Ghost Cozy Mystery

Best-selling author Susan Wittig Albert is especially beloved for creating herbalist and ex-lawyer China Bayles, hailed by Publishers Weekly as “in a class with lady sleuths V.I. Warshawski and Stephanie Plum.” In Widow’s Tears, China has urgent business to discuss with Ruby, a friend gifted with extrasensory perception. Meeting Ruby at a supposedly haunted house, China soon uncovers a mystery that may be linked to a deadly robbery that very night.

Maggie is under the distinct impression that either she is cursed, or she has the most inviting backyard in the entire South. Her wayward son has stumbled upon the foolish notion to use it for his own personal herb garden, while a murderer has chosen a plot of her acreage to bury his headless victim under the sprawling branches of her oak trees. Desperately needing a break from all the drama that now surrounds her life, Maggie is planning a long vacation when she begins having visitations from the other side.

Bailey Ruth’s supervisor, Wiggins, is worried about a dear old friend. The ghost of elegant Lorraine Marlow haunts Adelaide’s college library. Known as the Lady of the Roses, she plays matchmaker, using the fragrant flowers to pair up students. But someone’s making mischief after hours, leaving roses strewn about the library, destroying a gargoyle, and stealing a valuable book. Concerned with Lorraine’s reputation among the living, Wiggins dispatches the irrepressible redhead Bailey Ruth to investigate.

Senior snoop, Agnes Barton, has taken up residence in a Winnebago at a campground in East Tawas, Michigan. It's not the ideal place for a woman of 72 to live, but she's making do. She had planned to start a detective agency with partner in crime, Eleanor Mason, but a snag with the license has them free-wheeling it, not that it matters because they are the ones folks call when dead bodies turn up.

Local matchmaker and PI Demeter West gets called in to investigate some interdimensional turbulence in the basement of the local library. Over the course of the investigation, Demeter learns some new approaches to tarot work, some local history, some new information about Casper's situation within the multiverse, and some things she didn't know about her husband and daughter.

Samantha Hale has never met her mother. But when she has a vision on the eve of her 30th birthday, she decides to track down her long-lost family in the sleepy town of Mount Hazel to discover if she’s going insane. To Sam’s shock, she discovers the legacy she inherited - a legacy of magic - is more exciting and dangerous than she ever could have imagined.

Welcome to Hawkwood Hollow, where the dead outnumber the living. When a local witch shows up in an apparent drowning, everyone thinks it's a tragic accident. New witch in town Maura would, too, except her Reaper senses are telling her there's something not quite right about the woman's death. When the victim's ghost vanishes, she knows her instincts were right. Unfortunately, her attempt to find the truth is derailed by an annoying spirit who's moved into her room and an obstructionist coven leader. And then there's the detective she might be interested in romantically...

Still recovering from the case of a serial-killer spirit in Lyme-Regis, Dr. Ribero’s agency is soon confronted with an even greater threat: a reckless cult conspiring with an ancient and powerful Daemon to open a permanent spirit door so that spirits will have unfettered access to the human realm. Having just witnessed the lethal consequences uncontrolled spirits can have on the unsuspecting, the agency joins forces with several others to prevent the cult from unleashing chaos and ending the world’s fragile protection from dangerous spirits.

Only a few months have passed since the day Kester Lanner forced an angry ghost through the spirit door, but business prospects for Dr. Ribero's supernatural agency haven’t improved. Things are looking grim when the agency lands a contract that they must share with a rival agency headed by Dr. Ribero’s sworn enemy, Larry Higgins. Desperate for the job, the team accepts and begins to investigate the seaside town of Lyme Regis, where elderly victims are dying. The same mysterious clue links the horrendous deaths: The victims all see a double of themselves before dying.

When a prominent local businessman is found dead in his office, Sheriff Kenni Lowry is thrust into another murder investigation. At first, it seems like an open-and-shut case, but as Kenni digs deeper, she uncover a web of secrets and lies that suggests this was no simple case of robbery gone wrong. With suspects and their motives, red herrings, and clues, Kenni must navigate a dangerous world of bribery and corruption that leads all the way to the state capital. She needs to get into places she knows only her ghost side-kick papa can go, but he's vanished.

