English Women Sleuths

It's late 1936, and King Edward is in turmoil, having fallen in love with the scandalously divorced and even more scandalously American Wallis Simpson. He wants to marry her but knows that doing so will jeopardize his crown. Edward confides in his dear friend Darcy, Georgie's husband, and the couple agree to hide Wallis in their home while Edward figures out what to do. But unbeknownst to Georgie and Darcy, Sir Hubert, the owner of the estate, has given a film crew permission to shoot a motion picture about Henry the Eighth and Anne Boleyn on the grounds

Maisie Dobbs got her start as a maid in an aristocratic London household when she was thirteen. Her employer, suffragette Lady Rowan Compton, soon became her patron, taking the remarkably bright youngster under her wing. Lady Rowan’s friend, Maurice Blanche, often retained as an investigator by the European elite, recognized Maisie’s intuitive gifts. The outbreak of war changed everything. Ten years after the Armistice, in the spring of 1929, Maisie sets out on her own as a private investigator, one who has learned that coincidences are meaningful, and truth elusive.

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....

Olivia Denis is hesitant to help an old family friend get ready for her wedding outside London. The so-called friend is a master at using people. As a young widow trying to find her way through a new romantic relationship, Olivia would rather avoid the large party. She definitely didn't plan to find the bride's grandfather stabbed to death. The cruel, enormously rich aristocrat had changed his will only the day before, angering all his children.

When business magnate Robert Jeffreys announces his investment in airships, he hosts a promotional flight for a group of reporters. Working undercover in the crew is retired spy Augusta Peel. She’d rather be working on her book repair business, but Inspector Fisher of Scotland Yard has persuaded her to help with a surveillance operation. The press trip on the airship takes a turn when a body is found in a cabin. Can Augusta identify the murderer? It’s tricky to find a motive among the sophisticated passengers—some of them are sophisticated liars, too.

The Bodie Island Lighthouse Library Classic Novel Book Club is reading Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne while workers dig into the earth to repair the Lighthouse Library’s foundations. The digging halts when Lucy pulls a battered tin box containing a Civil War-era diary from the pit. Tucked inside is a hand-drawn map of the Outer Banks, accompanied by a page written in an indecipherable code.

Casey Duncan is a homicide detective with a secret: When she was in college, she killed a man. She was never caught, but he was the grandson of a mobster, and she knows that someday this crime will catch up to her. Casey's best friend, Diana, is on the run from a violent, abusive ex-husband. When Diana's husband finds her, and Casey herself is attacked shortly after, Casey knows it's time for the two of them to disappear again. Diana has heard of a town made for people like her, a town that takes in people on the run who want to shed their old lives.

Clare's Village Blend coffee beans are being used to create a new java love potion: a "Mocha Magic Coffee," billed as an aphrodisiac. The product, expected to rake in millions, will be sold exclusively on Aphrodite's Village, one of the most popular online communities for women. But at its launch, one of the website's editors is murdered. Clare is convinced a bitter killer wants the secret formula. Can she catch who's gone loco for mocha?

Detective Inspector Fenella Sallow is obsessive about her work and driven by her own demons. When the body of a retired artist is discovered atop the blackened embers of the town bonfire, the community is rocked to the core. It falls to DI Fenella Sallow and her team to find out how she came to be there. In her 50s, the veteran detective inspector thought she had seen it all. But behind the curtained windows and closed doors of the idyllic Cumbria coastal setting lurks pure evil.

Egypt, 1926. Fiercely independent American Jane Wunderly has made up her mind: she won't be swept off her feet on a trip abroad. Despite her Aunt Millie's best efforts at meddling with her love life, the young widow would rather gaze at the Great Pyramids of Giza than into the eyes of a dashing stranger. Yet Jane's plans to remain cool and indifferent become ancient history in the company of Mr. Redvers, a roguish banker she can't quite figure out.

