Woman Detective Mysteries

A prisoner languishes in a Phoenix jail cell, accused of brutally slaying his estranged wife. No one believes the man is innocent, except the new female sheriff of Cochise County, in town for a crash course in police training. Joanna Brady is out of her jurisdiction?and possibly in over her head. For a human monster is on the prowl, hiding the grisly evidence of his horrific crimes in the vast emptiness of the Arizona desert.

In the past... On a blisteringly hot August afternoon in Crystal Palace, once home to the tragically destroyed Great Exhibition, a solitary 13-year-old boy meets his next-door neighbor, a recently widowed young teacher hoping to make a new start in the tight-knit South London community. Drawn together by loneliness, the unlikely pair forms a deep connection that ends in a shattering act of betrayal. In the present... On a cold January morning in London, Detective Inspector Gemma James is back on the job....

It's spring in Shady Hollow, and romance is in the air. Even reporter Vera Vixen is caught up in the season as her relationship with new police chief Orville Braun blossoms. But true love is not always smooth sailing, as two of the hollow's young residents come to find. Jonah Atwater and Stasia von Beaverpelt find themselves battling their families in order to be together. And when Alan's father, Shelby, goes over the top of Twilight Falls, all signs point to Stasia being the murderer.

Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series has become a worldwide phenomenon thanks to the appeal of endearing protagonist Precious Ramotswe and the author’s charmingly quirky prose. In this 13th installment, Mma Ramotswe’s attention is focused on a pesky disciplinary problem at her adopted daughter’s school - while Grace Makutsi adjusts to wedded bliss and the famed Clovis Andersen arrives in Botswana looking for more than bush tea.

Years ago, Beth Lathrop and her sister Kate suffered what they thought would be the worst tragedy of their lives the night both the famous painting Moonlight and their mother were taken. The detective assigned to the case, Conor Reid, swore to protect the sisters from then on. Beth moved on, throwing herself fully into the art world, running the family gallery, and raising a beautiful daughter with her husband Pete. Kate, instead, retreated into herself and took to the skies as a pilot, always on the run.

When the Night Foxes boldly break into the Fourth Precinct’s Evidence Building, it causes quite the stir. As a Magical Examiner, Henri Davenforth is immediately called in. To his astonishment, Captain Gregson has him work the case like a detective. More astounding, he assigns Henri a partner - The Shinigami Detective. The woman is famous for killing the most destructive rogue witch of the century, and no one is quite certain where she’s from. Every officer in the precinct is either in awe of her, or a little frightened by her. Henri is just baffled.

When the body of a young woman is found, tied to her bed and the victim of a brutal attack in her own home, Detective Morgan Brookes is sickened by what she finds as she searches the house, and unprepared for the nightmares it inspires about her childhood. When the DNA collected gives a positive ID, Morgan can’t wait to put the attacker behind bars. But the person it matches to is already in prison. How could the DNA of someone who has been locked up for over 20 years have shown up in Morgan’s crime scene? And then they make another close match - to Morgan herself.

When Hannah Greenwood is murdered at the queen's jubilee, suspicion falls on the members of her literary circle. The case makes a baffling turn when it seems that no one has a motive for the murder. Since Inspector Witherspoon was a guest at the ball, the job of finding the murderer falls to him.

This is a land of long memory and hidden corners, a land that had known Vlad the Impaler, a land from whose churchyards the shades creep. When Queen Marie calls, Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes are as dubious as they are reluctant. But a young girl is involved, and a beautiful queen. Surely it won't take long to shine light on this unlikely case of what would seem to be strigoi? Or, as they are known in the West...vampires.

In 2009, Edie had New York’s social world in her thrall. Mercurial and beguiling, she was the shining star of a group of recent graduates living in a Brooklyn loft and treating New York like their playground. When Edie’s body was found near a suicide note at the end of a long, drunken night, no one could believe it. Grief, shock, and resentment scattered the group and brought the era to an abrupt end.

