Holiday Mystery

This holiday is the first time my husband Jeff and I have been on our own in years, and I want it to be a fresh start. We can walk along the beach, eat ice cream in the bright Spanish sun, and fall in love again.

With help from the Seaside Knitters, Mary Pisano converts her charming inherited home into a B&B, and the first week is booked by her very own family in town to discuss their grandfather's will. Mary is hoping the tranquility of the setting will smooth over ill feelings among them. But when her cousin Pam is found murdered, she realizes she was dead wrong. With the holiday cheer severely disrupted, Mary relies on the Seaside Knitters to set things right.

It's Christmas Eve, and Delia's family is finally together again. All is quiet and still, yet Delia can't help but feel a sense of foreboding. After all, an ancient dragon has just awakened and stronger magic is pulsing through the veins of the Myrtlewood Crones. Delia braces herself for her most enchanting adventure yet as questions about her grandmother's mysterious death and her heritage haunt her. On top of all this, her daughter Gillian's strange behavior becomes even more unsettling and the spirited grandchildren tumble into the mix.

Innkeeper Holly White is decking the halls this Christmas season, but someone is on the naughty list when a body is discovered in the fifth installment in the Christmas Tree Farm mystery series from bestselling author Jacqueline Frost.

Jules Capshaw and her staff at Torte are busier than ever...still, even the town's most in-demand bakers need to take a break. So Jules invites everyone to celebrate at the local Winchester Inn's Dickens Feast, a six-course extravaganza with Yorkshire Pudding, Christmas goose, and all the trimmings. But as the weather outside becomes frightful, things inside turn less delightful when one of the guests ends up as dead as Scrooge's doornail.

Though he may not look the part, Madoc Rhys is a Mountie - and his keen sense of detection tells him it's time to ask Janet Wadman to marry him. They have just gotten engaged when Christmas rolls around, and Janet's boss invites them to his family estate for a last holiday fling before Janet leaves her job. After a long helicopter ride, they are at Graylings, ancestral home of the Condryckes, a family so strange that Canada's shortest Mountie fits right in. There is a psychic old woman, an erudite butler, and a family patriarch.

Alvirah Meehan, the lottery winner turned amateur sleuth; recently "hitched" private detective Regan Reilly; and their husbands Willy and Jack, are guests on the Royal Mermaid's maiden voyage, the Santa Cruise. The cruise is Commodore Randolph Weed's gift to a select group of people who in the last year made the world a better place. What he doesn't know is that his ne'er-do-well nephew, Eric, has smuggled two escaping criminals on board.

Spring has sprung, and I'm finally getting out of town with my monster-hunting boyfriend. However, our cozy little rental cabin in the woods turns out to have a serious problem—an angry leprechaun infestation. Before we can get back to our romantic rendezvous, we have to prove we didn't steal a magic hat. Piece of cake, right?

It's once again Christmastime at Marlow House and the mediums of Beach Drive have all decided to stay in Frederickport for the holiday. Surprises await for them when the true Spirit of Christmas comes for a visit. Do you believe in Santa Claus?

Now that Thanksgiving's behind her, vintage cookware enthusiast Jaymie Leighton Müller is excitedly making plans for the upcoming Dickens Days festival - the town's month-long celebration leading up to Christmas. With a hot cider booth on the village green to warm the hearts and bodies of the townsfolk and a diorama featuring a scene from A Christmas Carol, things are shaping up for a festive season - until the town's local Scrooge is found murdered, a vintage pudding mould covering his cracked skull.

For innkeeper Holly White, Christmas time in Mistletoe, Maine, is the ultimate holiday gift. Business at the Reindeer Games Inn is booming, her wedding to Sheriff Evan Gray is nearly here, and the annual parade is about to begin. The town is lucky to have another gift this year with the state’s ballet company staying for several performances of The Nutcracker. But disaster strikes when Tiffany, the lead ballerina, shows up dead on a float during the parade, the Rat King’s mask nearby. Holly will have to spruce up her sleuthing skills if she wants to catch the killer before Christmas.

