Amateur Sleuth Cozy

from the start, Eve finds herself in a sticky situation. Famous guest artist Nena Field is a complete nightmare, painting everyone in a bad light. So when Eve finds her body in Blind-Eye Wood, there’s no shortage of suspects. But who could have hated her enough to take her life? Was it the curiously over-qualified cook, the secretive manager, or the chatty receptionist, mysteriously missing at the time of the murder? Determined to find the killer and save Simon’s business, Eve sets to work sketching out a theory of the crime.

Even with her life in ruins in New Mexico, Shay feels uneasy about settling into the small seaside town where she grew up on California's Monterey Peninsula, and taking over an estate bequeathed to her by Bridget Early, a woman she had barely known. Her heightened senses—an empathic gift she's had since childhood—go into overdrive upon touring Crystals & CuriosiTEAS, Bridget's eclectic tea and psychic shop brimming with Irish lore and Celtic symbols. They reach a boiling point when Shay looks up to discover a stranger's body sprawled across the shop's greenhouse roof . . .

Chloe is the cohost of a popular home-repair show on the Home Builders Network. Now, after 10 years, she has returned to her quaint coastal hometown to film several shows featuring her sister, Shannon, along with some special mini-segments on Victorian style and design. But Shannon quickly realizes things are not exactly blissful in TV land. Bree, the executive producer of the show, has a knack for stirring up sticky situations, and when she’s found dead, Chloe and the entire crew are under suspicion.

Meg Langslow is at Trinity Episcopal locking up after an event and checking on the toucan that Rev. Robyn Smith is fostering in her office. After hearing a hammering in the crypt, Meg finds an elderly parishioner lying dead on the floor. Several niches have been chiseled open, several urns knocked out, and amid the spilled ashes is a gold ring with a huge red stone. The curmudgeonly victim had become disgruntled with the church and ranted all over town about taking back his wife's ashes.

Meg Langslow is pregnant with twins when Michael asks if she wouldn't mind having a houseguest. One of his doctoral students is directing his new translation of a play by a minor Spanish playwright, who will come to town for the production. Señor Mendoza turns out to be a partygoer who loves to spend raucous evenings among adoring students...at Casa Langslow. Into this chaos arrives the dean of the English department, who insists the play be canceled. Then the dean is found murdered.

Lana Lee is a dutiful daughter, waiting tables at her family’s Chinese restaurant even though she’d rather be doing just about anything else. Then, just when she has a chance for a “real” job, her parents take off to Taiwan, leaving Lana in charge. Unfortunately, the newlyweds who just opened the souvenir store next door to Ho-Lee have turned up dead...and soon Lana finds herself in the midst of an Asia Village mystery.

When Gemma finds a rare and potentially valuable magazine hidden in the bookshop, she and her friend Jayne set off to find the owner, only to stumble upon a dead body. The highly perceptive Gemma is the police's first suspect, so she puts her consummate powers of deduction to work to clear her name, investigating a handsome rare books expert, the dead woman's suspiciously unmoved son, and a whole family of greedy characters desperate to cash in on their inheritance.

Addie leaves her Greyborne Harbor bookstore in the capable hands of her assistant while she travels to the neighboring town of Pen Hollow to attend a book sale at a library that is closing due to lack of funding. But the real find is a bookmobile bus, which she's excited to refit as a traveling bookstore to hit all the summer festivals. But before the bookmobile can be delivered to Addie, a fatal car crash occurs. When an autopsy reveals poison in the victim's system and the first editions go missing, it's up to Addie to determine what would drive someone to murder.

Lady Violet returns with St. Sevier to her family seat, and finds Derwent Hall at sixes and sevens upon the occasion of her nephew’s christening. Other guests have brought their children along to celebrate the occasion, and Sebastian MacHeath is on hand to serve as godfather. Nobody seems to be getting along, despite the happy nature of the gathering. Summer heat builds to an unbearable crescendo as clandestine affairs, marital troubles, and family tensions escalate. Then somebody starts kidnapping little girls.

Oxford summer balls are one of the highlights of the calendar and tearoom sleuth Gemma Rose is looking forward to taking a break and slipping into something gorgeous for the evening. But when the night ends with a celebrity chef murdered by his own whisk, Gemma finds herself plunged into a new mystery - and the nosy Old Biddies keen to help with the investigation.

