Women Detectives

Detective Inspector Carol Ashton is faced with three unsolved murders that seem linked by the fact that the victims' names appear under the heading Notable Deletions on the website of a radical international environmentalist group. Overseas, the entrepreneurs and magnates that the group, Gaia's Revenge, describes as environmental vandals have been dying mysterious deaths. Now it seems as if it's Australia's turn to play host to a hired killer.

A series of baffling murders among a group of imprisoned agents threatens the outcome of World War II in this chilling mystery from the New York Times best-selling author of Mr. Churchill’s Secretary. World War II is raging, and former spy Maggie Hope knows too much. She knows what the British government is willing to do to keep its secrets. She knows the real location of the planned invasion of France. She knows who’s lying. She knows who the double-crossers are. She knows exactly who is sending agents to their deaths.

A man is found stabbed to death on the Southampton morning commuter train. But why can't Detective Sophie Allen's team find out anything about his history? And why was he staying in a house that seems to be owned by a government security unit? Then there is another stabbing, this time in a refuge for abused women. And again, Sophie can find very little about the victim's life.

Arriving at High Wraith cottage, Detective Morgan Brookes joins her horrified team, who have found a woman’s body chained and dangling from the gnarled branch of an old oak tree. It’s a race against time to preserve any evidence as heavy rain destroys the scene, but they’ve already identified the victim as a woman who once tried to kill her own family. Twenty years ago, Margery Lancaster went to prison for poisoning her husband and infant son. They both survived, and Morgan must treat the pair as her first suspects.

In late 1926, the newly married Daisy Dalrymple and Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard take an ocean voyage to America for their honeymoon. Daisy and Alec are accompanied by Daisy's childhood friend, Phillip Petrie; his wife, Gloria; and Gloria's father, American millionaire industrialist Caleb P. Arbuckle, and all are looking forward to a pleasant, uneventful trip. But at the last minute they are joined by Arbuckle's new friend, Yorkshire millionaire Jethro Gotobed, and his new wife, Wanda.

Jane discovers holiday cheer is fleeting. One of the Yuletide gathering dies in a tragic accident whose circumstances Jane immediately views with suspicion. If the accident was in fact murder, the killer is one of Jane's fellow snowbound guests. With clues scattered amid cleverly crafted charades, dark secrets coming to light during parlor games, and old friendships returning to haunt the Christmas parties, whom can Jane trust to help her discover the truth and stop the killer from striking again?

New York, Autumn, 1907: Former private detective Molly Murphy Sullivan is happy with her place in the world. She and her policeman husband, Daniel, have built quite a life for themselves in Greenwich Village, in their modest-yet-beautiful home in Patchin Place, filled with family, friends, and laughter. Molly and Daniel have a good marriage, a true partnership where they value each other’s opinions in all things. So when he tells her they’re moving to a fancy home on Fifth Avenue—and that he’s running for the sheriff of New York—Molly is left reeling.

September, 1923. Despite closing her first case, high society lady detective Olive Belgrave hasn’t found a new client. She’s taken a job as a hat model to pay for her poky boarding house room. But then a job offer comes her way—make discreet inquiries about a famous author who’s disappeared. Olive travels to the English countryside to hunt for the missing mystery author. But soon after she arrives in the sleepy village, a body is discovered. Then a second murder focuses the police’s attention on Olive, and she must clear her name before the murderer pens a plot that frames her.

The year is 1901, and the death of Britain’s longest-reigning monarch has sent the entire British Empire into mourning. But for Lady Emily and her dashing husband, Colin, the grieving is cut short as another death takes center stage. A body has been found in the Tower of London, posed to look like the murdered medieval king Henry VI. When a second dead man turns up in London's exclusive Berkeley Square, his mutilated remains staged to evoke the violent demise of Edward II, it becomes evident that the mastermind behind the crimes plans to strike again.

In December 1923, the formidable Dowager Viscountess Dalrymple has decided that for Christmas the family will all gather at Brockdene in Cornwall at the invitation of Lord Westmoor. Her daughter - Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher - is somewhat less than pleased but yields to the demands of her mother, especially as she'll be there just before the holidays working on another article for Town and Country about the estate itself. But the family gathering quickly goes awry.

