Woman Detective

The picturesque Cotwsold village of Winter Parva has decided to warm the post-Christmas season by roasting a pig in the town square. Agatha, always one for a good roasting, organizes an outing to enjoy the merriment. But as the rotary spit is placed over a bed of fiery charcoals and the pig is carried toward its final resting place, Agatha realizes that things are not as they seem... Stop!" she screams suddenly. The "pig," in fact, is Gary Beech, a policeman not exactly beloved by the good people of the village. Although Agatha has every intention of leaving matters to the police....

Ruth Lennox, housewife and mother of three, is found dead in a pool of her own blood. Detective Chief Inspector Karlsson can’t piece together a motive and calls in Frieda, hoping her talents will offer a new angle on the case. When it emerges that the mother was hiding a scandalous secret, her family closes ranks. Frieda herself is distracted, still reeling from an attempt on her life, and struggling with her own rare feelings of vulnerability. Then a patient’s chance remark sends Frieda down a dangerous path that seems to lead to a serial killer who’s long escaped detection.

When Detective Billie Ann Wilde receives a desperate call that five-year-old Emma Wilson is missing, she rushes to the family home. But inside the picture-perfect house surrounded by Florida marshlands, she finds no children’s clothes or toys, no photos of the innocent child Emma’s mother Marissa describes. Billie suspects Marissa Wilson is hiding from someone.

Normally dead bodies in a graveyard are buried - but not this one. When a woman is found strangled in a North London cemetery with an old newspaper clipping clutched in her hand, Inspector Witherspoon is surprised to find that he and the victim have crossed paths before. Alice Robinson was a respectable widow who ran a quiet Islington lodging house. None of her lodgers have any apparent motive to murder their landlady.

In Edinburgh, rumors and gossip abound. But Isabel well knows that such things can't be taken at face value. Still, the latest whispers hint at mysterious goings-on, and who but Isabel can be trusted to get to the bottom of them? At the same time, she must deal with the demands of her two small children, her husband, and her rather tempestuous niece, Cat, whose latest romantic entanglement comes - to no one's surprise - with complications. Still, even with so much going on, Isabel, through the application of good sense, logic, and ethics, will, as ever, triumph.

Detective Margot Phalen knows the mind of a serial killer better than most. She learned from the worst: her father, Ed Finch. When bodies keep appearing in the tranquil Muir Woods, California, and a woman is killed in Chinatown, Margot begins to realize these are no ordinary homicides. The eerie similarities to her infamous father's crimes send chills down her spine. But Ed’s been behind bars for years now—surely he couldn’t mastermind this from his cell, could he?

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.

Two bodies have been found in a park in the fashionable London neighborhood of Callander Square. While Inspector Thomas Pitt is fighting to get the square’s aristocratic residents to speak with him, his pretty, well-born wife, Charlotte, decides to do some detective work of her own. Soon she is unearthing secrets in every house on the square, while Thomas tries to discover what would drive a person to murder.

Bridgestead is a peaceful spot: a babbling brook, rolling hills, and a working mill at its heart. Pretty and remote, nothing exceptional happens...until the day that Master of the Mill Joshua Braithwaite goes missing under dramatic circumstances, never to be heard of again. Now Joshua's daughter is getting married and wants to make one last attempt at finding her father. Kate Shackleton has always loved solving puzzles. So who better to get to the bottom of Joshua's mysterious disappearance?

Ellie Christie is thrilled to begin a new chapter, having recently returned to her tiny Colorado hometown to run her family’s historic bookshop with her elder sister, Meg, and their friendly bookshop cat, Agatha. Perched in a Swiss-style hamlet accessible primarily by ski gondola, the Book Chalet is a famed bibliophile destination known for its maze of shelves and relaxing reading lounge with cozy fireside seats and panoramic views. At least, until trouble blows in with a wintery whiteout, and a man is found dead on the gondola.

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...

Minerva Kenny is a dear woman, but her tendency to "borrow" things without asking has finally caught up with her. William Barrett has learned Minerva's shameful secret, and he's holding it over her head. Mrs. Jeffries and the staff at Upper Edmonton Gardens have hatched a scheme to save her - but when they try to recover the damning evidence from Barrett, they discover something more shocking: Barrett's corpse. Considering the victim's wicked ways, Minerva is far from the only suspect.

Charlotte Pitt’s mother, Caroline, travels with her young husband, Joshua Fielding, and his theatrical troupe to Whitby, where Dracula first touched English soil. Joshua has arranged to produce a stage adaptation of Dracula by the daughter of Whitby millionaire Charles Netheridge, but the amateurish script produces a disastrous first read-through. As tempers flare and wind and snow swirl around Netheridge’s lonely hilltop mansion, a black-cloaked stranger emerges from the storm - an eerily opportune arrival, for this enigmatic figure, one Anton Ballin, turns out to be a theatrical genius.

On a cold dark night in February, as a blizzard shrieks through Cedar Valley, police officer and new mother Gemma Monroe responds to an anonymous report of a prowler at the local private high school, The Valley Academy. In her idyllic Colorado small town, Gemma expects the call was just a prank by a bored teenager. But there in the snow lies the savaged body of a man whose presence in town was meant to be a secret. And a disturbing message left by his killer promises more death to come.

On her first day back with the Denton PD after a major trauma, Detective Josie Quinn is on the hunt for a missing woman, Krystal Duncan, the mother of one of five children killed in a devastating school bus crash. Hours later, Josie finds Krystal’s body beside her daughter’s grave, her lips sealed together forever with wax.

In the winter of 1906, Lady Emily and husband Colin are invited to the opulent home of Baroness Ursula von Duchtel in the Bavarian alps. Outside is a mountainous winter wonderland with a view of Mad King Ludwig’s fairy tale castle. Inside, the villa hosts a magnificent but eclectic art collection—as well as an equally eclectic collection of fellow guests, among them a musician, an art dealer, a coquette from the demi-monde, and Kaspar, the Baroness’ boorish son-in-law, whom, it begins to appear, someone wants dead.

Arriving in London on leave, Bess Crawford receives an unusual summons from the War Office. She's been requested to accompany a wounded soldier to Buckingham Palace, where he's to be decorated for gallantry. Though she is certain she's never met or nursed Sergeant Jason Wilkins, she cannot refuse the honor. Heavily bandaged and confined to a wheelchair, the soldier will be in her care for barely a day. But on the morning after the ceremony when Bess goes to collect her charge for his return journey, she finds the room empty.

On a hot summer’s day, the sleepy town of Mount Chester is thrown into turmoil when 17-year-old local girl Jenna goes missing. Within hours, the case takes an agonizing turn when her body is discovered in the isolated mountains. Detective Kay Sharp rushes to the scene, hiking for miles to the base of Wildfire Ridge. From the markings on Jenna’s body, it’s clear that she was brutally murdered. Near the victim, Kay finds a butterfly-shaped hair clip with a set of fingerprints that could be a vital clue. In the hunt for the truth, Kay turns the small town upside down.

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.

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.