Do you love the spoken word?
Audiobooks are great for listening to when commuting, exercising, walking, or when you are just in the mood to listen to a story (nothing beats it!). Most of Susan’s books are narrated by the amazing actor Holly Adams.
Gullah Secrets audiobook won the top prize in the 2020 Independent Audiobook Awards general fiction category.
Holly Adams did a phenomenal job narrating the novel!
Temple Secrets
Book 1 in the Temple Secrets Trilogy
A town held together with secrets. A wealthy widow looking for an heir. One choice could shame high society into submission.
Eighty-year-old Southern aristocrat Iris Temple’s health may be failing, but her wit is as sharp as ever. Before she joins her ancestral ghosts, she must pick an heir to take over her sprawling estate–and the book of secrets that’s kept her family in power for generations. But between her scheming son, her estranged daughter who abandoned Savannah years ago and her illegitimate half-sister, she’s working with slim pickings.
While only her half-sister and cook have put up with her outlandish diet and constant bickering, she can’t ignore the powerful hold her late father’s 100-year-old mistress has over the two women. When someone leaks embarrassing snippets from the Temple family book, she half suspects the voodoo-practicing centenarian as the elites of Savannah teeter on the edge of revolt. With Iris fading fast, her ragtag bunch of potential heirs must reveal the leaker before the book’s secrets tear the sleepy town apart.
Temple Secrets is a hilarious women’s fiction novel with a Southern gothic flair. If you like wisecracking humor, headstrong women, and twisty mysteries, then you’ll love Susan Gabriel’s compelling tale of an unconventional inheritance.
Listen to this audiobook FOR FREE with a 30 day free trial on Audible. You can listen to a sample here.
Temple Secrets got me through mowing 8 acres yesterday! I was listening to it on Audible, and I’m sure people wondered what the cackling old broad on the mower was laughing about!!
Gullah Secrets
Book 2 in the Temple Secrets Trilogy
A family legacy in danger. A stranger in their midst. Do they have the strength to survive the gathering storm of secrets?
For the Temple women, the winds of change are blowing. And if they’re not careful, it could sweep them all away!
After rising from Temple servant to tea shop owner, Violet finally feels in charge of her destiny. While learning Gullah folk magic from her aging grandmother, she worries much of her cultural heritage will be lost to the grave. Is there enough time for Old Sally to pass down all her special wisdom?
Bride-to-be Queenie has never felt younger at heart. Engaged to the man of her dreams, the feisty sixty-year-old won’t let anything ruin her big day – not even ancestral ghosts or a mysterious wedding crasher.
Rose’s southern roots run deep. Even after three decades away, she can still feel the shadow of her deceased high-society mother watching her every move. Can she shake her ghost and find a place among her family?
With a storm of trouble brewing across the island, the Temple women will have to survive more than a force of nature to put their ghosts to rest!
Gullah Secrets is the sequel to the bestselling novel Temple Secrets. If you like Southern gothic literature, characters you won’t want to close the cover on, and locations steeped in history, then you’ll love this hilarious and warmhearted saga.
Listen to this audiobook FOR FREE with a 30 day free trial on Audible. You can listen to a sample here.
Tea Leaf Secrets
Book 3 of the Temple Secrets Trilogy
A legacy to fulfill. A long-hidden secret. A shocking climax to the trilogy that began with Temple Secrets and Gullah Secrets.
Although Old Sally has been gone a year, Violet still hasn’t gotten over the loss of her beloved grandmother, with whom she shared the connection of the ancient Gullah magic. Mired in grief despite her thriving tea shop in downtown Savannah, what Violet wants more than anything is to hear from her grandmother—especially when her Gullah intuition indicates a storm is brewing.
Does it have something to do with the strange couple Queenie keeps spotting in the dunes? Or Iris’s diary that Rose discovered hidden in the family bank vault, revealing a side of her aloof and aristocratic mother that she never knew?
But Old Sally remains silent as shocking secrets are revealed that will turn the lives of the Temple women upside down.
Now everything that Violet holds dear is threatened…unless she’s brave enough to answer the call of her ancestors.
The ghosts of the past are laid to rest once and for all in the amazing finale of the bestselling Temple Secrets series, where Southern gothic mystery meets a heartwarming cast of unforgettable independent women in one immensely satisfying story of fate, family, and friendship.
Listen to this audiobook FOR FREE with a 30 day free trial on Audible. You can listen to a sample here.
The Secret Sense of Wildflower
Book 1 in the Wildflower Trilogy
A girl coming-of-age faces danger, death and new life in 1940s Appalachia.
The Secret Sense of Wildflower received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews
Named to Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2012!
“There are two things I am afraid of. One is dying young. The other is Johnny Monroe.”
Small southern towns have few secrets. But when a grieving daughter confronts the local bully, she unwittingly triggers a series of traumatic events that will change her life forever.
Appalachia, 1941. Thirteen-year-old Louisa May “Wildflower” McAllister’s heart still aches for her father. A year after her dad’s tragic sawmill accident, she relies on her strength of spirit and her heightened intuition to deal with a critical mother and cope with the aftermath. Despite these hardships, Wildflower has a resilience that is forged with humor, a love of the land, and an endless supply of questions.
But when she’s targeted by the town’s teenage bad boy, she may need more than her “secret sense” to survive.
Will Wildflower fall to another tragedy or will her strength be enough to carry her through?
With prose as lush and colorful as the American south, The Secret Sense of Wildflower is powerful and poignant, brimming with energy and angst, humor and hope.
