Cozy Suspense Women Sleuths

Lindsey prefers to keep her bakeshop's Halloween decor light and autumnal, rather than gruesome and ghoulish. But everyone knows her lighthouse home is haunted. Some intrepid teens have even tried to break in to witness the resident ghost themselves. Dreading Halloween night, Lindsey reluctantly allows her influencer and podcaster best friend, Kennedy, to host a live ghost hunting investigation in the lighthouse, conducted by a professional team. Protective of her ghost, Lyndsey is understandably nervous about what they might uncover.

Someone is trying to turn Portland High into a school for scandal with a gossipy website called Dirty Laundry. The latest target of ruinous rumors is newly elected PTA President Sandra Wallage. After a heated meeting with outraged parents, Sandra runs into fellow school mom and Private Investigator Maya Kendrick, who's discovered the person behind the website. But when the women storm into the venomous gossip columnist's office they find a lifeless body - along with a confession.

As the festival of Beltane draws near, mysterious fires are springing up around the magical village of Myrtlewood, and Rosemary Thorn can't help but try to solve the case. Rosemary already has too much on her plate with a hoard of foundling children to house and her own teenager to raise. On top of all this, she has run out of excuses. There's nothing standing between Rosemary and her dream of becoming a magical chocolatier. Well, nothing except her own self-sabotage. Meanwhile, Athena Thorn is yearning for the fae realm and harboring a secret that could put the whole town at risk.

Gemma and Jayne are busy managing both the bookshop and the adjoining Mrs. Hudson's Tea Room in anticipation of the upcoming book signing with Renalta Van Markoff, the author of the controversial Hudson and Holmes series. However, tragedy strikes during the author Q&A session of the signing when a dedicated Sherlockian verbally attacks the series for disgracing Sherlock's legacy and is then publicly humiliated when the author triumphantly lashes back and gains the upper hand - that is, until she collapses on the table and is pronounced dead.

Someone has created a fake social media identity and is online romancing the lonely women of Sinful in order to scam them out of money. Because he always seems to pick the perfect targets, Fortune, Ida Belle, and Gertie think he must be either a Sinful resident or someone with a close association to the town.

Few can compete with the Natasha Smith when it comes to entertaining, but her childhood rival, Sophie Winston, certainly tries. While Natasha is known for her intricate centerpieces and painstakingly prepared gourmet meals, Sophie likes to keep things simple...real simple.

It’s Christmastime, and the precocious Flavia de Luce—an eleven-year-old sleuth with a passion for chemistry and a penchant for crime-solving—is tucked away in her laboratory, whipping up a concoction to ensnare Saint Nick. But she is soon distracted when a film crew arrives at Buckshaw, the de Luces’ decaying English estate, to shoot a movie starring the famed Phyllis Wyvern.

Kate Hamilton is feeling good about her plans to recreate Asheboro, Maryland, as the Victorian town it once was. Even two recent murders aren't enough to discourage her: After she helped to solve them, she put them behind her. Now comes the time to make real plans, and her first goal is to renovate the Barton Mansion on the outskirts of town. But when the contractor gets started, he discovers a staircase that had been walled in years earlier. And of course, given the way Kate's luck has been going, there's a body on the stairs.

It’s New Year’s in Sinful, and the competition for the New Year’s Queen is heating up as the warring churches go head-to-head. Fortune Redding is not the sequined dress kind of woman, but reluctantly agrees to partake in the debacle so that Ida Belle and Gertie can best their nemesis, Celia, who’s put up former Sinful mean girl RJ Rogers. RJ and her friend Ricky Benoit left plenty of devastation in their wake when they fled Sinful after high school. So when they return and Ricky is found dead, there’s no shortage of suspects.

