Holiday Mystery

With Halloween just around the corner, the fall colors in Georgetown are brilliant. As manager of the Color Me Read bookstore, coloring book creator Florrie Fox has arranged for psychic author Hilda Rattenhorst to read from Spooktacular Ghost Stories. But the celebrity medium arrives for the event in hysterics, insisting she just saw a bare foot sticking out of a rolled-up carpet in a nearby alley. Is someone trying to sweep murder under the rug? Florrie calls in her policeman beau, Sergeant Eric Jonquille, but the carpet corpse has disappeared without a trace.

Antoine Verlaque, examining magistrate for the beautiful town of Aix-en-Provence, doesn't like Christmas. The decorations appear in the shops far too early, festive tourists swarm the streets, and his beloved Cours Mirabeau is lined with chalets selling what he regards as tacky trinkets. But his wife and partner Marine Bonnet is determined to make this a Christmas they can both enjoy, beginning with the carol sing at the Cathedral Saint Sauveur, a beautiful service in a packed church. Just as the holiday cheer is in full swing, a man is poisoned, sending the community into a tailspin.

It's Lex's first day back at work after maternity leave. She worries about the separation from her daughter as she leaves her with the nanny - but it's normal to worry, right? But Lex isn't a 'normal' mother. She's an elite-trained killer who works for a covert department within Her Majesty's Secret Service. She's just been given the assignment of her life, but can she juggle motherhood with the life of an assassin?

Shelby Morris came to Holiday Bay after receiving a huge inheritance from a woman she'd never met which she'd been destined to share with two half-sisters she'd never knew existed. It took some time for the three very different siblings to settle the estate in a manner that was agreeable to all of them, but in the end, it was decided that Shelby would stay and take care of things.

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.

Visitors are arriving in droves to spend Thanksgiving in the mountains of pet-friendly Wagtail, Virginia. Many of them are bringing dog and cat gingerbread houses to enter in the contest that will be held in the new convention center. Wagtail resident Orly Biffle bequeathed the land to the town in his will, provided that they not cut down the grand old oak tree on the property. Holly notices that Trixie and Twinkletoes are fixated on the big oak tree. Trixie barks at it as though it's a corpse! When a bulldozer churns up some roots, the tree falls over, revealing a body inside....

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?

Thanksgiving is Bailey King's busiest holiday weekend. This year promises to be even more hectic, since Bailey's candy shop is providing desserts for Harvest, Ohio's first village-wide Thanksgiving celebration. Yet the event's organizer, Margot Rawlings, is unfazed . . . until she discovers her mother, former judge Zara Bevan, will be in attendance. Zara's reputation as a harsh critic is matched only by her infamy as a judge. No one is prepared when she arrives with much younger boyfriend Blaze Smith. Then Blaze suffers an allergic reaction to something he's eaten and dies on the spot.

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.

Sam's crazy Italian family is back, and Suds takes them on with his usual Southern charm as he navigates through the holiday season. Will they find the nativity infant in time for Christmas?

When Mrs. Claus is found murdered days before the Annual Heywood Christmas Festival, Sheriff Mallory Richards cancels the beloved event. As the flu takes out the whole sheriff’s department—except for Deputy Jordan Branson—he begs Sam to help him find the killer. She and Annabelle set out to catch the murderer but land themselves in a tangled web of deception and danger.

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.