Book picks similar to
Bad Way Out by C. Hoyt Caldwell


mystery
hillbilly-noir
thunder-road
southern-fiction

Mrs. Hollingsworth's Men


Padgett Powell - 2000
    Ostensibly writing her grocery list, Mrs. Hollingsworth most happily loses her sense of herself. Her list becomes a discovery of the things she has and those she lacks, including men -- even her own husband. Mrs. Hollingsworth begins her list by imagining a lost-love story in which she is playful with and disdainful of the conventions of Southern literature. Soon tiring of that, she decides to turn up her imagination. For reasons unclear to her, the Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, an icon of the Lost Cause, rides into her tired lost-love story. He appears as a hologram created by a media giant, Roopit Mogul, who aims to find the real New Southerner -- in a man who can recognize General Forrest's image. Into this surreal atmosphere enter Mrs. Hollingsworth's all too real daughters, the forgotten husband, Mr. and Mrs. Mogul, the boys of the neighborhood, and petty criminals named Oswald and Bundy. Within this singular narrative collage, strong tenderness arises, with accounts of genuine lost love, both familial and wholly romantic. MRS HOLLINGSWORTH'S MEN is a remarkable achievement, full of style and feeling.

Knitorious Murder Mysteries Books 1 - 3


Reagan Davis - 2020
    I’m an almost-ex-wife, and former full-time mom who works part-time at the local yarn store. The biggest mystery I’ve ever solved is finding a missing knitting needle tucked behind my ear after spending all morning looking for it. Someone in Harmony Lake is trying to stitch me up for murder.In a small town where everyone has a secret they want to keep hidden, no one is talking to the out-of-town cop who’s been brought in to solve the case. So, armed with everything I’ve learned from watching murder mysteries on TV, and a little help from my friends, it’s up to me to find the real killer and clear my name. Can I knit the clues together and expose the killer before they unravel and kill again? I hope so, because knitting needles aren't allowed in prison, and I look horrible in orange.If you like your cozy mysteries with a bit of humour, small town Canadian life, a hint of romance, a close circle of quirky, lovable characters that you wish you knew in real life, dogs and cats, and free knitting patterns, there's something in this series for you.Clean read: no graphic violence, sex, or strong language.Each ebook includes a link to a free knitting pattern at the end of the book.Included stories: Knit One Murder Two, Killer Cables, and Murder & MerinoDownload The Knitorious Murder Mystery Books 1 - 3 and start unravelling the mysteries in three entertaining cozy mysteries today!Read FREE on Kindle Unlimited

GUILTY OR ELSE


Jeff Sherratt - 2009
    But Jimmy's shining star obviously has some strings attached. When a prominent state senator's attractive assistant is murdered, the cops arrest a Mexican gardener. The DA's case is slam-dunk. It's all wrapped up nice and tight. Maybe a little too tight. Something's not right in Downey! It's 1972 and the Mob is heavy into politics. From the track at Del Mar to the neon strip of Las Vegas and back to Beverly Hills, this novice criminal lawyer finds himself climbing into the pockets of judges and fending off the threats of a garbage mogul. How much did the assistant really know about the senator's powerful backers? Enough get her killed?

The Girls in the Stilt House


Kelly Mustian - 2021
    But now, after running away to Baton Rouge and briefly knowing a different kind of life, she finds herself with nowhere to go but back home. And she knows there will be a price to pay with her father.Matilda, daughter of a sharecropper, is from the other side of the Trace. Doing what she can to protect her family from the whims and demands of some particularly callous locals is an ongoing struggle. She forms a plan to go north, to pack up the secrets she's holding about her life in the South and hang them on the line for all to see in Ohio.As the two girls are drawn deeper into a dangerous world of bootleggers and moral corruption, they must come to terms with the complexities of their tenuous bond and a hidden past that links them in ways that could cost them their lives.

