Cozy Detective

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.

She keeps house for Inspector Witherspoon...and keeps him on his toes. Everyone's awed by his Scotland Yard successes - but they don't know about his secret weapon. No matter how messy the murder or how dirty the deed, Mrs. Jeffries' polished detection skills are up to the task...proving that behind every great man there's a woman - and that a crimesolver's work is never done.

Daphne Marriott strolls into Clover Ridge and informs librarian Carrie Singleton that she's a psychic. But if she had foreseen what fate awaited her, Daphne would have steered clear of the quaint Connecticut town. Evelyn, the library ghost, tells Carrie that there's more to Daphne than she lets on. The mysterious woman grew up in Clover Ridge with her no-good dad, who apparently met his end at the hands of Daphne's brother, Billy. Still, Daphne proves a welcome distraction when Carrie's overbearing mother hits town. Mom's much younger husband, Tom, is in a movie that's lensing locally.

Springtime in Mississippi is abloom with beauty, but the library's employees are too busy worrying to stop and smell the flowers. The new library director, Oscar Reilly, is a brash, unfriendly Yankee who's on a mission to cut costs - and his first targets are the archive and the rare book collection. But his biggest offense is declaring all four-legged creatures banned from the stacks. With enemies aplenty, the suspect list is long when Reilly's body is discovered in the library.

When real estate pro Helen Morrisey’s bombshell daughter, Lizzie, a popular home-shopping network host, invites her to meet an internationally famous chef, Helen jumps at the chance. What woman doesn’t want to shake hands with a celebrity and do a little shopping at the same time? Even more intriguing, this culinary superstar is about to sell his waterfront mansion, and it’s her opportunity to talk business. After all, he couldn’t choose a sharper agent than Helen, could he?

Tearoom sleuth Gemma Rose is looking forward to a holiday filled with delicious Yuletide treats, time with friends and family, and maybe even a "white Christmas" in Oxford. But when she's snowed in at a country manor, she finds herself stumbling on a puzzling murder, complete with a body in the library, a house full of suspects, and a trail of mysterious footprints!

A famous writer is found murdered at the Victorian baths in the Yorkshire town of Harrogate. In a crime worthy of one of his novels, Damian Penrose, who was appearing at the town’s crime writing festival, has been ruthlessly strangled. But with no trace of the murderer and no apparent means of escape, how did the killer simply vanish from the scene of the crime?

When the penniless FitzHenrys, proprietors of the rundown Combe Castle Heritage Site, find themselves victims of a threatening campaign to oust them from their ancestral home, Jack and Sarah are called in to track down the culprit. But nothing is what it seems at this castle - from the curious and unnerving waxwork displays of the 'Odditorium' to the in-laws and neighbours who can't wait to see the last of aristocratic couple. Soon Jack and Sarah discover that truth is often stranger than fiction, and in Combe Castle things do indeed go bump in the night.

Aurora Teagarden is basking in the news of her pregnancy when disaster strikes her small Georgia town: four kids vanish from the school soccer field in an afternoon. Aurora's 15-year-old brother, Phillip, is one of them. Also gone are two of his friends and an 11-year-old girl who was just hoping to get a ride home from soccer practice. And then there's an even worse discovery - at the kids' last known destination, a dead body.

When Flavia de Luce is banished to Miss Bodycote's Female Academy in Canada, she’s soon on familiar ground when, on her first night, a mummified body is dislodged from a chimney, and she is presented with a gruesome puzzle to solve. Girls have been disappearing with alarming regularity, leading Flavia to wonder not only how and why but what exactly is the academy's true purpose? Flavia must enter a shadowy world where truth and lies seem interchangeable and no one can be trusted.

In the dark, wintry highlands of Lochdubh, Scotland, where the local Calvinist element resists the secular trimmings of Christmas, the spirit of old Saint Nick is about as welcome as a flat tire on a deserted road. Nor is crime taking a holiday, as Constable Hamish Macbeth soon finds himself protecting an unhappy girl, unlocking the secrets of a frightened old woman, and retrieving some stolen holiday goods. Now the lanky lawman must use all his Highland charm and detective skills to make things right.

A winter weekend ends in snowbound disaster in a novel which remains a favourite among Marsh readers. It began as an entertainment: eight people, many of them enemies, gathered for a winter weekend by a host with a love for theatre. They would be the characters in a drama that he would devise. It ended in snowbound disaster. Everyone had an alibi - and most had motives as well. But Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn, when he finally arrived, knew it all hung on Thomas, the dancing footman....

London 1922. The Summer Ball is all arranged. Camille Divine has received her invitation to Antonella Toignton’s home in Chelsea, the one she inherited from her father, where the Summer Ball will be held.

Mirabelle Daws traveled all the way from Australia to Sheridan Square to visit her sister - only to die in the middle of a locked garden. All the residents of Sheridan Square have a key to the garden - but no one seemed to know that Mirabelle was planning to arrive. So the question facing Mrs. Jeffries is: Who wanted to make sure that Mirabelle's visit was very, very short-lived?

In addition to his library duties and his role as doting grandad, Charlie has enrolled in an early medieval history course offered by young, charismatic professor Carey Warriner. Charlie feels a bit out of place - his fellow classmates are half his age - except for Dixie Bell Compton, another "mature" student. When Charlie hears an angry exchange between her and their professor, his interest in piqued. He's even more intrigued when she shows up at his office asking for a study partner.

Lucinda Beckwith Long, the mayor of Athena, has donated a set of Civil War-era diaries to the archives of Athena College. The mayor would like Charlie to preserve and to substantiate them as a part of the Long family legacy - something that could benefit her son Beck as he prepares to campaign for the state senate.

November, 1923. Olive’s school chum, Gigi, invites Olive to London because Gigi’s dotty grandmother fears for her life—or so she’s said to Gigi. However Olive is surprised to find that the dowager is far from muddled. The sharp and imperious matriarch refuses to admit to her worries and sends Olive on her way. Without a client or case, Olive is swept into the glittering lifestyle of the “fast set,” and their decadent excess. But then among the cocktails and champagne, a murderer strikes during a frivolous party game, and Olive realizes the dowager’s fears were well-founded.

Suzanne, Toni, and Petra lost their husbands but found independence - and, in each other, a life raft of support, inspiration, fresh baked goods, and their own business. But when the Cackleberry Club cafe opened its doors in the town of Kindred, who'd have guessed that the three women would be working a double shift as amateur sleuths?

For Lord Anthony Hetheridge, this wet April should be full of promise. His wife, Kate, is on bedrest for her final month of pregnancy, and his friend DI Deepal "Paul" Bhar's firstborn, a darling baby girl, has already arrived. Wellegrave House is restored, and the Hetheridges are back where they belong, in the heart of Mayfair. But inside Scotland Yard, the institution Tony served for so many years, something is very wrong.

The Ducote sisters are in a tiff with Vera Cassity over the location of this year's library fundraising gala, and Charlie would rather curl up in a corner than get into the fray. It seems everyone - even his housekeeper Azalea - has it in for Vera. And at the gala, she gives them good reason, with a public display of rancor aimed at anyone who gets in her way.But those bitter words wind up being her last.