SOUTHERN FRIED won St. Martin’s Press Malice Domestic Award for Best Traditional Mystery.  Set in a small South Carolina hill country town, it was called an “assured debut, a cozy with some sharp edges” by Publishers’ Weekly and was one of five finalists for RT BookClub’s 2004 best new mysteries award.  In DONE GONE WRONG, Cathy uses her own courtroom experiences when Avery Andrews deals with a suicidal spree killer and a dynamite-toting paramour against the backdrop of a high-profile trial of a deadly drug. Poison pen letters and a run-away pig welcome Avery home again in HOG WILD.  HUSH MY MOUTH is the latest in the series.
In her other life, Cathy is a lawyer and business professor at Queens University of Charlotte.

The first Avery Andrews novel Southern Fried won the 2003 St. Martin’s Press/Malice Domestic Award for Best New Traditional Mystery.  Romantic Times BookClub magazine reviewers named it one of the five “Best First Mysteries” for 2004.  Her stories are set in South Carolina, the first in a town similar to the one where Cathy grew up and the second, Done Gone Wrong, in Charleston.  In Hog Wild, Avery attracts the attention of a poison-pen letter writer and a widow whose husband has used his tombstone to accuse her of murder.  In the latest, Hush My Mouth, Avery wrestles with a cold-case murder and an itinerant group of ghost hunters. 

Cathy has also written a mystery walking tour of Charleston, South Carolina: Charleston Mysteries (History Press 2007).

Cathy is a frequent mystery convention panelist, speaking on topics ranging from Southern mysteries to classic true crime stories to the use of poisons.  At various times and under various aliases, she’s been a trial attorney specializing in complex civil litigation such as product liability, medical negligence, and commercial contract disputes; a university provost; a professor teaching MBA students about the legal and ethical environment of business; a writer of law books and articles on poisons, private detectives, and legal damages; a church organist and choir director; and a ballroom and clog dance coach.

Cathy has a B.S. degree in financial management from Clemson University, and a J.D. degree from the University of South Carolina School of Law.  Her family has lived in South Carolina for almost 300 years, but she currently lives in “exile” over the border in Charlotte, North Carolina.  She is the Wireman Professor of Business at Queens University of Charlotte and is a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and the South Carolina Bar.