Adopted as a child into a privileged family, Philippa Palfrey fantasizes that she is the daughter of an aristocrat and a parlor maid. The terrifying truth about her parents and a long-ago murder is only the first in a series of shocking betrayals. Philippa quickly learns that those who delve into the secrets of the past must be on guard when long-buried horrors begin to stir.

It's summertime on the Riviera, where the Jazz Age is busily reinventing the holiday delights of warm days on golden sand and cool nights on terraces and dance floors. Just up the coast lies a more traditional pleasure ground: Monte Carlo, where fortunes are won, lost, stolen, and hidden away. So when Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes happen across the Côte d'Azur in this summer of 1925, they find themselves pulled between the young and the old, hot sun and cool jazz, new friendships and old loyalties, childlike pleasures and very grownup sins...

Jo Jones has always had a little trouble fitting in. As a neurodivergent, hyperlexic book editor and divorced New Yorker transplanted into the English countryside, Jo doesn’t know what stands out more: her Americanisms or her autism. After losing her job, her mother, and her marriage all in one year, she couldn’t be happier to take possession of a possibly haunted (and clearly unwanted) family estate in North Yorkshire. But when the body of the moody town groundskeeper turns up on her rug with three bullets in his back, Jo finds herself in potential danger—and she’s also a potential suspect.

Another day, another dead woman in Ellison Russell's study. Only this one claimed to be Mrs. Anarchy Jones. As Ellison juggles mothers, daughter, unhappy wives, and near-miss murder attempts, one thing is clear - someone will go to any lengths to hide the truth. Can Ellison and Anarchy catch a killer before the body count rises? Or will Ellison be the next corpse in the study?

It’s October, hunting season in the Green Mountains - and the Vermont wilderness has never been more beautiful or more dangerous. Especially for nine-year-old Henry, who’s lost in the woods. Again. Only this time, he sees something terrible. When a young woman is found shot through the heart with a fatal arrow, Mercy thinks that something is murder. But Henry, a math genius whose autism often silences him when he should speak up most, is not talking.

An evil-tempered forensic scientist is put to death, putting many of his colleagues out of misery. Dr. Lorrimer appeared to be the picture of a bloodless, coldly efficient scientist. Only when his brutally slain body is discovered and his secret past dissected does the image begin to change. Once again, Chief Inspector Adam Dalgliesh learns that there is more to human beings than meets the eye and more to solving a murder than the obvious clues.

Agatha Raisin has never been one for forced holiday cheer, but her friendly little village of Carsely has always prided itself on its traditional Christmas festivities. But this year the bells will not be ringing out, as Mr. John Sunday, an officer with the Cotswold Health and Safety Board, has chosen Christmas as the time to crack down on safety hazards. But Mr. Sunday is soon found face down in the petunias, very much dead.

Jack Sommers was just an ordinary accountant from Chicago - that is until his wife passed away, his young daughter was kidnapped, and he became the main suspect in an $88 million embezzlement case. Now Jack is on the run, hoping to avoid the feds long enough to rescue his daughter, Sophie, from her maternal grandfather, a suspected terrorist in Palestine.

When Detective Maria Miller walks up creaking stairs into the attic of the old brownstone she senses this isn’t an ordinary crime scene. The brutality of the murder is enough to shock even an experienced detective like Maria. But there’s something else. An unsettling presence seems to lurk in the shadows sending a chill through Maria’s bones, making her desperate to run back down the stairs and never return. The killing is identical to the murder of an actress sixty years before, a crime that tore a family apart and sent shockwaves through New York City.

Is there such a thing as a good sociopath? Newly minted private investigator Annalisa Vega is skeptical, but her first client, Mara Delaney, insists that some sociopaths are beneficial to society. Mara has even written a book titled The Good Sociopath that is centered around Chicago neurosurgeon Craig Canning. Dr. Canning has saved hundreds of lives so it shouldn’t matter that he doesn’t actually care about his patients, should it? But Mara has a more urgent problem, which is that she is now concerned that Canning might not be such a good sociopath after all.