Normally, not even drunk on a bet would Violet Parker go to Slagton, a creepy ghost town inhabited by those too stubborn - or deranged - to leave. But a certain bullheaded Deadwood detective has a problem - his informant from Slagton has gone missing. When Violet is shanghaied into taking a hunting trip to the ghost town to search for the missing snitch, she stumbles into trouble that will take more than a double-barreled shotgun to escape. Will Violet survive this new hell that haunts her, or will she end up on Slagton's growing list of those "gutted and hung"?

With the arrival of six senior reading group members at the Merry Ghost Inn, the long-awaited grand opening week has finally begun for Melanie West and her grandmother Liza. All is well with the Oregon coast-side B&B until Melanie's dog, Max, finds the dead body of one of their guests.

Daniel Clement has suffered a secret humiliation and to recover, takes respite at the monastery where he was a novice. But the monastery doesn't allow Daniel a break, for there are tensions building there too, as the secret past of novice master Father Paul is emerging. Tension mounts and a murder ensues. Meanwhile back at Champton, Daniel is the subject of village gossip, his mother Audrey is up to something again, there's trouble at the dress shop, up at the big house, and the puppies are running riot. Can Daniel be reconciled with detective Neil and solve the mystery?

Pearl Nolan always wanted to be a detective, but life and a teenage pregnancy got in the way of a police career and instead she built up a successful seafood restaurant in her coastal home town of Whitstable - famous for its native oysters. Now, at 39, and with son Charlie away at university, Pearl finds herself suffering from empty nest syndrome...until she discovers the drowned body of local oyster fisherman Vinnie Rowe, weighted down with an anchor chain, on the eve of Whitstable’s annual oyster festival.

The Christmas season has arrived in Lower Lockwood, and the Fairway Players are busy rehearsing their festive holiday production of Jack and the Beanstalk to raise money for a new church roof. But despite the season, goodwill is distinctly lacking among the amateur theater enthusiasts with petty rivalries, a possibly asbestos-filled beanstalk, and some perennially absent players behind the scenes. Of course, there’s also the matter of the dead body onstage. Who could possibly have had the victim on their naughty list?

Nora is known for her window displays, and as Halloween approaches, she decides to showcase fictional heroines like Roald Dahl’s Matilda and Madeline Miller’s Circe. A family-values group disapproves of the magical themes though and wastes no time launching a modern-day witch hunt. Suddenly, former friends and customers are targeting not only Nora and Miracle Books, but a new shopkeeper, Celeste, who’s been selling CBD oil products. Nora and the Secret, Book, and Scone Society are doing their best to put an end to the strife - but then someone puts an end to a life.

Erin Coleridge's used bookstore in Kirkbymoorside, North Yorkshire, England, is a meeting place for the villagers and, in particular, for the local Jane Austen Society. At the Society's monthly meeting, matters come to a head between the old guard and its young turks. After the meeting breaks for tea, persuasion gives way to murder with extreme prejudice when president Sylvia Pemberthy falls dead to the floor. Poisoned? Presumably, but by whom? And was Sylvia the only target?

When librarian Kathleen Paulson moved to Mayville Heights, Minnesota, she had no idea that two strays would nuzzle their way into her life. Owen is a tabby with a catnip addiction and Hercules is a stocky tuxedo cat who shares Kathleen's fondness for Barry Manilow. But beyond all the fur and purrs, there's something more to these felines. When murder interrupts Mayville's Music Festival, Kathleen finds herself the prime suspect.

Constance Campbell learned on her 40th birthday that she comes from a long line of witches. Now, struggling to learn her magic, Constance dives deeper into her family's sordid past. Constance vows to find the truth behind her mother's disappearance. She's determined to seek out the Faction, an order of witches and warlocks vying for power in the supernatural world. But when Constance's father shows up looking a little ghostly pale and see-through, she has other problems to solve.

The holidays have arrived, and Hannah and her good pal, Lisa, have agreed to provide all the goodies for the town's annual production of A Christmas Carol. But before anyone can say "bah, humbug!" a Santa-size sackful of trouble ensues. Like the fact that Lisa's husband will be playing Mr. Claus to his ex-girlfriend Phyllis Bates' Mrs. Claus. Or that before the curtains even go up, Phyllis is found dead in the snow - wearing a costume that the real Mrs. Claus would put on the naughty list.