Woman Detective

A grieving young widow, Charlene needed a new start - so she bought a historic mansion, sight unseen, and drove from Chicago to New England to start turning it into a bed-and-breakfast. On her first night in the house, she awakens to find a handsome man with startling blue eyes in her bedroom. Terror turns to utter disbelief when he politely introduces himself as Jack Strathmore - and explains that he used to live here - when he was alive. He firmly believes that someone pushed him down the stairs three years ago, and he won't be able to leave until someone figures out who.

The local ladies all deem Mr. John a wizard, so when Agatha Raisin finds a few grey hairs on her head - and the rinse she tries at home turns her hair purple - she makes a beeline for the handsome Evesham hairdresser. And as well as sorting out her hair it soon becomes clear the charming man also has designs on her heart - but their budding romance is cut short when Mr. John is fatally poisoned in his salon. Once again Agatha finds herself embroiled in a murder case. Was it one of Mr. John’s many lady clients, all of whom divulged to him their darkest secrets?

DI Nikki Galena's close friend Helen Brook is involved in a serious accident where she is trapped in a collapsed cellar. After her hard-won recovery, Helen is still getting flashbacks to a man she says was down there with her and who confessed to a murder. But no trace of this man can be found. Then Helen tells Nikki that someone is watching her. But is all this in her friend's imagination and part of her post-traumatic stress?

London, 1850: A young Charles Lenox struggles to make a name for himself as a detective...without a single case. Scotland Yard refuses to take him seriously and his friends deride him for attempting a profession at all. But when an anonymous writer sends a letter to the paper claiming to have committed the perfect crime - and promising to kill again - Lenox is convinced that this is his chance to prove himself. The writer's first victim is a young woman whose body is found in a naval trunk, caught up in the rushes of a small islets in the middle of the Thames.

Siobhán O'Sullivan's hopes for a quiet Irish Christmas are dashed when the local Santa turns up dead in a carnival dunk tank of hot cocoa. Now instead of hunting down holiday gifts, she's pursuing a heartless killer. Seems the dead Santa was no angel either, stealing neighborhood dogs to guide his sleigh. But was it his holiday antics - or worse - that led to his death by chocolate?

Often compared to both Ruth Rendell and P.D. James, Deborah Crombie is internationally acclaimed for her deftly written mysteries that combine suspense, with lyrical prose. Sharply etched characters further enrich this story of tangled relationships and dark secrets. Twelve years after their divorce, Scotland Yard Superintendent Duncan Kincaid receives a phone call from his ex-wife Victoria asking for his help.

Detective Sara Hirst has moved from London to Norfolk Police's Serious Crimes Unit. She wants to know the truth about her father, who has connections to the area. Her mother won't tell her the real story. A new job. A new place. Same old problems. Sara's first call-out is to a decomposing body discovered in a ditch on a local farm. How does the murder relate to a recent spate of thefts? Who wanted the victim dead? Then the case grows very personal.

This first installment of a cozy mystery series transports listeners back to the bygone era of 1923 Britain, where unflappable flapper and fledgling journalist Daisy Dalrymple daringly embarks on her first writing assignment, and promptly stumbles across a corpse.

Colorado's Redstone Ridge is a place of extraordinary beauty, but this rugged mountain wilderness harbors a horrifying secret. When a charred body is discovered in a shallow grave on the ridge, officer Mattie Cobb and her K-9 partner, Robo, are called in to spearhead the investigation. But this is no ordinary crime - and it soon becomes clear Mattie has a close personal connection to the dead man.

When therapist Jill Davent moved to the village of Carsely, Agatha Raisin was not a fan. Not only was this therapist romancing Agatha's ex-husband, she dug up details of Agatha's not-too-glamorous origins. Jill also counsels a woman, Gwen Simple, that Agatha firmly believes assisted her son in some grisly murders, although there is no proof. Not one to keep her feelings to herself, Agatha tells anyone who will listen that Jill is a charlatan and better off dead.

