and women are beginning to glimpse freedom. When Hannah Laveau, a formerly enslaved woman working on the Lufkin plantation, is accused of murder, she goes on the run with Florence Milton, an abolitionist schoolteacher, dodging the local constable and the slavecatchers that prowl the bayous.

Big-city defense lawyer Dean Lincoln left his picturesque hometown of Beaufort years ago. But now, the lure of small-town life and a family matter have drawn him back. Amidst the sultry heat and the Spanish moss, and beneath the facade of Southern small-town charm, Lincoln begins work again and is immediately thrown into two cases: a rich kid charged with murder and a poor kid accused of arson. Both swear they are innocent. Both feel the system is trying to crush them. And in this corner of the South, guilt is rarely decided in the courtroom…