Staff Picks
South Carolina Voices
- Kim M.
- Wednesday, February 21
Collection
A voice of South Carolina can be many different things. Slow and melodic with a rhythmic cadence, these authors voices bring to life varied stories from long ago to just yesterday. You will find books from South Carolina writers about history to vampires to stories of injustice. A little something for everyone. So, listen closely to these voices and see what you hear.
LOWCOUNTRY BOONDOGGLE
Published in 2020
Private investigators Liz Talbot and Nate Andrews thought they'd put Darius Baker's troubles to rest?then his recently discovered son ropes him into a hemp farm investment with his college buddies. When a beloved Charleston professor?and potential investor?is murdered, Liz and Nate discover Darius keeps the PIs on speed dial. A shocking number of people had reasons to want the genteel, bowtie wearing, tea-drinking professor dead. Was it one of his many girlfriends or a disgruntled student? Or perhaps Murray was killed because his failure to invest meant the hemp farm trio's dreams were going up in smoke? Though Liz's long-dead best friend, Colleen, warns her the stakes are far higher than Liz imagines, she is hellbent on finding the no-good killer among the bevy of suspects. But will the price of justice be more than Liz can bear? Take a virtual vacation to Charleston in Susan M. Boyer's latest Southern charmer, Lowcountry Boondoggle. It's a trip you don't want to miss. - - - - - - - - - - - - - LOWCOUNTRY BOONDOGGLE by Susan M. Boyer | A Henery Press Mystery. If you like one, you'll probably like them all. Author Bio: Susan M. Boyer is the author of the USA Today bestselling Liz Talbot mystery series. Her debut novel, Lowcountry Boil, won the Agatha Award for Best First Novel, the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense, and garnered several other award nominations, including the Macavity. The third in the series, Lowcountry Boneyard, was a Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) Okra Pick, a Daphne du Maurier Award finalist, and short-listed for the Pat Conroy Beach Music Mystery Prize. Susan loves beaches, Southern food, and small towns where everyone knows everyone, and everyone has crazy relatives. You'll find all of the above in her novels. She lives in Greenville, SC, with her husband and an inordinate number of houseplants.
Lowcountry Boomerang
A Liz Talbot Mystery
Published in 2019
Private investigators Liz Talbot and Nate Andrews are all set to enjoy some quality time on the beach. That's until they get the news about Darius. Darius DeAndre Baker, star of the hit TV show, Main Street USA, has had enough of the Hollywood highlife. After ten years of visiting everyone else's hometown, he returns to his own--Stella Maris, South Carolina. But the moving trucks have barely unloaded when Trina Lynn Causby, Darius's high school girlfriend, turns up dead, and the entire town reels as Darius is arrested. Despite the mounting evidence against him, Liz and Nate believe Darius is innocent. They dig through a scandalously long list of suspects, including Darius's three ex-wives--who have all arrived in Stella Maris--and his love child with Trina Lynn. But Trina Lynn led a complicated life. She had at least one stalker and two suitors--one with a jealous wife who recently made a deliciously outrageous scene when Trina Lynn turned up at a charity ball. As the danger mounts, Liz and Nate race to find a killer and clear Darius's name--and keep him alive. --Provided by publisher.
My Reading Life
Published in 2010
Bestselling author Pat Conroy acknowledges the books that have shaped him and celebrates the profound effect reading has had on his life.
All Summer Long
Published in 2016
Dorothea Benton Frank novels are filled with smart and witty fiction that every reader wants on their bookshelf: soulful, edgy stories about realistic characters familiar to us all that explore the most deeply felt moments of life with wry humor and heart. All Summer Long follows one charming New York couple ? prominent interior designer Olivia Ritchie and her husband Nicholas Seymour, an English professor and true southern gentleman. They are seemingly polar opposites, yet magnetically drawn together and in love for more than fourteen years. As they prepare to relocate to Charleston, S.C., Olivia, the ultimate New Yorker, has reservations about the promise she made to retire in the Lowcountry, where Nick wants to return home and lead a more peaceful life. They are moving north to south, fast pace versus slow pace and downsizing. Nick is ecstatic. Olivia is not. She can't let Nick know that their finances are not what he thought. Her client list is evaporating, their monetary reserves are dwindling and maybe that house she picked out on Sullivans Island needs too much work. Thank God, for her assistant, Roni Larini, her right (and sometimes left) hand. As they find themselves pondering the next step of their lives, Olivia and Nick travel with her billionaire clients and their friends and are swept up into the world of the ultra-rich and explore the globe with a cast of zany eccentrics over one tumultuous, hot summer. All as Olivia grapples with what lies ahead for her and Nick. This is a story of how plans evolve and lives change in unexpected ways, how even those who have everything are still looking for something more. Even the most successful people can often struggle to keep things together. All Summer Long asks the ultimate question: can money buy happiness? From Sullivans Island to Necker Island to Nantucket to the beaches of Southern Spain, we'll come to recognize the many faces of true love, love that deepens and endures but only because one woman makes a tremendous leap of faith. And that leap changes everything.
