There are places along the South Carolina and Georgia coast where the past never feels very far away. Daufuskie Island is one of them. On October 1, I’m delighted to welcome readers back to the world of the Savannah Mysteries with The Daufuskie Tide, the third book in the series. After the events of The Yamacraw Moon and The Wormsloe Marsh, Detective John Mitchell and historian Kate Gallagher return for a new mystery—one that carries them beyond Savannah and across the water

The haunting beauty of Savannah’s marshlands inspires the setting of the Savannah Mystery Series I’ve been thinking lately about what makes the Savannah Mystery Series different from my St. Augustine books. The obvious answer is that there are no ghosts. Well, not literal ones, anyway. Savannah has plenty of ghosts of its own—the kind that come from history, memory, family, grief, and all the things people carry with them long after they think they’ve put them away. That was

I'm so excited about The Yamacraw Moon! So far, those who have read it have liked it for different reasons than the St. Augustine series. It doesn't feature the supernatural, so some readers will be disappointed . . . but what it does show is what I've learned as a middle-aged and getting older woman who grew up in the South. In these stories, Kate Gallagher, the protagonist, starts out as a very timid woman who is quietly drowning in grief. I know many people like her. I

One of my favorite things about writing is that every story begins with a single question. Sometimes that question is, What if evil has been waiting for centuries? That question became the Angels Trilogy. Other times the question is much quieter: what secrets lie hidden along the oldest streets of Savannah? That question became The Yamacraw Moon. I am excited to announce that The Yamacraw Moon will be released in late July, marking the beginning of my new Savannah Mysteries s

You’ve probably heard it before: the first 48 hours are critical. That’s true. But not for the reasons most people think. It’s not just about speed; it’s about accuracy. Early information shapes everything that follows. Establishing the timeline Identifying last known contact Preserving physical evidence Determining whether the situation is voluntary or not If those pieces are wrong—or incomplete—the entire investigation shifts off course, and correcting that later is difficu

I'm sitting in Wildwood Crest, New Jersey, looking out at the marsh. At first glance, the marsh looks peaceful. Wide stretches of grass bending with the tide. Water moving in slow, quiet channels. Sunlight catching on the surface like glass. It feels open, visible and safe. It isn’t. Marshland is one of the most deceptive landscapes in the world. What looks flat and exposed is layered, shifting, and often impossible to fully search. The ground isn’t solid. It gives way. The w

At first glance, the supernatural and true crime seem completely different. One deals with what can’t be seen. The other with what can be proven. But the longer I write both . . . the more they begin to look the same. I think this is because at their core, both are about the same questions: Why do people do what they do? What pushes someone across a line? And what does it take to come back? In real crime, those answers are grounded in evidence. In supernatural stories, they’r

At first, they might seem at odds: faith deals with belief. Forensics deals with proof. One asks you to trust, the other asks you to verify. But in practice, they aren’t in conflict. They’re looking at the same reality from different angles. Forensics answers what happened, while faith asks what it means. One examines evidence, the other examines purpose. Both are present in my stories. Not competing, but completing. I have a very strong belief system, but I also know that u

Sometimes, people will ask me: why do you write about such difficult things? Loss, death, crime, evil, grief--these aren't easy topics. Why not write something lighter, something easier to carry? It’s a fair question. The answer is simple: Because darkness is real, and pretending it isn’t doesn’t make it go away. Stories have always been one of the ways we make sense of the world around us. Not just the parts that are comfortable or easy to explain, but the parts that unse

In stories about angels and demons, it’s easy to focus on the extraordinary—the unseen forces at work, the moments of power, the sense that something larger than the visible world is shaping events behind the scenes. Those elements draw attention, as they should. They create tension, raise the stakes, and suggest that what is happening extends beyond ordinary understanding. But that’s not where the real weight of the story falls. The weight falls on people like Sarah. She isn

At first glance, Mark Burton is easy to define: a detective, a protector, a man doing his job. But that definition doesn’t hold for long, because Mark operates in spaces where answers aren’t clean. Where logic explains most things, but not everything. As a detective, he follows evidence, trusts instinct, practices protocol. He's very good at his job, and that's no accident. A former Marine with a sharp intuitive streak, he's built to investigate homicide. But increasingly,

We’re taught that truth is good—that it’s something to seek, something to value, something that, once uncovered, brings clarity and resolution. And it is. But truth also has consequences, and those consequences are often more complex than we expect. Because once truth is uncovered—once something hidden is brought into the open—it doesn’t simply sit there as information. It changes things. Once you know the truth, you can no longer be neutral. Honesty shifts the ground people

It’s easy to assume that people will come forward—that if something is wrong, someone will say something, and that truth, once it exists, has a way of making itself known. But in reality, many crimes go unreported, and many truths remain buried—not because they are impossible to uncover, but because no one chooses to bring them into the open. The reasons for that silence are not always dramatic. More often, they are quiet, complicated, and deeply human. There is the fear of c

Most of us notice the obvious: what’s broken, missing, what stands out. We’re trained to notice disruption. We focus on the thing that doesn’t belong, or the moment that draws attention to itself and demands to be explained. It's not surprising that we're built this way. After all, things that gain our attention could be dangerous. We're conditioned to notice things that could be a problem for us. It feels efficient, logical, and safe, and for the most part--it is. But det

In fiction, justice is often very tidy. In a book, I have control over the outcome. In a story, I can ensure that the truth is uncovered, the responsible person is identified, and the story wraps up neatly, often within a few hundred pages. The reader closes the book, maybe with a satisfied nod, and thinks, " Well, that’s that." Wouldn’t it be nice if real life worked that way? Unfortunately, real life did not get the memo. In the real world, cases go cold. Evidence is often

Not the kind with wings or loud entrances. Not the type that say, "Behold!" Not the kind you’d recognize. The kind you almost forget—until later. We tend to imagine angels as unmistakable. Radiant. Otherworldly. Impossible to miss. After all, that is what we're told, in the Bible and elsewhere. Either they enter with trumpets, or they work invisibly. But what if that’s not how they work at all? What if the point isn’t to be seen—but to move quietly, just enough to change s

Good mysteries are built on imagination, but the best ones are grounded in reality. When people read mystery novels, they often assume the most difficult part of writing them is inventing the crime. In truth, the crime itself is usually the easiest part. What takes far more effort—and far more care—is making sure everything that follows feels believable. The investigation must unfold in ways that make sense. The clues must appear at the right moments. The authorities involved

Modern life encourages us to think of the world as entirely visible and measurable. If something cannot be weighed, photographed, or explained scientifically, we tend to assume it does not exist. Yet for most of human history, people believed something much different--that the world we see every day is only one layer of reality. And in that unseen layer, two kinds of beings appear again and again in human stories and traditions: angels and demons. The Quiet Messengers In the

People often ask how I get ideas for my stories. In the Shadow of Angels began because I heard a story I had never heard before and set out to learn whether it was true. One day, I was talking with a college student in St. Augustine. During the conversation, he mentioned a serial killer who had lived in the area and killed several women there. At first, I didn’t believe him. How could a serial killer operate so close to my own hometown and yet I had never heard of him? Curio

There are villains who rage. There are villains who boast. And then there is Stephan de Navarre . Stephan does not storm into a room. He inhabits it. He does not demand allegiance. He invites it. He does not seduce through chaos — but through clarity. That is what makes him dangerous. The Seduction of Order One of the central themes in the Angels series is this: evil rarely arrives announcing itself as evil. It arrives as order. As protection. As understanding. Stephan de Na