Margaret Maron

Bootlegger's Daughter

Margaret Maron

• 1993 Anthony-Novel winner
• 1993 Edgar–Novel winner
• 1993 Macavity-Novel winner
• 1992 Agatha–Novel winner
• Score: 40.43

Unconventional, still unwed (at the ripe old age of 34) North Carolina attorney Deborah Knott has done the unthinkable: tossed her hat into the heated race for district judge of old boy-ruled Colleton County. The only female candidate, she’s busy defending indigent clients and reeling in voters. Then suddenly, the young daughter of Janie Whitehead begs her to help solve Janie’s senseless, never-solved, eighteen-year-old murder. Deborah takes on the case; following twisted, typically Southern bloodlines, turning up dangerous, decades-old secrets, and inspiring…

High Country Fall: A Deborah Knott Mystery

Margaret Maron

• 2005 Macavity-Novel nominee
• 2004 Agatha–Novel nominee
• Score: 12.55

Judge Deborah Knott has agreed to “tie the knot” with childhood friend Deputy Sheriff Dwight Bryant, and her numerous relatives are acting as if it’s the love match of the century. It’s not, and suddenly Deborah’s wondering whether friendship, mutual history, and good sex are enough to make a marriage. Her antidote for cold feet? She’s heading for the hills.

When asked to fill in for a vacationing judge in Cedar Gap, a five-hour drive from her flatland home, Deborah readily agrees. It’s the perfect place to clear her head with its fresh mountain air, gorgeous…

Home Fires: A Deborah Knott Mystery

Margaret Maron

• 1999 Macavity-Novel nominee
• 1998 Agatha–Novel nominee
• Score: 12.49

North Carolina Judge Deborah Knott engages in her own investigation of an arsonists in the midst of campaigning for reelection in the sixth installment of this award-winning series.

At a stop along her campaign trail, Judge Deborah Knott attends a community picnic at the Mt. Olive Church. When the historic building is destroyed by a fire shortly after the outing - and the charred skeleton of young man is found among the ashes - Knott begins her own investigation into the tragedy. Earlier national news reports of a fire at a local African-American church had…

Storm Track

Margaret Maron

• 2000 Agatha–Novel winner
• Score: 10.5

“Hurricanes rarely make it inland as far as Colleton County, North Carolina. When they do, people remember them as events that mark an entire generation. Domestic storms, on the other hand, hit with regularity. But when the scantily clad body of a promiscuous wife is found in a motel, the killing resounds like a thunderclap through the community.

With her handsome cousin a suspect in the murder, Judge Deborah Knott gets personally involved in the case. She soon uncovers a web of secret and illicit affairs that stretches from the African-American church…

Up Jumps the Devil: A Deborah Knott Mystery

Margaret Maron

• 1996 Agatha–Novel winner
• Score: 10.46

Murder usually begins at home, and Colleton County, North Carolina, proves no exception. When truck driver and childhood neighbor Dallas Stancil is shot and killed in his own backyard, Judge Deborah Knott figures she owes his memory at least the respectful ritual of taking his widow one of her Aunt Zell’s best chicken casseroles. Mistake Number One. Dallas wasn’t rich, but with development eating up the farms and forests of North Carolina his land is suddenly worth a fortune. His trashy, chain-smoking third wife and grown stepchildren are all too aware of its…

Hard Row: A Deborah Knott Mystery

Margaret Maron

• 2007 Agatha–Novel nominee
• Score: 6.57

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 countryside. An early spring sun has begun to shine like a blessing on the fertile fields of North Carolina, but along with the seeds sprouting in the thawing soil, violence is growing as well. Mutilated body parts have appeared along the back roads of Colleton County, and the search for the victim’s identity and for that of his killer will lead Deborah and her new husband, Sheriff’s Deputy Dwight Bryant, into the desperate realm of undocumented farm workers exploited for cheap labor.In the meantime, Deborah and Dwight continue to adjust to married life and to having Dwight’s eight-year-old son, Cal, live with them full time. When another body is found, these newlyweds will discover dark truths that threaten to permanently alter the serenity of their rural surroundings and their new life together.

Rituals of the Season: A Deborah Knott Mystery

Margaret Maron

• 2005 Agatha–Novel nominee
• Score: 6.55

The multiple winner of the most coveted prizes for mystery fiction, Margaret Maron is back with a new tale featuring her perennially popular sleuth Judge Deborah Knott. Only days away from her wedding to Deputy Sheriff Dwight Bryant, Judge Deborah Knott has more than enough worries to keep her busy. With her sisters-in-law dissecting every detail of the ceremony, her brothers making book on whether her very pregnant matron of honor will be in the church or in labor, her house torn up by carpenters and plumbers, and Dwight’s young son expected for Christmas,…

Last Lessons of Summer

Margaret Maron

• 2003 Agatha–Novel nominee
• Score: 6.53

In the suffocating heat of a Southern August, Amy Steadman, heir to a merchandising and publishing empire, has come to clean out the house of her murdered grandmother - and perhaps find some answers. Beneath her quiet, accommodating manner, a storm is brewing.

For here in this gracious home, Amy’s own mother had committed suicide when her daughter was barely three years old. The tragedy put an end to her mother’s turbulent marriage to Amy’s father. But the secrets surrounding her mother’s death live on. Sorting through her grandmother’s things, Amy reflects on…

Southern Discomfort: A Deborah Knott Mystery

Margaret Maron

• 1993 Agatha–Novel nominee
• Score: 6.43

With sass and wit, Deborah Knott, formerly a defense attorney in North Carolina’s Colleton County, is putting herself firmly on the seat of power—a district judgeship. She’s also making good on a campaign promise: helping to build houses for battered women. Here Deborah expects muscle aches, not the near-rape of a young woman and the murder of her attacker. And she certainly never expects that her hammer—complete with her fingerprints—will be the murder weapon…

Corpus Christmas: A Mystery

Margaret Maron

• 1989 Agatha–Novel nominee
• Score: 6.39

A relic of Manhattan’s Gilded Age, when Edith Wharton and Henry James chronicled its inhabitants, the Erich Bruel House on Gramercy Park contained three floors of glorious art-and one Christmas corpse. While the mansion was being decorated with antique ornaments, and preparations were being made for a lavish holiday party, someone killed the obnoxious art historian Dr. Roger Shambley. Lieutenant Sigrid Harald of the New York Police Department comes up with a long list of suspects, and must sort through all sorts of motives, including academic rivalry, infidelity,…