South Carolina -- fiction

In this legendary Gershwin opera set among the black residents of a fishing village in 1912 South Carolina, Bess - a woman with a disreputable history - tries to break free from her brutish lover Crown after he becomes wanted for murder. The only person willing to overlook her past and offer her shelter is the crippled Porgy. Their relationship is threatened by the disapproval of the townspeople, the presence of her old drug supplier Sportin' Life - and the threatened return of Crown.

Available on DVD and CD.

Tory Bodeen grew up in a small, rundown house where her father ruled with an iron fist and a leather belt--and where her dreams and talents had no room to flourish. But she had 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. After young Hope's brutal murder, unsolved to this day, Tory's life began to fall apart. And now, as she returns to the tiny town of Progress, South Carolina, with plans to settle in and open a stylish home-design shop, she is determined to find a measure of peace and free herself from the haunting visions of that terrible night. As she forges a new bond with Cade Lavelle--Hope's older brother and the heir to the Lavelle fortune--she isn't sure whether the tragic loss they share will unite them or drive them apart

Charleston antiques dealer/amateur sleuth Abigail Timberlake Washburn reluctantly attends a seance at her friend C.J.'s newly-bought fixer-upper. When the psychic who conducts the seance is forced to the other side prematurely, Abby leaps into action.

Off his medication and slowly going mad, Timothy Rooney, aging boy wonder of the South Carolina lowlands, heads for New York City to search for Bernadette, an ex-wife from a six-day marriage, and to spend the fifteen thousand dollars he has hidden in his shoes.

"Things in the town of Stone's Throw, South Carolina, rarely get much spicier than the extra red pepper Lucy Nan Pilgrim sprinkles into her homemade cheese straws. So when an elderly but surprisingly childlike woman calling herself Shirley shows up on Lucy's doorstep looking for her mama, Lucy thinks it must be another of her friend Ellis's pranks. But Ellis doesn't know a thing about it, and what's more, the two suspect the woman might be Ellis's cousin, Florence, who disappeared as a child more than fifty years earlier.

"When the mysterious woman vanishes from Lucy's house, she and Ellis don't know what to think. And considering that Calpernia Hemphill, the town's theater and music aficionado, has just been found dead of an apparent fall from the tower at Bertram's Folly, life in Stone's Throw suddenly seems less safe than sinister. Luckily, guardian angel Augusta Goodnight shows up to calm Lucy's nerves (with a basket of strawberry muffins, of course)."

First in a series featuring Charleston tea shop owner Theodosia Browning. When Theodosia caters a tea for 200 at the annual historic homes garden party, she much track down the killer of an esteemed guest.