Fiction

Lizzie Stuart

Death's Favorite Child
Death's Favorite Child

African-American, 38, a crime historian, Lizzie Stuart has spent most of her life in Drucilla, Kentucky. When her grandmother dies, Lizzie decides it is time for a vacation. She joins her friend Tess for a week in Cornwall, England, in the resort town of St. Regis. Lizzie finds her vacation anything but restful when she becomes an eyewitness to a murder and the probable next victim.

A Dead Man's Honor
A Dead Man's Honor
Crime historian Lizzie Stuart goes to Gallagher, Virginia for a year as a visiting professor at Piedmont State University. She is there to do research for a book about a 1921 lynching that her grandmother, Hester Rose, witnessed when she was a twelve-year-old child. Lizzie's research is complicated by her own unresolved feelings about her secretive grandmother and by the disturbing pres­ence of John Quinn, the police officer she met while on vacation in England. When an arrogant but brilliant faculty member of Piedmont State University is murdered, Lizzie begins to have more than a few sleep­less nights. A Dead Man’s Honor is a haunting story that will keep you awake nights, too.
Old Murders
Old Murders

On August 16, 1912, Virginia Christian became the only female to die in the electric chair in the state of Virginia. She was a 17 year old (her age was the subject of debate) African American juvenile who had been convicted of the murder of her white female employer, Ida Belote. Virginia and her family was sharecroppers on the woman's farm. I discovered the case when I was during research for Blood on Her Hands, a book about women and murder.

You Should Have Died on Monday
You Should Have Died on Monday

In this compelling mystery, African American university professor and crime historian Lizzie Stuart comes face-to-face with her long lost mother, Becca, and ultimately learns that some things are better left buried in the past.

Forty Acres and a Soggy Grave
Forty Acres and a Soggy Grave

Fitting in, being liked by his friends, or staying alive? Sometimes the person you love isn't the person you thought you knew. Crime historian Lizzie Stuart and her fiance, John Quinn travel to a farm on the Eastern Shore of Virginia for a weekend gathering of his old West Point buddies. Mexican migrant laborers and struggling black farmers. Money, politics, and war. Too many secrets in the past, too many lies in the present, and a weekend that turns deadly.

Hannah McCabe

The Red Queen Dies
The Red Queen Dies

The year is 2019, and a drug used to treat soldiers for post-traumatic stress disorder, nicknamed "Lullaby," has hit the streets. Swallowing a little pill erases traumatic memories, but what happens to a criminal trial when the star witness takes a pill and can't remember the crime? When two women are murdered in quick succession, biracial police detective Hannah McCabe is charged with solving the case. In spite of the advanced technology, including a city-wide surveillance program, a third woman is soon killed, and the police begin to suspect that a serial killer is on the loose.

What The Fly Saw
What The Fly Saw
The morning after a blizzard that shut down the city, funeral director Kevin Novak is found dead in the basement of his funeral home. The arrow sticking out of his chest came from his own hunting bow. A loving husband and father and an active member of a local megachurch, Novak had no known enemies. His family and friends say he had been depressed because his best friend died suddenly of a heart attack and Novak blamed himself. But what does his guilt have to do with his death? Maybe nothing, maybe a lot.