Holiday Mystery

No place is more perfect for the winter holidays than the charming mountain town of Estes Park. As the Cozy Corgi Bookshop and Bakery glistens with lights and garlands, Winifred Page allows the seasonal merriment to brush away all worry and fear. Watson, her grumpy corgi, is about as far from stressed as possible-after all, with the holiday baking, delectable crumbs are everywhere.

Christmas lights on palm trees and Santa hats on plastic pink flamingoes are far from the snowy landscape Maureen and her beloved golden retriever, Finn, are used to. But Maureen is determined to make this a holiday to remember—which means finding a way to promote Haven House on a shoestring. Fortunately, Haven's vintage movie theater, the Paramount, has come up with a great "Twelve Days of Christmas" idea. They'll feature an impressive list of the best classic Christmas movies ever made—shown by one-time movie actor-turned-projectionist Decklin Monroe.

After five years of running the Holiday Haven Inn, Carolyn Highcrest thinks she can handle anything. She and her best friend Mercy are determined to make their festive weekend celebrations the best they can possibly be, despite being surrounded by scheming rivals, melodramatic theatre group members and overenthusiastic carollers.

It’s nearly Katie’s birthday, and she learns she will be getting a special present. She’s too excited to wait patiently for the gift to arrive, so she decides to investigate ahead of time. The clues might lead her to her present, but is it better to let this mystery go unsolved?

Christmas morning 1902, London, England. A bottle of fine French wine from the Côte de Beaune region of France, intended as a gift from Mr. Sherlock Holmes to his old friend Dr. Watson, is found to have been drained of its aromatic spirits during the night and filled with sand. But not just any sand.

Peace on Earth isn’t everyone’s cup of tea in Charlotte MacLeod’s “A Cozy for Christmas”. Peter Lovesey’s “The Haunted Crescent” delivers a holiday ghost story with a twist. A training session for department-store Santas turns up Saint Nicks who are anything but angels in Isaac Asimov’s “Ho, Ho, Ho”. Marcia Muller’s “Silent Night” finds a tough private investigator searching San Francisco’s Tenderloin district - and discovering something unexpected.

After suffering a personal tragedy, Abby Sullivan buys a huge old seaside mansion she has never even seen, packs up her life in San Francisco, and moves to Holiday Bay Maine, where she is adopted, quite against her will, by a huge Maine coon cat named Rufus, a drifter with her own tragic past named Georgia, and a giant dog with an inferiority complex named Ramos.

Eleven-year-old Max Watson is looking for adventure. He never expects to find it in his boring old backyard. Santa is in trouble. The elves have gone bad and are destroying everything. The countdown to Christmas has begun, and Santa has only broken toys to fill his sleigh. As the fate of Christmas hangs in the air, four siblings must work together to break the spell. If they fail, the North Pole will be destroyed, and Christmas will be ruined forever.

Abby is offered the chance to participate in an author event being held at Firehouse Books with one of her own favorite authors. When the guest author turns up dead, Abby realizes that clues to the author’s death could be found in the new novel. Abby joins Colt as he investigates the death of a local man who died after eating pudding dosed with poison during a community dinner. Colt receives a call to check out a light inside an abandoned lighthouse closed for renovations. The pair respond only to find evidence of two trespassers, one of which is now dead.

When Detective Kate Rosetti is startled awake in the middle of the night by a phone call from her mother, she knows it’s not good news. It turns out Kate’s father, the notorious Angelo Rosetti, is missing. There are no witnesses and no leads, and with only a week to go before Christmas, Kate hopes to find her father before the New Year. As Kate begins the hunt for her father, she gets another case added to her plate at the precinct.

Kicking off season three of their hit reality TV show Domestic Partners is a home renovation project with an irresistible hook. Woods Hall is a lavish 1913 manor home in the Detroit suburb of Pleasant Woods, once belonging to the town's founding family. It also comes with its own ghost. Twenty-five years ago during a Halloween night party, automotive heiress and beauty queen Emma Wheeler-Woods, wearing a white Princess Diana wedding gown as a costume, fell from a third-floor balcony to her death. Or was she pushed?

It’s Christmastime, but one old movie studio watchman won’t be celebrating. It’s now up to two patrolmen to solve the case in this murder mystery set in 1943 Hollywood. Murder On Santa Claus Lane was adapted from a pulp-fiction story by William G. Bogart, first appearing in G-Men Detective magazine.

It's the most wonderful time of the year, but private investigator Liz Talbot is struggling to feel festive. She hasn't seen her best friend, Colleen, in weeks and fears she may never see her again in this life. Meanwhile Nate, Liz's husband and partner, is spending money like he prints it in the attic on a mysterious family Christmas celebration. Liz's nerves are shot, and she hasn't even decked a single hall. But there's simply no time to fret.

The lead-up to Christmas sees the Connection private investigation team planning their festive season. Until a new case arrives. Catapulted into their biggest mystery yet, they are tasked with finding a killer who has been released on parole, and subsequently disappeared. Has he returned to finish the murder he tried to commit before his capture? As he targets his intended victim, his attention is also focused on the private investigators and their police colleagues with devastating effect. With families torn apart, Doris must seek assistance from a colleague from her past.

Ellen should have known that a gathering in America's last castle would entail a few uninvited guests. During a Christmas Eve wedding at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina, Ellen and her friends are visited by multiple ghosts. The spirits have come to tell their stories, to right the wrongs that history has done to their memories. Each of them died in Asheville with their voices stifled.

When Matt and Imogen move out of the city, they're hoping for a much-needed fresh start. Matt throws himself into his new job, but Imogen struggles to adjust to life in quiet Surrey. She's grateful for the kind welcome from new neighbour Nancy, and they soon become close friends. So when Nancy makes a shocking accusation, Imogen doesn't know who to trust. This isn't the first time Matt has found himself on the wrong end of a false accusation...but is Nancy hiding secrets of her own?

For all its merriment, Christmas can also bring melancholy-and in Magic Springs, Idaho, Mia finds that the season has brought her an unhappy ghost who's pulling poltergeist-style pranks to get her attention. When she demands an explanation, the ghost just sends a message: Ask Mary Alice-that is, Mia's beloved Grans, who's been training her to develop her witchy talents. If anyone can figure this out, it's Grans . . . even if she still hasn't managed to free Mia's cat from a previous spell that she cast.

Things are a little different in Aspen, Colorado, at the office holiday party for the real estate firm owned by Henry Calhoun and his wife, Claudine. Each Christmas sparks a contest among the already competitive staff to see who can buy the most coveted gift: the one that will get stolen the most times, the one that will prove just how many more commissions they earned that year than their colleagues. Everyone is puzzled when a strange gift shows up in the mix: an antique cowboy statue. In fact, the gift makes sense only to Henry and Claudine.

After the shocking events of last Christmas, Jess Croft is determined this festive season will be the one to remember, for all the right reasons. But when a stranger turns up on her doorstep claiming to be her estranged father, Jess is shocked. Moreso, when the man claims that the little girl with him is none other than Jess’s sister - a child she knew nothing about. Jess isn’t sure she wants these strangers to stay, but she can’t turn them away, especially when she learns that their lives are in danger.

As beautiful as it may be, their friends’ country house is not where Lady Vespasia wishes to spend Christmas with her new husband, Victor Narraway. She’d have preferred a relaxing holiday at home with him - especially as Victor, former head of the London Special Branch, seems to be hiding undercover dealings with the other guests who have gathered at the spacious estate.