Holiday Mystery

DI James Walker is ready for a quiet family Christmas in the sleepy village of Kirkby Abbey. But when he opens an early Christmas present left on his doorstep, he soon realises it is no gift. Inside is a gruesome surprise and a promise - 12 days, 12 murders. Not long after, the first body is found, half frozen in the snow. As the blizzards descend, panic spreads through the remote Cumbrian village - there’s a killer amongst them, and with 11 more victims to go, anyone could be next.... Can James stop the killer before they strike again?

Ah, the pleasures of Christmas: the hanging of lights, the traditional feasts, the gathering of families, and...a bit of murder, conspiracy, and theft. The holiday season seems to inspire the imagination of the best mystery writers, and their talents shine here in these delightful tales of Yuletide crime. In this busiest of seasons, seize a few hours to enjoy a sleigh—or slay--full of mysterious treasures, served with the finest of flair.

Knitting an ugly Christmas jumper at Cardinal Woolsey's knitting shop in Oxford is supposed to be relaxing. Until a knitter keels over. It's soon clear to amateur sleuth Lucy that murder's in the air and that the culprit is one of the knitters. This is a fun take on a classic closed-room mystery. Of course, no room is every closed when vampires live downstairs. But are the undead knitters to blame? Or is there more to this Oxford knitting circle than lumpy Santas and light-up reindeer?

Krissy Hancock is staying in her adopted hometown of Pine Hills, Ohio, for Christmas this year - and she even has a whole week off from her combination bookstore-cafe. Unfortunately, she's been roped into filling in for a sick elf in the local holiday musical extravaganza. With a demanding director, backstage gossip, and two men in fierce competition for the starring role, it isn't all sweetness and Christmas lights. Then a murder puts a stop to the production, and Krissy is faced with a pageant of suspects.

Everyone knows a Juniper Holiday Halloween party is to die for. To get an invite is the most talked about topic in Crescent Cove. To experience the Holiday mansion in all its (supposedly) haunted glory is the stuff of legend. Of course, no one has actually seen a ghost in residence—but how could they when they’re having the time of their life?

Have yourself a very Merry Witchmas in Holiday Haven, where the magic and mystery of Christmas is snow joke! Lumi Northrop is a powerful guardian of the north—the North Star Reindeer Sanctuary, that is. But when trouble strikes and Santa's favorite reindeer goes missing, it's up to her to save Christmas!

Charlotte Pitt’s mother, Caroline, travels with her young husband, Joshua Fielding, and his theatrical troupe to Whitby, where Dracula first touched English soil. Joshua has arranged to produce a stage adaptation of Dracula by the daughter of Whitby millionaire Charles Netheridge, but the amateurish script produces a disastrous first read-through. As tempers flare and wind and snow swirl around Netheridge’s lonely hilltop mansion, a black-cloaked stranger emerges from the storm - an eerily opportune arrival, for this enigmatic figure, one Anton Ballin, turns out to be a theatrical genius.

It’s Christmastime in Brighton, and the city is abuzz about magician Max Mephisto’s star turn in Aladdin. But the holiday cheer is lost on DI Edgar Stephens. He’s investigating the murder of two children, Annie and Mark, who were found in the woods alongside a trail of candy—a horrifying scene eerily reminiscent of “Hansel and Gretel.” Edgar has plenty of leads. Annie, a dark child, wrote gruesome plays based on the Grimms’ fairy tales. Does the key to the case lie in her final script? Or does the macabre staging of the bodies point to the theater and the capricious cast of Aladdin?

Pathologist Toni Day and her husband, Hal, are mystified when she starts receiving grisly Christmas cards depicting murders, each accompanied by a twisted verse from The Twelve Days of Christmas, and she and her partners are suddenly inundated with autopsies on the corresponding bodies. The victims are members of a jury that convicted Toni’s old boyfriend Robbie of kidnapping and sent him to prison.

Chet the dog, "the most lovable narrator in all of crime fiction" (Boston Globe), and his human partner Bernie Little find themselves high in the mountains this holiday season to help Dame Ariadne Carlisle, a renowned author of bestselling Christmas mysteries, find Rudy, her lead reindeer and good luck charm, who has gone missing. At Kringle Ranch, Dame Ariadne's expansive mountain spread, Chet discovers that he is not fond of reindeer. But the case turns out to be about much more than reindeer after Dame Ariadne's personal assistant takes a long fall into Devil's Purse, a deep mountain gorge.

