Cozy Detective

Lies, spies, film stars, and murder. New Year’s Eve, 1921 Posie has been asked to accompany Inspector Richard Lovelace of Scotland Yard on an undercover mission. Their destination is a glittering New Year’s Eve party at Maypole Manor, the clifftop home of Lord Robin Glaysayer. With a blizzard raging outside, when a killer strikes, the Inspector and Posie’s skills are tested to breaking point as they try to find the murderer before he attacks again.

When Dr. Georges Moutte is found murdered, investigator Antoine Verlaque is stumped. Certainly the director of theology at the Universite d'Aix had his enemies. Moutte was just about to name the recipient of an elite fellowship as well as his own successor - a highly coveted position - when his lips were sealed permanently. But Verlaque isn't convinced anyone in the tiny community of academics is capable of murder.

Newlyweds Brooklyn and Derek are enjoying the final days of their honeymoon in Paris. As they're browsing the book stalls along the Seine, Brooklyn finds the perfect gift for Derek: a first edition James Bond novel, The Spy Who Loved Me. When they bump into Ned, an old friend from Derek’s spy days, Brooklyn shows him her latest treasure. Once they're back home in San Francisco, they visit a spy shop Ned mentioned. Soon after, Derek is dismayed when he receives a mysterious letter from Paris announcing Ned’s death. Then someone is killed inside the spy shop.

When Jesse Camden, owner of the Gilded Lily Tea Room and Coffee House, agrees to meet her childhood friend, Winnie Rogers, for a morning of girl talk and reminiscing, or "fishing" as Winnie likes to call it, Jesse anticipates a morning of shared confidences over a picnic brunch in the countryside. But spring in Oklahoma can be unpredictable, and when a tornado drops out of a wall cloud practically on top of them, Jesse and Winnie find themselves stranded with a demolished pickup and a dead body before they've even opened the picnic basket.

Maple Bay is hosting the Ms. Gay West Coast Pageant, and Victor’s drag queen persona Raven Ronelle is the emcee and organizer. It’s a huge event for the town, and everyone is excited. For someone, excitement means murder. As the drag queens suffer multiple attempts on their life, Victor enlists the help of his best friend and his boyfriend, Sheriff Hottie, to sleuth out the truth.

In 1956, Kitty Cunningham disappeared on the way to the Starlite Drive-In. Now the first real evidence of foul play is coming to light in the ghostly realm—and it links directly to a modern crime. Only a sleuth with one foot in the past can solve the mystery and make things right.

Elizabeth Cubbon is called “Aunt Bessie” by nearly everyone in the small village of Laxey that she calls home. A number of murders have thrown her normally quiet life into turmoil, and at her age (just don’t ask her exactly what age that is), she feels like she’s had enough. Aunt Bessie enjoys getting through the whole day without anyone stumbling over a dead body.

A cop, a pig, and a serial killer walk into a bar. Seal Island is home to a moonshine making billionaire, a pot growing fisherman, a celebrity flower child, a handsome romance writer, a sex addicted realtor, a womanizing pub owner, a cop, a pot-bellied pig…and a serial killer. The island is serene and remote. It is only accessible by boat. The residents like it that way, until those with the deepest and darkest of secrets start dying in the most bizarre of ways.

Murder, blackmail and drug dealing on the Tiber combine in one of Ngaio Marsh’s liveliest and most evocative novels. When their guide disappears mysteriously in the depths of a Roman basilica, the members of Mr. Sebastian Mailer’s tour group seem strangely unperturbed. But when a body is discovered in an Etruscan sarcophagus, Superintendent Alleyn, in Rome incognito on the trail of an international drug racket, is very much concerned.

When mystery writer Marius Quin and his sleuthing partner Lady Bella Montague are hired by a secretive stranger to find a missing civil servant, they immediately set to work. Ernest Castleton was taken at gunpoint days earlier, but with the help of his distraught fiancée, Marius and Bella uncover a vital clue. Ernest hid a cryptic letter in the British Museum, and it sends the intrepid duo on a trail that stretches from the center of London all the way to the English coast.

