Miss Julia, a recently bereaved and newly wealthy widow, is only slightly bemused when one Hazel Marie Puckett appears at her door with a youngster in tow and unceremoniously announces that the child is the bastard son of Miss Julia's late husband. Suddenly, this longtime church member and pillar of her small Southern community finds herself in the center of an unseemly scandal - and the guardian of a wan nine-year-old whose mere presence turns her life upside down.

The first novel in a charming new series, award-winning author Jane Myers Perrine's The Welcome Committee of Butternut Creek is an amusing, warmhearted look at a small town's reception of its newly ordained minister. The mission of committee members Miss Birdie and Mercedes is to educate Adam Jordan on how things should be done in town. But soon the ladies decide on a new goal - to find him a wife.

It's easy to feel at home in Mitford. In these high, green hills, the air is pure, the village is charming, and the people are generally lovable. Yet Father Tim, the bachelor rector, wants something more. Enter a dog the size of a sofa who moves in and won't go away. Add an attractive neighbor who begins wearing a path through the hedge. Now, stir in a lovable but unloved boy, a mystifying jewel theft, and a secret that's 60 years old.

Novelist Anne George injects murder, mayhem, and laughs into her popular mysteries. Nominated for an Agatha Award, this hilarious tale of two “60 something” sisters reveals the deadly consequences of a hasty real estate purchase. Retired Alabama school teacher Patricia Anne thinks her older sister, flamboyant Mary Alice, has lost her cotton-pickin’ mind. On a whim, Mary Alice bought the Skoot ’n’ Boot, the local country western night spot where she and her boyfriend hang out. Mary Alice insists it will be easy to run the club - until the previous owner is found executed.

Laid off from her department store job, Carmen has perilously little cash and few options. The prospect of spending Christmas with her perfect sister Sofia, in Sofia’s perfect house with her perfect children and her perfectly ordered yuppie life, does not appeal. Frankly, Sofia doesn’t exactly want her prickly sister Carmen there, either. But Sofia has yet another baby on the way, a mother desperate to see her daughters get along, and a client who needs help revitalizing his shabby old bookshop. So Carmen moves in and takes the job.

Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! is the funny, serious, and compelling new novel by Fannie Flagg, author of the beloved Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (and prize-winning co-writer of the classic movie). Once again, Flagg's humor and respect and affection for her characters shine forth. Many inhabit small-town or suburban America. But this time, her heroine is urban: a brainy, beautiful, and ambitious rising star of 1970s television. Dena Nordstrom, pride of the network, is a woman whose future is full of promise, her present rich with complications, and her past marked by mystery.

It was a hell of a long shot.... CIA assassin Fortune Redding is about to undertake her most difficult mission ever - in Sinful, Louisiana. With a leak at the CIA and a price placed on her head by one of the world's largest arms dealers, Fortune has to go off-grid, but she never expected to be this far out of her element.

After 10 years of cleaning up the dirt on Atlanta's streets, Callahan Garrity is trading in her badge for a broom and a staff of house cleaners. But, though the uniform is a little different, Callahan soon finds herself right back in the middle of a mystery when a client's pretty, pious 19-year-old nanny is gone...along with the jewelry, silver, and a few rather sensitive real estate documents. Before she knows it, the meticulous Callahan is up to her elbows in a case involving illicit love triangles, crooked business deals, long-distance scams, and a dead body.

Fannie Flagg gives us a story of richly human characters, the saving graces of the once-maligned middle classes and small-town life, and the daily contest between laughter and tears.

The 23-year-old heiress from one of Charleston's oldest families vanished a month ago. When her father hires private investigator Liz Talbot, Liz suspects the most difficult part of her job will be convincing the patriarch his daughter tired of his overbearing nature and left town. That's what the Charleston Police Department believes. But behind the garden walls South of Broad, family secrets pop up like weeds in the azaleas.

Eloise Foley, known to her friends as Weezie, has been through the divorce from hell. Her ex-husband Tal (aka Talmadge Evans III) was awarded their house in Savannah's historic district, the house that Weezie had spent years painstakingly restoring to its original splendor. Weezie was awarded the two-bedroom carriage house on the same property. Each was sure the other would sell.

When Caroline Wimbley Levine learns that her mother, Miss Lavinia, has supposedly gone mad, she leaves the big city bustle of Manhattan and returns to Tall Pines Plantation. Caroline originally left Tall Pines to escape her feisty, eccentric mother and her drunken brother, Trip. When Miss Lavinia dies, Caroline is forced to come to terms with her family's troubled history as well as her failing relationship with her husband.

Few can compete with the Natasha Smith when it comes to entertaining, but her childhood rival, Sophie Winston, certainly tries. While Natasha is known for her intricate centerpieces and painstakingly prepared gourmet meals, Sophie likes to keep things simple...real simple.

Miracle Springs is a place of healing. Strangers flock there hoping the natural hot springs, five-star cuisine, and renowned spa can cure their ills. And, if none of that works, they often find their way to Miracle Books, where, over a fresh-baked scone from the Gingerbread House bakery, they exchange their stories with owner Nora Pennington in return for a carefully chosen book. That's Nora's special talent. But when a visiting businessman reaches out to Nora for guidance, he's found dead on the train tracks before he can keep their appointment.

Born and raised in idyllic Sullivan's Island, Susan Hayes navigated through her turbulent childhood with humor, spunk, and characteristic Southern sass. But years later, she is a conflicted woman with an unfaithful husband, a sometimes resentful teenage daughter, and a heart that aches with painful, poignant memories. And as Susan faces her uncertain future, she realizes that she must go back to her past. To the beachfront house where her sister welcomes her with open arms.

