Katie Crouch

When her free-spirited mother dies in a tragic accident, sixteen-year-old Alexandria Lee is forced to leave her West Coast home and move in with a wealthy grandmother she's never known in Savannah, Georgia. By birth, Alex is a rightful if unwilling member of the Magnolia League-Savannah's long-standing debutante society. But white gloves and silk gowns are a far cry from the vintage t-shirts and torn jeans shorts she's used to. Alex is the first in decades to question the Magnolia League's intentions, yet even she becomes entangled in their seductive world. The members enjoy youth, beauty and power...but at what cost? As Alex discovers a pact between the Magnolias and the Buzzards, a legendary hoodoo family, she discovers secrets-some deadly-hidden beneath the glossy Southern veneer. New York Times bestselling author Katie Crouch's poignant and humorous voice shines in this enchanting and mysterious story about girls growing up in a magical Southern city.

The Magnolia League

Katie Crouch's Embassy Wife is a page-turning thriller following two women abroad searching for the truth about their husbands—and their country Katie Crouch's Embassy Wife introduces us to Persephone Wilder, a displaced genius posing as the wife of an American diplomat in Namibia. She takes her job as a representative of her country seriously, and comes up with an intricate set of rules to survive such problems as: how to dress in hundred-degree weather without showing too much skin, how not to look drunk at embassy functions, and how to eat roasted oryx with grace. She also suspects her husband is not actually the ambassador’s general counsel, but a secret agent in the CIA. Ever the embassy wife, she takes the new trailing spouse, Amanda Evans, under her wing. Amanda Evans has just arrived in Namibia, mere weeks after giving up her Silicon Valley job, as her husband, Mark, has accepted a Fulbright. But once they arrive in the sub-Saharan desert, it becomes clear that Mark, who lived in Namibia two decades earlier, had other reasons for returning. Their marriage, which seemed solid in the safety of home, feels tenuous in the glaring heat of the Kalahari. Mark, it seems, has secrets born twenty years ago, and this journey is actually a quest to find a woman he left behind. When Amanda’s daughter becomes involved an actual international conflict, lines are drawn in the sand, and it is clear that her own government won’t stand up for her or her daughter. Propulsive and provocative, Embassy Wife compellingly explores the limits of human resilliency and loyalty, asking: How far will Amanda go to keep her family intact? How much corruptness can Persephone purposefully ignore? And what, exactly, does it mean to be an American abroad when you don’t like your country anymore?

A Novel

Embassy Wife

"A young English woman studying abroad in Italy is murdered under bizarre circumstances"--

Abroad

Girls in Trucks

Unable to emulate the model of a perfect debutante, Sarah Walters becomes increasingly disenchanted with undercurrents of barbarism in her southern community and relocates to New York, where she and fellow displaced southerners struggle to make sense of the city's sophistication.

Money, beauty, power, and love -- the youngest members of the Magnolia League have it all. Some may call them lucky, but the truth is they're charmed. Armed with spells, potions, and conjures from the powerful Buzzard family, the Magnolias have bought their luck...at a price. Ensconced in the League's headquarters on Habersham street, golden girl Hayes Anderson would never dream of leaving Savannah, where there's no problem that can't be solved with a cup of Swamp Brew tea. But when danger lurks and family secrets are unearthed, Hayes learns that magic can't fix everything. Across town at an old mansion on Forsyth Park, recent California transplant Alexandria Lee is on a quest to free her mother's spirit from a hoodoo spell. As dark magic sweeps through Savannah's historic squares and misty backwaters, will Hayes and Alex have the strength to save the people they love -- and themselves? Katie Crouch's second Magnolia League novel is a beguiling story about family, friendship, and the magical ties that bind.

The White Glove War

When Hannah Legare was 11, her father went on a fishing trip in the Charleston harbor and never came back. And while most of the town and her family accepted Buzz's disappearance, Hannah remained steadfastly convinced of his imminent return. Twenty years later Hannah's new life in San Francisco is unraveling. Her marriage is on the rocks, her business is bankrupt. After a disastrous attempt to win back her husband, she ends up back at her mother's home to "rest up", where she is once again sucked into the mystery of her missing father. Suspecting that those closest are keeping secrets--including Palmer, her emotionally closed, well-mannered brother and Warren, the beautiful boyfriend she left behind--Hannah sets out on an uproarious, dangerous quest that will test the whole family's concepts of loyalty and faith.

Men and Dogs

Sarah Walters, the narrator of GIRLS IN TRUCKS, is a reluctant Camellia Society debutante. She has always felt ill-fitted to the rococo ways of Southern womanhood and family, and is anxious to shake the bonds of her youth. Still, she follows the traditional path laid out for her. This is Charleston, and in this beautiful, dark, segregated town, established rules and manners mean everything. But as Sarah grows older, she finds that her Camellia lessons fail her, particularly as she goes to college, moves North, and navigates love and life in New York. There, Sarah and her group of displaced deb sisters try to define themselves within the realities of modern life. Heartbreak, addiction, disappointing jobs and death fail to live up to the hazy, happy future promised to them by their Camellia mothers and sisters. When some unexpected bumps in the road--an unplanned birth, a family death--lead Sarah back home, she's forced to take another long look at the fading empire of her youth. It takes a strange turn of events to finally ground Sarah enough to make some serious choices. And only then does she realize that as much as she tried to deny it, where she comes from will always affect where she ends up. The motto of her girlhood cotillion society, "Once a Camellia, always a Camellia," may turn out to have more wisdom and pull to it than she ever could have guessed.

There are a few things about her father that Hannah Legare is sure of: he can maneuver a boat; he knows all the bones in the human body; he is a hero; and, someday, she'll find him again. You might think that Hannah--now running a racy start-up company with her husband in San Francisco--has moved on in the two decades since her father went fishing and never came back. But Palmer, Hannah's brother, who dutifully stayed home with their mother in Charleston, South Carolina, knows she's still obsessed. When Hannah returns to Charleston after a frenzied break with her husband, Palmer can only imagine what mystery and mayhem she'll stir up. MEN AND DOGS is a hilarious, affecting, and wholly original tale of siblings trying to reckon with their flaws, with a heroine as exasperating, magnetic, and breathtakingly real as family itself.

A hilarious and moving story of messing up, making good and moving on

Katie Crouch

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