An instant New York Times bestseller! “Greg Iles is one of America’s great storytellers." – Stephen King, #1 New York Times bestselling author "A first-rate political thriller." – John Grisham, #1 New York Times bestselling author The final thrilling, page-turner in the Penn Cage series from the #1  New York Times  bestselling author of the Natchez Burning trilogy and  Cemetery Road , a Southern thriller about a man—and a town—rocked by anarchy and tragedy, but unbowed in the fight to save those they love. Fifteen years after the events of the  Natchez Burning  trilogy, Penn Cage is alone. Nearly all his loved ones are dead, his old allies gone, and he carries a mortal secret that separates him from the world. But Penn’s exile comes to an end when a brawl at a Mississippi rap festival triggers a bloody mass shooting—an act of domestic terrorism that nearly takes the life of his daughter Annie. As the stunned cities of Natchez and Bienville reel, antebellum plantation homes continue to burn and the deadly attacks are claimed by a Black radical group as historic acts of justice. Panic sweeps through the tourist communities, driving them inexorably toward a race war. But what might have been only a regional sideshow of the 2024 Presidential election explodes into national prominence, thanks to the stunning ascent of Robert E. Lee White, a Southern war hero who seizes the public imagination as a third-party candidate. Dubbed “the Tik-Tok Man,” and funded by an eccentric Mississippi billionaire, Bobby White rides the glory of his Special Forces record to an unprecedented run at the White House—one unseen since the campaign of H. Ross Perot. To triumph over the national party machines, Bobby evolves a plan of unimaginable daring. One fateful autumn weekend, with White set to declare his candidacy, the forces polarizing America line up against one another, fueling explosive racial tension: Black vs. white, states vs. the federal government, democracy vs. Fascism. Teaming with his fearless daughter (now a civil rights lawyer) and a former Black Panther who spent most of his life in Parchman Prison, Penn tears into a political conspiracy behind White’s pursuit of the Presidency and ultimately risks a second Civil War to try to expose its motivation to the world, before the America of our Constitution slides into the abyss. In  Southern Man , Greg Iles returns to the riveting style and historic depth that made the Natchez Burning trilogy a searing masterpiece and hurls the narrative fifteen years forward—where America itself teeters on the brink of anarchy. “An ambitious stand-alone thriller that is both an absorbing crime story and an in-depth exploration of grief, betrayal and corruption… Iles’s latest calls to mind the late, great Southern novelist Pat Conroy. Like Conroy, Iles writes with passion, intensity and absolute commitment.” - Washington Post on Cemetery Road “Pure reading pleasure. This guy knows the deep south as well or better than any other novelist.”  - Stephen King on Cemetery Road “Iles… has made Mississippi his own in the same way that James Lee Burke has claimed Cajun country and Michael Connelly has remapped contemporary Los Angeles… They will be talking about this one for a quite a while.” - Booklist (starred review) on Cemetery Road “A sweeping tale of family dysfunction [and] sexually charged secrets.” - Publishers Weekly (starred review) on Cemetery Road “Imagine William Faulkner and Stieg Larsson had a love child.  Natchez Burning  combines the pace of Larsson’s  The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo  with a Faulkneresque, bone-deep knowledge of Mississippi in all its beauty and racial torment.” - AARP Magazine “Every single page of  Natchez Burning  is a cliffhanger that will keep you devouring just one more chapter before you put it down to eat, work, or go to bed.... This ambitious, unique novel is the perfect marriage of a history lesson and a thriller.” - Jodi Picoult "Astonishing.... The most timely book of 2024." - Dayton Daily News “A masterstroke from a master writer… a contemporary and prescient political thriller.” - Tom Mayer, Oxford Magazine “Crime writing of a rare order…As much a trenchant state-of-the-nation novel as a mesmeric page-turner.” - Financial Times "This is a genuinely terrifying book because of its plausibility—Iles perfectly captures the tinderbox that America is in the post-Trump era. . . .This is a perfectly done political thriller with genuine resonance. Astonishing."  - Kirkus (starred review) on Southern Man “[Iles] manages to weave the many threads beautifully; nothing gets lost in the shuffle. This is a genuinely terrifying book because of its plausibility—Iles perfectly captures the tinderbox that America is in the post-Trump era. (As Penn ruefully reflects, “I watched in disbelief as businessmen voted for a repeat bankrupt…women for an admitted sexual assaulter, patriots for a draft dodger who would sell his country’s secrets for tr