Cozy Crime Fiction

Spring, 1918. The Great War is at a crucial stage, the Germans are making one last push into France, and the Allies are struggling to hold them back. Battle lines are shifting, and men, and their machines, are being sent up and down the front to shore up defenses. Major Heathcliff Lennox, and his batman Greggs, are told to report to their new HQ. They set off on a sunlit day to fly the distance, but the enemy is never far away, and disaster strikes. They're sent crashing to the ground behind enemy lines, where life, death, and love await.

I thought judging the Willow Waters garden contest would be fun. A nice way to get to know a few more of my neighbors in this beautiful Cotswold village. I’d get to see how the best gardens grew, maybe even nab a few tips for my own garden. I did not expect the competition to be to the death.

Irish Milkshake Murder: In advance of their St. Patrick's Day wedding, Tara and Danny are off to the Aran Islands. The weekend kicks off with the ferry trip, as the passengers enjoy boozy milkshakes on board. Murder Most Irish: As St. Patrick's Day is drawing near, the folks at Hyler's Luncheonette are getting into the holiday spirit with a festive new green milkshake. Mrs. Claus and the Luckless Leprechaun: To celebrate Spring in Santaland, April Claus's friend, Claire, whips up some minty milkshakes for her bustling ice cream shop, Santaland Scoop.

Facing boredom after his long-postponed knee surgery, Jack volunteers at Fitz Morton Manor to serve as steward, chatting with visitors about the long history of the house. And when the retired volunteer Cyril Roebuck is found dead in the Great Hall, one morning, it seems at first that the dear old man must have suffered a heart attack. But the room was locked from the inside - and it quickly becomes clear that Cyril could not have bolted it. Soon Jack and Sarah are confronting the odd mystery of the locked room... and what must be - in fact - a case of foul play.

Both the skeleton and the corpse have died with suspicious convenience for Georgia Wells, a monstrous but charming actress with a raffish entourage. Georgia's best friend just happens to be Valentine, a top couturière and Campion's sister. In order to protect Valentine, Campion must unravel a story of blackmail and ruthless murder....

Antoine Verlaque, examining magistrate for the beautiful town of Aix-en-Provence, doesn't like Christmas. The decorations appear in the shops far too early, festive tourists swarm the streets, and his beloved Cours Mirabeau is lined with chalets selling what he regards as tacky trinkets. But his wife and partner Marine Bonnet is determined to make this a Christmas they can both enjoy, beginning with the carol sing at the Cathedral Saint Sauveur, a beautiful service in a packed church. Just as the holiday cheer is in full swing, a man is poisoned, sending the community into a tailspin.

It's official! Siobhan is now Garda O'Sullivan, and her five siblings couldn't be prouder. While her brother James runs Naomi's Bistro, Siobhan is doing her part to keep the village safe. Of course, Kilbane is pretty quiet compared to a place like Dublin, where Macdara Flannery has gone to be a detective sergeant. Then one night the local priest summons Siobhan to the church cemetery. There's a dead man in the graveyard - above ground. He's a stranger, but the priest has heard talk of an American tourist in town searching for an Irish ancestor.

Mumbai is a city that thrives on extravagant spectacles and larger-than-life characters. But as Chopra is about to discover, even in the city of dreams, there is no guarantee of a happy ending.

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.

A routine weekend visit by the Gillibry Bird Observatory Trust is made memorable by the owner’s announcement that he is going to sell the island. A sale would mean the end of the Observatory, which for some of the birders made life worth living. A fire in Charlie Todd’s cottage added to their distress. And when, next morning, after a fierce storm, they found Charlie dead in a bird hide, their pleasant September weekend assumed a dangerous new face.

A rare and unrecorded sea bird captures all the birders attention whilst right under their noses the most fanatical birder of them all disappears. Later, Greg Franks’s corpse, the head bludgeoned, is found floating in the sea. Had it not been for Greg Franks, amateur detective George Palmer-Jones would not have been on the bird watching trip in Cornwall to the first place. He had been hired by Greg Franks’s anxious parents to try and persuade their errant son to return home.

