Women Detectives

Alice Rogers, an elderly widow, is dead, found murdered in the Arizona desert. It's easy enough to pin the killing on the teens caught driving her car across the Mexican border, but Sheriff Brady isn't about to let it go at that. Alice was something of a free spirit, with a penchant for Scotch, the glitter of Las Vegas, and a romance with a man twenty years her junior. Her hot-tempered daughter Susan suspects Mom's boyfriend—her former handyman who moved in instead of moving on.

When Isabel bumps into Minty Auchterlonie for the first time in years, she is skeptical (again) of Minty's integrity. But Minty mentions the bank where she works is having internal troubles, and Isabel must determine, once and for all, if Minty can be trusted.

A young woman goes to the country to reconnect with old relatives, and stumbles on a murder only Miss Silver can solve. An orphan of the Second World War, Candida Sayle has gotten so used to life with her guardian that she never considered that she might have a family somewhere. When her guardian dies, a letter appears from an unheard-of aunt, informing Candida that it is time for her to return to the Benevent family fold. The young woman ventures to the country, and finds a strange pair of spinsters who spend their days obsessing over family lore.

With her twins, Fitzgerald and Hemingway, back in school, Jane Steward can finally focus on her work again - managing Storyton Hall and breaking ground on the resort's latest attraction: a luxurious, relaxing spa named in honor of Walt Whitman. But when the Earth is dug up to start laying the spa's foundation, something else comes to the surface - a collection of unusual bones and the remnants of a very old book. The attendees of the Rare Book Conference are eager to assist Jane with this unexpected historical mystery - until a visitor meets an untimely end in the Henry James Library.

Now that Madison Reynolds has agreed to be part of a reality-television home remodeling show, she barely recognizes her own life. The show is an instant success, bringing cameras and reporters right to her doorstep, eager to chronicle her every move in the small Texas town. With In a Pinch Temporary Services hovering on the thin line between prosperity and extinction, Madison takes on another quirky case, this one concerning a property dispute. Complications turn a simple mission into all-out danger, and once again Madison finds herself embroiled in an intriguing mystery.

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.

As if meeting the parents wasn’t complicated enough… My boyfriend’s snooty parents are coming into town for the Yule Feast and they’re staying at the Beechwood Manor — for an entire week! With a paranormal meet-the-parents on the horizon, the last thing I need is to stumble into yet another murder investigation, but when I become a key witness, there’s no way to avoid it. Especially not when vampires are involved and my human partner-in-sleuthing is racing right into their path.

At the foot of a tree shattered by shelling and gunfire, stretcher bearers find an exhausted officer shivering with cold and a loss of blood from several wounds. The soldier is brought to battlefield nurse Bess Crawford's aid station, where she stabilizes him and treats his injuries before he is sent to a rear hospital. The odd thing is the officer isn't British - he's French. But in a moment of anger and stress, he shouts at Bess in German.

Stephanie Plum is thinking her career as a fugitive apprehension agent has run its course. She's been shot at, spat at, cussed at, fire-bombed, mooned, and attacked by dogs. Time for a change, Stephanie thinks. Time to find the kind of job her mother can tell her friends about without making the sign of the cross. So Stephanie Plum quits. Resigns. No looking back. No changing her mind. She wants something safe and normal. As it turns out, jobs that are safe and normal for most people aren't necessarily safe and normal for Stephanie Plum.

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.

When a gruesome murder is discovered at the Osthorne Academy of Young Mages, where her estranged twin sister teaches theoretical magic, reluctant detective Ivy Gamble is pulled into the world of untold power and dangerous secrets. She will have to find a murderer and reclaim her sister - without losing herself.

When firefighters discover the body of a teenage girl at an abandoned house, Detective Amanda Steele hurries to the scene. Dumfries, Virginia, is a small town, yet no one seems to have any idea who the dead girl is, until Amanda finds a dragonfly pin with the name Crystal engraved on it. Working tirelessly, Amanda traces the pin to Crystal Foster, a 13-year-old who disappeared three years ago from her wealthy parents’ home. Breaking the news to the distraught parents won’t be easy, but the loss of her own daughter still haunts Amanda, and she knows this will bring them closure.

Abi Logan and her partner, Grant MacEwan, are looking forward to a romantic weekend on a remote island off the coast of Scotland until the ghost of a 15th-century monk appears on the scene, leaving a trail of victims in his wake. The Scottish call this kind of apparition eldritch–weird, ghostly, and sinister. Abi couldn’t agree more, though, unlike the locals, she’s sure this is no spirit of the dead, but a real live person who seems to have a very earthly grudge against Abi, Grant, and their whisky-making host, Neil.

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.

Autumn of 1987 takes a young couple on a romantic trip in the Westfjords holiday - a trip that gets an unexpected ending and has catastrophic consequences. Ten years later a small group of friends go for a weekend in an old hunting lodge in Elliðaey. A place completely cut off from the outside world, to reconnect. But one of them isn't going to make it out alive. And Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdóttir is determined to find the truth in the darkness.

Lord Comstock is a barbarous newspaper tycoon with enemies in high places. His murder in the study of his country house poses a dilemma for the Home Secretary. In the hours before his death, Lord Comstock’s visitors included the government Chief Whip, an Archbishop, and the Assistant Commissioner for Scotland Yard. Suspicion falls upon them all and threatens the impartiality of any police investigation. Abandoning protocol, the Home Secretary invites four famous detectives to solve the case: Mrs Adela Bradley, Sir John Saumarez, Lord Peter Wimsey, and Mr Roger Sheringham.

Detective Margot Phalen has spent years running from her father’s shadow—and the awful truth of her own past as the daughter of a serial killer. But then she receives a message from him. He’s willing to share his darkest secret—but only with her. Now, as she sits across from the empty chair waiting for Ed Finch to be led in, Margot closes her eyes and steels herself for what lies ahead. The key to solving one of California’s most infamous missing persons cases is here, in the one place she fears most: her father’s cell.

With London's streets deserted, a young flower girl is murdered. But why was she out so late on the foggiest night of the year? Inspector Witherspoon of Scotland Yard has nowhere to even begin looking for a suspect. However, Mrs. Jeffries, his housekeeper, is even more accomplished at detection than she is at household management. A policeman's widow herself, her quick wits allow her to nudge the inspector in the right direction to solve the mystery.

Hayley Burke has landed a dream job. She is the new curator of Lady Georgiana Fowling's First Edition library. The library is kept at Middlebank House, a lovely Georgian home in Bath, England. Hayley lives on the premises and works with the finicky Glynis Woolgar, Lady Fowling's former secretary. Mrs. Woolgar does not like Hayley's ideas to modernize The First Edition Society and bring in fresh blood. And she is not even aware of the fact that Hayley does not know the first thing about the Golden Age of Mysteries.

During the height of the Great War, playboy Prince Harry, the third in line to the British throne, vanishes in thin air while horseback riding in Hyde Park The strikingly handsome playboy prince is initially believed to have arranged his disappearance so he can enjoy a brief rendezvous with one of his secret lovers. But when his absence continues on for days, the royal family grows concerned and summons Scotland Yard, who can only recover scant, unrevealing clues.