Christmas Thriller

Accompanied by her loyal maid and friend, Cecily Nugent, they arrive at Selfridges giggling with excitement, but unknown to them, their afternoon of delights was to take a very different turn. Yet again, Camille and Cecily are called upon to utilize their sleuthing skills to find a murderer.

This holiday season, join two of today’s most popular paranormal authors for a special look into their worlds, where creatures are always stirring and no one sleeps through the night. The Bite Before Christmas: Teddy Brunswick knows about the immortals among us. He’s worked with them, called them friend - but he never counted on being snowed in with one over Christmas. Home for the Holidays by Jeaniene Frost: Cat and Bones are looking forward to a normal holiday - at least as “normal” as it gets for the combustible vampire couple....

Librarian Abby Fawn is starstruck when her favorite romance author, Nadine White, has rented a cozy camper at the Happy Trails Campground for the winter months. Abby is devastated to find out Nadine White is nothing like the person she portrays in interviews or on social media. In fact, Nadine White is not nice at all, and Abby lets her feelings known that she thinks Nadine is a fraud...after she finds out Nadine has a ghost writer. When Nadine White is found dead in the Normal Library, Abby Fawn is Detective Hank Sharp's number one suspect.

Bill Vokes has played Santa at the children's Christmas show for years. But with the show just hours away, he vanishes with no explanation. The whole village is baffled. Did something bad happen to loveable Bill, upstanding citizen, churchgoer, life and soul of the party and the holiday season? Jack and Sarah are on the case - and soon discover there are secrets about this Santa that no one could have imagined.

Christmas has come early to the town of Paterson, New Jersey, in the form of a snowstorm that dumps two feet of snow on the ground. Lawyer Andy Carpenter likes snow – white Christmas and all that – but it can cause problems for the walks he takes his dogs on every day. When Andy’s golden retriever, Tara, goes to play in the snow and instead discovers a body, Andy ends up on the phone with the local newspaper editor. The murder victim is Mayor Alex Oliva, who had an infamous relationship with the newspaper.

Christmas has arrived in Rudolph, New York, and Merry Wilkinson is looking forward to a much needed rest. But before that can happen, Luanne Ireland walks through her door. Luanne had asked Merry to help make decorations for her wedding, but has suddenly moved the wedding months earlier and is now demanding that everyone follow her lead, regardless of the cost. But that cost is much higher than anyone anticipated. When Luanne's fiance is found murdered at their proposed wedding venue, Merry resolves to restore peace and calm to the community of Rudolph.

It's the week before Thanksgiving, and Merry Wilkinson, owner of Mrs. Claus's Treasures, is preparing for a weekend reunion of her mother's college friends. But when the group of women comes into Merry's shop, Merry is met with frosty attitudes and cold hearts. The women argue amongst themselves constantly, and the bickering only intensifies after one of the friends is poisoned. With her father's role as Santa in danger due to his proximity to the crime, Merry will need to use all of her investigative gifts to wrap this mystery up and save Santa and her favorite holiday.

Father Tom Christmas, the recently widowed vicar adjusting to life in the English village of Thornford Regis, would do almost anything to avoid attending the annual Robert Burns Supper at the local hotel. But as chaplain to a traditional Scottish pipe band, Father Tom must deliver the grace - and contend with wailing bagpipes, whiskey-laced parishioners reciting poetry, and the culinary abomination that is haggis.

Rachel's plans to spend Christmas with her fiancé are in tatters after he is called to Italy at short notice. Rather than spend Christmas with her parents, Rachel decides to take a last-minute Canary Island cruise. Sarah, cruise ship nurse and Rachel's best friend, is only too pleased to have her along, as Sarah's parents are taking their first cruise. With her mother keen for her to settle down, she is glad of the moral support.

Charlotte Pitt’s mother, Caroline, travels with her young husband, Joshua Fielding, and his theatrical troupe to Whitby, where Dracula first touched English soil. Joshua has arranged to produce a stage adaptation of Dracula by the daughter of Whitby millionaire Charles Netheridge, but the amateurish script produces a disastrous first read-through. As tempers flare and wind and snow swirl around Netheridge’s lonely hilltop mansion, a black-cloaked stranger emerges from the storm - an eerily opportune arrival, for this enigmatic figure, one Anton Ballin, turns out to be a theatrical genius.

