From O. Henry to Lilian Jackson Braun, North Carolina has nurtured some of the world's best-known mystery writers. This unique collection of mystery short stories showcases some of North Carolina's best writing talent from the past and the present--some famous, some less well known. Some of the mysteries are by authors who have earned solid reputations in other genres, such as Orson Scott Card and William Brittain, but as their stories here demonstrate, their talent embraces the mysterious.

The stories in this collection are as diverse as the "detectives" they feature: the Native...

New York Times bestselling author Margaret Maron returns with a thrilling new Deborah Knott mystery . . .
THE BUZZARD TABLE
Judge Deborah Knott and her husband, Sheriff's Deputy Dwight Bryant, are back home in Colleton County amid family and old friends. But the winter winds have blown in several new faces as well. Lt. Sigrid Harald and her mother, Anne, a well-known photographer, are down from New York to visit Mrs. Lattimore, Anne's dying mother. When the group gathers for dinner at Mrs. Lattimore's Victorian home, they meet the enigmatic Martin Crawford, an ornithologist...

MWA Grand Master Margaret Maron, Edgar Award winner Tom Franklin, and New York Times bestselling novelist Ron Rash headline a new anthology of 21 tales spanning from traditional detective stories to comic capers to darkest noir and more-something for all tastes. Murder Under the Oaks is published in conjunction with Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention, held in 2015 in Raleigh, North Carolina-the City of Oaks. As with the convention itself, the anthology spreads a broad canopy across a wide range of crime writers from across the country and around the world-including both veteran writers...

Since its inception, the Judge Deborah Knott series has garnered all the top mystery prizes and received overwhelming accolades. Now Margaret Maron presents an engrossing tale of Southern arts and sudden death . . .

North Carolina's Randolph County is heavy with bright red clay and home to generations of skilled potters. Two of the best are James Lucas Nordan and Sandra Kay Hitchcock, locked in a bitter divorce after twenty-five years of marriage. Enter Judge Deborah Knott, who must settle the most exasperating part of any divorce case--the equitable distribution of marital...

"A witty and affectionate view of the new South--and especially, the new South's new woman," writes the San Diego Union-Tribune of Margaret Maron's award-winning Deborah Knott mystery series. From its first book, Bootlegger's Daughter, which swept every major mystery writing award, this series has been extraordinary--winning a greater audience and brilliantly evolving in content and style. Now, in the seventh book in the series, sexual tension, illicit love, and brutal murder entangle and explode in Deborah Knott's life . . .

Hurricanes rarely make it inland as far as Colleton...

In SHOOTING AT LOONS, we follow Judge Deborah Knott to the state's lush Crystal Coast, where expensive yachts ride at anchor...and murders wash in on the "Down East" tide.

Asked to sit in for a hospitalized judge in gracious old Beaufort, Deborah hopes to spend a restful week at her cousin's nearby Harkers Island cottage; but her very first clamming expedition turns up the corpse of a well-known fisherman in the shallow waters. Discovering the body puts her right in the middle of the fight between the locals who have long made their living from the sea and the new tide of well-to-do...

The multiple winner of the most coveted prizes for mystery fiction, Margaret Maron has received immense acclaim for her highly popular Deborah Knott series. Now, in Slow Dollar, her ninth novel featuring the tough and quick-witted North Carolina judge, a ragtag carnival comes to Colleton County--with murder as the main attraction.

Opening night at the annual Harvest Festival carnival and the moonlit autumn evening has brought out half of Colleton County to ride the Tilt-O-Whirl and Ferris wheel, throw quarters at Polly's Plate Pitch, or toss ping-pong balls into bowls of...

Since the first Deborah Knott novel, Bootlegger's Daughter, swept the Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity Awards for 1993, Margaret Maron has brought to life the landscape and people, the history and current concerns of a contemporary South. As akin to Carson McCullers and William Faulkner as she is to her fellow mystery writers, Maron continues her acclaimed series with a chilling story of suspense: a searing crisis of race and region and other burning issues of the heart . . .

One place the two Souths--black and white--meet is in Judge Deborah Knott's courtroom. From the...

After Margaret Maron's first Deborah Knott novel, Bootlegger's Daughter, ran away with the top mystery awards in 1993, this highly acclaimed series has continued to whet our appetite for superb fiction in which the setting is, as the Houston Chronicle noted, "so rich in detail and description of the New South that you can almost hear the North Carolina twang and taste the barbecue." Now, in her fourth outing, Deborah Knott is again in the driver's seat, roaring down dirt roads and checking out crime scenes until . . .

UP JUMPS THE DEVIL.

When truck driver and childhood...

Deborah Knott may have lost the district election, but a bigoted judge's sudden death--and some old-fashioned political horse trading--have won her a governor's appointment. True to Southern form, her swearing-in is followed by a raucous reception that brings out every elderly aunt and cousin in the county.

Unfortunately, Lu Bingham, the force behind WomenAid, is at the reception, too. Not only has she come to collect the leftovers for her daycare center, but she's also there to collect on one of Deborah's more extravagant campaign promises. Before Deborah can say, "If elected..."...