Miss Julia, a recently bereaved and newly wealthy widow, is only slightly bemused when one Hazel Marie Puckett appears at her door with a youngster in tow and unceremoniously announces that the child is the bastard son of Miss Julia's late husband. Suddenly, this longtime church member and pillar of her small Southern community finds herself in the center of an unseemly scandal - and the guardian of a wan nine-year-old whose mere presence turns her life upside down.

A best-selling author of books for adults and children, Mark Childress pens his most outrageous work yet with Georgia Bottoms. The titular heroine is the epitome of the church-going Southern belle, except for one teeny-tiny aspect of her life. Georgia’s family inheritance has long since evaporated, and to maintain her genteel lifestyle, Miss Bottoms has taken six affluent lovers—the fly in the ointment being that one is a married preacher who’s about to reveal their infidelity to the whole congregation.

The biggest thing to happen to Skary, Indiana, is renowned horror novelist Wolfe Boone, or "Boo" as the locals fondly call him. For the past 16 years, the reclusive writer has been the town's greatest attraction, having unintentionally turned the once struggling Skary into a thriving tourist trap for the dark side.

But when a newly reformed Wolfe suddenly quits the genre and subsequently starts to pursue Skary's favorite girl-next-door, Ainsley Parker, the little town becomes truly horrified.

A widow with a small army of suitors, Aurora Greenway loves the limelight. She’s got three grandchildren whom she adores (in small doses) and her son-in-law Flap, whom she’s not really crazy about. And there’s her daughter Emma. In some ways, Emma is all there ever was. Now, there’s little time left to say the things that need to be said.

Southern housewife Linwood Breedlove Scott was happily content in her comfortable 30-year marriage, but when her husband cleans out their bank accounts and runs off with a stripper, her life takes a hilarious, yet touching, right turn into reality. With no place to go but home, she's forced back to her eccentric family she escaped by marrying at 19. But despite her newly dependent situation, Lin begins to stand on her own two feet and wake up to the joys - and perils - of life as a single woman.

Architect Kayla Carter and her husband designed a beautiful house for themselves in Round Hill’s new development, Shadow Ridge Estates. It was supposed to be a home where they could raise their three-year-old daughter and grow old together. Instead, it’s the place where Kayla’s husband died in an accident - a fact known to a mysterious woman who warns Kayla against moving in. The woods and lake behind the property are reputed to be haunted, and the new home has been targeted by vandals leaving threatening notes.

When Emily Cavanaugh inherits a fortune from her great-aunt, she expects her life to change. She doesn't expect to embark on a murder investigation, confront the man who broke her heart 35 years before, and nearly lose her own life. Emily travels to the sleepy coastal village of Stony Beach, Oregon, to claim her inheritance, centered on a beautiful Victorian estate called Windy Corner but also including a substantial portion of the real estate of the whole town.

Needing time to contemplate her troubled marriage, Tessa MacRae agrees to spend the summer helping her mother and grandmother clean out the family home in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. But the three women have never been close.

Finding herself in over her head with a case involving a politician's infidelities, Memphis-born karate expert Detective Sergeant Savannah Reid is told that she must turn in her badge because she is overweight.

When Elizabeth Mooney escaped the shame of her "white trash" family to marry the crown prince of her small town, Howell Whittington, she never dreamed that 30 years later she'd end up trapped in a loveless marriage to the cruel banker who's foreclosing on all her friends. Then Howe has a stroke in church, and when he wakes up, he's transformed. He wants to be a real husband - which scares proper, repressed Elizabeth to death - and sets out to right past wrongs....

The first in a new series, Four Seasons, takes us to Deepwater Cove, a small community on the shore of the Lake of the Ozarks, where we're introduced to four couples in different stages of life. It Happens Every Spring centers on Brenda, a lonely wife, and Steve, a go-getter real estate agent, in the mid-winter of their relationship. When a stranger appears at their door one night, change blows through their house and their marriage.

Only God knew why Jillian Slater agreed to return to New Orleans on the news that her father had finally drunk himself to death. It's not like they were close. She hadn't seen him - or her grandmother, the ice queen - in almost 20 years. But when Adella Atwater, the manager of her grandmother's apartment house, called and said her expenses would be paid if she'd fly in for the burial, a free trip to New Orleans was too intriguing to resist.

Now that Audrey and Grant's five kids are grown, they are turning their beloved family home into a cozy bed and breakfast in the heartland. Opening weekend makes Audrey anxious, with family and friends coming from all over to help celebrate the occasion. But when Audrey's daughter, Landyn, arrives, the U-Haul she's pulling makes it clear she's not just here for a visit. Audrey immediately has questions. What happened in New York that sent Landyn running home? And where is her husband, Chase?

The first novel in a charming new series, award-winning author Jane Myers Perrine's The Welcome Committee of Butternut Creek is an amusing, warmhearted look at a small town's reception of its newly ordained minister. The mission of committee members Miss Birdie and Mercedes is to educate Adam Jordan on how things should be done in town. But soon the ladies decide on a new goal - to find him a wife.

A Christy Award finalist, bestselling author Deborah Raney has garnered the RITA Award, the HOLT Medallion, and a Silver Angel for her soulstirring fiction. In Almost Forever, five firefighters perish battling the flames of the homeless shelter in Hanover Falls. Shelter volunteer Bryn Hennesey’s grief at the loss of her husband is compounded by a secret, haunting question: Did she extinguish the candle before falling asleep on that fateful night?