Queen Bee
A Novel
Published in 2019
New York Times-bestselling author Dorothea Benton Frank returns to the American South in this latest novel about friendship and love that is full of heart, humor, and rich description. A woman wounded by her past comes to Sullivan's Island, South Carolina to find new meaning in life and to find herself. As she takes up a new hobby of beekeeping, she begins to come into her own and rebuild her life. When a new friend comes in and she finally allows for something more than just "friendship", everyone will realize that life could use a little taste of sweetness. In what is sure to be another classic, Dorothea Benton Frank weaves a fun tale of self-discovery, love, and friendship with her signature charming wit, indelible poignancy, and hallmark themes.
The Beach House
Published in 2020
A 43-year-old unexpectedly divorced woman buys a house on a small South Carolina island, gets involved with her estranged sister and mother, and tries to figure out what life is all about.
Chasing Sunsets
Published in 2023
A new resident is moving to Seagrove! Heath Dutton has spent the last three years trying to heal his wounds, but no matter how many places he travels, his heart is still broken when he arrives in Seagrove. Will a current resident help heal his heart and turn out to be his soulmate?Colleen and Tucker arrive back in Seagrove after months of travel, but they're keeping a big secret that could cause a rift between Colleen and her mother.Janine is adjusting to being a new mother, but when she ends up in the ER with her new baby girl, will everything turn out well?Dixie gets unsettling medical news and has to make big changes to her life.Plus, SuAnn becomes famous. Can she handle the pressure?Come back to Seagrove to see all of your favorite characters!
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires
Published in 2020
Steel Magnolias meets Dracula in this '90s-set horror novel about a women's book club that must do battle with a mysterious newcomer to their small Southern town, perfect for murderinos and fans of Stephen King. Patricia Campbell's life has never felt smaller. Her husband is a workaholic, her teenage kids have their own lives, her senile mother-in-law needs constant care, and she's always a step behind on her endless to-do list. The only thing keeping her sane is her book club, a close-knit group of Charleston women united by their love of true crime. At these meetings they're as likely to talk about the Manson family as they are about their own families. One evening after book club, Patricia is viciously attacked by an elderly neighbor, bringing the neighbor's handsome nephew, James Harris, into her life. James is well traveled and well read, and he makes Patricia feel things she hasn't felt in years. But when children on the other side of town go missing, their deaths written off by local police, Patricia has reason to believe James Harris is more of a Bundy than a Brad Pitt. The real problem? James is a monster of a different kind?and Patricia has already invited him in. Little by little, James will insinuate himself into Patricia's life and try to take everything she took for granted?including the book club?but she won't surrender without a fight in this blood-soaked tale of neighborly kindness gone wrong.
The Final Girl Support Group
Published in 2021
"A fast-paced, thrilling horror novel that follows a group of heroines to die for, from the brilliant New York Times bestselling author of The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires. In horror movies, the final girl is the one who's left standing when the credits roll. The one who fought back, defeated the killer, and avenged her friends. The one who emerges bloodied but victorious, a victim and a hero. But after the sirens fade and the audience moves on, what happens to her? Lynnette Tarkington is a real-life final girl who survived a massacre twenty-two years ago, and it has defined every day of her life since. And she's not alone. For more than a decade she's been meeting with five other actual final girls and their therapist in a support group for those who survived the unthinkable, putting their lives back together, piece by piece. That is until one of the women misses a meeting and Lynnette's worst fears are realized-someone knows about the group and is determined to take their lives apart again. But the thing about these final girls is that they have each other now, and no matter how bad the odds, how dark the night, how sharp the knife . . . they will never, ever give up"-- Provided by publisher.
