KDL Recommends

Calling off her high-society wedding after discovering her fiance’s infidelity, Keely Murdock faces financial ruin before receiving assistance—and an opportunity for revenge—from the new owner of a local bra company.

Follows Eloise “Weezie” Foley, an antiques picker, as she deals with a huge estate sale, eccentric relatives, a sexy ex-boyfriend, and her ex-husband and his new girlfriend, unexpectedly discovering love is much better the second time around.

Savannah belle BeBe Loudermilk struggles to cope with the loss of everything following her relationship with Reddy, a con man, finding herself left only with a ramshackle 1950s motor court on Tybee Island, until she launches a campaign to retrieve her fortune and bring Reddy to justice.

It’s been twenty years since Cass Wakefield returned from the Civil War to his hometown in Mississippi, but he is still haunted by battlefield memories. Now he is presented with a chance to literally retrace his steps from the past, as his dying friend Alison urges him to accompany her on a trip to Franklin, Tennessee, to recover the bodies of her father and brother. As they make their way north over the battlefields, they are joined by two of Cass’s former brothers-in-arms, and his memories reemerge with overwhelming vividness. Before long the group has assembled on the haunted ground of Franklin, where past and present—the legacy of the war and the narrow hope of redemption—will draw each of them toward a painful confrontation. Moving between harrowing scenes of battle and the novel’s present-day quest, author Bahr recreates this era with devastating authority.

Stricken by polio, Paige Dunn continues to raise her daughter, Diana, with the help of her caretaker Peacie, in a novel set against the backdrop of Tupelo, Mississippi, in 1964.

Detective Dave Robicheaux struggles with alcoholism and rage while fighting to protect lives in Katrina-devastated New Orleans.

After a bizarre accident, construction worker Mick Brannigan is forced into the role of stay-at-home dad while his wife Layne returns to a law firm.

Meg, the great-granddaughter of a southwestern frontierswoman, accompanies her grandmother to a family property that is being excavated and makes a discovery that challenges the authenticity of stories about her famous family’s history.

When the impending nuptials of seventy-one-year-old Mayor Hale Dunbar and the widow Gaylie Lyons are threatened by the bride-to-be’s disapproving grown children, the Nitwitts plan a welcome for the children designed to garner their approval.

With her favorite market, the Piggly Wiggly, on the verge of closing due to competition from the Mega-Mart across town, Laurie Lepanto launches a campaign to save the store.

Inheriting a historic Mississippi family home she knows little about, Nora Bondurant moves to the house hoping to forget her unhappy past but becomes enmeshed in a mystery surrounding her aunt’s untimely death.

When he arrives in Louisiana in 1927, Hale Poser finds racial prejudices missing from the small town of Pilotsville, but while searching for a missing child, he uncovers evidence of the town’s darker side.

Mrs. Threadgoode’s tale of two high-spirited women of the 1930s, Idgie and Ruth, helps Evelyn, a 1980s woman in a sad slump of middle age, to begin to rejuvenate her own life.

Hoping to sell some of her watercolors, Becca Sims wanders into the seaside Gallery Valentine, never expecting that her life will be transformed by the gallery owner and his best friend, in a novel set in small-town South Carolina.

With Susan in Paris, Beth returns from college to house-sit the Island Gamble, intending to wrap herself in childhood memories and the island’s magic, until cunning Max Mitchell arrives on the scene and steals her heart.

Troubled by her unfaithful husband and difficult teenage daughter, Susan Hayes returns home to Sullivan’s Island in an attempt to reconnect with her past.

Running the local general store for their small-town South Carolina community, manager Elizabeth enlists her two fellow shopkeepers and a crew of friends to save the store from a rival who would put her out of business.

When a wealthy plantation owner in 1944 Louisiana turns up dead and eviscerated, Deputy Raymond Thibodeaux is confronted by Adele Hebert, who is found covered in blood next to the body and who claims to be a shapeshifter.

Five years after fleeing to New York in the wake of a murder acquittal, Adam Chase returns to North Carolina, only to find himself trapped in the middle of a new case of murder as the people around him begin to die and he becomes the prime suspect.

A tale inspired by the life of Confederate general John Bell Hood is set in post-Civil War New Orleans and follows his tragic struggles with disabling war injuries, his marriage and eleven children, and his battle with yellow fever.

