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Available July 15, 2025 - pre-order now!
"The Felons' Ball is full of secrets -- ones that refuse to reveal themselves and ones that refuse to stay buried. It's also full of wit and empathy and characters as real as your own family members. This novel is assured, propulsive, and thrilling, and I tore through it."
—Rebecca Makkai
"Polly Stewart’s The Felons’ Ball is a powerful work of literary suspense that feels both modern and timeless, about how loyalty to family can create its own moral universe. A love letter to Southern outlaws, a quietly gripping murder mystery, and a gorgeous portrait of a certain slice of Southern life, Stewart’s characters feel so rich and layered it’s hard to remember they’re fictional, and her Virginia is so real you can almost step into the pages. This story slips under your skin and refuses to let go, the kind of literary seduction only truly masterful writing can accomplish. This book belongs at the top of everyone's TBR."
—Ashley Winstead
"Who can you trust in this small town family drama where everyone has secrets? Sometimes, the past is better left undisturbed. A compelling page-turner that takes family loyalty to a whole new level!"
—Maxwell Gregory
The critically acclaimed author of The Good Ones returns with an edge-of-your-seat thriller about a powerful Southern family whose dark secrets set in motion a chain of events with deadly consequences.
In their younger years, Trey Macready and his best friend Ben Marsh were distributors and enforcers for the local distillers who made their small hamlet of Ewald, Virginia, the moonshine capital of the world. But that was years ago, and now the only tie to their criminal past is the Felons’ Ball—Trey’s annual birthday party where they regale the crowed with tales of their youthful exploits. But when Ben is found dead after Trey’s fiftieth celebration, it’s clear those connections may not be past at all.
Finding Ben’s body propels his much-younger secret lover, Natalie—Trey’s daughter—to search for Ben’s estranged son, Lanny, and to find the truth about his killing. Her quest will lead to a battle with a police department that refuses to ignore her family’s history, and to form unexpected connections with Hardy, the sheriff investigating the case, and her brother-in-law Jay, who had a very public fight with Ben on the night of his murder.
When Jay goes missing on the morning he planned to meet Natalie, she begins to wonder if her mother was right . . . and if the past should be left in the past.​
Also by Polly Stewart
An engrossing work of literary suspense that illuminates the push and pull of female friendship and the costs of being good when the rules for women begin to chafe.
The last time Nicola Bennett saw Lauren Ballard she was scraping a key along the side of a new cherry-red Chevy Silverado. That was the night before her friend mysteriously vanished from her home, leaving a bloodstained washcloth and signs of a struggle—as well as her grieving husband and young daughter—behind.
Now, nearly twenty years later, Nicola, newly unemployed and still haunted by the disappearance of her childhood friend, is returning to her Appalachian hometown. For Nicola, Tyndall County has remained frozen in time. Everywhere she turns she’s reminded of Lauren. Yet shockingly, her former friends and neighbors have all moved on. Drawn to stories of missing girls, Nicola obsessively searches the internet, hoping to discover a clue to Lauren’s ultimate fate.
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Driven by a desperate need to know what happened to her friend, Nicola takes a job in her hometown, determined to uncover any bit of information, any small clue, that can help. Deep down she knows the answers are tucked in the hollows and valleys of this small Blue Ridge county. As secrets come to light and the truth begins to unravel, will Nicola finally find release and break free of the past—or lose herself completely to unanswered questions from her adolescence?