Cozy Women Sleuths

November 1911. Lady Emily Hardcastle is celebrating her birthday by seeing a play at the Duke’s Theatre in Bristol with her maid and confidante, the inimitable Flo. Act One is a triumph. Then Act Two opens with a body on stage—a real one. One of the cast has been brutally murdered during the interval. When other matters get in the way of Inspector Sunderland overseeing the case himself, he asks the ever-resourceful Lady H to keep a watchful eye on the suspects—and his police colleagues.

When Lucy and Rafe are given a crystal ball as a wedding present, she's shocked when it foretells doom. For the newlyweds, this was supposed to be a time of joy and celebration. But when a terrible accident befalls one of their wedding guests, Lucy and Rafe must postpone their honeymoon. And as the evidence begins to unravel, it becomes clear this was no accident.

Retired schoolteachers Liz, Pat and Thelma never expected they would be caught up in a crime even once in their lives, let alone twice. But when poison pen letters start landing on the doorsteps of friends and neighbours in their Yorkshire village, old secrets come to light. With the potential for deadly consequences. It won’t be long until the three friends are out on a case yet again.

In the seaside town of Lighthouse Cove, everyone knows the best man for the job is actually a woman - contractor Shannon Hammer. But while Shannon can do wonders with a power drill and a little elbow grease, her love life needs work. On a blind date with real estate agent Jerry Saxton, she has to whip out a pair of pliers to keep Jerry from getting too hands on.Shannon is happy to put her rotten date behind her, but when Jerry's found dead in a run-down Victorian home that she's been hired to restore, the town's attractive new police chief suspects that her threats may have laid the foundation for murder.

Under the Great British Baking Contest tent, the competition's heating up to be crowned Best Baker in all of Britain. For amateur baker Poppy Wilkinson, there are mysteries, secrets, and lies, even murders to solve. As a fledgling witch, Poppy's having enough trouble controlling her sponge cake, never mind trying to control her powers. Besides solving crime, Poppy's also trying to uncover the mystery surrounding her own background. Will she discover who she really is before she gets sent home? Or worse?

Verity Beresford is worried about her husband. Oliver didn’t come home last night so of course Verity goes straight to Judith Potts, Marlow’s resident amateur sleuth, for help. Oliver, founder of the Marlow Amateur Dramatic Society, had hired The Marlow Belle, a private pleasure cruiser, for an exclusive party with the MADS committee but no one remembers seeing him disembark. And then Oliver’s body washes up on the Thames with two bullet holes in him—it’s time for the Marlow Murder Club to leap into action.

It's late August in Shady Hollow, and intrepid reporter Vera Vixen agrees to chaperone the school’s annual field trip to Summers End, an ancient tomb built by an early woodland culture. Naturally, her good friend Lenore Lee comes along to help her. But when the group enters the tomb one morning, they find a corpse that is distinctly more. . . modern than expected. Digging deeper, Vera and Lenore discover that the deceased was involved in the recent excavation at the site, and very unpopular with their colleagues—including Lenore’s sister, Ligeia.

Agatha Raisin's detective agency has become so successful that now all she wants is some R&R. But as soon as she cuts back her hours, Agatha remembers that when she has too much quality time, she doesn't know what to do with it. So it doesn't take much for the vicar of a nearby village to persuade her to help publicize the church fete, especially when the fair's organizer, George Selby, happens to be a gorgeous widower.

Meet Helen Thorpe. She’s smart, preternaturally calm, deeply insightful and a freshly trained butler. On the day she is supposed to start her career as an unusually equanimous domestic professional serving one of the wealthiest families in the world, she is called back to a spiritual retreat where she used to work, the Yatra Institute, on one of British Columbia’s gulf islands. The owner of the lodge, Helen’s former employer Edna, has died while on a three-month silent self-retreat, leaving Helen instructions to settle her affairs.

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.

At age 26 Agatha Raisin has already come a long way. She has clawed her way up since leaving the Birmingham slum where she was born. She's lost her Birmingham accent, run away from her drunken husband, and found a job at a public relations office as a secretary. Then her boss asks Agatha to go to the home of Sir Bryce Teller to tell him that he is soon to be arrested for the murder of his wife and that the agency no longer wants to represent him.

It isn’t the first time real estate agent Helen Morrisey has found someone naked in bed while showing a house. But this one is different. One glance at the bluish cast around his lips and the vacant, staring eyes, and Helen knows developer Al Capelli is never going to sign another sales agreement. His death is big news for a small Chesapeake water town where a family empire is built around secrets and their brash money style is resented by locals. Within days, his lover, her old friend, begs Helen to find the killer before she’s arrested for murder.

Spy extraordinaire Charlotte Mission is hiding out in her grandmother's quaint little inn in Gossip, Texas. With a rogue spy ex-husband after her, she has to stay under the radar for fear of losing everything she holds dear. Life in Gossip is meant to be peaceful, and Charlie's new job as a maid and assistant should be easy. But things never go to plan in this cozy small town. When a guest at the inn drops dead, it's up to Charlie to figure out whodunit before the local paper outs her position at the inn and compromises her cover. If only the murders stopped there.

Riley Thorn and her hot tattooed private investigator boyfriend are all moved in to their new fixer-upper. Not only do they finally have their own place they also haven’t found any new dead bodies on the premises. Yep. It looks like summer is over, and so is Riley’s bad luck. Or is it? While Nick gives up sleeping and showering to obsess over the cold case that still haunts him, his business partner Mrs. Penny is calling the investigative shots. It’s every bit as bad as you can imagine.

Sinful, Louisiana, is always a hotbed of activity, and despite the steamy heat, August is no exception. Godzilla is terrorizing the town, looking for a home-cooked meal, and Gertie is worried someone will take the gator out before she can get him under control. Francine has a situation of her own at the café, where food is missing from inventory. And Celia is always up to no good. But summer is almost over, which could mean huge changes for Fortune Redding.

As the residents of Wisteria snuggle up in the cold weather, two people take their relationship to a whole new level. But who will be getting married? And who will find themselves tangled up in more magical mayhem than ever?

Sinful, Louisiana, really knows how to throw a party, and it goes all out for Halloween. The weeklong celebration kicks off with a maze of horror in the park built of hay bales. And Fortune has the perfect assignment - the executioner. Her scene comes complete with a head block, a hatchet, and a fake body with removable head. It’s the perfect setup...for a crime. When Fortune returns from break and realizes the body in her scene is a real one and not the prop, she knows trouble is coming.

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.

As Milwaukee counts down to New Year's Eve, bar owner Mackenzie "Mack" Dalton has but one resolution - unmask the dangerous mastermind who has been taunting her and killed bouncer Gary Gunderson. Mack and her fellow barflies have fleshed out a suspect and arranged an invite-only party to put a cork in the murderer's game for good. But when the clock strikes midnight and their suspect is found cold and stiff on the basement stairs, it seems the celebration may have come too soon.

There’s been a sensational murder at historic Castle Kinloch, a gothic fantasy of grey granite on a remote island in the Highlands of Scotland. Literary superstar Brett Saffron Presley has been found dead—under bizarre circumstances—in the castle tower’s book-lined study. Years ago, Presley purchased the castle as a showpiece for his brand and to lure paying guests with a taste for writerly glamour. Now it seems, the castle has done him in…or, possibly, one of the castle’s guests has.