A story based on the true experiences of a Civil War heroine finds Carrie McGavock witnessing the bloodshed of the Battle of Franklin, falling in love with a wounded man, and dedicating her home as a burial site for fallen soldiers.

Mel, Sara, Annie, and Lola have traveled distinct and diverse paths since their years together at a small Southern liberal arts college during the early 1980s. Now the friends, all in their forties, converge on Lola’s lavish North Carolina beach house in an attempt to relive the carefree days of their college years. But as the week wears on and each woman’s hidden story is gradually revealed, these four friends learn that they must inevitably confront their shared past and a secret that threatens to change their bond, and their lives, forever.

Dissatisfied with their lives, three southern belles discover they are all dealing with cheating spouses and launch a joint campaign to seek revenge.

Experiencing panic attacks and blackouts at murder scenes, forensics expert Cat Ferry is suspended from her task force and returns to her Mississippi hometown, where she discovers disturbing information about her father’s murder.

Nonny Frett understands the meaning of “between a rock and a hard place.” She’s got two mothers, “one deaf-blind and the other four baby steps from flat crazy.” She’s got two men: her husband, easing out the back door; and her best friend, laying siege to her heart in her front yard. She has a job that holds her in the city, and she’s addicted to a little girl stuck deep in the country. And she has two families: the Fretts, who stole her and raised her right; and the Crabtrees, who lost her and won’t forget how they were done wrong. In Between, Georgia, population 90, a feud that began the night Nonny was born is escalating, and a random act of violence is about to ignite a stash of family secrets. This might be just what the town needs, if only Nonny wasn’t sitting in the middle of it.

Ten years after leaving, Arlene Fleet finds she still has not escaped Possett, Alabama, when an old classmate turns up asking questions about a crime Arlene committed in her youth, forcing her into a confrontation with her past.

Five very different Southern women meet in a nursing home and develop a friendship that resonates over the decades.

Anticipating a relaxing retirement, Father Tim returns to his hometown for the first time in decades when he receives an anonymous summons, an event that leads to his discovery of long-buried secrets and new people.

When cryptic messages are discovered on the bodies of a pair of murder victims, Alabama police detective Carson Ryder and veteran officer Harry Nautilus must seek help from Ryder’s brother, a convicted killer.

After her “stand-in mother,” a bold black woman named Rosaleen, insults the three biggest racists in town, Lily Owens joins Rosaleen on a journey to Tiburon, South Carolina, where they are taken in by three black, bee-keeping sisters.

Every two years, a tight-knit group of Southern women come together for a reunion to renew their relationships with one another, each of them having an incredible story to tell about the course their lives have taken.

Clare makes a living as a divorce coach to help men and women mend their broken hearts, all the while refusing to fall in love again herself, until she meets Lex, a charismatic sea captain and recent arrival in town.

Wildlife biologist Deanna is caught off guard by an intrusive young hunter, while bookish city wife Lusa finds herself facing a difficult identity choice, and elderly neighbors find attraction at the height of a long-standing feud.

Scout’s father defends a black man accused of raping a white woman in a small Alabama town during the 1930s.

Moving to a small South Carolina town in order to turn around a failing stationery shop, John Dodge is embraced by his new community, but finds his attempts to woo the widow owner of a neighboring store thwarted because of her inability to escape a painful past.

When a southern writer demands that their untraditional, shoestring film company make the movie of her life, producer Angie accompanies her colleagues to Georgia, where a man from her past is preparing to marry a wealthy debutante.

In rural South Carolina, Maggie and Dylan expectantly await the birth of their first child. Tragedy strikes when their son is stillborn and Maggie slips into a long-term coma. Refusing to give up on her recovery, a devastated Dylan marks time earning money as an adjunct English professor.

Chronicles the life and times of dashing hero Rhett Butler and the people who shaped his world—his unyielding father Langston, best friend and onetime slave Tunis Bonneau, former love Belle Watling, and the passionate Scarlett O’Hara.

Emmett and Lauren Sullivan have always been a team, working together to raise their daughters on tranquil Pawley’s Island, South Carolina. Now, with all their attention focused on nine-year-old Ainslie, they barely notice as their older daughter Sloan drifts further away from them and toward a reckless path that could tear the family apart.

Scarlett O’Hara faces and survives the Civil War and Reconstruction and marries Rhett Butler for his money because her true love has married someone else.

