Showing results by author "Denise Grover Swank" in All Categories

Ten years ago, Summer Butler was television's most popular teenage sleuth. Since then, she's hit - what gossip sites just love to call - the gutter. Nearly bankrupt, betrayed, estranged from her greedy mother, and just about unemployable, she's coaxed into that desperate haven for has-beens: reality TV.

Caroline Blakely is certain of two things: She was happy with her life as a first grade school teacher, and she can never, ever return to it. After discovering a shocking truth about her father, the wealthy businessman at the helm of Blakely Oil, she’s on the run - a difficult feat given her father’s endless resources and connections. With the help of friends, Carly is able to secure a new identity, but her attempts to keep a low profile are blown to bits when she gets stuck in Drum, Tennessee.

For Rose Gardner, working at the DMV on a Friday afternoon is bad even before she sees a vision of herself dead. She's had plenty of visions, usually boring ones like someone's toilet's overflowed, but she's never seen one of herself before. When her overbearing momma winds up murdered on her sofa instead, two things are certain: There isn't enough hydrogen peroxide in the state of Arkansas to get that stain out, and Rose is the prime suspect.

Everything Emma Thompson owns fits in a suitcase. She moves from one roach infested motel to another. She and Jake, her five-year-old son, who can see the future, are running from the men intent on taking him. Emma will do anything to protect him, even when it means accepting the help of a stranger named Will. Jake insists she needs Will, but Emma's never needed help before. And even though she's learned to trust her son, it doesn't mean she trusts Will.

Piper Lancaster is a ghost whisperer and a skeptic. Piper helps her clients settle their inner demons, and that's good enough for her, even if ghosts aren't real. But the astonishing reappearance of the ruins of the Lost Colony of Roanoke turns her world upside down. She's soon confronted with undeniable evidence and discovers Asheville's new resident demon intent on killing her and a handsome stranger who says she's the only one who can destroy it. Barely able to accept the complete reversal in her convictions, Piper must embrace her true identity before it's too late. 

Megan Vandemeer meant to tell her parents about her broken engagement, but a month and a half later she finds herself boarding a plane home to her wedding. Having stretched avoidance to its limits, it's time to come clean - a terrifying prospect since her mother is sure to blame her rather than her cheating, emotionally frigid ex. A couple of drinks and two Dramamine later, Megan finds herself spilling her sob story to the tall, dark, and handsome stranger in the seat next to her.

Violet Gardner Beauregard is barely cold in her grave, but she’s still stirring up trouble. When Neely Kate Coulson accompanies her best friend, Rose, to Violet’s attorney for the reading of the will, they get the shock of their lives, one that leaves them both reeling. If that weren’t enough, special prosecutor Mason Devereaux is still calling witnesses for his grand jury, digging into the corruption in Fenton County. Neely Kate is approached by an unexpected source who reveals shocking news from the grand jury testimony - information about her wayward husband, Ronnie Coulson.

Neely Kate’s life is finally coming together. She’s living and working with her best friend, Rose. Her newly discovered brother, Joe, has decided he’s done hiding that she’s his sister, and her new boyfriend, Jed, is everything she could have dreamed of and more. Only things aren’t going as well as she’d hoped. Neely Kate is still keeping secrets from Rose. 

Libby St. Clair believes in fate - so much so, she's willing to pin everything on a curse a fortune-teller placed on her and her two best friends when they were kids. The curse, that each of them will marry before 30, have a disaster of a wedding, and end up with a man other than her original fiancé, has come to fruition for both of her friends, who are now deliriously happy. But Libby's attempt to quick-start the curse by proposing to her wrong-for-her boyfriend ends in a wild dash from the altar.

Divorce attorney Blair Hansen is convinced that marriage should be based on practicality, not passion. But as her own wedding approaches, she finds herself remembering her law school boyfriend, the only man she's ever loved, and regretting what might have been. Garrett Lowry is a divorce attorney who's ready to settle down. The problem is that he can't find a woman who suits him nearly as well as the one he loved and lost.

Companion novella to the Rose Gardner Investigation series. This series provides insight into characters in the Rose Gardner world, but is not required to listen to the series.

Rose Gardner collects secrets the way other people collect junk - and now she’s being asked to expose them. Special prosecutor Mason Deveraux has called a grand jury to investigate the corruption in the Sweet Branch police department, and he’s summoned Rose as a witness. Any topic is fair game, and the criminals in Fenton county are rightly scared of what she might share under oath. While trying to placate the lawless men, Rose is also caring for her dying sister, Violet.

Rose Gardner feels like she’s up a creek without a paddle. Her sister is dying, her secret boyfriend, James Malcolm, is struggling to protect the county underworld from an upstart drug dealer, and her ex has moved back to town with a bee in his bonnet and a mission to root out corruption in the county.  

Trouble always comes to those who court it. Rose Gardner's ability to see glimpses of the future has gotten her into hot water time and again, but so have her curiosity and her sense of daring. Those very qualities helped her defeat the most powerful man in Arkansas - a man so adept at hiding his crimes there was no way to defeat him inside of the law - but her success came at a steep personal price. Now she's throwing herself into her landscaping business, trying to live a life that's as orderly as one of her gardens.

Rose Gardner is trying to build a new normal. One that leaves the Fenton County crime world - including James "Skeeter" Malcolm, the current king - behind. Her best friend and roommate is a big part of that effort, but Neely Kate is busy building her own life anew. She disappeared for a few days, scaring the spit out of Rose - which is why Rose finds it impossible to deny her when she suggests they look for a missing parrot. Only this time Neely Kate isn't interested in the reward money - she's set them up to work with a cranky private investigator.

When Rose reports for Fenton County jury duty she figures she's lucky to get out of a morning working at the DMV. Instead, despite a disastrous encounter with the new assistant district attorney, Mason Deveraux, she's picked as a juror on a murder case. As the trial progresses, she realizes an ominous vision she had in the men's restroom proves the defendant is innocent. And there's not a cotton picking thing she can do about it. Or is there? As if things weren't bad enough, Rose's older sister Violet is going through a mid-life crisis.

Book Nine in the New York Times Best Selling mystery series by Denise Grover Swank.

Book eight in the New York Times and USA Today best-selling Rose Gardner Mystery series. Rose Gardner has survived plenty of close scrapes in the past, but her latest bit of trouble has landed her in the Fenton County holding cell on trumped-up charges. The most powerful man in Southern Arkansas, J. R. Simmons, is determined to put her behind bars for good and destroy everything she holds dear, including her boyfriend, Mason, and her friend, Skeeter, reigning king of the Fenton County crime world.

As the fallout from J.R. Simmons death begins to settle, some of the victims are still dealing with the results of that deadly night. Rose mourns the changes in her life and struggles to move on. Neely Kate is devastated when Joe leaves Henryetta two weeks after his father's death and refuses to speak to her. Joe is left dealing with his father's business and the consequent FBI investigation, while he wonders where he belongs.

While Rose recovers from a broken heart, she finds herself at odds with her sister and business partner, Violet. Rose buries herself in her landscaping work but becomes worried when her employee and friend, Bruce Wayne Decker, goes missing. In the meantime Fenton County Assistant DA Mason Deveraux has been patiently waiting to begin a relationship with Rose, but she realizes she needs to confront the demons of her past before she can embrace a new future.