Listen to this audiobook FOR FREE with a 30 day free trial on Audible. You can listen to a sample here.
Lily’s Song
Book 2 in the Wildflower Trilogy
In Lily’s Song, a mother’s secrets, a daughter’s dream, and a family’s loyalty are masterfully interwoven in this much-anticipated sequel to Amazon and Nook #1 bestseller The Secret Sense of Wildflower. “Wildflower” McAllister’s daughter, Lily, now 14, struggles with her mother’s reluctance to tell her who her father is. When a stranger appears on the family doorstep, drunk and evoking ghosts from the past, it threatens to break the close-knit McAllister family apart.
Meanwhile, Wildflower has a deep secret of her own. When Lily discovers it by accident, it changes everything she thought she knew about her mother. The events that follow silence the singing she dreamed of sharing with the world.
With her signature metaphors, Gabriel weaves a compelling tale that captures the resilience and strength of both mother and daughter, as secrets revealed test their strong bond and ultimately change their lives forever.
Set in 1956 southern Appalachia, Lily’s Song stands on its own, and readers who are new to Gabriel will be drawn into the world she so skillfully depicts. As a sequel, it will captivate fans of The Secret Sense of Wildflower (a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2012), who have eagerly awaited more.
Listen to this audiobook FOR FREE with a 30 day free trial on Audible. You can listen to a sample here.
Daisy’s Fortune
Final book in The Wildflower Trilogy
She must return to the place that twice brought her shame. She’ll have one final chance to save someone else.
Tennessee, 1982. Wildflower McAllister thought she’d put the past behind her. But when she learns her mother is dying, she digs deep and returns to the small mountain town that stole her innocence and cast her out. And she has no choice but to pull her thirteen-year-old granddaughter Daisy right back into the ghosts of her painful history.
As her mother passes, Wildflower’s grief turns to despair when Daisy’s fortune is read, predicting a dark future and the return of sinister threats. With her granddaughter keeping a terrible secret, Wildflower’s distress forces her to call upon the community that rejected her to prevent another tragedy from playing out in front of her eyes.
Can Wildflower stop a harrowing legacy from spreading to another generation?
Daisy’s Fortune is the emotional conclusion to the Wildflower Trilogy. If you like strong women, generational tales, and the power of family and the land to heal, then you’ll adore Susan Gabriel’s compelling finale.
Listen to this audiobook FOR FREE with a 30 day free trial on Audible.
Trueluck Summer: Southern Historical Fiction
A Lowcountry Novel
A hopeful grandmother. A sassy young girl. Their audacious summer stunt could change their southern town forever.
Charleston, 1964. Ida Trueluck is still adjusting to life on her own. Moving into her son’s house creates a few family conflicts, but the widow’s saving grace is her whipsmart granddaughter Trudy. Ida makes it her top priority to give the girl a summer she’ll never forget.
When a runaway truck nearly takes her life, Trudy makes fast friends with the boy who saves her. But since Paris is black, the racism they encounter inspires Trudy’s surprising summer mission: to take down the Confederate flag from the South Carolina Statehouse. And she knows she can’t do it without the help of her beloved grandmother.
With all of Southern society conspiring against them, can Trudy, Ida, and their friends pull off the impossible?
Trueluck Summer is a Southern historical women’s fiction novel set in a time of great cultural change. If you like courageous characters, heartwarming humor, and inspirational acts, then you’ll love Susan Gabriel’s captivating tale.
Listen to this audiobook FOR FREE with a 30 day free trial on Audible.
Seeking Sara Summers
A Novel
In this elegant love story with a uniquely twenty-first-century twist, the reader is taken on a journey into the soul of relationship. Sara Summers Stanton has raised a family but her 25-year marriage is showing cracks in the facade and now she’s dealing with breast cancer.
In a rare moment of taking care of herself instead of everyone else, Sara takes a sabbatical and goes on the trip to Italy she has always dreamed of taking. This search for a more authentic life leads to Julia, a friend she hasn’t seen since they were inseparable as girls, nearly 30 years earlier. In Florence they reunite and their friendship continues where it left off. An unexpected attraction to one another threatens to turn Sara’s already shaky world upside down.
Sara’s inner conflict and subsequent choices reveal an unpredictable yet dynamic future for everyone affected. An emotional and lyrical novel, Seeking Sara Summers is a timeless story about commitment, transformation and love.
Listen to this audiobook FOR FREE with a 30 day free trial on Audible. You can listen to a sample here.
Circle of the Ancestors
Finding a rare treasure brings trouble and transformation to a coming-of-age boy in this novel by Amazon #1 bestselling southern author Susan Gabriel.
Thirteen-year-old Sam lives on a reservation in North Carolina with his beloved grandmother who teaches him the Cherokee ways. To honor his ancestors, Sam hikes to a nearby sacred mountain where he encounters a red-tailed hawk and has a life-threatening fall off a steep trail. Bruised and shaken, he lands at the roots of an ancient oak tree where he discovers, tangled in the roots, an extremely rare star ruby.
When news of the ruby gets out, he confronts bullies and thieves before connecting with a renowned gemstone expert to determine the ruby’s value. In the meantime, Sam calls on his circle of ancestors to help him decide the fate of his treasure. Their message takes him far beyond the boundaries of his home where he will discover if the ruby is a blessing or a curse.
Listen to this audiobook FOR FREE with a 30 day free trial on Audible. You can listen to a sample here.
