42 books like Malice in Maggody

Maybe it’s because I am naturally curious and ask a lot of questions, I’m a sucker for a protagonist who sticks her nose everywhere it doesn’t belong.

South Florida hairstylist Marla Shore is already having a bad hair day when one of her clients dies in the shampoo chair at her salon. Then Detective Dalton Vail accuses Marla of putting poison in the woman’s coffee creamer. Grumpy Bertha Kravitz might not have been Marla’s favorite customer, but the hairstylist wouldn’t have murdered the lady.

I love that no matter how much danger she gets herself into, Marla stands up for herself and leaves no stone unturned when she decides it’s up to her to unmask the real killer.

Newly widowed Miss Julia, a pillar of her small southern community, is the poster child for my wise Nana’s theory that things never turn out the way you think they will when she finds herself smack dab in the center of a smarmy love triangle scandal involving her late husband.

I adore Miss Julia’s razer-sharp wit as she morphs from a clueless stuffed shirt into an endearingly strong southern woman who doesn’t take crap from anyone.

I am a big fan of a fast-paced tale that deftly weaves comic characters through a plot wrought with hand-wringing angst. Miss Julia and her cast of crazy characters does not disappoint.   

Nothing tickles my funny bone more than my husband describing the antics of his boyhood family dog, a singing ninety-pound boxer aptly named Troubadour.

So, naturally, I fell in love with mortician Callie Valentine Jones’ basset hound who’s convinced he is the reincarnation of the King of Rock n’ Roll. Business takes a nasty nosedive when the corpse of a local doctor goes missing from the Eternal Rest Funeral Home.

I almost died laughing when kookie Callie and her wake caterer cousin Lovie race in hot pursuit of the recently embalmed, last seen bound for Las Vegas by way of downtown Tupelo, Mississippi.

The fast-paced plot is nothing short of sheer Southern fried lunacy as Callie, Lovie, and Elvis track the dearly departed doctor inside a freezer owned by his showgirl mistress. 

Maybe it’s because I had to do it throughout my career as a sales exec in a historically male-dominated industry before I became an author, that I am a hopeless sap for a heroine who picks herself up no matter how many times she gets knocked down.

So, it is no surprise that Savannah, Georgia-based recent divorcee Reagan Summerside has a special place in my heart. Reagan, left with almost nothing, thanks to the ruthless tactics of her husband’s divorce lawyer, discovers the bimbo her ex dumped her for dead in her former Lexus.

I cheered the consignment shop owner on as she relentlessly searched for the murderer.

I began my ladies’ apparel sales career as a manufacturer’s representative traveling the deep Southern states where many of my accounts were located in small, rural towns that were dead ringers for Maggody, Arkansas, a hotbed of gossip and murder, and the fictional burg where Mischief in Maggo takes place.

So, of course I have a special place in my heart for Joan Hess’s cheerfully bawdy, tongue-in-cheek second book of the Arly Hanks Mystery Series.

Brilliant, unapologetic author Joan Hess gleefully created a zany cast of characters-Madame Celeste, the psychic enthralling gullible local Yokels with her predictions of doom; a crooked Mayor who also owns the overpriced grocery store, and the fire and brimstone preacher who can’t keep his pants zipped, along with a gaggle of mantra-chanting hippies who have turned the old general store into the source for “cosmic harmony.”

With the brutal murder of Robin Buchanon-a moonshiner, prostitute,… show more.

I was working as a flak at Simon & Schuster when this book came out, and I helped to write the flap copy, so it feels to me like I had a hand in it. As an aspiring writer, I remember admiring the hell out of this novel. On a recent re-read, as a grizzled, wizened veteran writer, I still do. Hays gives us a collection of memorable characters, and a wild, vagabonding tale that offers a glimpse at minor league life in the deep South. There’s humor and heartache and all that good stuff. 

I had long been familiar with the events of Little Rock Central High, having read books, articles, and online accounts of the attempt to integrate this Arkansas school. I found The Lions of Little Rock an accurate and compelling novel that provides young adults with a masterful introduction to how attempts to integrate the Jim Crow South impacted its children. Built on the seminal events to integrate Arkansas’s Little Rock High in 1958, the friendship of young Marlee and Liz portrays how segregation damages not just communities, but friendships. Young adults will be pulled in by Levine’s blend of plot, humor, and emotion to make this a memorable work of historical fiction that may inspire young readers to engage in the cause of civil rights. 

Once upon a time, I was the founder and president of a book club, Literary Ladies Alliance. Many moons ago, LLA chose Sugar as our monthly reading selection. I was absolutely floored by this unlikely, unconventional heroine of the same name as the novel set in a small southern town that wasn’t ready for this seductive storm, i.e. Sugar. I found her shockingly bold and beautifully unapologetic despite her disreputable past and “questionable morals.” She hungered for love, endured dangerous risks and scandal; and yet for me, Sugar moved with an air of voluptuous freedom that captivated my church girl imagination and respect. While Dianne McKinney Whetstone is my favorite author, Sugar is undoubtedly my favorite novel! I’ve read the book twice and would readily devour it again for its captivating journey back in time and its uncharacteristic, boldly unforgettable heroine. 

As owner of a dusty bookshop and mother of a teen daughter, widow Claire Malloy is hesitant to host a book party for a smutty romance author. But the two women are friends, so she does, and this being a cozy mystery, murder results. Claire’s droll wit, the funny situations, and the sparring between Claire and the handsome detective keep the pages turning in this well-plotted mystery. Strangled Prose is the first book in the Claire Malloy series.

One of nine Black students to integrate the high school in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957, Beals faces threats to her life as well as constant cruelty not only from white people but also from members of her own community, who disapprove of her decision. Her book gives us an unflinching account of what it feels like to be inside the maelstrom. Education seems almost beside the point when she needs protection from the National Guard. Most resonant to me, Beals admits that being a warrior for social change is exhausting. “Sometimes,” she writes in her diary, “I just need to be a girl.”