English Women Sleuths

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.

Lt. Eve Dallas is just home from a long overdue vacation when she responds to a call of an unattended death. The victim is Martin Greenleaf, retired Internal Affairs Captain. At first glance, the scene appears to be suicide, but the closer Eve examines the body, the more suspicious she becomes. An unlocked open window, a loving wife and family, a too-perfect suicide note—Eve's gut says it's a homicide. After all, Greenleaf put a lot of dirty cops away during his forty-seven years in Internal Affairs. It could very well be payback—and she will not rest until the case is closed.

Shortlisted for the CWA Dagger in the Library. Ruth Galloway receives a phone call that bears shocking news. A friend of hers from college, Dan Golding, has been killed in a fire at his Lancashire home. Her shock turns to alarm when she gets a letter from Dan. He has made a discovery that will change archaeology forever but he needs Ruth's advice. Even more alarming, he sounds vulnerable and frightened. DCI Harry Nelson is also rediscovering his past. Up north for a holiday, he meets his former colleague Sandy MacLeod, now at Blackpool CID.

Zinnia, Mississippi is rife with quirky characters, but the arrival of three sister witches - and their intention to open a Wiccan boarding school - sets the small town on its ear. And bodies begin to accumulate as a result. They're setting up their boarding school in an old dairy - a piece of property with tremendous development potential. And they're standing in the way of "progress", according to some in the town. When young Corey Fontana goes missing, Delaney Detective Agency is hired to find the youth - who's well known as a local hooligan. His mother believes the witches have abducted her son....

Chicago surgeon Emily Hartford has never quite shaken off the dust of her hometown in Michigan. She may be a professional success and have a princely boyfriend in the Windy City, but she can’t seem to let go of being “the coroner’s daughter” from Freeport. Once again, she finds herself pulled back to her hometown when Jeremiah—the eleven-year-old son of her best friend, Jo—goes missing on the frigid shores of Lake Michigan.

The Man in the Brown Suit is Agatha Christie at her best, as a young woman makes a dangerous decision to investigate a shocking “accidental” death she witnesses at a London tube station. In Agatha Christie’s classic crime adventure novel, They Came to Baghdad, a bright young adventure seeker in the Middle East finds more excitement than she bargained for when a wounded spy expires in her hotel room.

Hailed as “queen of the cozy police procedural” (Publishers Weekly), USA Today bestselling author Carlene O’Connor returns to County Cork in Ireland’s lush countryside, where locals are simmering with excitement over the reality TV baking contest coming to town—until someone serves up a show-stopping murder that only Garda Siobhan O’Sullivan can solve.

As local merchants unite to attract tourists for a much anticipated weekend quilting event, business is sure to spill over into eateries like Daisy's Tea Garden. Gorgeous craftwork is hanging everywhere - but among the quilts, potholders, and placemats, one gallery owner is wrapped up in some dangerous affairs....Reese Masemer had been dating one of Daisy's employees, Tessa, an artist, though their last interaction was as strained as a cup of loose leaf tea. Now Reese has been found dead near a covered bridge where Tessa's been practicing her sketches.

Everyone in Sugar Creek Gap has tried to fix up widow and beloved mail carrier Bernadette Davis on several dates. They say she has to be lonely. What they don't know is how Bernadette's life is filled...filled with everyone's hidden secrets and obsessions. After all, she does deliver their mail and hears all the dirty laundry southern folks love to sweep secrets under the rug. While on her route, Bernadette finds out the beloved Sugar Creek Gap Country Club is being sold and turned into condos. The developer is Bernadette's best friend, Mac Tabor, and right now he's not very popular.

Palm Beach, 1961. Socialite, irresistible rascal, and devoted father Jack Morgan stages his suicide to shield his beloved daughters from scandal and disgrace. His daughter, Charlotte (Charlie), is an overindulged 23-year-old girl struggling to cope with the loss of her beloved father, her sister's resulting mental breakdown, and the discovery that she's now penniless. Fortunately Raul, an admiring young attorney, offers assistance to the traumatized young woman.

It's the end of the summer and prodigal daughter Maggie Crozat has returned home to her family's plantation-turned-bed-and-breakfast in Louisiana. The Crozats have an inn full of guests for the local food festival. But when the elderly couple keels over dead within minutes of each other - one from very unnatural causes - Maggie and her family suddenly become suspects in a murder.

It's a snowy Christmas at St. Stephen's Convent, where a cheerful party awaits an old friend and former confessor, Father Hudson McCormick. But he never reaches his destination. Christine Bennett, a former St. Stephen's nun, arrives to investigate the disappearance. But the nuns are mum until an old scandal involving the priest and a St. Stephen's novice rears its ugly head. Has Father McCormick, unable to face the scene of his sins, gone underground?

The Indialantic by the Sea Hotel has a 100-year-old history on beautiful Melbourne Beach, Florida, and more than a few guests seem to have been there from the start. When Liz Holt returns home after an intense decade in New York, she's happy to be surrounded by the eccentric clientele and loving relatives that populate her family-run inn. But that patronage decreases by one when a filthy rich guest is discovered dead in her oceanfront suite.

Tending to the soldiers in the trenches of France during the First World War, battlefield nurse Bess Crawford can't help but notice the photo of a young pilot's wife every time she tends to him. But then at the railway station, in a mob of troops leaving for the front, Bess glimpses a familiar face - the pilot's wife, with another man. Later, back in France, Bess sees a newspaper with a drawing of the woman's face on the front page. She'd been murdered - the very day Bess saw her.

This edition includes books four through seven of the Irish Village Mystery series: Murder in an Irish Pub, Murder in an Irish Cottage, Murder at an Irish Christmas, and Murder in an Irish Bookshop.

How to Be a Badass Detective is the latest addition to the How to Be a Badass series collection.

Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in "The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas". As her family lay dying, little Libby fled their tiny farmhouse into the freezing January snow. She lost some fingers and toes, but she survived, and famously testified that her 15-year-old brother, Ben, was the killer. Twenty-five years later, Ben sits in prison, and troubled Libby lives off the dregs of a trust created by well-wishers who've long forgotten her.

Summoned to an abandoned theme park to retrieve a body, Dr. Kay Scarpetta is devastated to learn that the victim is a man she once had an intense love affair with. The murder scene is bizarre, with a crop circle of petals around the body, and Giordano’s skin is strangely red. Scarpetta’s niece Lucy believes he was dropped from an unidentified flying craft. Scarpetta knows an autopsy can reveal the dead’s secrets, but she is shocked to find her friend seems to have deliberately left her a clue.

In a small town, everyone knows everyone else's business. But in Brindle, Oregon, there's a secret nobody wants to see. Todd Fielding, a newly married young woman, comes to Brindle for a job with the local newspaper, which plans to celebrate the town's centennial by printing photos and letters from the town's history. But the relics of the past hide a dark secret.

Only a woman with an iron backbone could succeed as an undertaker in Victorian England, but Violet Morgan takes great pride in her trade. While her husband, Graham, is preoccupied with elevating their station in society, Violet is cultivating a sterling reputation for Morgan Undertaking.