Mercy and Lizzie McCarthy are settling in to the charming seaside village of Shamrock Cove on the west coast of Ireland. Lizzie throws herself into organizing a book festival and mystery writer Mercy even agrees to come out of her bookish hidey-hole to do get involved. But then the star author for the event is found dead. James Brandt was killed by a falling bookshelf in his own cottage… The local detective is not convinced by Mercy’s suspicion of murder but when someone else turns up dead, the police cannot ignore it.

"A" Is for Alibi: Nikki Fife, convicted of murdering her husband Laurence, is out on parole after eight years of prison. Now, she hires Kinsey Millhone to find out who really killed Laurence. "B" Is for Burglar: Elaine Boldt is missing, and her sister wants Kinsey Millhone to find her. It seems to be a routine job - until Kinsey is ordered to drop the investigation. "C" Is for Corpse: Kinsey Millhone is recruited to help Bobby Callahan, a young man struggling back to life after his Porsche was forced to take a near-fatal nose dive over the edge of a canyon.

An aging art scholar and a visiting student, haunting echoes of France's colonialist past, and a delicious navarin of lamb - Bruno is back, and his latest case leads him from the Renaissance to the French Resistance and beyond by way of a corpse at the bottom of a well. When Claudia, a young American, turns up dead in the courtyard of an ancient castle in Bruno's jurisdiction, her death is assumed to be an accident related to opioid use. But her doctor persuades Bruno that things may not be so simple.

Kitty Underhay is looking forward to a week of long lunches and wedding planning with her husband-to-be, Captain Matthew Bryant. But the plan is derailed when he is called on to collect a former comrade-in-arms, arriving on the 15:50 from Paddington. As the train bearing Simon Travers pulls up to the platform, a piercing scream rises over the screech of its brakes. Travers is dead in his seat, a dagger in his heart. Only a few individuals had access to Travers’s compartment, and Kitty must find out which of these seemingly benign passengers is, in fact, a cross-country killer.

Former New Yorker and interior designer Tara Meehan is eagerly anticipating the grand opening of her architectural salvage shop Renewals in her newly adopted home of Galway. She's in the midst of preparations when heiress Veronica O'Farrell bursts in to announce she's ready for some renewal of her own. To celebrate one year of sobriety, she's invited seven people she wronged in her drinking days to historic Ballynahinch Castle Hotel in neighboring Connemara to make amends in style. But perhaps one among them is not so eager to pardon her past misdeeds.

An ancient skeleton tossed in a garbage dump is the first conundrum to rattle Gideon Oliver when he arrives in Egypt. There to appear in a documentary film, he expects an undemanding week of movie star treatment and a luxurious cruise up the Nile with his wife, Julie. But then Gideon discovers a tantalizing secret in the discarded bones - and violence claims a famous Egyptologist's life. Plying his calipers as the world's foremost forensic anthropologist, Gideon's investigation of the goings-on leads him through the back alleys and bazaars of Cairo.

At the Great New York Cookie Swap, pastry chefs bake up their very best for charity. Clare is in charge of the beverage service, and her famous Fa-la-la-la Lattes make the gathering even merrier. But her high spirits come crashing down when she discovers the battered body of a hard-working baker's assistant. Police suspect a serial attacker whose escalating crimes have become known as "the Christmas Stalkings". Clare'sboyfriend, NYPD detective Mike Quinn, finds reason to believe even more sinister forces are involved.

A spa stay turns into a homicidal holiday.... A bit snobbish and a trifle high strung, Sybil Foster prides herself on owning the finest estate in Upper Quintern and hiring the best gardener. In fact she is rapturous over the new asparagus beds when a visit from her unwelcome stepson sends her scurrying to a chic spa for a rest cure, a liaison with the spa's director...and an apparent suicide. Her autopsy holds one surprise, a secret drawer a second.

A classic Ngaio Marsh novel which features blood-curdling murders in the confines of a riverboat, the Zodiac, cruising through Constable country. 'He looks upon the murders that he did in fact perform as tiresome and regrettable necessities', reflected Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn on the international crook known as 'the Jampot'.