Although Father Tom Christmas serves his little church in enchanting Thornford Regis with a glad and faithful heart, he never expects to find himself skydiving to raise money for it. Nor, safely back on the ground, to see two of the other divers leap from the plane, then tangle in a midair punch-up and begin falling to the earth.

Some say that casting crusty attorney Allen Sharpe as Scrooge in the Kindred Players production of A Christmas Carol is just playing to type. He's not the most beloved man in town. In fact, you'd have a dickens of a time finding someone who liked him. Still, it's a shock when the Ghost of Christmas Past stabs him during the first rehearsal. Suzanne, the co-owner of the Cackleberry Club Cafe (Kindred's favorite combination diner, craft store, and bookshop), chases the murderer out of the building but loses him in the alley. As the days pass, the list of suspects grows longer.

As I walk into the pine-scented air of my seaside childhood home, gripping my husband Neil’s hand tight, I have a brief moment of hope. Maybe this Christmas will be different — for once my family might get on fueled by mulled wine and festive cheer. But the sound of happy carols are replaced by my older sister Christy’s over-loud laugh and slurred words. Rebecca, my younger sister, stalks out of the room as soon as I enter, as though I’m the Grinch here to steal Christmas. And their husbands, brash and arrogant, slap Neil’s back in a way that promises torment rather than welcome.

It's July in Christmas River, and the temperature isn't the only thing flaring out of control. After a fire destroys her best friend's ornament shop, pie baker extraordinaire Cinnamon Peters soon discovers that the blaze was no accident. Just days before the annual Christmas River in July Parade and Play, it becomes clear that a maniac is roaming the tourist-packed streets of Christmas River. And he's got a flair for the dramatic.

Tis the Season of love and hope; spies and intrigue! Enter the emotional, suspenseful regency world of USA Today best-selling author Jacki Delecki’s Code Breakers spy series. Undaunted by danger or scandal, these intrepid lords and ladies discover true love as they risk it all to save England from Napoleon’s treacherous designs.

In Rudolph, Christmas in July heralds Santa's arrival by boat to begin his summer vacation at the lake, and Merry Wilkinson, owner of Mrs. Claus's Treasures, is looking forward to a busy weekend. But she's caught off guard when her ex-fiance, Max Folger, arrives with a team from a lifestyle magazine wanting to do a feature on the July festivities. It's clear that Max's visit has less to do with business and more to do with winning back Merry's heart. Merry has too much on her plate to deal with an old flame, but when Max is found strangled to death, she must find out who wanted him dead.

Though she's the vampire queen, Betsy Taylor is much more like a princess. In MaryJanice Davidson's novels, this high-maintenance monarch is finally coming to terms with her new status.

Missing Persons Detective Everleigh Becket and her P.I. partner Isaac Stern have built a reputation as an elite team, able to solve the coldest cases. However, when A.D.A. Marie Schurr asks for their help in tracking down a missing witness, Everleigh isn’t sure she wants to get into the business of forcing a terrified woman to testify against a known killer. Madison Wheeler thought she’d met the man of her dreams, but when a business deal ends in murder, Madison is the only one left who can get justice for the dead man. That is if Everleigh and Isaac can find her.

After suffering a personal tragedy, Abby Sullivan buys a huge old seaside mansion she has never even seen, packs up her life in San Francisco, and moves to Holiday Bay Maine, where she is adopted, quite against her will, by a huge Maine Coon Cat named Rufus, a drifter with her own tragic past named Georgia, and a giant dog with an inferiority complex named Ramos. What Abby thought she needed was alone time to heal. What she ended up with was, an inn she never knew she wanted, a cat she couldn't seem to convince to leave, and a new family she'd never be able to live without.

It's Christmas Eve at the Merry Monarch. Nestled amongst the Yorkshire Dales, the pub is preparing to host its annual festive games night for its rabble of regulars. But this year, they are interrupted by a knock at the door from a stranger, stranded by the snow storm that's closing in on the village. And this won't be the only surprise of the night. When the power is cut off and darkness descends, the games turn deadly . . . It seems one of the group would kill to win.