Below is the complete list of Molly Harper’s Southern Eclectic books in order. For this series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
Publication Order of Southern Eclectic Books
- Sweet Tea and Sympathy (2017)
Sweet Tea and Sympathy was published in 2017 and is listed as book #1 in the Southern Eclectic series. - Save a Truck, Ride a Redneck (2017)
Published in 2017, Save a Truck, Ride a Redneck is listed as book #2 in the Southern Eclectic series. - Peachy Flippin’ Keen (2018)
Peachy Flippin’ Keen is a 2018 release and appears as book #3 in the Southern Eclectic series. - Ain’t She a Peach? (2018)
In the Southern Eclectic series, Ain’t She a Peach? is book #4 and was published in 2018. - A Few Pecans Short of a Pie (2019)
A Few Pecans Short of a Pie was first published in 2019; within the Southern Eclectic series, it is listed as book #5. - Gimme Some Sugar (2019)
Gimme Some Sugar was published in 2019 and is listed as book #6 in the Southern Eclectic series.
About Southern Eclectic
Molly Harper’s Southern Eclectic series is a contemporary romance and women’s fiction series set in Lake Sackett, Georgia, a small town where family business, gossip, grief, food, romance, and eccentric relatives all collide. The series begins with Sweet Tea and Sympathy and centers heavily on the McCready family, whose Funeral Home and Bait Shop gives the books one of their most memorable and unusual backdrops. Harper uses that strange family business not as a gimmick alone, but as a perfect symbol for the series: death, comfort, practicality, and absurd humor all exist side by side.
The first novel, Sweet Tea and Sympathy, introduces Margot Cary, a Chicago event planner whose career collapses after a very public professional disaster. With few options left, Margot accepts a job connected to the McCready family in Lake Sackett, where she is suddenly surrounded by relatives, local customs, and small-town intimacy she has no idea how to handle. Her romance with Kyle Archer, an elementary school principal, grows out of that adjustment. Kyle is also something of an outsider, which makes him a useful bridge between Margot’s polished city instincts and Lake Sackett’s more chaotic form of belonging.
Margot’s story sets the emotional pattern for the series. These books are funny and often outrageous, but they are also about people being forced to rebuild after embarrassment, loss, or disappointment. Lake Sackett is not presented as a perfect refuge. It is nosy, loud, and impossible to disappear in. Yet that is exactly why it works as a setting. Harper understands that family and community can be both irritating and healing, sometimes in the same scene.
Ain’t She a Peach shifts focus to Frankie McCready, the family’s mortician and county coroner, whose goth style, sharp tongue, and unusual work make her one of the series’ most distinctive characters. Frankie’s romance with Eric Linden, an Atlanta ex-cop who comes to Lake Sackett seeking quiet, gives the series a stronger mystery-adjacent flavor. Frankie is comfortable with death in a way that unsettles other people, but Harper treats that comfort as part of her compassion rather than a simple quirk.
Gimme Some Sugar turns toward Lucy Brewer, a young widow who returns to Lake Sackett with her son and tries to build a new life by opening a bakery. Duffy McCready, her longtime friend, has loved her for years, which gives the book a second-chance and friends-to-lovers emotional core. This installment shows the series at its warmest: grief is present, but so are cake, family interference, practical rebuilding, and the possibility that love may have been waiting in familiar places all along.
The novellas, including Save a Truck, Ride a Redneck, Peachy Flippin’ Keen, and A Few Pecans Short of a Pie, add extra texture around the main novels. They are useful companion pieces rather than distractions, filling in relationships, transitions, and comic family moments inside the same Lake Sackett world.
Southern Eclectic works because Harper balances humor with real emotional stakes. Her characters are not simply quirky for decoration. They are people trying to recover pride, claim identity, accept help, and find love without losing themselves to the demands of family or town opinion. The result is a warm, funny, deeply Southern-flavored series about coming home, even when home is strange, crowded, and attached to a funeral home with a bait shop.