A delightful new collection of original Southern stories set in the charming, fictitious down-home town of Mossy Creek, where there's a friendly face on every corner and a heartfelt story behind every door....

Come sit on the porch a spell. Let's talk about times gone by and folks we remember, about slow summer evenings and lightning bugs in a jar. Listen to the music of a creaky swing and hand-cranked ice cream and cicadas chorusing in the sultry night air. Let's talk about how things used to be in the South - and for some of us, they way they still are. Welcome to the world of Sweet Tea and Jesus Shoes, where award winning authors Deborah Smith, Sandra Chastain, Virginia Ellis, Debra Dixon, Donna Ball and Nancy Knight come together for the first time to create this poignant, humorous collection of nostalgic tales.

Hush has worked hard to restore her family's farming fortunes. She has also tried to hide the truth about her late husband and their tormented marriage from her son. Now, the eyes of the entire world turn to her private life when he returns home from college to tell his mother he has eloped with a fellow student - the rebellious daughter of the president!

Tallulah MacBride hasn't been back to North Carolina since her parents' tragic deaths 20 years ago. But now, Tal heads to cousin Delta Whittlespoon's famous Crossroads Café in the mountains above Asheville, hoping to find a safe hiding place for her young daughter, Eve. What she finds is cousin Delta gone, the café in a biscuit crisis, and a Scotsman who refuses to believe she's passing through instead of "running from." He believes she needs a knight in shining flannel.

High school senior Tara Luna's got all the usual teen problems: a new school, her attraction to a hunky guy, feuds with the Mean Girls, being regarded as an oddball outsider - PLUS she has psychic powers, a duo of protective, meddlesome ghosts AND an angry, threatening teen girl ghost who wants Tara to solve her murder - or else. Now you know why she calls this "my lunatic life"....

A Connecticut heiress learns she's adopted and travels to northern Florida "cracker" cattle ranch to find her birth parents. There she also finds unexpected romance with the ranch's owner.

At the reading of her father's will, Maria Slade receives shocking news—as a four-year-old, she'd witnessed her prostitute mother's murder and been taken into hiding by the well-meaning preacher who'd raised her as his own. Maria remembers none of that. But now she's determined to flush her mother's killer out of hiding and discover the identity of her birth father. She heads to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she meets Detective Bodie Scott.

Griff Knighton's found the perfect way to avoid being trapped into marriage with one of the Earl of Swanlea's daughters: He'll swap identities with his man of affairs during their next visit to Swan Park, and be free to pursue his own desires! After all, he's not about to marry some homely spinster just to claim his rightful title. But Griff didn't reckon on the brazen, voluptuous Rosalind, who could tempt even a saint into sinning, and Griff is no saint.

When Ava Harrison receives a letter containing an unusual job listing one month after the sudden death of her ex-boyfriend, she thinks she’s being haunted. The listing—a job as a live-in caretaker for a peculiar old man and his cranky cat in Driftwood, Alabama—is the perfect chance to start a new life. A normal life. Ava has always been too fearful to even travel, so no one’s more surprised than she is when she throws caution to the wind and drives to the distant beachside town.

Eleanor Murray will always remember her childhood on Edisto Island, where her late father, a local shrimper, shared her passion for music. Now her memories of him are all that tempers the guilt she feels over the accident that put her sister in a wheelchair and the feelings she harbors for her sister's husband. To help support her sister, Eleanor works at a Charleston investment firm during the day, but she escapes into her music, playing piano at a neighborhood bar. Until the night her enigmatic boss walks in and offers her a part-time job caring for his elderly aunt, Helena, back on Edisto.

Dorothea Benton Frank is a treasure of American letters with numerous New York Times best-sellers to her credit and a portfolio full of critical acclaim. “Mixing high drama and high jinks” ( Booklist), her third Lowcountry novel follows the fortunes of the dysfunctional Abbot family. Looking to set her life aright, Anna Lutz Abbot returns to her South Carolina lowcountry hometown. And as she attempts to right past wrongs, Anna receives help and support from a quirky cast of lovable locals sure to endear themselves to listeners.

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.

Private Investigator Liz Talbot is a modern Southern belle. She blesses hearts and takes names. She carries her Sig 9 in her Kate Spade handbag, and her golden retriever, Rhett, rides shotgun in her hybrid Escape. When her grandmother is murdered, Liz hightails it back to her South Carolina island home to find the killer. She’s fit to be tied when her brother—the chief of police—shuts her out of the investigation, so she opens her own. Then her long-dead best friend pops in and things really get complicated.

