Margaret Anne Barnes (July 24, 1927 – October 11, 2007) was an American writer born in Newnan, Georgia.
As a reporter for the Newnan Times-Herald, Barnes became interested in the 1948 case of John Wallace's murder of one of his tenant farmers.
This interest led to her book Murder in Coweta County which won an Edgar Allan Poe Award for an outstanding fact-crime study from the Mystery Writers of America.
Murder in Coweta County was published in 1976 and made into a television movie starring Andy Griffith and Johnny Cash in 1983.
A Buzzard is My Best Friend was autobiographical and dealt with her life in Virginia as a farmer, and earned Barnes a Georgia Author of the Year Award.