Cozy Suspense Women Sleuths

Like many old New England families, the Kellings live to die. Although their family vault is spacious and comfortable, it will not do for Sarah Kelling's great-uncle Frederick. In his will, he demands to be buried inside the ancient family tomb at Boston Common, which hasn't admitted a new member in more than a century. But when the Kellings crack the old vault's door, they find a recently built brick wall - and behind it lays a surprisingly fresh corpse, a skeleton with rubies in its teeth.

A cold case update in Salem, Massachusetts... Life at the house on Winter Street is abuzz with preparations for Aunt Ibby's 45th high school reunion, and Lee Barrett is happy to pitch in, tracking down addresses, and licking envelopes. But as a field reporter for Salem's WICH-TV, her priority is to be on top of the town's latest news before anyone else.

After losing her job as a TV psychic, Lee Barrett volunteers at the Tabitha Trumbull Academy of the Arts. When the school handyman turns up dead, Lee's clairvoyance begins bubbling. The Tabby is housed in long-vacant Trumbull's Department Store. As Lee and her students work on a documentary charting the store's history, they unravel a century of family secrets, deathbed whispers, and a mysterious labyrinth of tunnels hidden right below the streets of Salem. Even the witches in town are spooked.

While Siobhán studies for her Detective Sargeant exams, her brother, Eoin, prepares for the grand opening of his new restaurant, The O’Sullivan Six, and concocts a plan to enter Kilbane’s Top Garden Contest to boost business. But trouble brews when Eoin hires a mercurial landscape designer known for her killer designs. His new partner’s unflattering reputation and questionable practices nearly eclipse her talents—and plunge the prestigious competition into chaos.

When Lee Barrett joins a former student's bridal party as maid of honor, she expects cake tastings and dress fittings. But wedding planning becomes more peculiar than Lee's scrying talents could ever predict. There's a magical baker, a best man with a checkered past, and a talking crow named Poe as the ring bearer. There's also a kindly old man dead under his apple tree - one of a series of unexplained deaths hanging over the Wiccan community....

When Leona Davis hatches a plan to return to her beloved hometown of Honeytree, Oregon, she hopes to build the egg farm of her dreams and leave behind the marriage of her nightmares. But the yolk's on her when she breaks ground on her chicken palace and unearths a skeleton in her front yard. It's clearly fowl play. The bones may be decades old, but there's no statute of limitations on murder. With a county forensics team roosting on her lawn and a flock of town gossips poking their beaks where they don't belong, her well-laid farming plans may be nothing more than a wing and a prayer.

Harvest, Ohio, is a long way from New York City, where Bailey King left a coveted job as a head chocolatier to take over Swissmen Sweets, her Amish grandparents' candy shop. But between lavender blueberry fudge and chocolate cherry ganache truffles, Bailey may have bitten off more than she can chew when the search for a missing pot-bellied pig turns up a body suffering from sugar overload - the fatal kind....

When adoptee Lucille Jones comes to town researching her roots, Betsy Devonshire notices that she bears a remarkable resemblance to local Jan Henderson. Betsy introduces the look-alikes and they quickly hit it off. But then Jan's wealthy great-aunt is found dead, helped to her grave by a stiff metal wire—a double-zero knitting needle, in fact. Just like the kind Jan knits with.

Zoe Chambers, paramedic and deputy coroner in rural Pennsylvania's tight-knit Vance Township, has been privy to a number of local secrets over the years, some of them her own. But secrets become explosive when a dead body is found in the Township Board president's abandoned car. As a January blizzard rages, Zoe and Police Chief Pete Adams launch a desperate search for the killer, even if it means uncovering secrets that could not only destroy Zoe and Pete but also those closest to them.

Jill Gardner, owner of Coffee, Books, and More is almost out of Mother's Day cards. She has a few more in stock, but she's set them aside because she needs Greg's help choosing one for his mother. It'll be Jill's first time meeting her boyfriend's mother, and she's understandably nervous. Turns out Jill isn't the only one having feelings about mothers. Kyle, who works at the antiques store next door, needs to find the perfect card for a mother he hasn't seen since he was five - when she went away to jail.

Jane Darrowfield is a year into her retirement, and she's already traveled and planted a garden. She's organized her photos, her recipes, and her spices. The statistics suggest she has at least a few more decades ahead of her, so she better find something to do...After Jane helps a friend with a sticky personal problem, word starts to spread around her bridge club - and then around all of West Cambridge, Massachusetts - that she's the go-to girl for situations that need discreet fixing.

