Southern Humor Women

A small town scandal is afoot in Rhinestone! Can Mavis sort out her own drama before the past comes back to haunt her? Can Reverend Simmons overcome his own demons to lead his new flock? Can Mona keep her family’s diner afloat? And the biggest question of them all: Why is Opal nekkid?

A body in the lake. A castle on the ridge. And a town where the new police chief showed up in the mayor’s backyard… with amnesia… riding a stolen horse. Welcome to Camelot, West Virginia—a town where the legends are old, the secrets run deep, and nothing ever goes quite the way it should. Mayor Dreama Avalon just wants to save her hometown. Once a coal-fueled jewel of the Appalachian hills, Camelot is now clinging to its crumbling castle, a run-down main street, and a tourist plan that’s mostly fairy dust and desperation. Dreama’s ready to rebuild. But when a former beauty queen...

Romaine Wilder, big-city medical examiner with a small-town past, has been downsized and evicted. With few other options, she’s forced to return to her hometown of Roble in East Texas, leaving behind the man she’s dating and the life she’s worked hard to build. Suzanne Babet Derbinay, Romaine’s Auntie Zanne and proprietor of the Ball Funeral Home, has long since traded her French Creole upbringing for Big Texas attitude. She’s a member in a number of ladies’ auxiliaries and clubs, including being in charge of the Tri-County Annual Crawfish Boil and Music Festival. Hanging on to ...

From the author of Lovejoy and Blessed comes a series about church ladies of the South. After reading this first novel in the series, fans of Southern fiction write, "I want to live next door to Mildred Budge." A retired school teacher, Mildred Budge just wants to live a quiet life in her hometown of Cloverdale. But retirement does not mean she can say no to a friend--not a friend in trouble. Mildred Budge knows how. A disciplined woman, Mildred can breathe the word "no" to a second cup of ice cream. Can resist drinking too much champagne. But when it comes right down to a friend needing a ...

Three sassy retirees. One dead developer. Zero patience for nonsense. Welcome to Conch Key, where the sun is hot, the gossip is hotter, and the local beach just coughed up a corpse in Gucci loafers. Daisy Picklesworth wanted nothing more than a quiet morning, a strong cup of tea, and to finish her mystery novel on the porch of The Barnacle. What she got instead was a bloated real estate mogul dead in the surf, a jellyfish charm that doesn’t belong, and the strong suspicion that someone in their sleepy seaside town just committed the most stylish murder Florida’s ever seen. With her ...

Her next-door neighbor has predicted that Annabelle is destined to live her life as an old maid. Not true, Annabelle declares after hearing this from her neighbor’s son. She’s only forty-two and is just beginning a new life after caring for her invalid mother for years. Yearning for a social life and determined to prove her neighbor wrong, she signs up for a ballroom dancing class where she meets not one, but two eligible bachelors, both vying for her attention. Luke is the new interim CEO at the local hospital, and Jake is a country music star hiding out in Park Place from the ...

"A cottage by the sea is the perfect summer vacation spot for bonding and healing old and new wounds for divorced romance writer, Cassandra Phillips and her sister Eleanor. Gentle breezes and fresh salt air lull them into thinking it’s going to be a quiet relaxing summer, but when a mesmerizing, blue-eyed Carl McGee moves into the cottage next door, Cassie’s resolve to never fall for a man again begins to dissolve. When rumors of a drug-smuggling ring along the Carolina coastline surface, there are warning bells that something’s not quite right in paradise and Cassie begins to ...

From the bestselling author of Eat Cake. Be Brave, a love letter to the strong, opinionated Southern women who raised her and surround us all. Lucy and Ethel. Laverne and Shirley. Dorothy, Sophia, Blanche, and Rose. Chicken-Fried Women is a celebration of them: the women who raised us, taught us...

The unspooling of Toni Lee Wells' Tiffany and Wild Turkey lifestyle begins with a trip to the Luckett County Jail drunk tank. An earlier wrist injury sidelined her pro tennis career, and now she's trading her tennis whites for wild nights roaming the streets of Rose Hill, Georgia. Her wealthy family finally gets fed up with Toni Lee's shenanigans. They cut off her monthly allowance but also make her a sweetheart deal: Get a job, keep it for a year, and you'll receive an early inheritance.

