Amateur Sleuth Cozy

The Priory may look ramshackle in appearance, but Peter, Margaret and Celia are totally charmed by their newly inherited country house. But there's more to The Priory than meets the eye. Left empty for years, hardly a single person has set foot inside, and down in the village, the locals whisper of a ghostly figure that roams the halls. When a murder is committed, the new owners start to fear the rumours are true - but is their new home really haunted, or is someone trying to scare them away?

Miranda Abbott, once known for the crime-solving, karate-chopping church pastor she played on network television, has hit hard times. Turned down for a role on a cable reality show, Miranda is facing ruin when a mysterious postcard arrives, summoning her to Happy Rock, a small town in the Pacific Northwest. But when she gets there, nothing is what she expected. In dire straits, she signs up for an amateur production at the Happy Rock Little Theatre, competing against the local real estate agent for the lead role. On opening night, one of the actors is murdered, live.

Eli's trip to London with his uncle Harry quickly turns homicidal when the older magician finds himself accused of murder. A second slaying does little to take the spotlight off Harry. Instead it's clear someone is knocking off Harry's elderly peers in bizarrely effective ways. But who? The odd gets odder when the prime suspect appears to be a bitter performer with a grudge who committed suicide over 30 years before. While Eli struggles to prove his uncle's innocence - and keep them both alive - he finds himself embroiled in a battle of his own.

A casual glance out his apartment window turns magician Eli Marks' life upside down. After spotting a dead body in the projection booth of the movie theater next door, Eli is pulled into the hunt for the killer. As he attempts to puzzle out a solution to this classic locked room mystery, he must deal with a crisis of a more personal nature: the appearance of a rival magician who threatens not only Eli's faith in himself as a performer, but his relationship with his girlfriend.

On a foggy, early summer morning in Boston, Claire Rollins goes for a run along the Charles River. When a woman runner passes her in the mist, a terrible sense of alarm rushes through Claire's body, leaving her feeling anxious and uneasy. The next time she sees the young woman, Claire is thrown headlong into a confusing mystery of murder and deception. Can Claire, with the help of her friends and her "intuition", get to the bottom of the crime before another person loses her life?

A cold case heats up when the handsome detective, Frank Fontana, asks for Jessica Huntington's help. Who killed his cousin Kelly? Does Jessica want to know the truth about her high school friend's tragic death? "The worst kind of truth is better than the best lie, Jessica." Jessica hopes Bernadette's right as she races headlong into Kelly's troubled past. Believed to be the victim of a hit-and-run accident in Palm Springs, the investigation into Kelly's death had quickly grown cold. Now more than a decade later, a lowlife meth addict claims to have witnessed her death.

Mahalia's Sweet Tea boasts the most flavorful soul food in all of Prince George's County, Maryland. But as events at the beauty industry's leading trade show turn ugly, owner Halia Watkins needs to bite into an unsavory new item on the menu - murder!

School psychologist Skye Denison-Boyd is settling into the rhythm of being a working mom, but when school is put on lockdown, life gets messy again. Not only is she stuck in a room with her horrible superintendent, Dr. Wraige, it looks like the lockdown was a false alarm - someone left a cupid’s bow and arrow in a classroom. Later, as Wally looks into an attempted break-in, he finds the superintendent murdered, his jugular cut with the arrow of a cupid statue. Did love just turn deadly in Scumble River?

After being duped out of her life savings in Germany, Val Fremden retreats home to Florida with more than just her pride in tatters. Broke, jobless, divorced, and 45, she knows starting over won’t be easy. But when her only friend suddenly turns up dead, Val begins to wonder if the world is out to get her.

Down a quiet backstreet in Kyoto exists a very special restaurant. Run by Koishi Kamogawa and her father Nagare, the Kamogawa Diner serves up deliciously extravagant meals. But that's not the main reason customers stop by. The father-daughter duo are 'food detectives'. Through ingenious investigations, they are able to recreate dishes from a person’s treasured memories—dishes that may well hold the keys to their forgotten past and future happiness. The restaurant of lost recipes provides a link to vanished moments, creating a present full of possibility.

