Southern Women's Fiction

A 2018 Spring Okra Pick USA TODAY Happy Ever After’s Best Women’s Fiction Southern Living’s Most Anticipated Beach Reads of 2018 Deep South Magazine’s Summer Reading List Raleigh News & Observer's “The Best Reads of Summer” Charlotte Observer’s “Summer’s Best Books” New York...

Lex fled Memphis years ago, making ends meet with odd jobs teaching English around the world. She only returns when she has no choice, when her godmother presents her with a bargain she can't refuse. Lex has never understood her mother, who died tragically right before Lex's college graduation, but now she's got a chance to read her journals, to try and figure out what sent her mother spiraling all those years ago. 

Magnolia, South Carolina, 1980: Austin Foster is barely a teenager when her mama dies giving birth to twins, leaving her to pick up the pieces while holding her six siblings together and doing her best to stop her daddy from retreating into his personal darkness.   

The long-awaited Volume 22 of The Bregdan Chronicles is LIVE! America continues the struggle to become a country for everyone… 1874 carries the challenges created by the Financial Crash of 1873. Millions of Americans suffer the consequences of corporate greed and mismanagement. The Gilded Age crumbles. Everyone must come to grips with their destiny during a depression. Tough decisions must be made. Painful actions must be taken. Carrie, Frances, and Felicia find themselves in New York City during a protest that turns horribly violent. The KKK is more determined to destroy Cromwell ...

Olivia Shields is back in Carlisle Bay, Connecticut, after having traveled the world as a professional ballet dancer. Dancing was her life. Chasing performance dreams is all she's ever known or planned for. One summer she spent in Carlisle Bay before heading to Juilliard left her both heartbroken and more focused on her career than ever. A back injury has forced some changes. She'll take on a new role as the manager of her aunt's coastal boutique. After all, she's completely over the boy who broke her heart forever ago.

A week before your wedding is no time for your ex to ride back into town, stirring up trouble. But that’s exactly the predicament Darla McAdams finds herself in. With practically the entire town of Tishomingo, Oklahoma, in attendance, the last place she wants to be is at her grandparents’ 60th wedding anniversary party with the whole family, her fiancé and her old flame all in the same room.

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 ...

A mountain girl in the early 1900’s copes with a marriage arranged by her dad. Her story is titled from an old saying “I own my land, heaven-high and hell-deep.” “Your pa gave his consent for us to marry,” he said the words as though it was a simple matter. It wasn’t a romantic proposal of love and devotion. It wasn’t a proposal at all. I opened my mouth but nothing came out. I tried again. “I don’t know your name,” I managed to say as I felt my chest constrict. There was a pain in me that started at my toes and went to the roots of my hair. Dad had come up with a ...

What do a runaway bride, a free spirit, and a corporate exec have in common? Besides all being down on their luck, Lainie, Jodi, and Becky are Lizzie Cornell's granddaughters. Upon inheriting their grandmother's home and family bait shop, the three cousins return to Catfish, Texas, grieving Lizzie's passing and hoping to find the fresh start they all need.

America continues the struggle to become a country for everyone... 1873, already challenging, becomes even more so. Abby's predictions come true - creating tragedy and hardships for millions of Americans. Frances and Felicia encounter challenges and adventures in Boston. Hobbs discovers an invention that will change his life - if he can avoid discovery from the KKK. Minnie is being horribly bullied at school. The solution is one no one anticipated. While everyone might long for things to simply stay the same, life forces and provides new beginnings for everyone. Volume # 21 of the Bregdan ...

What if your next conversation was your last? When Pastor Charles returns to Bayou Refuge, he expects peace and familiarity. Instead, he finds a strange fog that won’t lift from the grounds, old avoiding his questions, and a mystery that he can't seem to crack. A place of refuge… or life-changing secrets? As Charles reconnects with old friends, he’s also tasked with sharing God’s love with three guests staying at Bayou Refuge. But the deeper he leans into these conversations, the more he begins to uncover a startling truth, one that forces him to rely on his faith in Christ more ...

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 ...

Series is finished! What do you get when you combine a coma-inducing career, an ardent academic, and a nefarious nemesis? A Vicki Bohanan hangover cocktail. Your favorite bartender babe is back and cutting a trail through a new vocation, with a college class tucked between briefs instead of sheets, and an alarm clock in two – er, tow. It’s no secret that a sleep-deprived Vicki is a volatile Vicki. Especially when a certain Texas Ranger goes MIA. And her first official case involves one pageanted Padget accused of killing her fiancé. Even as her recently resuscitated relationship with ...

★★★★★ "A page turner for sure!" - Reader Review ___ After her grandparents passed away, Louisa is forced to go back to her hometown and deal with the lies of her past that threaten to devastate her future. Between her high-powered job and handsome venture capitalist fiancé, Louisa Brian has a picture-perfect life. A former debutante born into a socialite family, she’s neatly tucked all the questions about her past away as she forges a new future in Atlanta. However, when Louisa’s grandparents, the only parents she’s ever known, pass away, she returns to her hometown of ...

The Weight of Her Name: The Cost of Obedience is a historical novel set on a Southern plantation in 1860, on the eve of the Civil War. Sarah is an enslaved woman whose life is governed by routine, silence, and unspoken expectation. Within the Harrison household, obedience is not merely demanded, it is watched for, measured, and rewarded or punished in ways that are rarely explicit and never simple. Survival depends on knowing when to speak, when to remain still, and when even compliance carries its own danger. As Sarah navigates the intimate power structures of the house, small choices ...

Women’s rights activist, Lynn Cummings, switches up churches like shoes. As soon as her anointing is exposed, she runs – that is, until she finds a pew at First Baptist Church, where Lynn is anchored by the wiles of the debonair Pastor Stewart. Lynn, becomes the woman on Stewart’s arm, and with that, becomes the target of women who are always up in Pastor Stewart’s face, namely, his quote-unquote friend Bianca, the skin-bleaching, man-worshipping teen choir director who’ll stop at nothing to become Stewart’s first lady. Even Nay, the wife of Stewart’s right hand man, Associate...

Family meant everything to Ayden Stratton. It always had even when he didn’t always allow it to show. Because of that, he understood the fury in Tobias Blaise’s eyes when they learned that his sister was their hometown's most recent crime victim...dragged out the backdoor of her restaurant despite every effort to stop her from being kidnapped. Fury didn’t begin to describe what he saw in his brother’s face. Cassidy Blaise might be Tobias’s sister, but she was Benjamin’s entire world. This Stratton Family saga will have you wondering what could possibly happen next. Keep some ...

"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 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 ...

SHE WANTED PEACE. SHE GOT MURDER. Forty-two-year-old Carrie Ashford thought she had her life figured out. Eighteen years as an event planner. Fifteen years of marriage. A beautiful home in Atlanta. Then her husband left her for his CrossFit instructor named Brittany. Now Carrie's starting over in Charleston, armed with nothing but her late aunt's cottage, a disapproving cat named Margot, and a fledgling pet-sitting business that's supposed to be stress-free. Supposed to be. WHAT YOU'LL FIND INSIDE: A charming Charleston setting dripping with Southern atmosphere A relatable protagonist ...