A big city detective. A lowcountry murder. Peace, safety, a place to grieve and heal. After her husband is murdered by the Russian mob, Boston detective Callie Jean Morgan comes home to her family's cottage in South Carolina. There, she can keep their teenage son, Jeb, away from further threats. But the day they arrive in Edisto Beach, Callie finds her childhood mentor and elderly neighbor murdered. Taunted by the killer, who repeatedly violates her home and threatens others in the community, Callie finds her new sanctuary has become her old nightmare. Despite warnings from the town's handsome police chief, Callie plunges back into detective work, pursuing a sinister stranger who may have ties to her past. He's turning a quiet paradise into a paranoid patch of sand where nobody's safe. She'll do whatever it takes to stop him.
A bribery case gone wrong leads a woman into the deep, dank Carolina Lowcountry on a manhunt. Carolina Slade, a by-the-book federal county manager in the coastal Lowcountry of South Carolina, reports an attempted bribe only to find herself a key player in a sting operation run by Senior Special Agent Wayne Largo from the IG Office in Atlanta. However, the IG isn't telling Slade everything about this case or the disappearance-presumed-murder of Slade's boss the year before. When the sting blows up, both cases are put on hold and Wayne is yanked back to Atlanta, leaving Slade to fear not only for her life and job, but for her children's safety. Suddenly, operating by the book is no longer an option. Author C. Hope Clark, an award-winning writer of two mystery series (Carolina Slade and the Edisto Island mysteries), founded FundsforWriters.com, which Writer's Digest has recognized in its annual 101 Best Web Sites for Writers for almost two decades. Hope is married to a 30-year veteran of federal law enforcement, a Senior Special Agent, now a private investigator. They live in South Carolina, on the banks of Lake Murray. Hope is hard at work on the next novel in her Carolina Slade Mystery Series. Visit her at www.chopeclark.com.
Planning a reunion is going to get someone killed. . . Edisto Beach Police Chief Callie Morgan has no desire to relive her senior year and the nightmare of a murder and a suicide that shook her high school to its core. But when the reunion committee convenes on Edisto Beach for a planning retreat, she has no choice. Every person on the committee could be a suspect in the unsolved murder, and one classmate, now a bestselling author, threatens to weave them into a tell-all true crime novel. Until she disappears the first night of the committee retreat. Callie must sort fact from fiction in a race against the clock to find a cold case murderer who may have just killed again.
"Terrific. Smart, knowing, clever...and completely original. A taut, high-tension page-turner--in a unique and fascinating setting. An absolute winner!" Hank Phillippi Ryan Agatha, Anthony and Macavity winning author In the deep waters off the coast of Beaufort, South Carolina, corpses are turning up faster than dolphins chasing a shrimp boat . . . When federal agricultural investigator Carolina Slade's best friend is suspected of embezzlement and fraud in a sordid case involving drugs and migrant slavery, Slade must question her own long-held loyalties. She's desperate to believe in Savannah Conroy's innocence despite every scrap of evidence pointing to her friend's guilt. After a tomato farmer dies in a shrimp boat explosion, Slade's colleague, Senior Special Agent Wayne Largo, manages to force Slade off the case, citing conflict of interest. Refusing to quit even if it means violating agency orders, Slade fights to save her friend's career. Soon, Slade's the target of escalating threats meant to frighten her off the case. But threats might be the least of Slade's worries. She's also juggling a co-worker's sudden romantic interest, voodoo, and her teenage daughter's determination to solve mysteries like her mother. Slade struggles to keep her life, and the lives of those around her, safe and sane when, once again, digging up dirt on the ag business threatens to put her six feet under.
The full story of the infamous double murder featured on Discovery’s FBI Files—includes photos. In this book, former South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) forensic photographer Lt. Rita Y. Shuler recounts twenty-eight days of terror and shocking developments in one of the most notorious double murders and manhunts in South Carolina history. Shuler shares her own personal interactions with some of the key players in this famous manhunt and investigation. Also included are Bell’s chilling calls from area phone booths to the Smith family, along with his disconcerting interviews and bizarre actions in the courtroom, which show the dark, evil, and criminal mind of this horrific killer. This is a comprehensive account of the case that has been featured on the Discovery Channel’s FBI Files, in the CBS movie Nightmare in Columbia County, and on Court TV’s Forensic Files.