Lies We Never See
Published in 2022
Charleston attorney Hanna Walsh finds her life in emotional and financial ruin when her husband's ties to a ruthless stranger unleashes a spiraling cascade of betrayal and murder in this twisting story of treachery and shattered dreams. Escaping to her last refuge on Pawleys Island, she discovers a letter and journal in the attic of her family's old beach house. She learns of a distant great-grandmother who owned the same house as a young widow during the Civil War who suffered a similar path of devastating loss and betrayal. Charleston police detective Alex Frank comes into Hanna's life and joins an FBI team to help her through the chaos and danger coming at her from all directions.
Beach House for Rent
Published in 2017
When Cara Rutledge rents out her quaint beach house on Isle of Palms to Heather Wyatt for the entire summer, it's a win-win by any standard: Cara's generating income necessary to keep husband Brett's ecotourism boat business afloat, and anxiety-prone Heather, an young artist who's been given a commission to paint birds on postage stamps, has a quiet space in which to work and tend to her pet canaries uninterrupted. It isn't long, however, before both women's idyllic summers are altered irrevocably: the alluring shorebirds -- and the man who rescues them -- begin to draw Heather out of the shell she's cultivated toward a world of adventure, and maybe even love; at the same time, Cara's life reels with sudden tragedy, and she wishes only to return to the beach house that had once been her port amidst life's storms. When Heather refuses to budge from her newfound sanctuary, so begins the unlikeliest of rooming situations. While they start out as strangers, as everything around the women falls apart they learn that the only thing they can really rely on is each other.
Beach House Reunion
Published in 2018
"Continuing the saga of her bestselling Beach House series, Mary Alice Monroe weaves together a tale of the struggles and triumphs of the historic Rutledge family of Charleston, South Carolina. Beautifully wrought and rich with keen insight, this is an illuminating tale of continuance, resilience, and one family's enduring love"-- Provided by publisher.
South Carolina Country Roads
Of Train Depots, Filling Stations and Other Vanishing Charms
Published in 2018
Venture off the beaten path to forgotten roads, where a hidden South Carolina exists. Time-travel and dead-end at a ferry that leads to wild islands. Cross a rusting steel truss bridge into a scene from the 1930s. Behold an old gristmill and imagine its creaking, clashing gears grinding corn. See an old gas pump wreathed in honeysuckle. Drive through a ghost town and wonder why it died. When's the last time you saw a country store's cured hams hanging from wires? How about a vintage Bull Durham tobacco ad on old brick? Tom Poland explores scenic back roads that lead to heirlooms tomatoes, poke salad, restaurants once gas stations, overgrown ruins and other soulful relics.
The Girls of August
Published in 2014
"Every August, four women would gather together to spend a week at the beach, renting a new house each year. The ritual began when they were in their twenties and their husbands were in medical school, and became a mainstay of every summer thereafter. Their only criteria was oceanfront and isolation, their only desire to strengthen their far-flung friendships. They called themselves the Girls of August. But when one of the Girls dies tragically, the group slowly drifts apart and their vacations together are brought to a halt. Years later, a new marriage reunites them and they decide to come together once again on a remote barrier island off the South Carolina coast. There, far from civilization, the women make startling discoveries that will change them in ways they never expected" -- from publisher's web site.
Before We Were Yours
A Novel
Published in 2017
"Two families, generations apart, are forever changed by a heartbreaking injustice in this poignant novel, inspired by a true story, for readers of Orphan Train and The Nightingale. Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family's Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge--until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children's Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents--but they quickly realize the dark truth. At the mercy of the facility's cruel director, Rill fights to keep her sisters and brother together in a world of danger and uncertainty. Aiken, South Carolina, present day. Born into wealth and privilege, Avery Stafford seems to have it all: a successful career as a federal prosecutor, a handsome fiance, and a lavish wedding on the horizon. But when Avery returns home to help her father weather a health crisis,a chance encounter leaves her with uncomfortable questions and compels her to take a journey through her family's long-hidden history, on a path that will ultimately lead either to devastation or to redemption. Based on one of America's most notorious real-life scandals--in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country--Lisa Wingate's riveting, wrenching, and ultimately uplifting tale reminds us how, even though the paths we take can lead to many places, the heart never forgets where we belong"-- Provided by publisher.