Anne George Books in Order

If you want the Southern Sisters from the beginning: Murder on a Girls' Night Out → Murder on a Bad Hair Day → Murder Runs in the Family
If you want the funniest cozy mystery hook: Murder on a Bad Hair Day → Murder Makes Waves → Murder Shoots the Bull
If you prefer Southern family drama: This One and Magic Life
If you want Anne George the poet first: Some of It is True → The Map That Lies Between Us → Wild Goose Chase

Anne George was born Anne Carroll Bell in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 4, 1927. She spent part of her childhood with grandparents, later lived in rural Lowndes County, and stayed rooted in Alabama all her life. That deep local knowledge became one of the clearest strengths of her writing.

She studied at Judson College before graduating from Howard College, now Samford University, in 1949, with studies in English and Spanish. After that she married Earl George, moved to Birmingham, and taught school for more than twenty years. She later earned a master's degree at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and kept studying while writing on the side.

Writing came to her through poetry first. She liked funny writing, even when teachers and writing instructors pushed her toward something more serious. Long before the mysteries made her widely known, she was publishing poems and short fiction, helping other writers, and building a literary community in Alabama. In 1982 she co-founded Druid Press with Jerri Beck to publish work by writers from around the state.

Poetry stayed at the center of things.

George published collections such as Wild Goose Chase, Spraying Under the Bed for Wolves, Some of It is True, and The Map That Lies Between Us. Her poems are often tied to place, memory, family, and the odd grace of everyday Southern life. Some of It is True was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and in 1994 she was named Alabama State Poet.

Then crime fiction took over, at least in public.

Her Southern Sisters books follow practical Patricia Anne Hollowell and her louder, wilder sister Mary Alice as they trip over murders in and around Birmingham. Readers tend to love the series for the back and forth between the sisters, the family tangles, the sharp humor, and the way George makes Alabama feel fully lived in rather than pasted on.

Murder on a Girls' Night Out introduced the sisters and won the Agatha Award for best first mystery. Books like Murder on a Bad Hair Day, Murder Runs in the Family, and Murder Shoots the Bull kept building that world, mixing dead bodies with weddings, old grudges, local gossip, and very funny dialogue. George had a gift for making older women the center of the action without sanding off their sharp edges.

She was not only a mystery writer. In This One and Magic Life, she turned to a broader Southern family story set near Mobile Bay, bringing in grief, secrets, memory, and a touch of the uncanny. Even there, the same strengths show up: a strong sense of place, a keen ear for speech, and sympathy for people trying to make peace with one another and with the past.

George later worked as a writer in residence for the Alabama State Council on the Arts, and she kept writing until the end of her life. She died in Birmingham on March 14, 2001, after complications from heart surgery. In one of those details that feels almost too perfectly timed for fiction, the manuscript of Murder Boogies with Elvis arrived at her home that same day.

Her books still feel neighborly, funny, and very sure of where they stand. Whether you start with the Southern Sisters or the poems, you can see the same writer at work, someone who noticed how people really talk, how families carry old stories, and how much comedy can sit right next to grief.