Hope Clark's books have been honored as winners of the Epic Award, Silver Falchion Award, the Daphne du Maurier Award, and the Imadjinn Award for mystery "Never short of rich characters and timely twists, this new series will keep the pages turning." —Julie Cantrell, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Perennials "Murder, corruption, and page-turning intrigue… characters that bring a vivid literary element… and create a strong emotional response to their tangled lives." —Susan Cushman, author of Cherry Bomb and editor of Southern Writers on Writing Quinn Sterling's father was murdered, and the Craven County sheriff—her uncle—botched the investigation. Now too many troubling questions remain for Quinn to walk away. Instead, she leaves her career at the FBI to take on her inheritance—a 3,000-acre pecan dynasty in the South Carolina Lowcountry. As the only heir she assumes the reins of the family business—while keeping an eye on her father's cold case, and her toe in the old game as a private investigator. With her two childhood friends, one now a caretaker of Sterling Banks, and the other a deputy sheriff, she managed to hold everything together until a blind client and a mentor from her early days pull her into a case that will jeopardize her friends, her farm, and her legacy, not to mention her life when her past meets her present. Author Bio: C. HOPE CLARK has a fascination with the mystery genre and is author of the Carolina Slade Mystery Series, the Edisto Island Mysteries, and now the Craven County Mysteries, all of which are set in the Lowcountry and her home state of South Carolina. In her previous federal life, she performed administrative investigations and married the agent she met on a bribery investigation. She enjoys nothing more than editing her books on the back porch with him, overlooking the lake, with bourbons in hand. She can be found either on the banks of Lake Murray or Edisto Beach with one or two dachshunds in her lap. Hope is also editor of the award-winning FundsforWriters.com.
The Myrtle Beach Boardwalk is normally an idyllic place. Until death arrives on recently widowed bookstore owner Clark Thomas' doorstep. When the body of a local businesswoman and environmentalist gets dumped by the back door of his shop, Clark finds himself in a unique position to investigate the crime. But should he? When it comes to murder, something else drives him he doesn't want to admit. As he launches his own search for the killer, Clark comes across a variety of colorful Boardwalk inhabitants who might have had reason to kill an otherwise beloved person. Can he do it and start putting his wife's death behind him in the process, or will it open up a fresh wound?
A former forensic photographer and author of Murder in the Midlands chronicles horrific killings that struck at the heart of the Palmetto State. Ax assault, kidnapping, brutal murder: how could these things happen in a small town? Although regional crimes hardly ever make it to the national circuit, they will always remain with the families and communities of the victims and a part of the area’s history. After working with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division as special agent/forensic photographer for twenty-four years, Rita Shuler has a passion for remembering the victims. In Small-town Slayings, Shuler takes us back in time, showing differences and similarities of crime solving in the past and present and some surprising twists of court proceedings, verdicts, and sentences. From an unsolved case that has haunted her for thirty years to a cold case that was solved after fifteen years by advanced DNA technology, Shuler blends her own memories with extensive research, resulting in a fast-paced, factual, and fascinating look at crime in South Carolina. Includes photos!
"A phenomenal read from beginning to end." - Sharon Sala, bestselling author, about Edisto Jinx Murder came in with the tide . . . Edisto Island is a paradise where people escape from the mainstream world. Yet for newly sworn-in Edisto Police Chief Callie Jean Morgan, the trouble has just begun . . . When a rookie officer drowns in a freak crash in the marsh, Callie's instincts tell her it wasn't an accident. As suspects and clues mount, Callie's outlandish mother complicates the investigation, and Callie's long-time friendship with Officer Mike Seabrook takes a turn toward something new--but is shadowed by the unsolved mystery of his wife's death. Everyone's past rises to the surface, entangling with death that cuts to the bone. The roar of the surf made Callie's steps soundless, her thoughts louder. Two and a half weeks on the job, and she'd lost an officer. Edisto hadn't sacrificed an officer in its entire history, and the first female chief had to be the one to break the record. She sniffled. Salty breezes began to clear her sinuses, but nothing could assuage the guilt clinging to her like the muggy air Sarah lived. Francis died. And somebody had to be disappointed at that freakish turn of events, because she suspected it was meant to be the other way around. Crime was for people who lived across the big bridge on the mainland. But whether the natives liked it or not, the brake lines were cut on Edisto. She didn't want to go down that path, but one of them might be a frustrated, unfulfilled killer. C. Hope Clark is the award-winning author of the Carolina Slade Mysteries and now the Edisto Island Mysteries. During her career with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, she met and married a federal agent--now a private investigator. She plots murder mysteries at their lakeside home in South Carolina when not visiting Edisto Beach. Visit Hope at chopeclark.com.
The New York Times bestselling author of the Tradd Street novels delivers a tale that spans two generations of sisters and secrets, set in the stunning South Carolina Lowcountry. 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. For Eleanor, it’s a chance to revisit the place where she was her happiest—and to share her love of music with grieving Helena, whose sister recently died under mysterious circumstances. An island lush with sweetgrass and salt marshes, Edisto has been a peaceful refuge for Helena, who escaped with her sister from war-torn Hungary in 1944. The sisters were well-known on the island, where they volunteered in their church and community. But now Eleanor will finally learn the truth about their past: secrets that will help heal her relationship with her own sister—and set Eleanor free....
