Funny Southern Fiction

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.

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 ...

Mae West, a far cry from the Hollywood actress, has been thrown for a loop. Her plush lifestyle in the big city of New York comes to a screeching halt after the FBI raids her mansion and arrests her husband, Paul West, for a Ponzi scheme that rips people out of millions of dollars. Mae finds herself homeless, friendless, and penniless. All hope isn't lost... the only thing Mae got to keep that the government didn't seize is a tourist camp ground, Happy Trails, in Normal, Kentucky.

Kate and her best friend Marlene are attending the Palmetto Beach Flea Market in hopes of selling Marlene’s collection of 1950s memorabilia. Fortunately, a table has become available in the busy corridor just outside the circus tent. Unfortunately, the vacant table’s previous occupant died from electrocution when a television set took a dive into his bathtub. The police suspect foul play. And Kate suspects nearly every seller who had a table near the victim—and a motive to put him out of business. - - - - - - - - - - - - - DEATH IS A BARGAIN by Noreen Wald A Henery Press Mystery. If ...

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...

Southern matriarch Lillian Summer Fairview is settling right nice into prison, until Big Martha, the toughest broad on the cellblock, comes asking for a favor. Her niece has fallen for a guy she met online, and Martha’s convinced Mr. Too-Good-To-Be-True is up to no good. All Lil’s friends have to do is investigate the guy and report back. Will these amateur sleuths be able to track down the elusive Romeo in the scam-filled world of online dating without alerting the local police to their shenanigans, or will they find themselves in trouble right up to their granny panties?

In Janet Evanovich and Charlotte Hughes's Full Tilt, he lives life in the fast lane and she's along for the ride-with no brakes.... Beaumont, South Carolina, has mint julips, ladies who lunch, good ole boy politics, and Jamie Swift. She's running her family newspaper, ready to marry the town's...

Charlotte has always been a good girl. But being good is getting boring. She’s not just stuck in a rut - she’s buried in it up to her chin. The only company she has in bed is the back catalogue of Netflix and falling in love feels like the stuff of fairy tales. So when she stumbles across a popular podcast, Sorry Not Sorry, which challenges women to embrace their inner bad girl, she jumps at the chance to shake things up.

A one-night stand. An unwanted pregnancy. A life-changing experience. Zane Spencer can't hide from his mistakes anymore, so tail tucked between his legs, he returns home to Shiloh for a fresh start. He'll swallow his pride, go back to working on the farm he never should have left in the first place, and maybe one day he'll deserve to find a sweet girl to marry and raise a family of his own. No one will ever find out that instead of chasing his dreams with his band, he’d spent most of his time away as an Elvis impersonator. But a surprise that will change his life forever awaits him back ...

She orchestrates happily-ever-afters. He curates dignified-ever-afters. Clemence Valentine, the sunshine-fueled force behind Vibrant Vows, is an explosion of color in the perpetually grey town of Parker. Her philosophy is simple: celebrate life, loudly. But with an eviction notice threatening her glitter-bombed empire, her signature optimism is running on fumes. Bartholomew Blackwood is the grumpy, fourth-generation undertaker of the Blackwood Funeral Home, a crumbling gothic manor where the only residents more silent than him are his clientele (both living and spectral). He’s the ...

ONE OF GLAMOUR'S BEST BOOKS FOR BOOK CLUBS A theater critic at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe writes a vicious one-star review of a struggling actress he has a one-night stand with in this sharply funny, feminist tinderbox. A WASHINGTON POST AND NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR...

Tiffany, Stone and Rosie travel to Georgia to stay at a bed and breakfast run by Scarlett O'Hara - who apparently is a real person... But when the local town is rocked by a scandal, Scarlett's secret is revealed. Worse still, Stone is arrested by the local cops, and small-town nepotism means he's in trouble...

It’s another murder in the little town of Roble. But not to worry, Romaine and Auntie Zanne are on it! It’s the 100th Boule of the Distinguished Ladies’ Society of Voodoo Herbalists. They’ve gotten together to eat, drink, be merry and vote for the next Lesser Mambo, a lifetime appointment second only to the Most High (bet you’ll never guess who holds that position). But the second in command spot keeps becoming vacant—that’s because the women who fill it keep dying off. This time though, it looks like murder. During an alcohol-infused dinner and a tall glass full of absinth, a...

Your next dose of pitch-black comedy, mystery, and mayhem has arrived as Hap and Leonard find themselves in a vicious and ridiculous situation—just as the best friends may finally be calling it quits. When Hap and Leonard are called in on a strange request (subduing a meth-hopped hog) by a...

When Lillian Debeaux inherits her great-aunt Mamie’s decorating business—The Queen’s Decor—she’s not just out of her comfort zone, she’s practically on another planet. At 45, this high-heeled, couture-loving fashionista knows how to turn heads at a gala, but she doesn’t know the first thing about table runners, tent poles, or the sacred Southern art of small-town event planning. And unfortunately for her, the people of Gloster, Louisiana, expect nothing less than perfection for their beloved Fourth of July festival. After all, it’s tradition. It’s legacy. And now…it’s ...

Filled with Evanovich's trademark style and wit, Full House is romantic suspense with a twist . . Polo instructor Nicholas Kaharcheck senses danger the minute he sees Billie Pearce. She represents everrything he's always avoided. Happy in her home life, a divorced mother of two, Billie is the...

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER Is love between equals possible? This modern classic is a delightful intellectual love story that explores the deepest canyons of romantic love even as it asks large questions about society, geopolitics, and the mystery of what men and women really want...

“Delightful. . . funny and poignant.” --People With a kick like the best hot sauce, this is the laugh-out-loud story of a girl determined to keep up with her aging, crazy-as-a-fox mother "If you ever pined for a mother who would take a hunting falcon as her wingman to a parent-teacher...

Dog foster mom Maggie Baxter thought her biggest problems were fur-covered leggings and Biscuit stealing socks again. But when a murdered accountant, a kidnapped groomer, and a shady donor all collide with the Bradford County Animal Shelter’s biggest fundraiser of the year, she’s plunged nose-first into a mystery with more twists than a leash caught under a rocking chair. With her crime-solving best friends Betty and Barb, her sheriff-turned-reluctant-ally Glenn Harper, and her loyal pack of foster pups, Maggie follows a trail of clues that exposes a shocking dog-trafficking scheme ...

K.T. Tomb introduces three new heroines: bounty hunters Roberta, Riley, and Ricki Vaughan. All sisters. And all tough as nails. When a new client hires the streetwise Vaughan sisters to find and recover a stolen diamond that’s worth millions, the recovery fee alone could save their struggling business. However, their new client refuses to call the police, so the sisters have to keep this case on the down low. And when the prime suspect turns up dead, things really start to heat up in the Deep South. When an unexpected event threatens more than the recovery of the one-of-a-kind gem, all ...