Southern Crime Fiction

Patricia Cornwell has a sixth sense about the men and women in blue. In Hornet's Nest, her page-turning novel about crime and police in Charlotte, North Carolina, Cornwell moved behind the badges of these real-life heroes to uncover flesh-and-blood characters who strode through her pages to reveal vulnerable, passionate, brave, sometimes doubting, always fascinating figures.

Australian and New Zealand crime and thriller writing is booming globally. Neighbours that are siblings in spirit, vastly different in landscape, antipodean authors offer readers and listeners a blend of exotic and familiar, seasoned by distinctive senses of place, outlook, and humour, and roots that trace to the earliest days of our genre. Southern Cross Crime is the first comprehensive guide to modern Australian and New Zealand crime writing.

On a beautiful October day in the San Fernando Valley, teenager Missy Avila was lured into the woods, beaten, tortured, and drowned. Missy's best friend, Karen Severson, publicly vowed to find the killer and even moved in with Missy's family to help. Three years later, a surprise witness exposed the murderers as Missy's two best friends—one of whom was Karen. New York Times bestselling author Karen Kingsbury delivers a story full of twists, turns, betrayals, and confessions.

From award-winning narrator Will Damron, Southern Dons is a thrilling saga perfect for fans of The Godfather and Succession. Thirty-five-year-old Ivy Armistead has just been named the next CEO of Atlantic Southern, the powerful Virginia shipping conglomerate that her family has controlled for...

There is a killing spree in the small town of Avery, Texas. A shroud of fear and suspicion falls over everyone in town. Shortly after it begins, an intern at the local paper finds a mysterious letter.

Secrets of Southern Girls is an evocative Southern Gothic mystery, blending suspense, memory, and redemption into a spellbinding story—perfect for fans of Diane Chamberlain, Ellen Marie Wiseman, and atmospheric women’s fiction. Some secrets haunt you for a lifetime. Some are your only chance...

A 60-year-old cold case and a big city sheriff seeking redemption—it’s time for the dead to rise. A thwarted youthful romance blends with the blues and Mama Cheche’s mojo. Controversy ensues when a blues singer groom goes missing in Cleveland, Mississippi. All becomes a tangled web. Paula and Mary have written this redemptive tale in such a way that transports you to the Delta. You can feel the gentle breeze coming across the Sunflower River and hear the mellowed notes jumping off the blues man’s guitar.

On one Indian summer Friday night, things happen that change the course of hundreds of lives. In Winston-Salem, a tobacco and mill town in central North Carolina, people like to relax as the weekend comes nigh, and depending on whether they sit above or below the salt, they'll do so in different ways. Both the well-to-do and the less-thans are wizened practitioners of the art of steam blowing, all in the name of fun and respite. And in doing so, violence and deceit and sadness mingle with money and alcohol to create a dangerous, crackling third rail of despair.

Cantankerous Cat Touchette and his friend and employee, Tee Man, stumble upon Cat’s murdered neighbor, Ovey LaCourier. Cat later learns that the old man’s son, Ari, is in town and meets with him. Ari, an Army sniper, is near retirement eligibility, and in the process of investigating his father’s murder with Cat, his involvement with a childhood friend’s sister, and a general affinity for his new friends, gives retirement serious consideration. Meanwhile, once again, Cat cannot keep himself from landing in the middle of someone’s problem.