Cozy Crime Fiction

Widowed Georgina Drake has no regrets about moving to beautiful, sleepy Little Wenborough in rural Norfolk. Until she opens the door to her rental property and finds the dead body of her latest guest, irritable university professor Roland Garnett. And on top of that she’s suddenly hearing a woman’s voice through her hearing aids. Completely shaken by the discovery, Georgina can hardly believe it when the police conclude that Professor Garnett was poisoned, with a dinner delivered by Georgina herself.

Now that Madison Reynolds has agreed to be part of a reality-television home remodeling show, she barely recognizes her own life. The show is an instant success, bringing cameras and reporters right to her doorstep, eager to chronicle her every move in the small Texas town. With In a Pinch Temporary Services hovering on the thin line between prosperity and extinction, Madison takes on another quirky case, this one concerning a property dispute. Complications turn a simple mission into all-out danger, and once again Madison finds herself embroiled in an intriguing mystery.

Madison's newest client at In a Pinch Temp Service is a suspicious wife, up against a formidable foe - the lovely Caress Ellingsworth, former soap opera queen. When the star is murdered and Madison is eyewitness to the deed, she wonders if the shadowed person she saw commit the crime might really be her client. Now Madison is torn between uncovering the truth and keeping her client's name off the suspect list. Caress is not the only star in town these days. With a little help from Granny Bert and Madison's best friend Genesis, the popular television show Home Again arrives.

High in the rugged Pyrenees lies the Valley of the Storms, where a tiny convent clings to the beautiful but lonely mountainside. Jenny Silver arrives seeking her missing cousin, and is devastated when she learns of Gillian's death following a terrible car accident. But Jenny's suspicions are aroused when she's told the blue flowers ornamenting her cousin's grave were Gillian's favourite. Jenny knows Gillian was colour-blind - and so starts her mission to uncover what really happened to her.

Pru's life in England is coming full circle. A Texas transplant, she's married to the love of her life, thriving in the plum gardening position she shares with her long-lost brother, and prepping a Chelsea Flower Show exhibit featuring the beloved bluebonnets of the Texas hill country. Technically, Twyla Woodford, the president of a gardening club in the Lone Star State, is in charge of the London event, but Pru seems to be the one getting her hands dirty. When they finally do meet, Pru senses a kindred spirit - until Twyla turns up dead.

Texas transplant Pru Parke has put down roots in England, but she never dreamed she'd live in a grand place such as Greenoak. When her former employers offer Pru and her new husband, former Detective Chief Inspector Christopher Pearse, the use of their 19th-century estate while they're away for a year, she jumps at the chance. Sweetening the deal is the prospect of further bonding with her long-lost brother, Simon, who happens to be Greenoak's head gardener. But the majestic manor has at least one skeleton in its closet.

Pru Parke has her dream job: head gardener at an 18th-century manor house in Sussex. The landscape for Primrose House was laid out in 1806 by renowned designer Humphry Repton in one of his meticulously illustrated Red Books, and the new owners want Pru to restore the estate to its former glory - quickly, as they're planning to showcase it in less than a year at a summer party.

After her romantic idyll with the debonair Detective Chief Inspector Christopher Pearse culminates in a marriage proposal, Pru Parke sets about arranging their nuptials while diving into a short-term gig at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. At hand is the authentication of a journal purportedly penned by 18th-century botanist and explorer Archibald Menzies. Compared to the chaos of wedding planning, studying the journal is an agreeable task...that is, until a search for a missing cat leads to the discovery of a dead body....

Abby Cooper, Psychic Eye, is having a hard time getting over a gunshot wound from her last case-especially because she didn't see the shots coming. Out of work and second-guessing her abilities, she tries to get back in the saddle by helping her boyfriend Dutch with some of his FBI cases. And soon enough, her intuition returns-with a vengeance.

Pru and her husband, Christopher Pearse, are long overdue for a getaway. So when Pru is invited to redesign an Arts and Crafts garden in Cotswolds, she and Christopher jump at the chance. Unfortunately, their B&B is more ramshackle than charming, and the once thriving garden has fallen into neglect. With the garden's owner and designer, Batsford Bede, under the weather, Pru tackles the renovation alone. But just as she's starting to make headway, she stumbles upon Batsford's body in the garden - dead and pinned beneath one of his limestone statues.

