Amateur Sleuth Mystery

The Queens are intrigued when a grisly murder mars a small town's Christmas. It's Christmas in Chicago, and Detective Richard Queen is enjoying a busman's holiday at a conference on gangland violence - but his son, amateur sleuth Ellery, is bored silly. Until, that is, Ellery reads of an unusual killing in rural Arroyo, West Virginia. A schoolmaster has been found beheaded and crucified. Ellery hustles his father into his roadster and heads east, since there is nothing he'd like better for Christmas than a juicy, gruesome puzzle.

Visiting a psychic is outside the norm for Ellison Russell. Finding bodies is not. Unfortunately, the psychic's crystal ball says she'll soon be surrounded by death. Again. Drat. Now there's a corpse in the front drive, a witchy neighbor ready to turn Ellison and her (not so) little dog into toadstools, and a stripper named Starry Knight occupying the guest room. How did 1975 go so wrong so quickly? Ellison must handle Mother (who's found a body of her own), make up with a certain handsome detective, and catch a killer, or the death surrounding her might be her own.

The Enchanted Village always has a touch of magic about it, but the buzz of excitement over the wedding between wish-granting witch Darcy and Police Chief Nick Sawyer is positively electric. With every spellbinding detail planned to perfection, all that's left is to sit back and let wishes come true. But Darcy's dream wedding is threatened when the Divinitea Cottage, the tea room hosting her bridal luncheon, goes up in flames, revealing the strangled body of the owner, Leyna Noble.

When Fletch learns there are four ex-cons on the loose in his part of the county, little does he suspect that one of the scruffy and very dangerous men will claim to be the son he never knew - a son about whom he was never even told, in fact. But when a muddy and bedraggled young man accosts him in his study, it doesn't take our wily reporter and investigator long to surmise this kid might well be his son. When Fletch meets the kid's compatriots, he wonders how either of them is going to get out of this situation unscathed.

While gathering a collection of vintage book cover paintings for a special event in her quaint Rhode Island bookshop, Penelope discovers a spooky portrait of a beautiful woman, one who supposedly went mad, according to town gossip. Seymour, the local mailman, falls in love with the haunting image and buys the picture, refusing to part with it, even as fatal accidents befall those around it. Is the canvas cursed? Or is something more sinister at work?

School psychologist Skye Denison-Boyd had hoped that her maternity leave would be at least a little relaxing, but when she and her husband, Wally, meet with the priest to discuss their newborn twins' christening, an explosion at the nearby bowling alley rocks the rectory. And although the business was closed at the time of the blast, there's a body inside. As police chief, Wally is inevitably drawn into the investigation, which seems to indicate that foul play is afoot again in Scumble River, and Skye can't help but do a bit of her own sleuthing.

Hidden beneath her British reserve, Edwina has a secret: she’s finished her novel and is bravely mailing the manuscript to a publisher. Beryl also has a secret: as thanks for solving a case, the American adventuress has been gifted an airplane. After swooping over the fields and hedgerows of Walmsley Parva, livestock scattering beneath her, she flamboyantly lands the plane on the village green, prompting a startled Edwina to consider a stiff gin fizz. Beryl’s aircraft is not the only disruption of village peace. Miss Dinsdale, a psychic medium, has started holding séances.

Zoe’s hard-won peaceful life is shattered when a devious thief targets her most prized possession—a vibrant portrait that’s her last connection to her long-dead brother. It’s a painting that also holds the secrets of a forgotten artist who created recipes for the most breathtaking colors ever seen. When the canvas disappears and murder follows, Zoe must unravel a palette of deadly puzzles. With her quick-witted sidekick Dorian and their eclectic group of friends, Zoe races to catch a killer, evade a secret society, and recover her beloved painting.

London. July, 1399. As rumors spread that his ambitious cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, has returned from exile in France, King Richard's grip on the English throne grows ever more precarious. Meanwhile, the body of a young woman is discovered at Dowgate sluice. When it's established that the dead woman was a novice from nearby Barking Abbey, the coroner calls in his friend, Brother Chandler, to investigate. Who would cut the throat of a young nun and throw her remains in the river? And what was she doing outside the confines of the priory in the first place?

