Phillip DePoy Books In Order

The Devil’s Hearth

Fever Devilin is a folklorist and a very recent ex academic who has decided to return to his family home in the Georgia Appalachians. But his homecoming isn’t quite what he expected he arrives at the home he once shared with his now deceased parents to find a corpse on his front porch, evidence that someone has been living in the house without his knowledge, and someone in the woods around the house taking shots at him with a rifle. Simply put, it could be better. Instead it gets worse especially when Fever finds out that the corpse is that of a half brother whom he never knew existed. This discovery leads him to think that the actual intended target of the murderer might well have been Fever himself. As he probes the mystery in this tight knit and often closed mouthed community, home to many of his best and worst memories, it quickly becomes ovious that there are some of the town’s secrets are deadlier than others. And the answers to his questions about the murder and about Fever’s own past are

The Witch’s Grave

Fever Devilin was raised amongst the hill country people of the deep Georgia Appalachians and their seemingly simple folk ways are in his blood and his soul. His own family, however, was another matter and at sixteen he left home for college, returning only rarely and always under protest. In the years to come, Fever became a noted folklorist of the Appalachian region and a college professor. He never quite adjusted to the realities of city life and academic politics, and has now returned to the deceptively quiet life amongst his people. But below the surface, nothing is ever as quiet and simple as it appears. When Truevine Deveroe, a local girl reputed to be a witch, goes missing and the local mortician, acknowledged as an unpleasant character, turns up dead near Devilin’s home, Able Carter, fianc of the missing girl, is suspected of killing them both. Tied by friendship and long term enmity to all of the principals, Fever finds himself in the midst of a very difficult situation. To make matters even worse, the brothers of the missing girl are determined to find Carter who has taken it on the lam and administer their own brand of justice. With precious little time, lives at stake, and a missing girl to be found, Devilin must unravel the mystery behind this perplexing series of events. A series of events somehow related to the hidden history of the area and the old folk legend of The Witch’s Grave.

A Minister’s Ghost

Fever Devilin is a folklorist who fled the fevered halls of academia to return home to the Blue Mountain region of the Georgia Appalachians and a hopefully quiet life. While on a trip collecting folklore, Fever spots an apparition at a railroad crossing. Such visions are traditionally omens of evil, and when he returns home he finds his fears are accurate: his friend Lucinda’s two nieces have been killed in a suspicious accident. As he consoles Lucinda, Fever promises to investigate the girls deaths. His promise leads him through a maze of train hopping drifters, old ghost stories, and the wild ravings of an itinerant preacher as he attempts to uncover the truth behind the tales that are told and the visions that are seen.

A Widow’s Curse

Fever Devilin, a folklorist by inclination and training, was born and raised amongst the hill country folk of the Georgia Appalachians and it was there that he returned once he decided to leave academia. And he’s the perfect person to turn to when the owner of a mysterious medallion, one with some connection to the area, wants to uncover the provenance of the piece. On the surface, it sounds simple enough but in Fever’s life, nothing is ever simple. Especially when the medallion’s owner is found dead, murdered, in Fever’s own house and the papers of Fever’s late grandfather, of no intrinsic value, are stolen. And Fever himself in the prime suspect in the murder. The only clue to the truth behind these confusing events is the medallion itself, which is somehow tied to Fever’s secretive family’s history. With someone trying to frame him for the murder and other hidden forces hot on the trail of the medallion itself, Fever is wedged tightly between the proverbial ‘rock’ and equally proverbial ‘hard place.’ And the only possible way out is buried within the uncomfortable hidden truths about his own family that Fever has spent years trying to avoid.

The Drifter’s Wheel

‘DePoy, a folklorist, excels at providing local color and creating complex characters. The story unfolds slowly and lyrically, giving readers a sense of small town Appalachian atmosphere.’ Booklist on A Minister’s Ghost

‘By far DePoy s best, with top notch plotting, full blown characters, and a bit of Shakespeare thrown in.’ Kirkus Reviews starred on A Minister s Ghost

Fever Devilin, born and raised amongst the hill country folk of the Georgia Appalachians, left home a long time ago and pursued an education, then a career, in the wider outside world. A folklorist by inclination and profession, he left the strange world of academia behind to return to his family home in the if anything stranger mountain town he grew up in. But oddness follows Fever wherever he goes and Blue Mountain, Georgia is no different.

When a man shows up at his house, claiming to be over a hundred years old even though he looks like he s in his 30 s, Fever is pretty sure his guest is not right. When the man starts to wave a gun around, then falls suddenly asleep immediately afterward, Fever thinks he s both ‘not right’ and ‘dangerous’ and slips out to call the sheriff. The sheriff, Fever s childhood friend, has been hearing reports of this particular vagrant all day but before he can get out there, the man disappears.

In the early morning, the body of man that fits the description of the mysterious vagrant is found by the side of the road, shot to death. But, although the body is wearing the same clothes that the vagrant was, it isn t the same person.

The King James Conspiracy

The turning of the wheel by the tilling of the wheat. With these cryptic words, a conspiracy is set into motion that threatens the new translation of the Bible ordered by King James I, and the lives of the scholars working on it. In 1605, in Cambridge England, a group of scholars brought together to create a definitive English translation of the Bible finds one of its members savagely murdered by unknown hands. Deacon Marbury, the man in charge of this group, seeks outside help to find the murderer, to protect the innocents and their work. But the people who offer to help are not who they claim to be and the man they send to Marbury Brother Timon has a secret past, much blood on his hands, and is an agent for those forces that wish to halt the translation itself. But as the hidden killer continues his gruesome work, the body count among the scholars continues to rise. Brother Timon is torn between his loyalties and believes an even greater crisis looms as ancient and alarming secrets are revealed secrets dating back to the earliest days of Christianity that threaten the most basic of its closely held beliefs.