Patricia Houck Sprinkle

“I ate and ate and ate in the hopes that if I made myself big, my body would be safe. I buried the girl I was because she ran into all kinds of trouble. I tried to erase every memory of her, but she is still there, somewhere. . . . I was trapped in my body, one that I barely recognized or understood, but at least I was safe.” In her phenomenally popular essays and long-running Tumblr blog, Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and body, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. As a woman who describes her own body as “wildly undisciplined,” Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care. In Hunger, she explores her past—including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life—and brings readers along on her journey to understand and ultimately save herself. With the bracing candor, vulnerability, and power that have made her one of the most admired writers of her generation, Roxane explores what it means to learn to take care of yourself: how to feed your hungers for delicious and satisfying food, a smaller and safer body, and a body that can love and be loved—in a time when the bigger you are, the smaller your world becomes.

When the body of a local vagrant is found dead and all signs point to MacLaren Yarbrough's old college boyfriend, Mac is caught in a murder investigation that puts her right in the spotlight.

State bridge champion and club woman Edie Whelan Burkett has been dealt many a bad hand, but after being widowed, the only things she has to sustain herself are a job at the library and a thousand-acre pecan grove. And just when the stress of it all seems too much, the grove's foreman dies...followed by Edie-and not by natural causes. Now, county magistrate Mac Yarbrough is on the case to prove the foreman's son innocent of murder, and figure out who's playing with a full deck-and who's not.

Georgia magistrate MacLaren Yarbrough is back in a brand-new Thoroughly Southern Mystery... A black cloud covers the town of Hopemore, Georgia, when a favorite high school chemistry teacher is found dead. But if this is murder, darkness may be lurking in places where even sharp-eyed MacLaren would never think to look...

Always ready to help a friend, Katharine Murray has made her way to Bayard Island off the coast of Georgia with Dr. Flo Gadney, to attend to an unsavory errand. Burch Bayard, local patriarch and greedy landowner, has a nefarious plan to build McMansions up and down the island—and over graves that may belong to Dr. Flo's ancestors!The friends set to work to make sure that Dr. Flo's family tree has its roots in the old cemetery, a task made very difficult by the lack of Southern hospitality from the island's inhabitants. One old woman even tries to shoot them! But when that woman later turns up dead, Katharine and Flo realize there's more than bodies buried on that land. And if they keep unearthing the island's secrets, they might be digging their own graves.

This brand new Thoroughly Southern Mystery from the author of Who Invited the Dead Man? finds Georgia magistrate MacLaren Yarbrough investigating the murder of a dear family friend-and uncovering more dark secrets about their lives than she ever wanted to know.

What does a Dunwoody matron wear to a funeral? Her black tennis dress. It's no joke, however, when the funeral is given for your high school buddy's wife, and she has been brutally murdered. Sheila Travis, successful corporate executive and attractive fortyish widow, has met Yvonne Delacourt once, at a party. Yvonne is stunning, ambitious - and intensely disliked. Under the local residents' gracious veneer of Southern hospitality, Sheila senses their seething antagonism to young Mrs. Delacourt. When Yvonne is found stabbed to death, the police focus on her husband, Walt, as the most likely suspect. Sheila sets out to clear the pal of her youth by finding out more about those Dunwoody residents who loathed the alluring victim. The spirited search reveals dark secrets more carefully kept than the manicured lawns of this exclusive enclave - from a respected matron's double life, to a retired couple's vile secret, to an arrogant gardener who has no gardening tools. But the real shocker comes when Sheila, following lurid hints about Yvonne's slippery past, arrives in the dead woman's Florida hometown. Horrific discoveries reveal a soul-chilling evil and elicit unexpected sympathy for Yvonne's killer. Back in Dunwoody, Sheila finds her emotions stirred by an undeniably appealing man with a disturbing connection to the crime. Her maverick investigation startlingly reveals that the biggest secret of all was Yvonne's.

Katharine Murray's elegant Atlanta home has been viciously vandalized! She's prepared to devote all her time to getting it back in tip-top shape — until she meets Bara Weidenauer. Once a picture-perfect socialite, Bara has fallen on some hard times. Her husband, Foley, has hightailed it out of their marriage, and she's convinced he'll try to take her for every penny she's got. While scouring her house for anything of value to hide from her greedy ex, Bara finds a box of military medals that once belonged to her father, a beloved war hero. Eager to know the story behind these precious trinkets, she enlists Katharine's help.But as Katharine digs deeper into Weidenauer family history, she discovers that everything Bara believed about her father may have been a lie. And when Foley is found shot to death, Bara's world turns to complete chaos. It's up to Katharine to expose this family's secrets from the past and the present...or the future will be very grim indeed.