Amateur Detective

Sophie never considered ghostwriting as a side gig, until former actress and aspiring lifestyle guru, Tilly Stratford, trophy wife of Wesley Winthrope, needs someone to write her celebrity cookbook. Sophie agrees, hoping she'll earn enough bread on this assignment to finish her bathroom renovations. But as it turns out, Sophie isn't the first foodie to get a taste for recipe ghostwriting, and if the marginalia are any indication, this project could be a killer....

Christopher Gilhaney isn't a popular man, and he proves why once again when he insults every guest at Abigail Chase's Guy Fawkes Night dinner party. When Gilhaney is shot dead under the cover of the night's fireworks, his murder is deemed a robbery gone wrong. But when the case hasn't been solved six weeks later, Inspector Witherspoon is called upon to find the killer - and quickly!

With her twins, Fitzgerald and Hemingway, back in school, Jane Steward can finally focus on her work again - managing Storyton Hall and breaking ground on the resort's latest attraction: a luxurious, relaxing spa named in honor of Walt Whitman. But when the Earth is dug up to start laying the spa's foundation, something else comes to the surface - a collection of unusual bones and the remnants of a very old book. The attendees of the Rare Book Conference are eager to assist Jane with this unexpected historical mystery - until a visitor meets an untimely end in the Henry James Library.

Newly returned from investigating a murder in Monkslip-super-Mare, former M15 agent Max Tudor wants nothing more than to settle back into his predictable routine as vicar of St. Edwold's Church in the village of Nether Monkslip. But the flow of his sermon on Bathsheba is interrupted when Lady Duxter is found dead after having made a suicide pact with her lover. Lady Duxter's husband rallies quickly from the double tragedy - too quickly, it is murmured in the village. Having already planned a writer's retreat at his manor house, he insists the show must go on.

Brooklyn and her hunky new husband, Derek, are excited to be guests at Dharma’s first annual book festival. The entire town is involved, and Brooklyn’s mom, Rebecca, is taking charge. Brooklyn couldn’t be more proud of her mom’s do-it-all attitude, so when a greedy local businessman who seems intent on destroying Dharma starts harassing Rebecca, Brooklyn is ready to take him down. Rebecca is able to hold her own with the nasty jerk until one of her fellow festival committee members is brutally murdered and the money for the festival seems to have vanished into thin air.

November, 1923. Olive’s school chum, Gigi, invites Olive to London because Gigi’s dotty grandmother fears for her life—or so she’s said to Gigi. However Olive is surprised to find that the dowager is far from muddled. The sharp and imperious matriarch refuses to admit to her worries and sends Olive on her way. Without a client or case, Olive is swept into the glittering lifestyle of the “fast set,” and their decadent excess. But then among the cocktails and champagne, a murderer strikes during a frivolous party game, and Olive realizes the dowager’s fears were well-founded.

When world-famous, highly reclusive author J. W. Quicksilver chooses a local book club for his first public appearance, the residents of Whispering Bay have trouble containing their excitement. That is until he's found murdered. But things are not always what they seem. It turns out that the dead man wasn't J. W. Quicksilver after all, but a shifty conman who'd been running a publishing scam leaving a mile-long trail of victims. When the real J. W. Quicksilver becomes the prime suspect in the murder, he turns to Lucy for help.

Harriet Andover had no intention of dying young like her silly siblings had. She intended to outlive them and outdo them as she always had. But Harriet discovers that the best intentions can lead to murder when she is strangled inside her mansion with a house full of holiday guests. As much as Inspector Witherspoon enjoys his job delivering justice, the last thing he wanted was a complicated murder case just a week before Christmas. He soon discovers that Harriet's own husband and grown stepchildren are not overcome with grief and neither are most of her friends.

Thomas Mundy checks in to London's Wrexley Hotel, but he never checks out. The maid finds him on the floor of his room, bludgeoned to death by his own walking stick. Inspector Witherspoon is soon on the case and learns Mundy was an unlikely victim for such a violent crime. But Mrs. Jeffries and the household staff uncover that Mundy was less an amiable businessman and more a duplicitous con man with enemies on both sides of the Atlantic. Now Witherspoon and his staff must determine who on their lengthy list of suspects had the motive to put Mundy in the red.