When Gemma’s romantic holiday with her boyfriend is cancelled, the tearoom sleuth finds herself heading to Vienna instead with her cat Muesli and the nosy Old Biddies for company. And it’s not long before they stumble across a murder right in the heart of Austria’s historic capital. A handsome art critic dies suspiciously at their hotel, and the Old Biddies are determined to sniff out the killer. Is it the bitter hotel owner nursing a grudge? The critic’s jealous mistress wanting revenge? Or even the American horse trainer who seems inexplicably nervous around the police?

Winery-owner Olivier Bonnard is devastated when he discovers a priceless cache of rare vintages has been stolen from his private cellar. Soon after, Monsieur Gilles d'Arras arrives to report another mysterious disappearance: His wife, Pauline, has vanished from their apartment. Madame has always been as tough as nails, but in recent weeks, she's been wandering around town in her slippers, crying for no reason. As the mistral arrives to temper the region's late-summer heat, Commissioner Paulik receives an urgent call from Bonnard: He's just found Pauline d'Arras - dead in his vineyard.

Dreams of stardom had lured Martyn Tarne from faraway New Zealand to make the dreary, soul-destroying round of West End agents and managers in search of work. The Vulcan Theatre had been her last forlorn hope, and now, driven by sheer necessity, she was glad to accept the humble job of dresser to its leading lady. And then came the eagerly awaited opening night.

The powerful Lord complains loudly to the local bishop, who asks Father Max Tudor, vicar of Nether Monkslip and former MI5 agent, to investigate. Just as Max comes to believe the poisoning was accidental, a body is discovered in the cloister well. Can Max Tudor solve the case and restore order in time to attend his own nuptials?

Harriet Andover had no intention of dying young like her silly siblings had. She intended to outlive them and outdo them as she always had. But Harriet discovers that the best intentions can lead to murder when she is strangled inside her mansion with a house full of holiday guests. As much as Inspector Witherspoon enjoys his job delivering justice, the last thing he wanted was a complicated murder case just a week before Christmas. He soon discovers that Harriet's own husband and grown stepchildren are not overcome with grief and neither are most of her friends.

A classic Ngaio Marsh mystery thriller combining drugs and sacrifice. High in the mountains stands the magnificent Saracen fortress, home of the mysterious Mr. Oberon, leader of a coven of witches. It is not the historic castle, however, that intrigues Roderick Alleyn, on holiday with his family, but the suspicion that a huge drugs ring operates from within its ancient portals. But before the holiday is over, someone else has stumbled upon the secret.

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.

When crime novelist Phoebe opens the post and receives an invitation to her own funeral, she’s horrified. Not least because the date of her death is marked as tomorrow. Deciding it’s nothing more than a prank from an enemy from her past, she determines to put it to the back of her mind. But the next morning, when her completely infuriating postman (who likes to think himself her no.1 literary critic) rings her doorbell, a parcel of poisoned pen-nibs explodes in his face. Forced to confront the fact her correspondence is more RIP than RSVP, Phoebe realises someone must want her dead.

When the body of the glamorous film star Margot Browne washes ashore, Max's former colleague, Patrice Logan, requests his help. It's a perfect closed-circle murder: Margot must have been killed by one of the actors, stylists, scriptwriters, or second-tier royalty aboard the yacht. Patrice suspects the yacht's owner, a playboy film director she's been keeping tabs on for smuggling, but Max isn't so sure.

While out on a walk, Eleanor Trewynn, her niece Megan, and her neighbor Nick spot a young, half-drowned Indian man floating in the water. Delirious and concussed, he utters a cryptic message about his family being trapped in a cave and his mother dying. The young man, unconscious and unable to help, is whisked away to a hospital while a desperate effort is mounted to find the missing family in time.