Following her breakout mystery debut, THE GOOD ONES (HarperCollins, 2023), Polly Stewart’s THE FELONS’ BALL is a rural noir set in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. Every October, the powerful Macready family gathers together for a party known as the “Felons’ Ball”. Though the Macready family has a violent past, they have rehabilitated their reputation, and see the party as an opportunity to benefit their family business. Stewart’s novel follows Natalie, a yoga teacher and the Macready’s youngest daughter and explores questions of crime, gender, and class in the South. The Macready family’s dark secrets set a chain of events in motion at their annual party and Natalie finds herself caught in the vortex of her family’s history and the Felons’ Ball’s deadly consequences.