An increasingly gripping southern-crime tale for readers of Where the Crawdads Sing and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. (-Booklist STARRED review)

One of Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Hot New Summer Books!

Everybody's got good and bad in them. In the end, it just depends which side wins out.

Arlene has lived in a small town on the edge of nowhere Georgia her whole life. Now married to her long-time high school sweetheart, Tommy, Arlene is itching to start a family and become the mother she always dreamed of being. But that's proving more difficult than she thought, and Arlene is desperate to find something to do to keep her mind off things. And get some distance from her husband, who is increasingly getting on her nerves.

As the summer gives way to a chilly, lonesome fall up in the mountains of northern Georgia, she takes a part-time job bagging evidence at the local police department, which involves about twenty minutes of actual work, and the rest of her shift she reads over old cold cases. One in particular fascinates her: the mysterious deaths of three young brothers murdered on Deck River, followed by the suicide of Mitchell Wright, the prime suspect in the murders.

Arlene becomes obsessed with the case, and with the help of the police department's receptionist and a family friend of the Wrights, she sets out on discovering the truth. She can't help but feel that if she solves the case of the Broderick boys' deaths, she'll find her footing in her young marriage and maybe find what she's been looking for all along.

From the author of The Floating Girls, a finalist for the Townsend Prize for Fiction and a Reader's Digest Editor's Pick, Lo Patrick has once again crafted a story bursting with charm, heartbreak, and memorable characters that leap off the page, a true delight for fans of Southern fiction.

A masterly achievement. - Publishers Weekly STARRED review

Many readers are looking for the next Where the Crawdads Sing, and will find The Floating Girls...is a close cousin. - Augusta Chronicle

Fierce 12-year-old Kay can't ignore the problems surfacing in her troubled home--or the mysterious marsh outside. It will take all of her courage and perseverance to survive her family drama as their dark secrets come to life in the wake of a small-town murder.

One hot, sticky summer in Bledsoe, Georgia, twelve-year-old Kay Whitaker stumbles across a stilt house in a neighboring marsh and upon Andy Webber, a boy about her age. He and his father have recently moved back to Georgia from California, and rumors of the suspicious drowning death of Andy's mother years earlier have chased them there and back.

Kay is fascinated and enamored with Andy, and she doesn't listen when her father tells her to stay away from the Webbers. But when Kay's sister goes missing, the mystery of Mrs. Webber's death--and Kay's parents' potential role in it--comes to light. Kay and her brothers must navigate the layers of secrets that emerge in the course of the investigation as their family, and the world as they knew it, unravels around them.

At once wickedly funny and heartbreaking, perfect for fans of Kim Michele Richardson, The Floating Girls is a stunning southern mystery, a wonderfully atmospheric coming-of-age family drama told from the perspective of a fierce 12-year-old marsh girl--reminiscent of a modern-day Scout Finch--as she unravels the secrets that threaten her entire family.

Praise for The Floating Girls:

A powerhouse of a Southern novel. At once a poignant coming-of-age tale, a murder mystery, and an evocative tribute to the marshlands of Georgia. Lo Patrick is a standout new Southern voice. --Andrea Bobotis, author of The Last List of Miss Judith Kratt

Kay is the smartest, funniest, most curious young narrator I have come across in some time. Her voice stuck with me long after I finished reading. If I met Kay on the street, I'd beg her to be my best friend. --Tiffany Quay Tyson, award-winning author of The Past is Never

A cracking story that unfolds in gorgeous prose in the stultifying heat of the American South. --Hayley Scrivenor, author of Dirt Creek

Fans of Where the Crawdads Sing will love this immersive mystery set against the salty air of Georgia's marshes. In Patrick's atmospheric prose, the water and its characters come to life. --Lindsey Rogers Cook, author of Learning to Speak Southern?

They say you can never go home again. And sometimes, you shouldn't.

Following a semi-successful career as a teen model in New York City, Danielle Greer has moved back to the mountains of North Georgia and is living in her childhood home with her husband and four daughters. One stifling, lazy afternoon, the girls are exploring the ravine behind the house when they come across a body.

Danielle knows the body doesn't belong to Benji Law, a younger local misfit who Danielle had an illicit relationship with as a teenager. No, his body was found right away, after he was killed in a motorcycle accident on the road in front of her family's house. Danielle has a good idea who the body might be, but she doesn't know how it got there.

When local police officer Cady Benson is called in to investigate, Danielle's world is turned upside down, and she's thrust back into those dark, confusing days leading up to Benji's death, battling the things she remembers with the things she can't forget.

From the acclaimed author of The Floating Girls and The Night the River Wept comes a gritty, coming-of-age, slow-burn Southern mystery with devastating characters and a twist that will leave you aching, exposing the all-consuming, obsessive power of first love and what it can do to a person.