Grave Matters

A Novel by Talea Story, Releasing December 8, 2026

She buries the dead for a living. He’s burying her business.

Camille Rivers is the third generation to run her family’s funeral home on Lott Street — the green awning, the steady hands, the covenant her father died keeping. She’s very good at burying the dead. She’s better at burying everything she feels.
Then Xavier Holloway opens his sleek, glass-fronted empire directly across the street, announces he’s bought her building out from under her, and turns Camille’s quiet corner of Belhaven into a war.

They’re supposed to be rivals. They are absolutely not supposed to want each other. But between the storms, the night calls, and the bodies only the two of them know how to carry, the line between rival and ruin gets dangerously thin — and the closer they get, the more Camille senses Xavier is hiding something that reaches back thirty years, all the way to a folding chair set down in the rain.

Falling for the man trying to take everything is the most dangerous thing Camille has ever done. Finding out why he came to Lott Street might be the thing that buries them both.

A sharp, swoony, slow-unraveling Southern romance about rival hearts, inherited wounds, and the terrifying business of letting someone in.

Perfect for readers who love: enemies-to-lovers • forced proximity • rich Black love stories • small-town Southern settings • slow burn with real heat • a grovel worth the wait