Zara partners again with Detective Bentley to investigate a call about a missing person. The caller, a sweet little old lady named Temperance Krinkle, claims to have psychic abilities. Zara and Bentley have to laugh when it turns out the missing "person" is a tiny figurine from a dollhouse. But then a local resident disappears for real, and the so-called psychic with the attic full of creepy dollhouses doesn't seem so funny anymore. Now Zara and Bentley, witch librarian and vampire detective, must use their skills to unravel a mystifying crime.

Sarah knew starting over would be messy. But things fall apart completely when her ex drops dead, seemingly poisoned by her twin sister Emily's award-winning rhubarb crisp.

In USA Today best-selling author Carlene O’Connor’s eighth Irish Village Mystery, the long-engaged garda of County Cork, Ireland, Siobhán O’Sullivan and Macdaras Flannery, are about to get married at last. But just as the rowdy O’Sullivan brood and all the regulars of the local bistro have gathered at the church, the nuptials come to an abrupt halt when the discovery of an unidentified skeleton puts the wedding on pause....

When Jill hosts a talk at Coffee, Books, and More on the topic of elder abuse, all that's really on her mind is lunch. But the topic hits close to home when she discovers Aunt Jackie has been getting mysterious calls. Jill's certain the caller is a con artist, of course, but her feisty aunt claims to understand this, though she's still shaken-and Harrold's still heartbroken. Who's behind the scam and why was her aunt targeted? When a volunteer from the Senior Project is found murdered, Jill's detective boyfriend is on the case - and it soon becomes clear no one is safe.

Jessica Fletcher would like nothing more than to sit back and relax as Thanksgiving comes to Cabot Cove. But this year, she's already got more on her plate than she can handle.

For innkeeper Holly White, Christmas time in Mistletoe, Maine, is the ultimate holiday gift. Business at the Reindeer Games Inn is booming, her wedding to Sheriff Evan Gray is nearly here, and the annual parade is about to begin. The town is lucky to have another gift this year with the state’s ballet company staying for several performances of The Nutcracker. But disaster strikes when Tiffany, the lead ballerina, shows up dead on a float during the parade, the Rat King’s mask nearby. Holly will have to spruce up her sleuthing skills if she wants to catch the killer before Christmas.

The quaint coastal town of South Cove, California, is all abuzz about the opening of a new specialty shop, Tea Hee. But as Coffee, Books, and More owner Jill Gardner is about to find out, there's nothing cozy about murder. Shop owner Kathi Corbin says she came to South Cove to get away from her estranged family. But is she telling the truth? And did a sinister someone from her past follow her to South Cove?

After far too many years in the Los Angeles corporate world, Whitney Dagner has come home to Santa Catalina Island off the California coast to help her brother Nick run Nautically Yours, the family tourism business. Between gift shop shifts selling all manner of T-shirts and tchotchkes and keeping her feline Whiskers in fine fettle, she pilots the Sea Bounder, a glass-bottom boat showing tourists the underwater sights of aquatic plants, marine life - and a murder victim?

In the small village of Kilbane, County Cork, Ireland, Natalie's Bistro has always been warm and welcoming. Nowadays, 22-year-old Siobhan O'Sullivan runs the family bistro named for her mother, along with her five siblings, after the death of their parents in a car crash almost a year ago. It's been a rough year for the O'Sullivans, but it's about to get rougher. One morning, as they're opening the bistro, they discover a man seated at a table with a pair of hot pink barber scissors protruding from his chest.

Dixie Hemingway is a pet sitter for some of Florida's most pampered pets. But when she happens upon a man drowned in a cat's water bowl, Dixie's sleuthing powers from her time as a deputy sheriff return full-force. And as more bodies keep turning up, she'd better find out whodunit.

Late October 1909, and the season of ghouls and things that go bump in the night has descended on the village of Littleton Cotterell. Lady Hardcastle and her trusted lady’s maid, Florence, find themselves hosting a colorful cast of actors whose spooky moving picture, The Witch’s Downfall, is being shown to mark Halloween. But things take a macabre turn when the first night’s screening ends with a mysterious murder, and the second night with another. One by one the actors turn up dead in ways that eerily echo their film.