Margaret Maron

When Deborah Knott's terminally ill aunt, Rachel, is found smothered to death in her bed at a hospice center, all of her Colleton County kith and kin are shocked. Who kills a dying woman? As Deborah and her husband, Sheriff's Deputy Dwight Bryant, try to find Rachel's killer, they cross paths with the Designated Daughters, a support group for caregivers, not all of whom are women. Rachel's flamboyant daughter, Sally, is a member, and when a con artist...

Margaret Maron is back with a new mystery featuring her critically acclaimed sleuth Judge Deborah Knott.

Inheriting her family's business, Amy Stedman reflects on her marriage to a man who loves her only for her money, her mother's apparent suicide, her grandmother's unsolved murder, and the possibility that she may be targeted next.

With a steamy Southern plot and a sassy new heroine, this Edgar Award winning novel debuts an exceptional new series. Attorney Deborah Knott is North Carolina's answer to V.I. Warshawski, a legal sleuth with a knack for sniffing out the most baffling crimes. Deborah has just done the unthinkable-entered the heated race for judge of old-boy-ruled Colleton County. The only female candidate, she's busy reeling in voters and giving campaign speeches....

Judge Deborah Knott and Deputy Sheriff Dwight Bryant are due to marry in a few days, but their plans are put on hold when unforseen events demand their attention. First, an assistant district attorney is killed. Then, Judge Knott is asked to review the scheduled execution of convicted murderer Martha Hurst. Unable to resist, Judge Knott begnis sifting through the evidence and finds the two cases may be connected.

"As Judge Deborah Knott presides over a case involving a barroom brawl, it becomes clear that deep resentments over race, class, and illegal immigration are simmering just below the surface in the North Carolina countryside"--Provided by publisher.

"On a quiet August morning, Judge Deborah Knott's father Kezzie makes a shocking discovery on a remote corner of his farm: the body of a man bludgeoned to death. Investigating this crime, Deborah's husband, Sheriff's Deputy Dwight Bryant, soon uncovers a long-simmering hostility between Kezzie and the slain man over a land dispute. The local newspaper implies that Deborah's family may have had something to do with the murder-and that Dwight is dragging...

Margaret Maron's best-selling Deborah Knott mystery series won instant acclaim upon its debut in 1993. In this 16th entry in the series, the judge is faced with a horrifying holiday murder case. After a beautiful young cheerleader is found dead in a car wreck, Judge Knott's husband Deputy Dwight Bryant discovers evidence that the death was anything but an accident. Now Knott and Bryant are on a desperate search for a killer before he or she strikes...

The governor of North Carolina has appointed Deborah to a judicial seat in the District Court Division. On her weekends, the fledgling judge has been helping an all-woman building crew complete a home for a needy single mother. Her attempts to gain positive P.R. go awry when her niece is found battered and half-naked in the partially completed home, with Deborah's own bloody hammer lying nearby.

Home Fires tackles one of the contemporary South's most burning issues. When racial tension erupts in the sleepy community of Colleton County, North Carolina, Deborah is caught off guard. She is happily tending her own home fires: her simmering romance with Kidd Chapin, the house she's building on her family's land, and her campaign for reelection as district judge. But then the first black church is burned, and all of Deborah's alarms go off. Narrator...