Amateur Detective

Jonathan Knox was an auctioneer of somewhat dubious repute with a photographic memory. So when a frightened woman offered him a discount on eleven of the rarest stamps in existence, worth something like $500,000, he became suspicious. He figured also that if the stamps had been stolen he might net a pretty reward by returning them to their rightful owner. But he couldn't find a single collector willing to admit to owning them. And when the girl who had originally offered them was murdered, Knox knew that he'd be the next one canceled unless he could find the person who would pay.

Annie Darling, popular proprietress of the Death on Demand bookstore, has done it again! Her murder-mystery cruise in the waters off her not-always-idyllic isle of Broward's Rock is sure to be a roaring success, with every participant dressing up as a favorite fictional sleuth. And sure enough, everything goes swimmingly, until one of the revelers plunges overboard. And despite hubby Max Darling's courageous rescue attempt, faux murder turns all too quickly into real-life death.

What lies buried in a hoarder's house - precious treasure or ghastly secrets? One moment of misguided generosity throws estate sale organizer Audrey Nealon's life into turmoil. She loses a client's money, cripples her budding romance, and witnesses a murder. Strapped for cash, she accepts a questionable project: clearing out the home of a mentally ill hoarder who may have hidden valuable Civil War letters.

Hank was found standing over the body of visiting Norwegian artist Glasius Dokken. When Hank won't say a word in his own defense, it falls to his step-daughter, Alix Thorssen, to clear him and uncover who actually sent Dokken, the painter of myths, to Valhalla.

A random accident leads Grit Norris to an unlikely friendship with a retired banker and his search for treasure hidden in historical letters. Inspired by his love of detective stories, Grit and his two best friends embark on a journey of intrigue and a danger. An unlikely friend provides encouragement, but the questions accumulate.

Jay and his friends are on the cusp of perpetrating the greatest heist in Leif Erickson High history when they unwittingly find themselves dangerously close to a murder scene. Consumed with an irrational obsession, he is determined to do anything to solve the crime, including hiring a private investigator, infiltrating a sex club, and indulging in a 90-day LSD binge. Forced to confront his demons, both real and imagined, he must unravel the conspiracy of an elusive octopus and his lascivious minions to find the killer.

Estate sale organizer Audrey Nealon combines business with pleasure as she plans a sale at the exquisite beach home of the Gardner family. But the romantic getaway weekend with her husband is shattered when the body of a teenage boy washes up on the sand. The death soon proves to be more than an unpleasant distraction from Audrey’s work. Sophia, the troubled young woman who lives next door to the Gardners, is wracked with guilt over the death of her friend.

Television host and organic gardener Louise Eldridge welcomes old friend Jay McCormick to Washington, D.C. When McCormick is found face down in a fish pond, Louise uncovers a plot that includes Washington's power brokers.

When Jesse Camden, owner of the Gilded Lily Tea Room and Coffee House, agrees to meet her childhood friend, Winnie Rogers, for a morning of girl talk and reminiscing, or "fishing" as Winnie likes to call it, Jesse anticipates a morning of shared confidences over a picnic brunch in the countryside. But spring in Oklahoma can be unpredictable, and when a tornado drops out of a wall cloud practically on top of them, Jesse and Winnie find themselves stranded with a demolished pickup and a dead body before they've even opened the picnic basket.

El conjunto de los relatos del padre Brown, escrito a lo largo de más de veinte años, constituye quizá la obra más popular de Chesterton. El simpático cura-detective que los protagoniza resuelve en ellos, armado únicamente con su paraguas, su inocencia y su sabiduría, intrincados casos gracias a un conocimiento sencillo a la par que profundo de la naturaleza humana.

Stella Darnell is a cleaner. But when she isn't tackling dust and dirt and restoring order to chaos, Stella solves murders. Her latest case concerns a man convicted of killing his mistress. His daughter thinks he's innocent, and needs Stella to prove it. As Stella sifts through piles of evidence and interview suspects, she discovers a link between the recent murder and a famous case from forty years ago: the shocking death of six-year-old Sarah Ferris, killed in the shadows of an empty playground. Stella knows that dredging up the past can be dangerous.

When a lawyer turns up dead and Tally's cousin is implicated in the crime, Tally must clear her cousin's name before everyone's happiness melts away.

Tess Spencer hadn't planned on returning to her hometown, but when her ex-prisoner mom puts in a special request, Tess overcomes her hesitance to help her turn over a new leaf. Pearletta Vee's drug-dealing past is resurrected when the body of an overdosed teen shows up - right next to her trailer. Tess decides to stick around and investigate, yet the evidence is stacked against Pearletta. Tess suspects a setup - but why? Never one to back down from a challenge, Tess takes on a wayward teen, an abusive grandma, and more than one drug dealer in her quest for the truth.

For my birthday, my best friends Gilly and Pippa signed us up for a weekend at the Central Midwest Spa Convention. Yay. Massages, fine dining, maid service, and best of all, as long as we attend a few workshops, the weekend is a tax write-off. It should be all sunshine and roses, right? Wrong. My former intern at Belliza Beauty aka the Job Stealer, Carmen Carraway, is a featured presenter. Yuck. Throw in an ex-boyfriend, a number one fan, a brewing scandal, and a dead body, and my relaxing birthday weekend is DOA.

London, 1920: Boston-bred Enoch Hale, working as a reporter for the Central News Syndicate, arrives on the scene shortly after a music-hall escape artist is found hanging from the ceiling in his dressing room. What at first appears to be a suicide turns out to be murder...the first of several using the same modus operandi. What's the connecting factor among all the victims? Or isn't there one? That's what the dogged journalist Hale aims to find out.

As an ex-star of a hit teen detective show, Maizie Albright gets the youth demographic, or so she thought. Now that she’s adulting, today’s kids make Maizie feel out of date. But at least the teen YouTube stars of Bigfoot Trackers want to hire her to look into the disappearance and possible murder of their producer, a murder the police find as likely as Bigfoot.

A fascinating mystery featuring Ladarat Patalung, the first and only nurse detective in Thailand. As a nurse ethicist, Ladarat Patalung works to save the lives of her patients, and to make sure the ones she can't save have at least the dignity of a "good death". But when wealthy foreign travelers start to go missing all across Thailand, Detective Wiriya Mookjai fears that a killer is at large and turns to Ladarat for help.

Two nights ago a young woman brought her husband into the emergency room of the Sriphat Hospital in Thailand, where he passed away. A guard thinks she remembers her coming in before but with a different husband - one who also died. Ladarat Patalung, for one, would have been happier without a serial murderer - if there is one - loose in her hospital. Then again, she never expected to be a detective in the first place.

When single mom and recent widow Cameron Chandler takes a much-needed job at Penny-wise Investigations, a detective agency conveniently located in a suburban shopping mall, she grabs the chance to reinvent herself. Her first case is to locate a runaway girl, something her predecessor had been pursuing before he disappeared. Following in his footsteps, the trail leads to a survivalist camp on a remote island in northern Puget Sound. Armed with only a Swiss Army Knife and her quirky on-the-job training as a suburban sleuth, Cameron uncovers more than she bargained for.

A short story from the British Library Crime Classic collection Final Acts. The Affair at the Semiramis Hotel sees A .E. W. Mason's famous detective, Inspector Hanaud, and amateur detective Ricardo investigate the theft of a pearl necklace and the murder of its owner, set within the world of opera.