In her well-received novel Outfoxed, Rita Mae Brown vividly and deftly brought to life the genteel world of foxhunting, where hunters, horses, hounds, and foxes form a tightly knit community amidst old money and simmering conflicts. With Hotspur, we return to the Southern chase-and to a hunt on the trail of a murderer.

Jane "Sister" Arnold may be in her seventies, but she shows no signs of losing her love for the Hunt. As Master of the prestigious Jefferson Hunt Club in a well-heeled Virginia Blue Ridge Mountain town, she is the most powerful and revered woman in...

In the third novel of her captivating foxhunting series, Rita Mae Brown welcomes readers back for a final tour of a world where most business is conducted on horseback-and stables are de rigueur for even the smallest of estates. Here, in the wealth-studded hills of Jefferson County, Virginia, even evil rides a mount.

The all-important New Year's Hunt commences amid swirling light snow. It is the last formal hunt of the season; therefore, participation is required no matter how hungover riders are from toasting the midnight before. On this momentous occasion, "Sister" Jane Arnold, master...

A rich, atmospheric murder mystery . . . rife with love, scandal . . . redemption, greed and nobility, raved the San Jose Mercury News about Outfoxed, Rita Mae Brown s first foxhunting masterpiece. In The Hunt Ball, the latest novel in this popular series, all the ingredients Brown s readers love are abundantly present: richness of character and landscape, the thrill of the hunt, and the chill of violence.
The trouble begins at Custis Hall, an exclusive girls school in Virginia that has gloried in its good name for nearly two hundred years. At first, the outcry is a mere tempest in a...

From the bestselling author of the landmark work Rubyfruit Jungle comes an engaging, original new novel that only Rita Mae Brown could have written. In the pristine world of Virginia foxhunting, hunters, horses, hounds, and foxes form a lively community of conflicting loyalties, where the thrill of the chase and the intricacies of human-animal relationships are experienced firsthand--and murder exposes a proud Southern community's unsavory secrets. . . .
As Master of the prestigious Jefferson Hunt Club, Jane Arnold, known as Sister, is the most revered citizen in the Virginia Blue Ridge...

Only Rita Mae Brown, author of Rubyfruit Jungle, could have written a novel as passionately delightful as Southern Discomfort. Here is a witty, warm and pentrating tale of two decades in Montgomery Alabama--a world where all is not what it seems. Meet Hortensia Reedmuller Banastre, a beautiful woman entrenched on old money, white magnolia and a loveless marriage--until she meets an utterly gorgeous young prizefighter. Amid such memorable characters as Banana Mae Parker and Blue Rhonda Latrec (two first-class whores) and Reverend Linton Ray (who wears his clerical collar too...

Curiosity just might be the death of Mrs. Murphy--and her human companion, Mary Minor "Harry" Haristeen.Small towns are like families: Everyone lives very close together. . .and everyone keeps secrets.Crozet, Virginia, is a typical small town-until its secrets explode into murder.Crozet's thirty-something post-mistress, Mary Minor "Harry" Haristeen, has a tiger cat (Mrs. Murphy) and a Welsh Corgi (Tucker), a pending divorce, and a bad habit of reading postcards not addressed to her.When Crozet's citizens start turning up murdered, Harry remembers that each received a card with a tombstone on...

From the best-selling author of Rubyfruit Jungle and Bingo, here is a writers' manual as provocative, frank, and funny as her fiction. Unlike most writers' guides, this one had as much to do with how writers live as with mastering the tools of their trade. Rita Mae Brown begins with a very personal account of her own career, from her days as a young poet who had written a novel no publisher wanted to take a chance on, right up to her recent adventures as a Hollywood screenwriter. In a sassy style that makes her outspoken advice as entertaining as it is useful, she provides...

Perched right on the Mason-Dixon line, tiny Runnymede, Maryland, is ripe with a history almost as colorful as the women who live there--from Celeste Chalfonte, headstrong and aristocratic, who murders for principle and steals her brother's wife, to Fannie Jump Creighton, who runs a speakeasy right in her own home when hard times come knocking. Then of course, there're Louise and Julia, the boldly eccentric Hunsenmeir sisters. Wheezie and Juts spend their whole lives in Runnymede, cheerfully quibbling about everything from men to child-rearing to how to drive a car. But they never let...

If you crossed Mitford, North Carolina, with Peyton Place, you might come up with Runnymede, Maryland, the most beguiling of Southern towns. In Loose Lips, Rita Mae Brown revisits Runnymede and the beloved characters introduced in Six of One and Bingo, serving up an exuberant portrayal of small-town sins and Southern mores, set against a backdrop of homefront life during World War II.
-I'm afraid life is passing me by, - Louise told her sister.
-No, it's not, - Juts said. -Life can't pass us by. We are life.-
In the picturesque town of Runnymede, everyone...

Mrs. Murphy thinks the new man in town is thecat's meow.... Maybe she should think again.Small towns don't take kindly to strangers--unlessthe stranger happens to be a drop-dead gorgeous andseemingly unattached male. When Blair Bainbridgecomes to Crozet, Virginia, the local matchmakerslose no time in declaring him perfect for theirnewly divorced postmistress, Marry Minor "HarryHaristeen." Even Harry's tiger cat, Ms.Murphy, and her Welsh Corgi, Tee Tucker, believe hesmells A-okay. Could his one little imperfectionbe that he's a killer? Blair becomes the mostlikely suspect when the pieces of a...