The New York Times best-selling library lover's mystery from the author of Due or Die. “Avast” in pirate speak means what? Answering tricky reference questions like this one provides plenty of excitement for library director Lindsey Norris. But when a shocking murder is committed in her cozy coastal town of Briar Creek, Connecticut, the question of who did it must be answered before an innocent man gets the book thrown at him...

An idle conversation on the merits of the glorious game with an old Etonian chum is just the excuse Blotto needs to put himself forward for a cricket tour to foreign climes...and so begins the next adventure for our intrepid duo, where the action takes them to India where, as everyone knows, the finest cricket players hail from - as well as the world's most skilled jewel thieves.

Melissa Craig is settling in nicely to a new teaching position in the quaint little village of Upper Bembury, getting to know her way around, drinking tea with the eccentric staff, even sewing the first seeds of romance. But when she arrives one morning to find police outside her classroom, Melissa is shocked to hear that her beautiful colleague Angelica has been found dead in her home. As everyone in Angelica’s life comes under suspicion, Melissa makes it her mission to go in search of the truth.

Hoteliers Maxime and Catherine Le Bon have spent their life savings restoring the hotel, which lies in an archipelago of sun-soaked islands off the coast of Marseille. To celebrate the grand opening, a group of privileged guests joins Verlaque and Bonnet: Marine's free-spirited best friend; an aging film star, his much-younger wife, and her son; a pair of affable American tourists; and a querelous Parisian couple. But the murder of one of the guests casts a shadow over everyone's vacation, and things go from bad to worse when a violent storm cuts off all communication with the mainland.

Heading back to work the day after she returns from her European honeymoon, Delaney Nichols is excited to get back to the Cracked Spine. But as she disembarks the bus and hurries toward the shop, she and another woman collide, sending a stack of books the woman is carrying to the ground. Delaney's hapless victim's name is Mary, and she and Delaney can't help but notice that they bear an uncanny resemblance to one another. According to Mary, they both also look like the long-beheaded Mary Queen of Scots.

Steeped in a history of award-winning Yorkshire ale, the town of Markham boasts not one but two breweries. Richard Foster runs one; his sister, Emily, along with her partner, Janice, runs the other. And not without some resentment. The unwelcome return of the town’s former bad boy, Brendan Scholes, threatens to ignite the sibling rivalry further. Scholes claims to have found the long-lost secret recipe to the beer that made Richard and Emily’s father famous, and he wants money.

Dr Nell Ward is in the lush, emerald hills of Ireland, to attend the wedding of two dear friends at a picture-perfect farmhouse. But family tensions are running high in the days before the happy couple tie the knot. And when Nell sees a fox kill a hare in the early morning light, it sends shivers down her spine. Almost like it is a sign of something to come... Then one of the locals makes a gruesome discovery in a nearby peat bog. Famous for the ancient bodies these habitats preserve, what has been found instead is a woman who died much more recently...

A rambling old house, surrounded by a gorgeous rose garden with an elegant fountain, looks too perfect to be true. But could this beautiful place be the link between a string of peculiar deaths?Sukey Reynolds is photographing the scene of a burglary at Burwell Farm for the police, when she finds herself drawn to the crumbling building and peaceful surroundings. But before Sukey can get too intrigued, she’s called to another break-in at the house of a young widow, whose husband spent a great deal of time at...Burwell Farm.

It started as a student exercise, the knife under the drape, the model's pose chalked in place. But before Agatha Troy, artist and instructor, returns to the class, the pose has been re-enacted in earnest: the model is dead, fixed for ever in one of the most dramatic poses Troy has ever seen. It's a difficult case for Chief Detective Inspector Alleyn. How can he believe that the woman he loves is a murderess? And yet no one can be above suspicion.

1930: Miss Clara Vale, chemistry major turned detective, is taking a night off from sleuthing to attend the launch party of a new exhibition at the Hancock Museum in Newcastle. But when the piece de resistance, a rare ornate sarcophagus, is finally opened and it turns out the mummy inside it is a fake it looks like there is no rest for Clara after all... Later that night, she is summoned back to the museum and asked to investigate a series of stolen Egyptian artefacts.