Daisy Kincaid is in her 60s and heiress to a fortune. Now she wants to make a name for herself as a romance author...with a little help from Jaine, that is. As Jaine labors away on love scenes, she gets to know the wealthy woman's gentleman friend, her household staff, and her social circle - every one of whom is horrified when Daisy falls under the spell of a much younger stud named Tommy, a rude, crude lothario who's made himself a fixture in Daisy's Bel Air mansion. It doesn't take long for someone to stab him in the neck....

For 400 years, the Warren witches have used their magic to quietly help the citizens of the sleepy New England town of Evenfall thrive. There's never been a problem they couldn't handle. But then Constance Graves - a local known for being argumentative and demanding - dies while staying at the bed and breakfast Brynn Warren maintains with her aunts. At first, it seems like an accident...but it soon becomes clear that there's something more sinister at work, and Aunt Nora is shaping up to be the prime suspect.

Like most women, Elizabeth Miles assumes many roles; unlike most, hers have made her a woman on the run. Living on the edge of society, Elizabeth uses her guile to relieve so-called respectable men of their ill-gotten gains. But brutal and greedy entrepreneur Oscar Thornton is out for blood. He's lost a great deal of money and is not going to forgive a woman for outwitting him. With his thugs hot on her trail, Elizabeth seizes the moment to blend in with a group of women who have an agenda of their own.

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....

This quartet of crime stories about deadly books, penned by award-winning contemporary mystery writers, includes The Little Men, What's in a Name?, The Book of the Lion, and From the Queen.

Lily Armitage never intended to return to Endgame House—the grand family home where her mother died twenty-one Christmases ago—until she receives a letter from her aunt, asking her to return to take part in an annual tradition: the Christmas Game. The challenge? Solve twelve clues to find twelve keys. The prize? The deeds to the manor house. Lily has no desire to win the house. But her aunt makes one more promise: The clues will also reveal who really killed Lily's mother all those years ago.

There's big trouble in Quincy's Gap when the "Diva of Dough" arrives to bake the wedding cake for Milla and Jackson's Christmas Eve wedding. The Diva, a celebrity television chef and cookbook author, is Milla's younger sister. And while her cakes are delectably sweet and incredibly beautiful, the Diva makes enemies wherever she goes. When one of the Diva's enemies decides to take her out, and Deputy Lucy Hanover finds the famous chef's body covered in cake batter, the Supper Club members find themselves up to their necks in suspects.

Chaque année, des personnes disparaissent dans les parcs nationaux et forêts américaines, dans des circonstances très étranges. Un guide touristique qui s'évapore derrière le groupe qu'il accompagne... Un bambin qui disparaît des heures en forêt, et qui fait un étrange récit à son retour... Un photographe qu'on retrouve "fondu sur place" dans un endroit inaccessible à cause de la neige... Le participant d'une course en montagne qui ne franchit jamais la ligne d'arrivée.

Maggie Crozat is back home in bayou country during the most magical time of the year. In Pelican, Louisiana, Christmastime is a season of giant bonfires on the levee, zydeco carols, and pots of gumbo. Except, this year, the Grinch has come to stay at the family-run Crozat Plantation B&B. When he floods travel websites with vicious reviews, Maggie thinks she's identified him as rival businessman Donald Baxter. That is, until he's found stabbed to death at Maggie's workplace. And Maggie and her loved ones become top suspects.

Snow is a rarity in Maura Donovan's small village in County Cork, Ireland, so she wasn't sure what to expect when a major snowstorm rolled in around Sullivan's pub. But now she's stranded in a bar full of patrons - and a suspected killer in a long-ago murder. Maura's been in Ireland less than a year and hasn't heard about the decades-old unsolved crime that took place nearby, let alone the infamous suspect, Diane Caldwell.

Robert Langdon, le célèbre professeur en symbologie, arrive au musée Guggenheim de Bilbao pour assister à la conférence d'un de ses anciens élèves, Edmond Kirsch, un éminent futurologue spécialiste des nouvelles technologies. La cérémonie s'annonce historique car Kirsch s'apprête à livrer les résultats de ses recherches qui apportent une réponse stupéfiante aux questions fondamentales sur l'origine et le futur de l'humanité. Mais la soirée va brusquement virer au cauchemar.