Returning to her childhood home in the Lowcountry at the request of her mother, Caretta Rutledge, who had thought she had forever buried her Southern roots and her troubled family, unexpectedly begins to reconnect with her friends and family while she fixes up the family beach house, learning that in order to live life to the fullest, she must forgive and forget the past.

In a Southern shrimping village, the entire town rallies to find a missing vessel and its captain, Bud Morrison.

Toy Sooner, a single mother and marine biologist opening a turtle rehab facility with the help of a director at the South Carolina Aquarium, must find a way to deal with the return of her daughter’s vindictive father, who has just been released from prison.

In the wake of racial tensions in 1960s Alabama, sheltered white college student Stella participates in her first freedom movement and finds her life changed in several ways when she develops friendships with local African Americans.

Leaving her beloved Memphis to help her husband’s pipe dream of running a Vermont inn, southern belle Leelee Satterfield discovers numerous unanticipated challenges and is forced to apply her southern-style wits in the wake of a cruel swindle.

Returning to her tiny hometown of Dacus, South Carolina, attorney Avery Andrews suddenly finds herself caught up in the battle between a real-estate developer and environmentalists, a battle that is complicated by a brutal murder.

Laid off from her job with a big-city law firm, attorney Avery Andrews returns to the small Southern town of her childhood in the hope of setting up a new practice.

Struggling with a lackluster teaching position at an archaeology field school in South Carolina, Tempe Brennan discovers a fresh skeleton among ancient bones and traces leads to a free street clinic where patients are going missing.

In a sequel to Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, Scarlett O’Hara encounters Rhett before going to Ireland to find her family’s heritage.

Hugh and Serena Hallam’s family prospers on their cotton farm in late 1850s Tennessee until the Civil War erupts, causing Hugh to join the Confederate Army and forcing Serena to hold onto the farm, slaves, and family.

Two Confederate and two Union generals (Lee, Jackson, Hancock, and Chamberlain) examine their careers leading to Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville in a prequel to The Killer Angels.

The two sides of the country go to war in the last of the trilogy that includes Killer Angels and Gods and Generals.

Robert E. Lee and James Longstreet tell the Southern view of the battle at Gettysburg while Colonel Joshua Chamberlain and General John Buford present the Northern view.

Rebuilding her life on a plantation after the disappearance of her mother and the death of a sibling, Emily Parmenter forges a near-mystical relationship with her beloved spaniel and finds her world changing after the arrival of a rebellious debutante.

The lives of three generations of two African-American families intertwine in the aftermath of the Civil War as newly freed slaves struggle to build new lives in The Bottom, a poor settlement just down Red River from Colfax, Louisiana.

In a modern tale based on the classic film, “Arsenic and Old Lace,” the women of a small town’s bird-watching society secretly plot to murder a member’s husband who tricked his wife into marriage in order to steal her land for a development project.

A multigenerational saga of the Belle family of strong-minded Southern women includes Musette, whose psychic abilities astonish her neighbors even after her death, and Dixie, who serves tea to the statue of a Confederate soldier.

When his attempts to get to know his dying father fail, William Bloom makes up stories that recreate his father’s life in heroic proportions.

Divorcée Delilah Dickinson has high hopes for her new tour to sites associated with Margaret Mitchell. Unfortunately, by the time the group reaches “Tara” for a dinner dance, the actor playing Rhett Butler turns up dead. A sheriff’s department investigator tries to catch the killer by keeping the group at Tara overnight-with Delilah’s unasked for assistance, of course.

When Siddi inadvertently reveals some revealing things about her Southern childhood in a newspaper interview, her mother, Vivi, virtually disowns her. Vivi’s lifelong friends, the Ya-Ya’s, set in motion a plan to bring the mother and daughter back together using a scrapbook of childhood memories that they ask Vivi to put together.

Introduces the colorful and offbeat inhabitants of a sleepy, southern Georgia town, including Roger, a studious peanut virologist; Della, a newcomer and painter of chickens; and Louise, who is trying to summon Martian invaders.

Inheriting an historic home from an elderly man she had recently met, Melanie Middleton, a Charleston real-estate agent who possesses the ability to see ghosts, finds herself dealing with an entire family of haunts and joins forces with Jack Trenholm, a handsome writer, to unravel the house’s dark history and find some long-missing diamonds.