Hey, y’all. I’m Liz Talbot. I live on Stella Maris, a sea island just up the coast from Charleston, South Carolina. No bridge connects our island home to the rest of the world. You can only travel here by boat—or helicopter.

My husband, Nate, and I used to be private investigators. These days we run the Talbot & Andrews Foundation—Taffy for short. I traded stakeouts for sea turtles and beach erosion, and I’m at peace with that. Mostly.

One morning in April, work waited in downtown Charleston. I slipped into my cobalt-blue skirt suit, took my coffee, and drove over to catch the eight o’clock ferry.

The Amelia Ruth II was a circus that morning. I parked, cut my engine, and climbed to the top deck to enjoy the fresh air and the view that never got old.

My brother Blake joined me at the rail, sipping from his insulated tumbler.

“What takes you to town on a Wednesday morning?” I asked.

“Bureaucracy.” He tasted the word and scowled. “Routine paperwork. You?”

“Planning meeting at Taffy’s Broad Street office.”

The ferry swung out toward Isle of Palms.

On the deck below us sat a teal and lime green van with orange, yellow, and pink flowers painted all over it. We both stared. It looked like maybe somebody bought Scooby-Doo’s Mystery Machine at the salvage yard and Bedazzled it.

“They finally leaving?” I asked Blake.

“We can hope.”

Everybody on the island knew who that van belonged to. For weeks, a pair of TikTokers had hunted Old Herschel, the Marsh King, the granddaddy bull gator who’s ruled the marshes of Stella Maris since before I was born. We were TikTok famous, and nobody was happy about it.

Now, I have seen the grand gator myself, exactly once, close enough to know the stories don’t exaggerate much. He’s fourteen feet if he’s an inch.

The kids in the van never did find Herschel. But they found something that would prove significantly more worrisome: a human hand bone, half-buried in the pluff mud. They proceeded to post it to TikTok before calling the police.

This did not endear the intrepid youths to my brother, our chief of police.

The TikTokers glanced our way, then edged closer. When they stood next to us, the lavender-haired girl spoke up. “Is it true the coroner’s about to release a name?”

She’d addressed Blake, of course. He’d interviewed them about the bone. But my brother doesn’t always ask the questions I want answered.

“Where on earth did you hear that?” I asked.

She shrugged, like the answer was obvious. “TikTok.”

Naturally. Rumor had it the comments section had nominated a pirate, Jimmy Hoffa, D.B. Cooper, and something the Reddit crowd calls a “Marsh Squatch.”

“It’s a Revolutionary War soldier.” Blake made a dismissive face. “The Battle of Sullivan’s Island brought a lot of military activity to these waters. We’ll know more when the folks in the lab finish their work. Probably take months. Yeah, y’all need to look somewhere else for a headline. This is history, nothing more.”

The lavender-haired girl’s shoulders dropped.

Her friend, maybe six feet five, wrapped a long, alligator-tattooed arm around her. “We’ll come back next month. Maybe Old Herschel likes warmer weather. We’ll get footage of him yet.”

“Herschel’s shy,” Blake said. “Camera adds ten pounds. He’s awful sensitive about it.”

Stella Maris slid away behind us. Diesel and salt hung on the breeze. At Isle of Palms, the van rolled off through the marina parking lot.

Blake gave me a wave and drove off toward his “paperwork” errand, unbothered.

I knew better. Police chiefs don’t board the ferry first thing in the morning over routine paperwork. That’s what email is for.

It would be months before that hand bone had a name. And that name would rock my family’s world. It would also lead me back to the career I’d thought I’d lost forever. But that’s a Christmas story…

Giveaway: Leave a comment below for your chance to win a print copy of HARD CANDY CHRISTMAS. One entry per person. U.S. residents only, please. The giveaway ends October 30, 2026. Good luck everyone!

HARD CANDY CHRISTMAS
Series: A Talbot & Andrews Investigation Mystery, Book 1
Genre: Southern Fiction, Private Investigator Mystery
Release: October 2026
Format: Print, Digital, Audio
Stella Maris Books | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop

Welcome back to Stella Maris…

Carolers are singing. The Talbots are gathering. And TikTokers in a Scooby-Doo van just unearthed a thirty-five-year-old secret buried by a fourteen-foot alligator.

Ten days before Christmas, the whole Talbot clan turns out at Charleston International to send Blake, Poppy, and the kids off to Italy. Then SLED agent Sonny Ravenel walks in with news that stops the merriment cold: Frank Talbot stands accused of murder. The shock sends Frank to the ICU.

Liz Talbot’s days as a P.I. were mostly behind her. Until now. With the family reeling, Liz and her husband, Nate Andrews, will do whatever it takes to clear her father’s name.

From the moss-draped lanes of Stella Maris to the wild edges of the Outer Banks to the sultry backstreets of the Florida Keys, Liz and Nate chase a truth someone needs to stay buried.

This Christmas, that someone’s about to find out just how far the Talbots will go to protect their own.

Liz Talbot is back. Hard Candy Christmas is the first Talbot & Andrews Investigation.

About the author
Susan M. Boyer is the award-winning USA TODAY bestselling author of fifteen novels. Her debut, Lowcountry Boil, won the Agatha Award for Best First Novel. She grew up in a small North Carolina town and has lived most of her life in South Carolina. She loves beaches, Southern food, and small towns where everyone knows everyone, and everyone has crazy relatives. She and her husband call Greenville, South Carolina, home and spend as much time as possible on the Carolina coast.

Hard Candy Christmas (A Talbot & Andrews Investigation) releases October 27, 2026.