In the delightful Cotswold village of Carsely, the air is heady with romance. Agatha Raisin is convinced that the new vet has taken a shine to her. But before she can get anywhere, handsome Dr. Paul Bladen is accidentally killed while attending to Lord Pendlebury’s horse. So was it really an accident? All the evidence points that way, but the circumstances are decidedly suspicious....

Suffering from bald patches thanks to a hair conditioner spiked with depilatory cream - supplied by the murderess in her last investigation - Agatha escapes to the coastal resort of Wyckhadden to allow her crowning glory to recover in privacy. A local witch provides her with hair tonic and Agatha’s lost locks begin to grow - but then the witch is found bludgeoned to death. The elderly residents at Agatha’s faded hotel seem innocuous enough, if a little odd. But, as she enquires into the murder she turns up an alarming number of secrets....

After six grueling months back in London, Agatha Raisin returns to her beloved Cotswold village of Carsely - and to the charms of her neighbor, James Lacey. True, James is less than thrilled to see her, but Agatha is soon distracted by a sensational murder. The victim, hiker Jessica Tartinck, spent her life enraging wealthy landowners by insisting on her walking club’s right to hike over their properties. Now she has been found dead....

No one would ever accuse famous opera star Dame Serena Levante of lacking a flare for the dramatic. Unfortunately, it's curtains down on the dysfunctional diva when she's found dead at the bottom of a staircase in her elegant home. Solving an opera singer's murder may not be the typical hairdresser's aria of expertise. But Dame Serena was the mother of Daisy's best friend Floria, so Daisy must do-or-dye her best to get to the roots of the case.

Agatha Raisin's neighboring village of Ancombe is usually the epitome of quiet rural charm, but the arrival of a new mineral-water company - which intends to tap into the village spring - sends tempers flaring and divides the parish council into two stubborn camps. When Agatha, who happens to be the PR person for the water company, finds the council chairman murdered at the spring, tongues start wagging. Could one of the council members have silenced the chairman before he could cast the deciding vote?

Agatha Raisin, retired PR supremo, has been spurned at the alter by the man of her dreams - her attractive neighbor James Lacey. So temporarily deserting the sleepy Cotswold village of Carsely, she pursues her fleeing fiancé to north Cyprus where, instead of enjoying a romantic honeymoon, they witness the killing of an obnoxious tourist in a disco. Can the duo forget their differences and resume their strangely successful sleuthing partnership?

In England in the late 1920s, the Honourable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher, on a convalescent trip to the countryside, goes to visit three old school friends in the area. Daisy and her husband Alec - Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher, of Scotland Yard - go for a Sunday lunch with Daisy’s friends, where one of the women mentions a wine cellar below their house, which remains curiously locked, no key to be found. Alec offers to pick the lock, but when he opens the door, what greets them is not a cache of wine but the stench of a long-dead body.

Now engaged to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, Mma Ramotswe must contend with the hostility of her fianci's unscrupulous maid, who quickly begins plotting the disintegration of the arrangement. Then an American woman asks for help to learn the truth behind her son's disappearance in Africa, and Mma Ramotswe has all the troubles she can handle.

An explosion outside a community dance sends Mattie Cobb and Cole Walker reeling into the night, where they discover a burning van and beside it the body of outfitter Nate Fletcher. But the explosion didn’t kill Nate - it was two gunshots to the heart.

Irene Adler, American opera singer and the one woman who outsmarted Sherlock Holmes, finds herself a widow at thirty-two, wealthy but emotionally broken. At the same time, Sherlock Holmes finds himself unable to return to England after faking his death at Reichenbach Falls and is drawn into an investigation of two men with designs on a woman they call Miss A, who is none other than Irene Adler herself. The Detective and The Woman throw their lot in together to uncover a dangerous plot with implications that stretch across the Atlantic. In the process, they meet legendary inventor Thomas Edison and experience life in Florida at the turn of the 20th century.