The Inspector Lynley Collection (Inspector Lynley, #1-4)


Elizabeth George - 2003
    WELL SCHOOLED IN MURDER is set in an old and distinguished public school. The body of a brilliant young pupil is discovered in a country churchyard. Hampered by the code of honour and loyalty that prevail, Inspector Thomas Lynley and Barbara Havers discover within the confines of that privileged community a culture of cruelty that stretches back across the generations.In A SUITABLE VENGEANCE, Inspector Lynley investigation into the brutal murder of a local journalist tears apart powerful ties of love and friendship, shattering the tranquillity of the picturesque Cornish community and exposing a long-buried family secret. Its consequences irrevocably alter the course of Thomas Lynley's life.

Hurricanes in Paradise


Denise Hildreth Jones - 2010
    But the waters become choppy when Riley discovers that some who come to the Atlantis Hotel are accompanied by paralyzing secrets and overwhelming fears. Riley and three guests are in desperate but unknowing need of each other, eventually forging unlikely yet powerful friendships. With a hurricane headed straight for the island, together they embark on a journey of laughter, heartache, and healing.

Fall of the Citizens


Eric Thomas - 2012
    Eric Thomas' debut thriller is an exciting, violent and thought provoking story that asks the question, "What happens after you've won the revolution?" The story centers around Josh, a member of the hacktivist group Anonymous, who is living in safe seclusion until he's recruited by a bloodthirsty group of revolutionaries called "The Citizens." They've launched a war on the wealthy; stealing vaccinations from rich pharmaceutical companies and handing them out for free to the poor. Josh is reluctant to join until he meets Betty, a sarcastic, pink haired revolutionary motivated by her recent misfortune. Josh and Betty ride the wave of the uprising that will put them on the front line in the battle between the "haves" and the "have-nots," a classic class warfare struggle where the rights of the many finally outweigh the rights of the few.

With Full Malice


Brenda Hill - 2012
    Since the night her parents were murdered, she’s haunted by the killer’s threat to return for her. But the murder of a paroled sex-offender plunges her world upside down. Asked to cover the story, Madison discovers links to a vast underground society where no one is who they seem and few can be trusted. When threats to stop the investigation turn deadly, Madison races for her life against an unseen enemy who'll stop at nothing to protect the Ruby Red Society's secrets.

True North


Marie Force - 2010
    He doesn't immediately recognize the world-famous super model who is attending her cousin Enid's wedding at the country club he owns.Thanks to Enid's shameless matchmaking, Travis and Liana become acquainted and later embark on a two-week fling intended to be free of emotion and entanglement. As Liana's return to work gets closer, however, Travis wonders how he'll ever let her go when the time comes while Liana considers whether he might be her true north.Two high-powered careers, two amazing weeks and a love that comes along just once in a lifetime. Is she ready to give up her career for a different kind of life? Does he want the same things she does? After insisting on an emotionless affair, she can't very well ask him. Or can she?

Lawyers, Guns and Money


J.D. Rhoades - 2011
    Local crime boss Voit Fairgreen has just dropped a bag full of cash on his desk and hired him to defend Voit's brother Danny on a murder charge. Andy's one of the movers and shakers in the small southern town of Blainesville, and Voit figures Andy's the kind of inside guy that can cut a deal to get his baby brother out of the jam. The problem is that Danny just might be innocent. But someone powerful needs this case buried, and if an innocent man dies for that, so be it. Andy Cole is a guy who's made a good living by going along to get along. He's been willing to bend every rule, except Rule One--always get paid. But this case will cause him to re-examine his life and push him and his lover, beautiful newspaper editor Elizabeth Sinclair, to risk everything--including their lives-- for the truth. J.D. Rhoades, author of the Kindle bestseller BREAKING COVER and an attorney himself, turns his eye on his own profession in a book that combines the hard-boiled tone of the classic P.I novel with the white-knuckle suspense of the legal thriller.

Boxes For Beds


Maryann Miller - 2012
    They don't need the heat, and they have the leverage with the sheriff to make him do whatever they want. It seems like a good move to arrest Leslie Richards, the new woman in town, even though there is only thin circumstantial evidence against her. Better for it to be a stranger taking those babies and not one of their own.Leslie has left New York with her ten-year-old daughter, Mandy, hoping to escape from her past and the ruins of a relationship, only to discover that there is little peace for her in Pine Hollow, Arkansas.