DI Tom Stonem’s peaceful holiday is cut short when a body is discovered nearby, in the shadow of the Angel of the North. The dead man is bound, his arms outstretched in the sculpture’s iconic pose. In the man’s pocket is what appears to be a little girl’s Christmas list, with the first item – 1. Angel delight – crossed off. When a second body is found – a woman, stabbed in the abdomen after her work Christmas do – Stonem can’t help but notice a grim connection between the crime scenes and the items on the seemingly innocent list. 2. Red party dress. Could this be a murderer’s twisted code?

Welcome back to the irresistible world of Greenglass House, where 13-year-old Milo is, once again, spending the winter holidays stuck in a house full of strange guests who are not what they seem. There are fresh clues to uncover as friends old and new join in his search for a mysterious map and a famous smuggler's lost haul. This exciting sequel to a beloved book is sure to thrill both fans and newcomers.

Meg’s running Caerphilly’s Helping Hands for the Holidays project, in which neighbors help each other with things they can’t do and can’t afford to have done. Her hopes for a relatively peaceful (if busy) Christmas vanish when someone murders Harvey the Hoarder, whose house the Helping Hands were decluttering. Was there any truth to the rumor that he had something valuable hidden beneath all his junk? Was one of his friends, neighbors, or relatives greedy enough to murder him for the rumored treasure?

Every year, the town of Happy Hills holds its haunted house contest. In a spooky old manor, teams of kids come up with new ways to frighten people. The scariest team wins. But this year, all the teams are going to lose. Because this year the house itself has awakened...and it won’t be happy until it’s devoured all the people inside. What started out as a game has turned into something much more deadly. Is there any way out?

Meg's husband has decided to escalate his one-man show of Dickens's A Christmas Carol into a full-scale production with a large cast including their sons Jamie and Josh as Tiny Tim and young Scrooge and Meg helping as stage manager. When a famous, although slightly over-the-hill, actor comes to town to play the starring role of Scrooge, no one expects that he's bringing a lot of baggage and enemies with him.

Throughout the years, the ladies of the Sisterhood have delivered their own style of vigilante justice to those who most deserve it. But this Christmas, instead of finding and punishing bad guys, all Maggie Spitzer wants is to bring a little more joy to the world - and especially to a beloved teacher from her past. And as the Sisters unite to find her, they learn that no holiday treat is as fulfilling as giving to others....

Slàinte! A Christmas Eve party at snow-covered Vik castle, where the Christmas Star diamond is on display. Good food, dancing and a visit from Santa. What could possibly go wrong? When Santa appears down the chimney, looking far more crispy than expected, it is clear that something has gone very wrong. With the castle cut off from help, a murderer in their midst and the Christmas Star stolen, it's up to Losers Club to investigate. As they follow the network of secret passages to learn more about their fellow guests, they realize that everyone has a motive. Including one of their own.

In Rudolph, Christmas in July heralds Santa's arrival by boat to begin his summer vacation at the lake, and Merry Wilkinson, owner of Mrs. Claus's Treasures, is looking forward to a busy weekend. But she's caught off guard when her ex-fiance, Max Folger, arrives with a team from a lifestyle magazine wanting to do a feature on the July festivities. It's clear that Max's visit has less to do with business and more to do with winning back Merry's heart. Merry has too much on her plate to deal with an old flame, but when Max is found strangled to death, she must find out who wanted him dead.

It is five days until Christmas, and Winston has a Very Curious Mystery to solve. He has hazy rememberings of another mouse, and he just knows that someone very important to him is lost. After promising Oliver that he will be back in time for Christmas, no matter what, Winston sets out on an exciting round-the-world adventure to find the missing mouse, helped along the way by wonderful old friends and delightful new ones, too.

The rented house was supposed to be a relaxing getaway. But Jill and her companions feel a sense of danger instead. First, they learn that their hosts' son had a fiancee, but her disappearance remains unexplained - and then they meet some menacing members of a local trail-riding club. When one of Jill and Greg's friends finds human remains amid the dunes - with a diamond ring around one mummified finger - things start heating up fast, and they'll be thankful just to survive through the long weekend....