Three years have passed since Major Sir Robert Kurland and Lucy Harrington, the rector's daughter, became husband and wife. Having established a measure of contentment among the local gentry, the couple lately have found an unsettling distance grown between them. But when peace in the small village is disrupted by an anonymous letter accusing Lucy of witchcraft, her unfulfilled desire to be a mother becomes the least of her worries, especially after she learns she is not the only one to have received such a malicious letter.

Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs are on the warpath in the village of Balfour, and the local shop owners fear that their financial sins are about to catch up with them. Meanwhile, Abbey Glen’s new Whisky Masterclass is a resounding success...until the latest group of students starts to drop dead in the night and Abi Logan fears that what they are really offering is a Masterclass in Murder. Missing money, dead bodies, and a whistle blower who may not be as virtuous as he appears leave Abi scrambling for clues in the dark. Will Abi find the killer before the inevitable happens?

Jacobia Tiptree saved her sanity - and her son, Sam - the day she abandoned Wall Street for the seacoast village of Eastport, Maine. In her new home, a charmingly dilapidated fixer-upper, she looks forward to repairing old radiators and restoring antique shutters for years to come. But Jake's hopes of serenity are dashed when tiny Eastport erupts in a crime wave. Hometown bad boy Kenny Mumford - old flame of Jake's best friend and fellow sleuth, Ellie White - is the first victim.

Dying is the only thing people do with any regularity, and Fiona makes her indecorous living cleaning up after the corpses are carted away. Her childhood best friend, Mary, was the last known victim of Jack the Ripper. It's been two years since Fiona scrubbed Mary's blood from the floorboards, and London is no longer buzzing about the Ripper, but Fiona hasn't forgotten. When she's called to a murder in the middle of the night, Fiona finds a victim mutilated in an eerily similar fashion to those of the Ripper, and only a few doors down from Mary's old home.

Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: She must return to her tiny hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful 13-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family's Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims - a bit too strongly.

On 1st of December, renowned puzzle setter, loner, and Christmas curmudgeon Edie O'Sullivan finds a hand-delivered present on her doorstep. Unwrapping it, she finds a jigsaw box and, inside, six jigsaw pieces. When fitted together, the pieces show part of a crime scene—blood-spattered black and white tiles and part of an outlined body. Included in the parcel is a message: 'Four, maybe more, people will be dead by midnight on Christmas Eve, unless you can put all the pieces together and stop me.' It's signed Rest In Pieces.

Grandeur and opulence are everything in the famed New Orleans Garden District where pets are family and no bling is too big. Opening Furry Godmother, pet boutique and organic treat bakery, is Lacy Marie Crocker's dream come true - until the glitter gun used to make her Shih Tzu tutus becomes a murder weapon - and Lacy becomes public enemy number one. Now detective Jack Oliver is hounding Lacy, and her Furry Godmother investor wants out before his name is tarnished by association.

Ellie has an ailing sister to care for and working as a ghost hunter who doesn't believe in ghosts helps cover the bills. On her latest job, though, she may be in for some genuine scares. The skeptical, reserved, and very rich Nicholas Hartford III has flown her all the way to his family's ancestral estate in England - supposedly haunted by a phantom named Xavier. Something is causing the flashes of light, mysterious accidents and other apparent pranks in the chilly, eerie castle. His mother is sure that Xavier is real, and he's willing to employ Ellie if she can get to the bottom of it.

Stephanie Plum, Trenton’s hardest working, most underappreciated bounty hunter, is offered an assignment that seems simple enough. Local jeweler Martin Rabner wants her to locate his former security guard, Andy Manley (a.k.a. Nutsy), who he is convinced stole a fortune in diamonds from his safe. Stephanie is also looking for another troubled man, Duncan Dugan, a fugitive from justice arrested for robbing the same jewelry store on the same day.

Deep in the Yukon wilderness, a town is being built. A place for people to disappear, a fresh start from a life on the run. Haven’s Rock isn’t the first town of this kind, something detective Casey Duncan and her husband, Sheriff Eric Dalton, know firsthand. They met in the original town of Rockton. But greed and deception led the couple to financing a new refuge for those in need. This time around, they get to decide which applicants are approved for residency.