Tattooed from her neck to her toes—and sporting a gold tooth as sharp as her wisecracks, Sister Holiday struggles to stay on the righteous path. Never one to make things easy for herself, she’s committed to taking her permanent vows with the Sisters of the Sublime Blood and joining former fire inspector Magnolia Riveaux’s latest venture, Redemption Detective Agency—both in service of satisfying her eternal quest for answers. When Sister Holiday and Riveaux set out to bust a philandering husband, they instead find the body of a priest floating in the swollen Mississippi River.

It's Christmas Eve and Detective Alex Cross has been called out to catch someone who's robbing his church's poor box. That mission behind him, Alex returns home to celebrate with Bree, Nana, and his children. The tree decorating is barely underway before his phone rings again - a horrific hostage situation is quickly spiraling out of control. Away from his own family on the most precious of days, Alex calls upon every ounce of his training, creativity, and daring to save another family.

The six of us arrived on that beautiful Greek island dreaming of sun-drenched beaches and blood-orange sunsets, ready to lose ourselves in the wild freedom of a weekend away with friends. On the first night, we swam under a blanket of stars. On the second night, the games began on our clifftop terrace. On the third night, the idyll cracked, secrets and lies whispering on the breeze. And by the final night, there was a body on the rocks below.

Melanie Trenholm should be anticipating Christmas with nothing but joy - after all, it’s only the second Christmas she and her husband, Jack, will celebrate with their twin toddlers. But the ongoing excavation of the centuries-old cistern in the garden of her historic Tradd Street home has been a huge millstone, both financially and aesthetically. Local students are thrilled by the possibility of unearthing more Colonial-era artifacts at the cistern, but Melanie is concerned by the ghosts connected to it that have suddenly invaded her life and her house.

Gabe and Josh Roman-Wyatt are celebrating their first holidays as fathers, but someone's war on St. Nick threatens to ruin their holly jolly Christmas. The Norman Rockwell holiday they had envisioned implodes and shenanigans ensue in true Josh and Gabe style, but that only makes the couple more determined to rejoice in the love and joy they have found in one another. A Black Friday showdown, two foul-mouthed birds, one lumbersexual, ugly Christmas sweaters aplenty, four invading grandparents, and a sexy twist on an advent calendar lead up to oh, holy nights.

Reluctant lawyer Andy Carpenter is at the Tara Foundation’s annual Christmas party. The dog rescue organization has always been his true calling, and this is one holiday tradition he can get behind because every dog that’s come through the rescue—and their families—are invited to celebrate. This year’s party is no exception. But before the stockings can be hung by the chimney with care, homicide detectives ruin the evening. Derek Moore, one of the foundation’s best foster volunteers, is arrested for murder.

"It' s a question of what you have to do, what you have to live with if you don't." Sheriff Walt Longmire is reading A Christmas Carol in his office on December 24th when he's interrupted by the ghost of Christmas past: a young woman with a hairline scar across her forehead and more than a few questions about Walt' s predecessor, Lucian Connally. Walt doesn' t recognize the mystery woman, but she seems to know him and claims to have something she must return to Connally.

Evanovich fans rejoice for Plum Spooky! Stephanie Plum is back in town, along with her sidekick Lula, her Grandma Mazur, and an ever-widening cast of freaks, criminals, deranged felons, and lunatics looking for love. And just when Stephanie thinks her life can't get any more complicated, in walks the mysterious Diesel. A man who seems to show up at the most inconvenient moments.

It was supposed to be a relaxing vacation in sweet, sunny Cape Cod—just me and my beloved brother—but discovering a corpse in our rental house really throws a wrench into our tanning schedule. Now a rude, crude bounty hunter has arrived on the back of his motorcycle to catch the killer and refuses to believe I can be helpful, despite countless hours of true crime podcast listening. Not to mention a fulfilling teaching career of wrangling second graders.