Cozy Detective

Christmastime in an isolated country house and, following a flaming row in the kitchen, there’s murder inside. When a much disliked visiting servant disappears without trace after playing Santa Claus, foul play is at once suspected - and foul play it proves to be. Only suspicion falls not on the staff but on the guests, all so unimpeachably respectable that the very thought of murder in connection with any of them seems almost heresy.

The poison was cyanide, slipped into the sacred wine of ecstasy just before it was presented to Miss Cara Quayne at the House of the Sacred Flame. The victim was a deeply religious initiate who had trained for a month for her last ceremony. She was also a very beautiful woman.... The suspects were the other initiates and the high priest. All claimed they were above earthly passions. But Cara Quayne had provoked lust, jealousy - and murder.

Magic Springs, Idaho, may be a small town, but Mia Malone is living an enchanted life running her own catering business and cooking school. And while she's teaching the locals culinary craft, her grandmother is teaching her witchcraft for the day she inherits the family magical spells that have been passed down for generations. Unfortunately, all that knowledge is not helping Mia or her grandmother in removing the spirit of warlock Dorian Alexander from Mia's cat, Mr. Darcy.

One night Mrs. Plansky is startled awake by a phone call from a voice claiming to be her grandson Will, who desperately needs ten thousand dollars to get out of a jam. Of course, Loretta obliges—after all, what are grandmothers for, even grandmothers who still haven’t gotten a simple “thank you” for a gift sent weeks ago. Not that she's counting.

Retired lawyer Andy Carpenter remembers every dog that’s come through the Tara Foundation’s doors, but the most well-known alum of the dog rescue organization that Andy founded in Paterson, New Jersey, may be Mamie. Adopted by famous actress Jenny Nichols—Andy’s high school girlfriend—the miniature French poodle is now practically a starlet in her own right. Andy doesn’t hold it against his friend. In fact, he and his wife, Laurie, have dinner with Jenny while she’s in town filming her next big hit. But after an eventful meal, there’s a plot twist the next morning that none of them see coming.

England, Summer 1926. When Lord Edgington receives a letter from Hugo Templeton-Swift, a famously rich old man who believes he’s being poisoned, the renowned detective fetches his assistant, his golden retriever, and a full staff of servants and heads off to the countryside to investigate. But when the bodies start falling in the enigmatic manor of Riverside Keep, anyone could be guilty.

Christmas has come to Lighthouse Cove, but business hasn’t slowed down for Shannon Hammer. She’s been contracted to renovate a local hotel owned by the Garrisons, a family that’s so devoted to the holidays they serve a seven-course dinner every night from Thanksgiving through Christmas. Last year’s festivities featured a train that transported guests around the breathtaking Cliffside property. This year, Shannon and her crew have been commissioned to build a Victorian-style carnival midway with games and prizes galore.

A 1920s Easter Murder Mystery in the depths of rural Yorkshire A scoundrel lies dying, he makes his confession; his sins were despicable, and he wants to atone for his wasted life. He bequeaths an invaluable gift to Monks Hood Abbey, an ancient monastery set in a lonely corner of the Yorkshire moors. But sin throws a long shadow and corruption crawls in its shade.

When Octavia Garamond passed away, she left explicit instructions in her will: The police must be present at her funeral, and the coroner should be exceptionally thorough when examining her body. Amelia Kennerly is perplexed to find herself the sole executor of her great-aunt's will, as she barely knew her. Further questions arise when the local parson is anything but happy to conduct Octavia's service. Then someone breaks into Octavia's home and tears the house apart. It seems the old lady's words may have been eerily prescient: "Hell is empty, and all the devils are here."

Summer in the Twin Cities is hard to beat, and Detective Kate Rosetti is excited to show FBI Agent Jack Russo a nice, relaxing time while he’s back in town. Unfortunately, her plans go belly up when Tommy “Two-Toed” Bianchi is found floating face-down in Kate’s favorite lake. To complicate matters, Alastair Gem turns up with a brand-new girlfriend...which is all fine and dandy until his girlfriend goes missing. Gem begs the already-strapped-for-time detective for help, and Kate can’t refuse.

The engagement of effervescent Mally Lee to handsome, well-connected Roger Mooring is not going well. They quarrel constantly and Mally's idea is to spend time apart and delay the wedding. She has no money of her own and hopes to find a job, which materializes when Sir George Peterson hires her to be a governess to his daughter. She happily heads to London and all is well until Sir George and his odious secretary, Paul Craddock, accuse her of the theft of a diamond brooch and an important paper.

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.

The lives of the inhabitants of Swevenings are disrupted only by a fierce competition to catch the Old Un, a monster trout known to dwell in a beautiful stream which winds past their homes. Then one of their small community is found brutally murdered; beside him is the freshly killed trout. Both died by violence - but Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn's murder investigation seems to be much more interested in the fish.... Scales of Justice was first published in 1955.

It's just days before the Cherringham Regatta - an annual event that draws luxury yachts from across the country, as well as the local boat crowd, all looking to party on the river. But it's no party when boats are vandalized, and a wealthy executive turns up missing, with his blood on the deck. As the Regatta date looms, Jack and Sarah discover that what's happening on the water looks less like vandalism and more like murder.

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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.

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.

Amy is stuck in a rut. After graduating, she never left her temporary job at the motorway service station. Daily visits from a mysterious woman are the highlight of her days. Until one day, when the mystery woman vanishes. Amy investigates the disappearance and makes a shocking discovery. Suddenly, she's being framed, and no-nonsense Claudia McAllister is being sent to arrest her. Will Amy's unique approach to evading capture prove successful?

In the second in the series, Kate Brannigan investigates the bizarre case of the missing conservatories, unearthing an unscrupulous lawyer (later found hanging from his balcony in flimsy women's apparel); a supersalesman with an overstuffed bank account; and a brother-sister pair who are double-crossing everyone. And this real estate fiddling ties in with a separate scam involving Kate's best buds - and murder of the most unexpected order.

Evans' search for a hiker gone missing in the Welsh hills places his fiancé in the path of a killer in this tantalizing installment in this award-winning author's cozy series.