After two years of seeing ghosts, Rosemary Woodmere has never encountered a spirit who has appeared so soon after they were murdered. But the ghost of Dominic Frost proves it’s possible, and he immediately begs her to help find his killer. Unfortunately, the local playboy left behind a long list of scorned lovers, with ample motives to kill. Even dead, the spirit spends more time flirting than helping Rosemary with the case. When Rosemary’s search for Asher’s killer leads her to his distant relative, the similarities are unmistakable, with one difference: He’s not a ghost.

The people of Pebble Cove are thrown into a forced hibernation when the worst snowstorm in a decade hits the Oregon Coast. They expect to find damages once the snow thaws, but a frozen body down by the pier comes as a terrible surprise. Rosemary is keeping warm with an abundance of chai tea, wooly sweaters, and further research into Asher’s past. But when a second body is found, she can’t deny the chilling thoughts that the two deaths might be connected. Or that this might not be the end.

A ghostly visit from her former landlady draws Emma away from sleepy little Hillbilly Hollow to investigate a murder in the big city. But what seems like a straightforward case soon becomes entangled with an event from Emma's past and a personal quest for justice. With the attractive but bungling Sheriff Tucker at her side, will Emma be tempted by the chance to avenge an old wrong?

Dr. Norrie Marconi is in a good place: She’s solved an old friend’s murder and her love life is blooming. She still has issues to deal with, such as her father’s ghost and that malpractice suit, but she feels like things are settling down and she’s getting her life in order. Wrong. The senior doctor in her medical group drops a bombshell that threatens to disrupt her life, some of the patients start acting strange, and one winds up near death from multiple gunshot wounds. Then there’s her father’s ghost who insists he won’t be free until she finds out what happened to his boyhood friend.

After unexpectedly losing her husband, Hope Herring and her daughter, Cori, leave their home and move away to start over in a new town. With a heavy heart, a new house, a new job, and a new community, Hope is trying to settle in when she is reluctantly drawn into two mysteries. Will Hope and Cori find the clues to a killer before he or she strikes again?

Marygene Brown always figured she'd marry her childhood sweetheart, Alex Myers, not cater his wedding. But the Peach Diner could use the exposure. Most of the island is showing up - although more for the role-playing murder game at the reception than for the widely loathed bridezilla, Lucy Carmichael. Marygene may have to smile through the festivities, but Mama doesn't have to hold her peace - especially since only Marygene can hear her mother's ghost. Mama says she sees an aura of darkness around the wedding.

When a body is found near her historic neighborhood of Ohio City, mimicking the famous Torso Murders, and she starts hearing voices, Bailey thinks she’s really lost it now. Ryan’s ghost is one thing, but a whole gaggle of undead talking to her? No thanks. But Ryan informs Bailey she’s not nuts…she is a spiritual medium. And with him as middleman between the victims and the police, they can give the dead justice and he will finally get his one-way ticket to heaven.

With Bailey Burke’s design and staging business booming—it turns out tangling with a serial killer is the best advertising ever—she has no time to lament her lack of love life, or wonder where her dead friend Ryan’s ghost has gone. She hasn’t seen him in months, but when she finds a body in a home she’s been hired to stage she’s hounded by the dead man’s ghost.

Bailey Burke has had a rough six months—it’s not easy thinking your romantic overtures toward your best friend caused him to kill himself. Except that’s exactly what happened. Ryan is very much dead, having shot himself with his own police-issued gun. Guilt and grief shouldn’t cause hallucinations though, but six months after Ryan went into the ground, Bailey is freaking out and swearing his ghost is standing in her kitchen. Which he is…

When Danielle Roberts inherits a boarding house in Charters Towers, her first thought is that it’s a scam. Assured by the solicitor that it isn’t, she decides to make a quick trip and sort everything out. She has no intention of staying. A pastry chef, she owns a café in Redcliffe. The first person she sees when she arrives is the last person she wants to see. Brett Bainbridge, her first boyfriend, broke her heart when he walked out on her. Now, here he is, standing in her garden bed.