Meet Elizabeth Polk, 26, in her natural habitat, the Bottom Dollar Emporium in Cayboo Creek, South Carolina, where she works with widowed store owner Mavis Loomis and Attalee Gaines, who's "knee deep in her eighties." On the mend from a sudden breakup with her fiance and busy cooking up plans to fight the store's competition, Elizabeth isn't looking for romance--but that's what she gets when one of her wealthy customers pushes Timothy Hollingsworth...

The latest in Gillespie's lighthearted Bottom Dollar Girls series (after Bet Your Bottom Dollar), set again in the small town of Cayboo Creek, S.C., chronicles how Chiffon Amber Butrell finds the inner strength with the help of her friends to stand up to rather than stand by her man.

Jill, Mary Bennett, Patsy, and Gerald are united by their outsider status in high school. When Tammy, a beautiful but insecure redhead, moves into town and is humiliated by the in-crowd, Jill and company form the Tammy Club to bolster her spirits. The five enter the homecoming parade in wild dresses and red wigs, but a misprint on their sign (it reads Yammy instead of Tammy) leads to the five rechristening themselves the Sweet Potato Queens. The groups'...