Winter still has a firm stranglehold on the small town of Granford, and newly married orchard owner Meg Chapin is restless to begin her spring pruning and planting, while Seth busies himself with a new project of his own. But their relative peace is shattered when a gunshot breaks the winter silence, and they discover the body of a dead woman on their land. What's just as troubling is that the state police have hushed up the murder and are warning Meg not to investigate.

Summer 1911. A scorching heatwave engulfs the quiet town of Littleton Cotterell and brings about an unusually early harvest. The villagers are thrilled, but events quickly turn sour when one of them turns up dead in an apple orchard, stabbed through the heart. Amateur sleuth Lady Hardcastle and her trusty lady’s maid, Flo, suddenly have a juicy case on their hands. Might the mysterious stranger they recently met in the village be to blame?

Jessica Huntington is back in the fourth Desert Cities Mystery by USA Today best-selling author Anna Celeste Burke. Jessica's ex-husband, James Harper, and her mother, Alexis, are in big trouble in A Dead Mother. Family dysfunction, infidelity, murder, and mayhem - what else can you expect from members of the rich and famous who move in Jessica Huntington's circles? An arraignment in court goes off the rails after Jim Harper's Bel Air mansion is trashed and a man is left fighting for his life.

Sister Joan heads to the serene shores of Loch Morag for a spiritual retreat in a cave up a steep hill. She’s hoping for peace and quiet, but she soon finds trouble. Six years ago, the womanizing husband of the local store-owner disappeared. Then the minister’s wife died of an overdose. Was it an accident or suicide? Then, after a sudden storm, a body surfaces in the loch. What’s going on? The grumpy villagers don’t want to talk about it. Sister Joan must abandon her solitude to search for the killer and unearth the truth.

Meg's neighbors, the Smetkamps', have won a makeover for their old home from Marvelous Mansions, a flashy, yet dubious company, focused on making historic homes more "modern." The company already several days into its makeover of the Smetkamps' house, and tensions are running high—not only between the officious, demanding Mrs. Smetkamp and her neighbors, but also between her and the renovation crew.

Luna Bodman always looks forward to a new shipment of furniture at the restoration shop. Her brother, Cullen, has a knack for finding discarded pieces with an intriguing history, and Luna likes to sit with each item to see if she can feel any kind of vibrations. Usually, Cullen does his thing while Luna does hers, but the arrival of an old armoire triggers a reaction in Luna that’s impossible to ignore. From the moment Luna wiggles inside the armoire and closes her eyes, she feels an overpowering and disturbing sensation.

Former musician Juliet Langley has barely had a day off since taking over management of the coffeehouse owned by her best friend, Pete Bennett. But there's always more to be done - such as prepping for the annual 5K Race organized by Pete's snobby socialite girlfriend, Cecilia Hollingsworth. This year, Java Jive has a booth right at the finish line, and since Juliet and Cecilia don't always see eye to eye, everything has to be perfect. Nothing can go wrong.

Toni and Agatha are in the car on the way to Officer Bill Wong’s long-awaited wedding when, much to their shock, a naked young man bursts through a hedge on the side of the road and comes running toward them. Terrified, he explains that he has just seen a dead body in the woods. Toni lends him an old t-shirt to cover himself, Agatha calls the police, and the young man takes them to the spot where he saw the body, across from a meadow where the Mircester Naturist Club is due to have its annual summer barbecue.

Assisting an overwhelmed insurance appraiser with the inventory, Addie discovers an 1887 magazine containing Arthur Conan Doyle's first Sherlock Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet, which she estimates to be worth over $150,000. But when Addie later finds the appraiser dead in the estate's private library, with the door bolted from the inside, and the priceless edition missing, it's a mystery worthy of the Great Detective himself. She's certain the death and the robbery are connected - but who, other than a ghost who can walk through walls, could have gotten in to do the deed?

Miss Marple meets Oscar Wilde in this new series of cosy mysteries set in the picturesque Cotswolds village of Bunburry. Life is looking up for amateur sleuth Alfie McAlister. He has found relatives he never knew he had, and at long last, he has replaced the avocado suite in his bathroom. But he is shocked to get a plea for help from his niece Ruby, a young law graduate in Oxford. There is no support from his fellow amateur sleuths: Liz and Marge are having problems of their own, and Constable Emma Hollis isn't answering her phone.