Showing titles in Southern

Forty-something widow Jessie Tucker is beloved throughout Lexington, Alabama, for her kind heart and endless generosity. But she feels it's past time she rewarded herself—especially when upstanding Hubert Wiggins tragically loses his wife and son. Making herself indispensable, yet discouraged by Hubert’s lack of romantic interest, Jessie cooks up a deception she knows will make pious Hubert do right by her....

Run, Rose, Run is a novel glittering with danger and desire—a story that only America’s #1 beloved entertainer and its #1 bestselling author could have created.

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.

In a small Southern town where loyalty to family and to "your people" carries the weight of a sacred oath, defying those unspoken rules can be a deadly proposition. After 15 years of growing up in the Ozark hills with his widowed mother, high-school freshman Boady Sanden is beyond ready to move on. He dreams of glass towers and cityscapes, driven by his desire to be anywhere other than Jessup, Missouri. The new kid at St. Ignatius High School, if he isn't being pushed around, he is being completely ignored.

Fifteen years after the events of the Natchez Burning trilogy, Penn Cage is alone. Nearly all his loved ones are dead, his old allies gone, and he carries a mortal secret that separates him from the world. But Penn’s exile comes to an end when a brawl at a Mississippi rap festival triggers a bloody mass shooting—one that nearly takes the life of his daughter Annie.

A novel written by Ellie’s first love, Jack Bennett, tells the story of a young man and woman who meet at the water’s edge and fall madly in love, only to have their romance cut short by forces beyond their control. Ellie quickly realizes this is no ordinary story; it’s their story. Captivated by Jack’s words, she immerses herself in the pages, reliving the adventures they shared that magical summer. To her astonishment, hidden among the tales of star-gazing and stolen kisses is a detail that has her questioning everything.

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.

Fannie Flagg once said that what the world needs now is a good laugh. And that is what she gives us in these thirty warmhearted, often hilarious, always surprising stories about Americans finding clever ways of dealing with the curveballs life throws at us. We meet Velma from Kansas, a loving great-grandmother who struggles to bridge the generational divide with her great-grandchild in California. Why, for instance, does her great-grandchild sign letters to Velma with “(they/them)”?

Escape to the South Carolina Lowcountry, where family bonds and hidden secrets run deep. In this gripping tale of self-discovery, Victoria Benton Frank introduces us to Maggie, struggling to find her place in the world when she receives a phone call bringing her back to her hometown of Sullivan's Island.

She’s 43 years old…and starting over from scratch. How did this happen? She had it all together. A stable marriage of two decades. Two grown daughters. And now she and her husband, empty nesters, were moving to a beach house. Until he showed up late one night and tore their marriage apart. A secret life. A different woman. Another family. Left alone, she has to begin again. And then her estranged sister and mother get thrown into the mix. When she buys a house on a small South Carolina island, will she learn what life is really about?

Chef extraordinaire Gina Foxton doesn't expect anything to be handed to her on a platter. After years of hard work, the former runner-up Miss Teen Vidalia Onion is now the host of her own local Georgia public television show called Fresh Start, and she's dating the show's producer. But when her show gets canceled - and she catches her boyfriend in flagrante delicto with the boss' wife - Gina realizes that she's meant for bigger and better things. Namely, a gig on national television.

After a dog belonging to local pet activist Tilly Lawson is snatched right out of her backyard in Sunflower County, MS, Sarah Booth and the Delaney Detective Agency are up to their ears in concerned pet owners. Could Tilly's work liberating abused animals have come back to bite her, or was this a random act of dognapping?

The one constant in Jules’ life is family—the plentiful Martin clan. Domestic terrorism brought the Martins together under one roof to endure food scarcity, punishing Gulf Coast heat, no electricity, and no indoor plumbing. One outhouse for twelve people is no way to live, but at least they are safe. For now. With every setback and stolen dignity, Jules questions whether she wants to survive at all.

In 1803, the Ische family made a difficult decision. Members of three generations left their homeland in Canton Bern in Swiss/Germany and emigrated to America. It was a life-altering decision. They carried everything they owned in two sacks. Follow this family of nine, ranging in age from 2 to 69, as they travel down the Rhine River aboard a Dutch cutter; depart Amsterdam as ‘Redemptioners’ aboard the brig Commerce; trek on foot down the Great Wagon road from Philadelphia through Lancaster, Pennsylvania and Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley to the Carolinas and Georgia; to finally cross ...

James and Millie, with their small family, are delighted to join Millie's parents on their recently purchased sorghum farm. The property looks like paradise but the harmony of the multi-generational family shatters when tempers flare. As disputes escalate, a tragedy leaves them with a legacy of guilt and unanswered questions.

Patricia Campbell’s life has never felt smaller. Her husband is a workaholic, her teenage kids have their own lives, her senile mother-in-law needs constant care, and she’s always a step behind on her endless to-do list. The only thing keeping her sane is her book club, a close-knit group of Charleston women united by their love of true crime. At these meetings they’re as likely to talk about the Manson family as they are about their own families.

Biographer Ellie Connor is in Gideon, Texas, to research blues singer Mabel Beauvais who, on the verge of fame, mysteriously disappeared more than forty years ago. Gideon holds another mystery for Ellie. It’s the truth about her parents—a restless mother who died young and a father she never knew. They are an unsettled piece of Ellie’s own past. Somewhere in this town is the answer to both of her quests.

Isaac is at a crossroads in his young life. Growing up in Missouri, the son of a caustic, hard-driving father, he was conditioned to suppress his artistic pursuits and physical desires, notions that didn’t align with a traditional view of masculinity. But now, in late ’80s Chicago, Isaac has finally carved out a life of his own. He is sensitive and tenderhearted and has built up the courage to seek out a community. Yet just as he begins to embrace who he is, two social catalysts—the AIDS crisis and Rodney King’s attack—collectively extinguish his hard-earned joy.

Since childhood, identical twins Leona and Fiona Dunbar have been getting in—and out—of trouble by pretending to be each other. Yet underneath, they couldn’t be more different. Outspoken Leona lives to break rules, have a good time, and scandalize their respectable hometown of Lexington. Fiona is a seemingly demure churchgoing girl who is the apple of her domineering, widowed mother Mavis’s eye. But together, the twins have fooled teachers, boyfriends, bosses, racist police—and most importantly, straitlaced Mavis.

In Gods of Howl Mountain, award-winning author Taylor Brown explores a world of folk healers, whiskey-runners, and dark family secrets in the high country of 1950s North Carolina. Bootlegger Rory Docherty has returned home to the fabled mountain of his childhood - a misty wilderness that holds its secrets close and keeps the outside world at gunpoint. Slowed by a wooden leg and haunted by memories of the Korean War, Rory runs bootleg whiskey for a powerful mountain clan in a retro-fitted 1940 Ford coupe.