What do church ladies really think? Composed and often so quiet as to be thought invisible, church ladies have secret powers to change the world. What are those special powers? They love well. They give well. They can often cook! And they play an essential role in a great rescue operation for mankind. For although they appear to have Ninja warrior strengths (and can be invisible!), they are helpers to the only Superhero who ever really saved the world and mankind. They know His name and will tell you. And they can show you what it's like to brought to life and empowered to love instead of ...

LOVE HUNTIN’ AND OTHER CRAZY HILLBILLY STORIES Volume 4 of MUSING APPALACHIA Hillbillies are peculiar critters, found only in the Appalachian Mountains…where real life often seems stranger than fiction. These stories weave mountain customs and folklore into the lives of whimsical characters who were mostly sane (give or take a little). I write about the more eccentric, humorous, and fun-loving folks I’ve run across…sprinkled with a few embellishments here and there. . The book features forty-two uproariously funny tales: The Jay Bird Boys Talk Trash The Snuggle Inn Half-Star Hotel ...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “This book is the inspirational story that we all need. No one makes me laugh harder than Leanne Morgan!”—Reese Witherspoon Look for Leanne Morgan’s new standup special, Unspeakable Things, and her hit sitcom, Leanne, both available on Netflix. The beloved...

“Entertaining. . . . If you are up for a big helping of humor and heartbreak, insanity and intrigue, read Irish Eyes.” —Orange Country Register The eighth outing in the heartwarming and hilarious mystery series from New York Times bestselling author Mary Kay Andrews featuring former cop...

When Miss Julia burst on the scene in her debut, Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind, this proper lady of a certain age found her orderly world turned upside down when Hazel Marie Puckett appeared with her nine-year-old son, Little Lloyd, who looked disturbingly similar to Miss Julia's late husband. Now, in Miss Julia Takes Over, with her sharp tongue and iron backbone intact, Miss Julia must tackle another disruption when Hazel Marie doesn't return from a dinner date. Miss Julia hires J. D. Pickens to investigate, despite her reservations about his taste for beer and women.

Mimi Clark was never going to win the most popular student award. The prolific tattletale seemed to cruise through university life, seeking out rule-breakers so she could bring their sins to the dean’s attention. She probably never thought she’d be murdered for her favorite pastime. Detective Casey certainly didn’t think her daughter, Audrey, would become the prime suspect.

When the Southern Bells brought the telephone to rural North Carolina, it looked like a "big black daffodil". What the telephone company had not counted on in conceiving its eight-party line service was a pair of "past-middle-age, unmarried sisters", the chatty Misses Lucy and Lena Leatherwood. Once the Leatherwood sisters were connected by the Southern Bells, nobody else on that line had a chance!

Not only do Southerners talk slowly, but sometimes the whole language is hard to understand. No one realizes that more than Memphis belle Leelee Satterfield. Watching her tackle life and love in Vermont was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to antics, charades, mischief, and romance. Now that she’s back in Memphis, and starting a new relationship with Peter, the Yankee chef from her New England inn, you’d think she’d sit back and enjoy her newly crafted life back home in Dixie. But that just wouldn’t be as much fun.

Always a bride's maid--never a bride. That's part of the story of the life of Mildred Budge in this third novel in the series. But there is more to know about this Sunday School teacher who has been recruited to be a maid of honor for her good friend's wedding. As someone who has routinely had to muzzle herself at weddings by not calling out when the preacher asks if anyone knows a reason these two should not be wed, "It's not going to work out," this new role of supporting the bride has its challenges for this church lady of the South, Mildred Budge. But being a bride's maid also has its ...

Readers will flock to NYT bestselling author Donna Andrews' latest installment in the award-winning Meg Langslow series. Two of Meg’s cousins, members of Mother’s vast Hollingsworth clan, are getting married, and both have chosen Caerphilly for their Christmas destination wedding . . on the...

Mildred Budge returns in Kingdom Come, a story about setbacks and how to face them. The fourth novel in the series, Kingdom Come, continues with the stories of Mildred, Fran, Winston, Janie, and Chase. In this story, Mildred’s Cloverdale bungalow is crowded. Her best friend Fran observes, “For a single woman, Mildred, your quiver is getting very full.” And it is. There is little room in Mildred’s Cloverdale bungalow for solitude and extended prayer, and Mildred Budge needs both. Many people do. And it is harder to find that kind of quiet in a world where background noise is as ...