Cozy Crime Fiction

Leighann Dobbs and Harmony Williams present Book 5 in the Lady Katherine Regency Mysteries.

When classic horror movie star Basil Coates becomes the victim of a series of scary pranks, the local police put it down to a crazed fan. Just pranks, after all... But with Halloween only days away, the spectre of murder suddenly visits the ghostly Coates mansion on the hill outside Cherringham - and Jack and Sarah find themselves caught in a mystery worthy of Basil's spookiest roles... Cherringham is a serial novel à la Charles Dickens, with a new audio episode released every two weeks.

It's summer in the Dordogne. The heirs of a Périgordian sheep farmer learn that they have been disinherited, and their father's estate sold to an insurance company in return for a policy that will place him in a five-star retirement home for the rest of his life. But the farmer never gets his life of luxury - he dies before moving in. Was it a natural death? Was there foul play? Bruno begins the investigation that leads him to several shadowy insurance companies owned by a Russian oligarch with a Cypriot passport.

When an American tourist goes missing in Cherringham, the local police don't see reason for concern - people often wander away from such tours. But when that tourist's sister shows up from New York, desperately looking for answers, Jack and Sarah become convinced there's more to the disappearance than meets the eye. Soon, they are entangled in a mystery with a secret history of betrayal, sacrifice, dishonor... and death.

À la suite d'un accident mortel survenu à la foire aux bestiaux de Bruncliffe, le commissaire-priseur Harry Furness engage Samson et Delilah pour mener l'enquête. Mais ce qui semblait n'être qu'une simple vérification de routine prend vite un tour plus sombre quand les détectives découvrent que cet accident a probablement été provoqué...

When the exuberant president of Ng'ombwana proposes to dispense with the usual security arrangements on an official visit to London, his old schoolmate, Chief Superintendent Alleyn, is called in to persuade him otherwise. Consequently, on the night of the embassy's reception, the house and grounds are stiff with police.

Scandal hits the staid publishing house of Barnabas when one of the directors is found dead in the strong-room. Suspicion immediately falls on his wife's lover, the junior partner in the firm. But how does an unpublished Restoration comedy come to feature in the tragedy? And what of the odd disappearance of another director twenty years before?

In a poisonous cloud of spray, the curtain falls on a drama queen. Little did beloved British actress Mary Bellamy know that she would be done in at her own birthday party - choked by toxic mist from the bottle of Slaypest, a deadly insecticide. Basking in the glow of her most adoring fans - who all happened to be her most duplicitous enemies - Mary would make her final performance.

Rickie Alleyn, son of the famed detective Roderick Alleyn, had taken to the peaceful Channel Island village of Deep Cove to write his book. However, soon enough the tedium of provincial life threatens to send him packing - until, that is, he finds a dead stablehand, and the sleepy community's world is upturned. His father is called to take proceedings into hand, but as a darker side to island life emerges, one of illegal drugs and smuggling, Rickie goes missing.

Shiloh Bellamy can hardly believe it—for the first time in her family farm's seventy-year history, she has managed to score a highly-coveted booth at the Cherry Farm Market in Traverse City, Michigan. It's a huge win in her master plan to bring the rundown farm back to life… and the fact that her coup has sent her next-door neighbor and organic farming competitor into fits of jealousy doesn't hurt, either.

Last year at Cherringham High, and for three girls that means facing the School Summer Challenge, a grueling fifty-mile hike across the Cotswolds, through thick woods, over steep hills, camping each night under the stars. But when one of them disappears in the middle of the night and is found dead in the morning, most believe a terrible accident has taken place. Was it really an accident? Jack and Sarah aren't convinced - and soon discover that secrets and lies can have terrible consequences... and always leave a trail.

Kate Palmer is stunned when she wakes up one morning to discover the body of a man in the beautiful garden of Lavender Cottage. She’s spent the last few years renovating her cozy clifftop cottage with its gorgeous views of the sparkling Cornish Sea. And a death right under her nose is more than a little unsettling....

Melissa couldn’t be happier that summer has arrived. She’s delighted to have her mother back by her side, and she is extending her beloved Hawthorn Cottage so her new family can live together. Meanwhile, Melissa’s mother, Sylvia, is back in good health and enjoying a brief stay at a stately retirement home. She loves getting to know the residents, until first a dog and then his owner are both found dead in the dining room. Like mother, like daughter, Sylvia decides to do a little investigating of her own.

Date with Poison is the brilliant fourth novel in Julia Chapman's Dales Detective Agency series and is perfect of fans of M C Beaton's Agatha Raisin series and Gervase Phinn. A young teenager has gone missing. Can Samson O'Brien and Delilah Metcalfe find him? Spring is in the air in Bruncliffe. But not everyone is filled with the joys of the season. Implicated in the murder of a man in Leeds, the Dales Detective Agency’s Samson O’Brien is facing tough questions from the police....

Early October is "winding down" time in Busman's Harbor, Maine, but there's nothing relaxing about it for Julia Snowden. Between busloads of weekend leaf peepers at the Snowden Family Clambake and a gut renovation of the old mansion on Morrow Island, she's keeping it all together with a potentially volatile skeleton crew - until one of them turns up dead under the firewood. When the Russian demo team clearing out the mansion discovers a room that's been sealed off, Julia's baffled as to its purpose and it's secrets. When one of the workers is found murdered, things come to a boil.

No stranger to fear since meeting the unhuman Inspector Hobbes, Andy Caplet fears getting fired from his reporting job (again). His main concern, though, is a shady property developer who has designs on Sorenchester Common, and more annoyingly on his wife. Perhaps a trip to the mountains will help him relax, but this proves even more perilous with foul weather, inedible food, brigands, and a terrifying cruise. Fortunately, mountain leopards, Yetis and Flossy, the yak, take a shine to Andy.

"When I say, therefore, that [my brother] has better powers of observation than I...I am speaking the exact and literal truth." (Sherlock Holmes) This story occurs when Mycroft, an athletic Cambridge graduate, assists the secretary of state. He becomes embroiled in a mystery in Trinidad based on actual history. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a huge Holmesian, seven feet two inches tall, basketball's all-time leading scorer, and a US cultural ambassador. Anna Waterhouse is a professional screenwriter and script consultant.

It's a beautiful day in Como, and the Caswell-Jones family are surrounded their nearest and dearest in their Villa Janus. But when Jonty Caswell-Jones is found dead in his study, it is clear the only suspects are the guests and the family. It seems all this time, tensions have been brewing, guests seething, and rivalries have reared their ugly head....

In the picturesque seaside town of St Ives, Detective Sergeant Sophie Keane is a pillar of the community. Between the occasional collar and lazy weekends spent on the beach, it seems a perfect life. But for Sophie, the golden sands and crystal waters hide a dark secret, one that's lain buried for twenty years. When a body turns up on the opening night of a glittering new art gallery on the seafront, the town is left shaken—especially Sophie, who recognizes the killer's style but knows that what she fears just couldn't be possible.

Ngaio Marsh returns to her New Zealand roots to transplant the classic country house murder mystery to an upland sheep station on South Island - and produces one of her most exotic and intriguing novels. One summer evening in 1942, Flossie Rubrick, MP, one of the most formidable women in New Zealand, goes to her husband’s wool shed to rehearse a patriotic speech - and disappears.