When Vivien Walker left her home in the Mississippi Delta, she swore never to go back, as generations of the women in her family had. But in the spring, nine years to the day since she'd left, that's exactly what happens - Vivien returns, fleeing from a broken marriage and her lost dreams for children. What she hopes to find is solace with "Bootsie", her dear grandmother who raised her, a Walker woman with a knack for making everything all right. But instead she finds that her grandmother has died and that her estranged mother is drifting further away from her memories.

Margot Cary has spent her life immersed in everything Lake Sackett is not. As an elite event planner, Margot's rubbed elbows with the cream of Chicago society and made elegance and glamour her business. She's riding high until one event goes tragically, spectacularly wrong. Now she's blackballed by the gala set and in dire need of a fresh start - and apparently the McCreadys are in need of an event planner with a tarnished reputation.

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.

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.

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 ex-lawyer and herb-shop proprietor China Bayles’s friend Jo dies of an apparent suicide, China looks behind the quaint façade of her new home of Pecan Springs, Texas, and takes a suspicious look at everyone. And though she finds lots of friendly faces, China is sure that one of them hides the heart of a killer.

Tory Bodeen grew up in a run-down house where her father ruled with an iron fist and a leather belt - and where her dreams and talents had no room to flourish. Her one escape was her neighbor Hope, who lived in the big house just a short skip away, and whose friendship allowed Tory to be something she wasn’t allowed to be at home: a child. Then Hope was brutally murdered, and everything fell apart.

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.

Sometimes even good girls need to be a little bad.... Marla Jean Bandy might be down, but she's not out. Even though her no-good ex-husband left her for another woman - a Bookmobile -driving librarian 20 years her senior - Marla Jean won't settle for another lonely night. She's not ready for Mr. Right, but why not have a little fun with Mr. Right Now? The only wrench in her plan is her childhood crush, Jake - and the memory of the one toe-curling kiss they shared on a hot summer night years ago....

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.

When Opal Sullivan walks out on an abusive husband after 15 years, she has only her dreams in her pocket. Her new beginning starts in a graceful but dilapidated house. Like Opal, the house is worn-out and somewhat beaten up, but it still stands proudly and deserves a second chance. Opal opens her doors - and her heart - to a parade of unforgettable characters. It is one of these people who helps Opal understand a funny thing about life: You can't move forward if you keep looking back.

When their hard-drinking but loving father dies in a car accident, teenage brothers Kyle and Klint Hayes face a bleak prospect: leaving their Pennsylvania hometown for an uncertain life in Arizona with the mother who ran out on them years ago. But in a strange twist of fate, their town's matriarch, an eccentric, wealthy old woman whose family once owned the county coal mines, hears the boys' story and takes them in.

For Rosemary Reynolds, life in tiny Morning Glory, Mississippi, is just like the fabric store she runs: it seems she's always waiting around for someone else to make the first stitch. Then a dear childhood friend passes away, leaving behind a gift that sends Rosemary on a once-in-a-lifetime adventure. Despite her mother's protests, Rosemary heads to New York City for a stay in her cousin's trendy SoHo loft. On her first day in town, a wrong turn leads her to Little Italy...and into the arms of handsome, outgoing Sal Genovese.

Welcome to Grace Valley, California - where blood runs thicker…ties are stronger…and love is all the more sweet. Visitors to the town often remark about the valley's peace and beauty - both of which are plentiful. Unlocked doors, front porches, pies cooling in the windows - this is country life at its finest. But visitors don't always see what lies at the heart of a community. Or just beyond.… June Hudson grew up in Grace Valley, the daughter of the town doctor. Leaving only to get her medical training, she returned home and followed in her father's footsteps.

Addie Andrews is living a life interrupted. Tragedy sent her fleeing from Chicago to the shelter of an unexpected inheritance - her beloved aunt's somewhat dilapidated home in Eunice, Arkansas, population very tiny. There she reconnects with some of her most cherished childhood memories. If only they didn't make her feel so much!

Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a collection of short stories, some classic, others impending, selected and introduced by David Sedaris.

For generations, the Windsors have lived on the family's grand estate in Crestwood, South Carolina, as intertwined with local life as sweet tea and pecan pie. Now, on the anniversary of her daughter Emily's death, Sarabess Windsor believes she may be the last to carry the family name - unless she can find her second daughter, Trinity, who disappeared 15 years ago.