Dark River Road


Virginia Brown - 2011
    Unchallenged, until now.Like everyone else in Cane Creek, Mississippi, Chantry Callahan grew up in the shadow of town boss Bert Quinton. Quinton held the lives of local people in his harsh grasp, never letting go. He knew where all their secrets were buried, along with the bodies of anyone who had dared to defy him.As a boy, Chantry couldn't best Quinton. Couldn't protect the people he loved, including his own mother. But now Chantry is grown. He's come back for answers.And for justice.

The Russian's Pride


Cap Daniels - 2020
    As the freedom she’s longed for turns to little more than imprisonment, her deadly skill set, forged and honed behind the Iron Curtain, is the only key that can possibly unshackle her.A late-night vigilante mission under the veil of darkness turns from vendetta to entrapment in an instant. What should’ve been a mission to right decades-old injustices becomes a deadly encounter with federal agents determined to turn the assassin into an indentured servant.With terrifying glimpses inside the modern-day Russian Mafia in the United States, this non-stop thriller takes the reader into the hedonistic streets of Miami’s South Beach, where millionaires play alongside The Bratva – The Brotherhood – of former Russian prisoners and current international criminals bent on breaking every rule to collect what they believe the world owes them.Loosely based on actual events following the fall of the Soviet Union, The Russian’s Pride takes readers on a harrowing march through an underworld they likely never knew existed right under their noses. Book number one in the Avenging Angel – Seven Deadly Sins Series lures readers into the murderous foyer of the Russkaya Mafiya. The remainder of the series promises to explore the darkest, deadliest, corners of every room.

Seaside and Homicide


Jenna St. James - 2019
    Standing next to the victim is the strange new girl in town, Raven Masters. When Brynn identifies the murder weapon as belonging to her Grams, the three girls set out to prove Granny Winnie is no killer! Brynn and Peyton must learn to set aside their prejudices and trust the quirky new girl. After all, she seems to be an old pro at sleuthing. Of course, it doesn't hurt that the girls get to cut their sleuthing teeth in Raven's cool '66 Fastback Mustang. But when things go from bad to worse for Granny Winnie, Brynn decides to call in her Grams' estranged younger sister, Aggie, a former bounty hunter.Can the girls learn to trust one another, follow their instincts, and get Granny Winnie out of jail? Or will Brynn be destined to spend her last year of high school alone in the small town of Copper Cove?

A Cape May Diamond


Larry Enright - 2012
    I’ll never forget that day. The Vietnam War had ended with the fall of Saigon that April, and the world was mired in one of its worst recessions ever. Unemployment in the United States was nearly nine percent, inflation even higher, and leadership lacking. The Watergate scandal had cast a smear across American politics, resulting in Richard Nixon’s resignation in August 1974 to avoid impeachment, and his successor’s immediately pardoning him to close the book on an unhappy chapter in U.S. history.It was not a good time for anyone and a particularly hard time for the old Victorian town of Cape May. The crown jewel of the New Jersey shore had fallen into neglect and disrepair and was dying a slow death. Once the elegant summer home to presidents and kings, it had become the last refuge of the deposed.That’s where I met Tom Ryan. Tom was a king, or so he would have you believe, but unlike Richard Nixon, when Tom was dethroned, he wasn’t sent home with a slap on the wrist. He was sent to prison. He was a convicted draft dodger, but one of the lucky ones released early by President Ford as part of his mass clemency after Nixon’s pardon. The problem was, Tom had nowhere to go when he got out, so he took the money his dad mailed to him and spent it on a bus ticket to get as far away as possible to a place where nobody cared who he was or what he had done, a place where nobody cared about anything. That place was Cape May.As hard a time as it was for everyone, it was harder for me because that was the day I met Tom Ryan. I should have turned and walked away. I knew it when he first looked at me, but I didn’t, not my first mistake, but one that would make Monday, May 19th, 1975 the hardest day of my life. This is the story of how Tom Ryan and I met and how things never quite work out the way you think. You might find a love story in here somewhere. You might not. You might find a message hidden in one of the nickel pop bottles collected by the beachcombers from some of the most beautiful white sand beaches in the world. You might even find a little mystery, but life is a mystery, isn’t it?