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..." she is committed to putting her muscle where her mouth was, spending weekends with an all-woman crew as the group attempts to build its first house for a needy single mom. Chaos erupts before the house is even half-finished. On the same rainy summer night that one of her many older brothers collapses on the side of the road from an apparent heart attack, his daughter is found battered and half-naked in the deserted structure. Has she been raped? Who left her in that condition? And whose blood is that on Deborah's own hammer? Dwight Bryant, an old childhood friend (and a bit of a good ol' boy), is a modern and efficient police detective, but it is Deborah who must judge whether dark secrets in her own family have led to murder. And if so, reveal the darker more troubling reasons why.

Southern Discomfort (Deborah Knott Mystery)

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Maron, Margaret

Mystery

Maron and Company

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 "dingbatters" weekenders and land developers who view the coast as their personal playground and gold mine. Deborah soon realizes that the centuries-old way of life in this isolated corner of the South is as endangered as loons and sea turtles, and the fisherman's murder is clearly tied to the coming changes. On the bench and off, she can feel the rage and fear and greed these changes arouse. Even so, sipping her bourbon in the fresh salt air proves beneficial for Deborah's soul, and life at the beach takes a definite upswing when she meets a game warden who's hunting for loon poachers. Not until a second murder occurs and a lover from her past becomes a suspect does Deborah realize she's up to her own neck in intrigue--and dangerously close to a killer...

Shooting at Loons (Deborah Knott Mystery)

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 neighbor Dallas Stancil is shot and killed in his own backyard, Deborah figures she owes his memory at least the respectful ritual of taking his widow one of her Aunt Zell's best chicken casseroles. Mistake Number One. Dallas wasn't rich, but with development eating up the farms and forests of North Carolina, his land is suddenly worth a fortune. His trashy, chain-smoking third wife and grown stepchildren are all too aware of its value. Opportunists--including one of Deborah's own brothers--are coming out of the woodwork. And big money makes people do bad things. The Stancils have lived side-by-side with Deborah's family for several generations. When another tragedy strikes, a long-hidden mistake jumps out of her past. She can run him out of town, but ignoring him would be Mistake Number Two. All around the changing South, Deborah sees hunting dogs, rowdy funerals, backwoods moonshine stills, and long-bed pickups clashing with BMW-driving professionals and housing tracts. With one foot in the rural past and the other in today's high-tech present, she knows her personal world is changing, too. This bootlegger's daughter sits on the judicial bench and sees both sides of the law. But she also feels the tug of her roots...and the pull of her heart.

Up Jumps the Devil (Deborah Knott Mystery)

The first Deborah Knott mystery, Bootlegger's Daughter, swept the top mystery awards in 1993 with a down-home judge dedicated to justice, driven by private demons, and prone to decide with her heart. From the first though, the books have given us an insider's look at North Carolina--from its western mountains to its Crystal Coast. Now in the series' fifth book, Judge Deborah investigate the interior geography of human folly in an exquisite plot created with polish and élan... Sent to High Point, North Carolina, to substitute for a vacationing colleague, Deborah finds there is no room at the inn. Or anywhere else for that matter. The International Home Furnishings Market has taken over the town and all the hotels. All Deborah wants is a bed for the night, not thousands of living room suites and dining room ensembles. And the last thing she needs is murder. A chilling misadventure begins when she is befriended by Mrs. Jernigan, an eccentric older woman who promises to find her a place to stay. Deborah follows the chiffon-clad Good Samaritan through showrooms of French provincial and high-tech modern until the woman suddenly vanishes, leaving a sexy hunk of manhood dead and motionless on a pricey piece of "motion" furniture. Who is the mysterious Mrs. Jernigan and why is Deborah herself suspected of killing a furniture executive who specialized in making after-hours bedroom arrangements and cutthroat deals? To clear her name, Deborah has to table all other plans and investigate. But the knotty heart of this case are secrets hidden behind walls of silence. It will take all Deborah's courtroom experience and intuitive skills to strip through layers of deception to solve a whodunit that is strictly top-shelf.

Killer Market (Deborah Knott Mystery)

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 pretty yet aggressive D.A. who requests harsh sentences for her fellow African-Americans to the three white teens caught desecrating a family graveyard with hate slogans, racial bias still tries the soul and tests the sense of justice in Colleton County, North Carolina. Busy with her reelection campaign and building a new house on land that has been in her family for generations, Deborah has both deep roots and a professional stake in her community. She’s shaken when her nephew A.K. is arrested with a group of vandalizing teens at a local cemetery. Torn between her duty as a judge and her loyalty to her large, close-knit family, Deborah has to decide how far she can go to protect him. Then the first black church burns. Determined to investigate the arson in which A.K. has become a suspect, Deborah Knott is quickly swept into the dark undercurrents of prejudice, pain,m and betrayal in this rural Southern county. Add to this the sudden arrival of a 1970s black activist-turned-public-figure, the emerging secrets of an angry young woman and the burning of two more churches, and Deborah faces a crisis that will challenge her political acumen, her detective skills, and her core beliefs. The sins of the past return to forever change the present in Margaret Maron’s most riveting, emotionally moving novel to date, a mystery that involves color and kinship, and the unbreakable bonds of love . . .

Home Fires (Deborah Knott Mystery)

Literature & Fiction

United States

“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 County, North Carolina. When they do, people remember them as events that mark an entire generation. Domestic storms, on the other hand, hit with regularity, so when the scantily clad body of a promiscuous wife is found in a motel, the murder resounds like a thunderclap through the community. With her handsome cousin a suspect in the murder, Judge Deborah Knott soon uncovers a web of secret and illicit affairs that stretches from the African-American church community to Deborah’s own family. Then the killer strikes again, even as a real-life killer storm rages up the Carolina coast. Mesmerizing, psychologically complex, and cleverly plotted, STORM TRACK is great, powerful fiction . . . and Margaret Maron is at her best.

Storm Track (Deborah Knott Mystery)

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 property. As creative as it was stormy, the Nordans’ marriage produced great artistic achievement that continued the legacy of James Lucas’s father and proud clan patriarch. Old Amos Norton is no stranger to tragedy. Two years earlier, his more talented son, Donny, committed suicide . . . in a manner so scandalous that Amos still can’t bear to speak of it. Suddenly, amid the petty bickering, an even more gruesome death strikes the Nordans again. Violence stalks the family homestead as the sins of the past catch up with the Nordan family. Judge Knott knows she must summon all her considerable insight into the darkest entanglements of the human heart, if she is to stop a malevolent killer well-crafted in the art of murder.

Uncommon Clay (Deborah Knott Mystery)

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 live goldfish against a cacophony of music, clacking machines, and hucksterism. The air is sweetly redolent of hot grease, fried dough, grilled meats, and spun sugar...and one whiff is all it takes to send Judge Deborah Knott straight back to her childhood, holding her mother's hand, riding on the shoulders of one of her eleven brothers, or clinging to her daddy's pants leg, dazzled by the bright neon tubes and colorful chasing lights. Unfortunately, all is not try-your-luck and stuffed prizes this year. Murder stalks the midway, and when one gaffed game ends with a brutal death, Deborah discovers more than a body. Hidden beneath the carnival's razzle-dazzle surface is a sordid reality of danger, greed, and dark secrets--devastating confidences that Deborah has kept concealed for almost twenty years. Now as family loyalties war with judicial obligations, Deborah must struggle to win a carny's trust...before the killer pins a bull's-eye on yet another victim.

Slow Dollar (Deborah Knott Mystery)

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