LOWCOUNTRY CRIME Now Available in Nook, Kobo, Google Play, and iBooks!

The entire LOWCOUNTRY CRIME: FOUR NOVELLAS anthology is now available not just on Amazon, but also on Nook, iBooks, Google Play and Kobo.

LOWCOUNTRY: That portion of the Southeastern United States characterized by low country, generally flat—whether barrier island, tidal marsh, tidal river valleys, swamps, piney forests, or great cities like Charleston and Savannah.

CRIME: An act, forbidden by a public law, that makes the offender liable to punishment by that law.

These four novellas capture the unique aspects of the Lowcountry with stories incorporating Charleston high life and Savannah low life, island vacations and life on a boat. You’ll be treated to thieves doing good and rapscallions doing bad, loves won and loves lost, family relations providing wonderful support and life after divorce.

Each novella can be read in a single hour to hour-and-a-half sitting or enjoyed at a more leisurely pace, stopping at white space along the way. Within the broad range of the crime genre, these tales fit “north of cozy” and “south of noir.”

“Trouble Like A Freight Train Coming” by Tina Whittle is a prequel to her Tai Randolph Mysteries. Tai is accustomed to murder and mayhem . . . of the fictional variety. As a tour guide in Savannah, Georgia, she’s learned the tips are better when she seasons her stories with a little blood here, a little depravity there. She’s less experienced in real life criminality, however, preferring to spend her days sleeping late and her nights hitting the bars. But when she gets the news that her trouble-making cousin has keeled over while running a marathon, Tai finds herself in a hot mess of treachery and dirty dealings. Worst of all, the clues lead her straight into the moonshine-soaked territory of the most infamous smuggler in Chatham County—her Uncle Boone.

The novella is set in Savannah several years prior to the inheritance of her Atlanta gun shop and her first encounter with security agent Trey Seaver, who ultimately becomes her partner in both romance and crime solving. For readers familiar with the rest of Tai’s adventures, this story is a chance to watch her develop her sleuthing chops. For those meeting Tai for the first time...welcome to her slightly reckless, somewhat hungover, not-quite-respectable world.

In “Last Heist” by Polly Iyer, Paul Swan travels the world buying exotic automobiles for wealthy clients, but underneath his believable cover is a first-class, never-been-caught diamond thief.

When he sees a picture in the Charleston newspaper of a magnificent diamond necklace on the wife of a visiting South American strongman, he can’t resist the temptation to steal it. Paul doesn’t anticipate what he finds in the hotel room’s safe besides the jewels. Now he has to figure out how to stop a political catastrophe without exposing himself as the thief who stole the diamonds, and he has three people complicating his effort: a sexy TV reporter angling for a story, a suspicious cop eager for an arrest, and a rogue mercenary bent on ending his life.

“Blue Nude,” by Jonathan M. Bryant introduces us to Brad Sharpe, who has problems. Not just the problems you would expect resulting from traumatic injury and a destructive divorce. His ex-wife has gone missing and a priceless Picasso has been stolen. The cops have pegged Brad as a person of interest in both cases. Worse, a violent sociopath might want Brad dead. Only with the help of friends and his knowledge of the Georgia Lowcountry can Brad fight to clear his name and resolve the case of the Blue Nude.

In “Low Tide at Tybee,” James M. Jackson brings three of his Seamus McCree series characters (Seamus, his darts-throwing mother, and his now six-year-old granddaughter, Megan) to Tybee Island, Georgia to vacation and escape winter up north. Megan spots a thief going through their beach bags, after which their vacation unravels with a series of twists and turns that will leave you guessing until the end, trying to figure out who done what.

A Walk Through Savannah's Bonaventure Cemetery

I love strolling in old cemeteries. I suppose this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone – I am, after all, a mystery writer, and I write a character who used to be a tour guide in Savannah graveyards – but my appreciation is occasionally met with a shudder from others.

Those are places of the dead, they say.

Well, yes . . . and no. Places of the dead certainly, but for the living without a doubt. Graveyards are the collective scrapbook of a community – a family, a church, a town – and Savannah’s Bonaventure Cemetery is an especially gorgeous and intricate one.

First a plantation, Bonaventure began welcoming the dead into its marshy arms in the early 1800s. Situated at the bend of the Wilmington River, Bonaventure blends the manmade and the natural in a shifting intermingle, as tidal as the waters that run along its Eastern borders. The landscape is mostly silent – bird calls, rustling leaves, a high soft breeze winding through the Spanish moss and live oak branches – but occasionally the whine of an outboard motor will piece the quiet. Or a tour bus will rumble through. Or even – because this is still a working cemetery – a line of cars with their headlights on, laying a loved one to rest, adding another soul and another story to the Bonaventure fold.

Bonaventure is most famous perhaps for the iconic Bird Girl statue, which after it graced the cover of John Beredt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil became too valuable to rest unattended and which was spirited away to a downtown museum. But there are other famous grave sites, and art, still available for the viewing.

There’s the resting place of Gracie Watson, marked with tenderly carved sculpture of the little girl who died at age seven. Her grave is protected by a wrought iron fence, saving the stone from the further erosion of human hands. Rain and the salt air have had their way, and so I imagine the features are not as sharply defined as they once were. I think it’s beautiful this way, worked upon by the slow hand of time, which is as tender and delicate as an artist’s touch.

There’s also the gravesite of Conrad Aiken, a one of the finest American poets and a lover of Savannah. His grave is a bench—the legend goes, he wanted to provide a place for visitors to stop, rest and have a martini with him – engraved with two telling phrases: “GIVE MY LOVE TO THE WORLD” and “COSMOS MARINER DESTINATION UNKNOWN.”

Bonaventure is – and perhaps this is why I love all cemeteries so – a place of stories. Some are long and raveling. Some read “The End” all too soon. Some are mysteries, marked only by a stone that says “Mother” or “Baby Boy.” But all invite us to participate in the telling. All ask us, the living, to continue the tale.

*If you’d like to see more of my photos from Bonaventure Cemetery, you can visit my Pinterest board: https://www.pinterest.com/tinawh/bonaventure-cemetery/

* This post originally appeared on Booklover's Bench.