Hannah Cameron was not well-liked, but who stabbed her in the back? To almost everyone, the answer was clear: she was killed by a burglar. This case is given to Inspector Nivens, so Mrs. Jeffries and the rest of the household must tiptoe around this case to find the real killer.

Spring is in the air of Fort Connor, Colorado - a time of new beginnings for the House of Lambspun knitters. But for fellow knitter Jennifer's new real-estate client, it is his end. He's been murdered, and Kelly Flynn is left unraveling a tangle of clues. This may prove to be her most challenging project yet.

When bookstore event coordinator Molly Pink stumbles across the dead body of a crochet group's leader, her complicated past with the woman makes her a prime suspect. But while Molly's fending off a detective with a personal grudge and navigating the pitfalls of crochet group politics, the real killer remains at large. And it's up to her to catch the culprit - before she winds up in a tight knot....

A woman in tears in the Dales Detective Agency is never the best way to start the week. But when that woman is the wife of Bernard Taylor, town mayor and eminent businessman, there is even more cause for alarm. So when Nancy Taylor asks the detectives to investigate whether her husband is having an affair, Samson O’Brien and Delilah Metcalfe know they will have to tread carefully. The case, however, proves to be more complex than even they had imagined.

When an American tourist is murdered with a scone in Gemma Rose's quaint English tearoom, she suddenly finds herself apron-deep in a mystery involving long-buried secrets from Oxford's past. Armed with her insider knowledge of the university and with the help of four nosy old ladies from her local Cotswolds village (not to mention a cheeky little tabby cat named Muesli), Gemma sets out to solve the mystery - all while dealing with her matchmaking mother and the return of her old college love, Devlin O'Connor, now a dashing CID detective.

Lucinda Beckwith Long, the mayor of Athena, has donated a set of Civil War-era diaries to the archives of Athena College. The mayor would like Charlie to preserve and to substantiate them as a part of the Long family legacy - something that could benefit her son Beck as he prepares to campaign for the state senate.

Charlie may be a proud new grandfather, but he and Diesel still have work to do at Athena College and the small Mississippi town's public library. He's too busy to deal with true-crime writer Jack Pemberton, who wants Charlie as the subject of his latest book - and who won't take no for an answer. A more appealing proposition for Charlie is spending time helping a kind, elderly man navigate the library's genealogical database. But he's shocked when he learns that the visitor's search is focused on a member of his own family: his late aunt's husband.

Kate Ardleigh is everything the Victorian English gentlewoman is not - outspoken, free-thinking, American...and a writer of the frowned upon penny dreadfuls. Soon after her arrival in Essex, England, a body is unearthed in a nearby archeological dig - and Kate has the chance to not only research her latest story but to begin her first case with amateur detective Sir Charles Sheridan.

Normally dead bodies in a graveyard are buried - but not this one. When a woman is found strangled in a North London cemetery with an old newspaper clipping clutched in her hand, Inspector Witherspoon is surprised to find that he and the victim have crossed paths before. Alice Robinson was a respectable widow who ran a quiet Islington lodging house. None of her lodgers have any apparent motive to murder their landlady.

Claire Hendricks can see ghosts, but she can't see herself having a fun vacation. Yet when her new friends/found family, Basher and Alex, insist, Claire and her dead BFF, Sophie, pack themselves off to a remote Irish island. This tempest-tossed isle is indeed full of noises: not only is the hotel where the gang is staying double booked with a posh private party, the island's crumbling old fort is being fought over by rival ghost pirates. In death, as in life, they're vying over a legendary stash of loot, supposedly hidden somewhere on the island or in the surrounding rough seas.

The Vinyl Detective goes Scandi noir in his sixth adventure. Disfigured corpse. Check. Grotesque snowman. Check. Headless animals. Check. But in fact the killer is taking their cue not from Scandi noir fiction but another popular Scandinavian export—death metal.