A devastating terror attack strikes at the heart of Birmingham... but is all as it seems? When DI Zoe Finch and her colleagues rush to respond to a terrorist attack, the city is plunged into chaos. But Zoe begins to suspect that all is not as it seems. Could the attack be a smokeshield for other criminal activity? And are Zoe's own colleagues involved in that cover-up?

Beloved author Alexander McCall Smith’s seventh Isabel Dalhousie tale finds the ethical philosopher doing background checks on several candidates for the same job. In the process, Isabel learns quite a bit about herself, as well.

The Ducote sisters are in a tiff with Vera Cassity over the location of this year's library fundraising gala, and Charlie would rather curl up in a corner than get into the fray. It seems everyone - even his housekeeper Azalea - has it in for Vera. And at the gala, she gives them good reason, with a public display of rancor aimed at anyone who gets in her way.But those bitter words wind up being her last.

Nikki Griffin isn't your typical private investigator. In her office above her bookstore’s shelves and stacks, where she luxuriates in books and the comfort they provide, she also tracks certain men. Dangerous men. Men who have hurt the women they claim to love. When a regular PI job tailing Karen, a tech company's disgruntled employee who might be selling secrets, turns ugly and Karen's life is threatened, Nikki has to break cover and intervene.

Jem Jago is back at work with her antique books, and spending her weekends exploring her new home - the windswept Isles of Scilly - in her little sailboat, 'Bellatrix'. She’s really starting to settle into island life. Unfortunately, murder in the Scillies is not as rare as some of her manuscripts. In Tatteredly’s second-hand bookstore, she discovers the body of beautiful Gina Marrak. Poking around the scene of the crime, Jem finds an unusual book, which leads her down an unlikely path.

Ten years ago, 15-year-old Scarlett Rainsford vanished while on a family holiday in Greece. Lou Smith worked the case as a police constable, and failing to find Scarlett has been one of the biggest regrets of her career. No one is more shocked than Lou to learn that Scarlett has unexpectedly been found during a Special Branch raid of a brothel in Briarstone. Lou and her Major Crime team are already stretched working two troubling cases: 19-year-old Ian Palmer was found badly beaten; and soon after, bar owner Carl McVey was found half-buried in the woods.

Is Harriet Blue as great a detective as Lindsay Boxer? Harriet Blue, the most single-minded detective since Lindsay Boxer, won't rest until she stops a savage killer targeting female university students. But there's something strange about the newest victim - clues to an even more chilling predator.

In this latest installment of Alexander McCall Smith's ever-delightful and perennially best-selling series, amateur sleuth and philosopher Isabel Dalhousie is called upon to help when a matchmaker begins to question her latest match. Rosemary is something of a matchmaker and has brought together a cosmetic surgeon and a successful banker at her most recent dinner party. But new information comes to light about the cosmetic surgeon that causes Rosemary to doubt the auspiciousness of the match.

>In July of 1923, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple travels to Henley-on-Thames to visit her aunt and uncle, as well as to work on her latest writing assignment: covering the Henley Royal Regatta for an American magazine. Daisy plans a simple trip researching her article, enjoying the races, and, come the weekend, having a pleasant time with her fiancé, Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard. But the tensions between the Ambrose team's coxswain, Horace Bott - a shopkeeper's son and scholarship student at Oxford - and rower Basil DeLancey - the younger son of an earl and all-around bounder - are constantly threatening to erupt into violence.

When Detective Kim Stone rushes to the scene of a house fire, she’s shocked to discover it’s claimed the lives of two teenage children and their parents. But this tragedy is not quite as it seems. Each body is marked by a gunshot wound, and the mother, Helen Daynes, is holding the gun. The case sparks painful childhood memories for Kim, who suffered at the hands of her own abusive mother, but it just makes her more determined to uncover the truth. As Kim untangles Helen’s past, she finds a history of clinical depression. But did it drive Helen to murder her loved ones?