A grieving young widow, Charlene needed a new start - so she bought a historic mansion, sight unseen, and drove from Chicago to New England to start turning it into a bed-and-breakfast. On her first night in the house, she awakens to find a handsome man with startling blue eyes in her bedroom. Terror turns to utter disbelief when he politely introduces himself as Jack Strathmore - and explains that he used to live here - when he was alive. He firmly believes that someone pushed him down the stairs three years ago, and he won't be able to leave until someone figures out who.

When Betsy Devonshire arrived in Excelsior, Minnesota, all she wanted was to visit her sister Margot and get her life in order. She never dreamed her sister would give her a place to stay and a job at her needlecraft shop. In fact, things had never looked so good - until Margot was murdered. In a town this friendly, it's hard to imagine who could have committed such a horrible act, but Betsy has a few ideas. There's an ex-employee who wants to start her own needlework store. And there's the landlord who wanted Margot out. Now Betsy's putting together a list of motives and suspects....

The perfect proposal leads to a chilling cold case. Coffeehouse manager Clare Cosi sheds tears of joy when her NYPD detective boyfriend surprises her with an engagement ring. But her bridal bliss is put on hold when a chilling mystery brings a wave of deadly danger to those she holds dear. After everything Clare and Mike have been through, they deserve a little bit of happily ever after. So when Mike decides to put a ring on Clare's finger, Clare's eccentric octogenarian employer is there to help. While the engagement is steeped in perfection, the celebration is not long lived.

Finlay Donovan and her nanny/partner-in-crime Vero are in sore need of a girls’ weekend away. They plan a trip to Atlantic City, but odds are—seeing as it’s actually a cover story to negotiate a deal with a dangerous loan shark, save Vero’s childhood crush Javi, and hunt down a stolen car—it won’t be all fun and games. When Finlay’s ex-husband Steven and her mother insist on tagging along too, Finlay and Vero suddenly have a few too many meddlesome passengers along for the ride.

Alison is happy for her best friend, Max. Really, she is. She loves Max, and the guy Max is marrying completely adores her. Even being in the wedding wouldn't be so bad, if it'd keep her from thinking about her off-again relationship with NYPD homicide detective Bobby Crawford. However, Bobby's the best man, and that forces them into all kinds of awkward situations. Then, when Alison’s ex turns up dead, she's dragged into another murder investigation. Romance, humor, and murder are sure to mix and mingle whenever Alison and Bobby link up in Extracurricular Activities.

Mystery author Rachel Goldman is getting used to the idea that her fictional creation, Duffy Madison, has somehow taken flesh-and-blood form and is investigating missing person cases not far from where Rachel lives. Wait. No. She's not getting used to it at all, and the presence of this real-life Duffy is making her current manuscript - what's the word? - lousy.

Lauren Crenshaw and her Norwegian Forest Cat Annie run their own certified cat cafe in the picturesque small town of Gold Leaf Valley, Northern California. Lauren's fun cousin Zoe helps out as well. Lauren, Annie, and Zoe are shocked when one of their favorite customers is poisoned. Steve came into the cafe nearly every day - but who wanted him dead? The trio find themselves suspecting their customers - even elderly Mrs. Finch, whom Lauren thinks of as a substitute grandmother, doesn't escape their scrutiny.

With her favorite '80s hair-metal band in town, Bobbi's as starstruck as they come. But when the guitarist is found dead of an apparent snake bite, the sheriffs are quick to rule it an accident. Bobbi’s not so sure, because a lot of things don’t add up—like how the guitarist had a lot of enemies and more than a few secrets that he was trying to hide from the tabloids. But none of that compares to the shock when Grant tells her that he’s got a big announcement about his fiancée…

The house has sat empty for 15 years, taking up prime real estate along the picturesque coastline. Built by one of the founders of South Cove, its last known owner, Maryanne Demerit, vanished without a trace. Now her home will be demolished for a condo development, but until then, it's the perfect spot for a Halloween haunted house. Jill Gardner, her boyfriend, and three other couples are spending the weekend in the Demerit home. But what begins as an all-in-good-fun fright fest turns into a mystery begging to be solved as Jill is contacted by the ghost of Maryanne.