Amateur Sleuth Suspense

Rick Montoya has just moved from Santa Fe to Rome, embracing the life of a translator. He's beginning to settle in to la dolce vita when school friend Beppo, now senior in the Italian Art Squad, recruits Rick for an unofficial undercover role. Armed with a list of galleries, suspects, and an expense account, Rick arrives in Tuscany posing as a buyer for a Santa Fe gallery to flush out traffickers in priceless burial urns. However, before sunset on his first day in Volterra, the challenge intensifies. Rick has one quick conversation with a gallery employee who dies minutes later in a brutal fall from a high cliff.

When the Australian Mystery Writers’ Society invited me to their crime-writing festival aboard the Ghan, the famous train between Darwin and Adelaide, I was hoping for some inspiration for my second book. Fiction, this time: I needed a break from real people killing each other. Obviously, that didn’t pan out.

The White Lotus meets Agatha Christie in this bold novel from a #1 New York Times bestselling author: a recent divorcee's exclusive Big Sur resort vacation unravels when she discovers a dead body on the day of a wedding.

Ellie has an ailing sister to care for and working as a ghost hunter who doesn't believe in ghosts helps cover the bills. On her latest job, though, she may be in for some genuine scares. The skeptical, reserved, and very rich Nicholas Hartford III has flown her all the way to his family's ancestral estate in England - supposedly haunted by a phantom named Xavier. Something is causing the flashes of light, mysterious accidents and other apparent pranks in the chilly, eerie castle. His mother is sure that Xavier is real, and he's willing to employ Ellie if she can get to the bottom of it.

In a small Lao village, a very strange thing has happened. A woman was shot and killed in her bed during a burglary; she was given a funeral and everyone in the village saw her body burned. Then, three days later, she was back in her house as if she'd never been dead at all. But now she's clairvoyant and can speak to the dead. That's why the long-dead brother of a Lao general has enlisted her to help his brother uncover his remains, which have been lost at the bottom of a river for many years.

Despite his trimmer waistline, his girlfriend Lucy's affections for him seem to have inexplicably cooled. So when Lindy suggests the supper club members join a Mexican cooking class, James leaps at the chance to try something new. The Flab Five's classmates include Shenandoah Star Ledger editor Murphy Alistair and twin sisters with supermodel physiques. When one of the sisters is murdered during a school field trip to Luray Caverns, the amateur sleuths set out to catch the killer.

The first three books in the Irish Village Mystery series are included in this edition: Murder in an Irish Village, Murder at an Irish Wedding, and Murder in an Irish Churchyard.

Life is looking rosy for Florrie Fox, manager of the Color Me Read bookstore in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. The bookstore's weekly coloring club is a source of friendship and entertainment, and no member is more vibrant than Dolly Cavanaugh. When Dolly's love of garage sales results in her showing up at Color Me Read with a rare book in hand, Florrie is astounded. The Florist was first published in 1760, and an original copy would be worth a fortune. That same evening, Florrie finds Dolly dead on the floor of her apartment, a corner of a coloring book page clutched in her hand.

Torie Bliss thought that being over 40 and having your husband dump you over your favorite meal would be rock bottom. Then she learned that the perfect life he had created for them was built on a foundation of lies. A very public fall from grace leaves her penniless and homeless. Thinking she had nothing else to lose, she decides to move in with her estranged mother in a picturesque town in the mountains of North Carolina. Only to discover that her mother is quite the witch. Literally.

Molly Gray is not like anyone else. With her flair for cleaning and proper etiquette, she has risen through the ranks of the glorious five-star Regency Grand Hotel to become the esteemed Head Maid. But just as her life reaches a pinnacle state of perfection, her world is turned upside down when J.D. Grimthorpe, the world-renowned mystery author, drops dead—very dead—on the hotel’s tea room floor.

It is an ordinary Thursday, and things should finally be returning to normal. Except trouble is never far away where the Thursday Murder Club are concerned. A decade-old cold case—their favorite kind--leads them to a local news legend and a murder with no body and no answers. Then a new foe pays Elizabeth a visit. Her mission? Kill or be killed. Suddenly the cold case has become red hot.

Smarmy personals ads. Daring declarations of love. Freelance writer Jaine Austen has penned them all. But no one needs her help more than geeky, gawky Howard Murdoch. His request is simple enough: a letter proclaiming his undying love for Stacy Lawrence, a gorgeous aerobics instructor. The fact that he's never actually met the woman gives Jaine pause - yet she soon overcomes her misgivings, and the unlikely Romeo lands a date! But his triumph is short-lived. On Valentine's Day, Howard finds Stacy bludgeoned to death with a Thigh Master - and is quickly named the prime suspect.

Farlingaye Hall is a beautiful hotel in Suffolk on the east coast of England. Unfortunately, it is also the site of the brutal murder of Frank Parris, a retired advertising executive. Stefan Codrescu, a Romanian maintenance man, is arrested after police discover blood spatter on his clothes and bed linen. He is found guilty and sentenced to eight years in prison. It appears to be an open-and-shut case, but there is more to it than meets the eye.

Lady Emily Hardcastle is an eccentric widow with a secret past. Florence Armstrong, her maid and confidante, is an expert in martial arts. The year is 1908 and they've just moved from London to the country, hoping for a quiet life. But it is not long before Lady Hardcastle is forced out of her self-imposed retirement. There's a dead body in the woods, and the police are on the wrong scent. Lady Hardcastle makes some enquiries of her own, and it seems she knows a surprising amount about crime investigation...

Owning her own business seemed like pie in the sky to Valentine Harris when she moved to the coastal California town of San Nicholas. But when one of her regulars keels over at the counter while eating a quiche, Val feels like she's living a nightmare. After the police determine the customer was poisoned, business at Pie Town drops faster than a fallen crust, and Val must expose the truth - before a crummy killer tries to shut her pie hole.

It isn’t the first time real estate agent Helen Morrisey has found someone naked in bed while showing a house. But this one is different. One glance at the bluish cast around his lips and the vacant, staring eyes, and Helen knows developer Al Capelli is never going to sign another sales agreement. His death is big news for a small Chesapeake water town where a family empire is built around secrets and their brash money style is resented by locals. Within days, his lover, her old friend, begs Helen to find the killer before she’s arrested for murder.

Fletch's newfound son, Jack, has just heard from an old flame who's about to marry a billionaire's son - that is until her future father-in-law suffers several near-fatal accidents. The potential victim - the inventor of the perfect mirror, which allows people to see themselves exactly as others do - lives in his own secluded compound, so Jack gets a job as poolhand on the estate to get closer to the action. Now, Jack's life may be in danger, and he will need his inimitable father's help to discover - before it's too late - whose reflection hides a killer's heart.

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.

When a last-minute opportunity arises to accompany her boss to an art auction in Atlanta, Lilly throws some money at the problem of where to board her toy poodle Aggie (short for Agatha Christie). Posh Pet Haven offers the most luxurious canine accommodations in all of Chattanooga, Tennessee. The place even provides pet cams so anxious owners can check in on their pampered pooches.

When ex-detective inspector Daniel Hawthorne and his sidekick, author Anthony Horowitz, are invited to an exclusive literary festival on Alderney, an idyllic island off the south coast of England, they don’t expect to find themselves in the middle of murder investigation - or to be trapped with a cold-blooded killer in a remote place with a murky, haunted past.