Margaret Maron

Deborah Knott, an attorney attempting to infiltrate the old boy network of tobacco country by running for district judge, is distracted from the race, and almost eliminated, when she finds new evidence to an old small-town murder.

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.

"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.

Deborah Knott may have lost the district election, but a bigoted judge's sudden death-and some old-fashioned political horse trading-have won her a governor's appointment. True to Southern form, her swearing-in is followed by a raucous reception that brings out every elderly aunt and cousin in the county. Unfortunately, Lu Bingham, the force behind WomanAid, is at the reception, too. Not only has she come to collect the leftovers for her daycare center,...

In North Carolina, Judge Deborah Knott investigates the death of Tink Taylor, a local fisherman who was a voice of reason in the dispute between commercial fishermen and real estate developers. By the author of Bootlegger's Daughter.

When Judge Deborah Knott travels to Wrightsville Beach for a summer conference for North Carolina District Court Judges, she stumbles upon the body of one of her colleagues. Meanwhile, Deborah's husband, Sheriff's Deputy Dwight Bryant, is in Virginia with his son, tying up loose ends left by the death of his first wife. When another judge is found murdered at the conference, it soon becomes evident that Deborah may be the killer's next target. Her...

Taking an out-of-town assignment to put distance between herself and her hyper-reactive family, recently engaged judge Deborah Knott finds her peaceful break disrupted by a local murder that she becomes determined to solve.

A mysterious ornithologist staying at Mrs. Lattimore's Victorian home and doing research on Southern vultures seems familiar to Judge Deborah Knott and Sheriff's Deputy Dwight Bryant, especially after a murderer strikes.

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...