Womens Mystery Fiction

It's springtime on Cranberry Island - and love is in the air. It seems like every woman has the hots for buff trainer Dirk De Leon. He and his equally gorgeous business partner, Vanessa Black, are leading a weight-loss retreat at the Gray Whale Inn - forcing innkeeper Natalie Barnes to lighten up her butter-laden breakfast menu. The mood on the island darkens when two grisly discoveries are made. The first is a skeleton walled up at the island's lighthouse. The second is a corpse of the fresh variety - the handsome Dirk!

Although this isn't the life Lexie would have chosen, all is going well. At least until Lexie is fired and her deranged ex-boyfriend tries to kidnap her. Deciding that it's better to accept a mysterious inheritance from a great aunt she's never heard of rather than end up kept in a cage as her ex's pet poodle, Lexie packs up and heads to Kansas. So, what if she has to go by a new name and live in a town that she can't find on a map? Unfortunately, once she arrives in her new hometown, everyone there seems just a tad off-kilter, and Lexie's cousin insists the citizens are magical.

As if being in New York City for Easter isn't exciting enough, Charlotte Weaver has another reason to be thrilled. She's helping her cousin Bailey on the set of her first cable TV show, Bailey's Amish Sweets. Bailey will even be recreating the delectable handwoven chocolate Easter baskets she once crafted for the city's world-famous JP Chocolates. But once things start rolling, Charlotte starts to notice odd things happening - things that seem intended to make Bailey look bad....

The indomitable Amelia Peabody and her husband, known to many as "the Father of Curses", are into archaeology and mischief again. This third in the series brings the reader once more into Egypt and the shady world of black market antiquities. The winter excavation season has hardly yet begun when Amelia stumbles onto what looks suspiciously like a ring of thieves.

Meet Sarah Booth Delaney...an unconventional Southern belle whose knack for uncovering the truth is about to make her the hottest detective in Zinnia, Mississippi...if it doesn't make her the deadest. No self-respecting lady would allow herself to end up in Sarah Booth's situation. Unwed, unemployed, and over 30, she's flat broke and about to lose the family plantation. Not to mention being haunted by the ghost of her great-great-grandmother's nanny, who never misses an opportunity to remind her of her sorry state.

New York Times best-selling author Laurie R. King has won or been nominated for every major award in mystery writing. King's beloved sleuth Mary Russell here attempts to reverse her legendary husband, Sherlock Holmes', greatest failure.

London, July 1889. Eight months have passed since the horrific murder of Mary Jane Kelly. The residents of Whitechapel have begun breathing easy again - daring to leave windows open and walk about at twilight. But when old Alice McKenzie is found dead, throat slashed from ear to ear, the whispers begin once more: Jack the Ripper is back. Constance Piper, a flower seller with a psychic gift, was a friend to both women. With the supernatural help of her late mentor and her more grounded ally, police detective Thaddeus Hawkins, she uncovers links between the murders and a Fenian gang.

For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand.

In an all-new novella in E.J. Copperman’s “funny, charming, and thoroughly enjoyable” ( Spinetingler Magazine) series, the storm of the century bears down on the haunted guesthouse, and stirs up a gale of memories for a troubled ghost. Haunted guesthouse owner Alison Kerby may have only recently discovered her ability to communicate with ghosts, but for her mother Loretta, it’s been a lifelong gift.

Clove has gone to extremes to keep her past a secret. Thanks to her lies, she’s landed the life of her dreams, complete with a safe husband and two adoring children who will never know the terror that was routine in her own childhood. If her buried anxiety threatens to breach the surface, Clove (if that is really her name) focuses on finding the right supplement, the right gratitude meditation. But when she receives a letter from a women’s prison in California, her past comes screeching into the present, entangling her in a dangerous game with memory and the people she thought she had outrun.

Addison’s about to get married, but she’s not looking forward to the big day. It’s not her fiancé; he’s a wonderful man. It’s because Addison doesn't know who she really is. A few years ago, a kind driver found her bleeding next to a New Jersey highway and rescued her. While her physical wounds healed, Addison’s memory never returned. She doesn’t know her real name. Or how she ended up injured on the side of a road. Or why she can’t shake the notion that she may have done something very, very bad.

Paramedic Zoe Chambers is used to saving lives, but when she stops a man from running into a raging inferno in a futile attempt to rescue his wife, Zoe finds herself drawn to him, and even more so to his 10-year-old daughter. She invites them both to live at the farm while the grieving widower picks up the pieces of his life. Vance Township Police Chief Pete Adams, of course, is not happy with this setup, especially when he finds evidence implicating Zoe's new houseguest in murder times two.

Mia Malone has landed a lucrative and convenient gig, catering a reunion at the old school that's become her new business headquarters. The town swirls with rumors that St. Catherine's Preparatory is haunted, but there's one living visitor that Mia wasn't expecting - her mother. Theresa Malone stepped away from the magic that runs in Mia's family, much to the annoyance of Mia's grandmother. Soon Mia has to deal with more than personal drama when Robin Hanover, the head of the reunion committee, is murdered in one of the classrooms.

Smarmy personals ads. Daring declarations of love. Freelance writer Jaine Austen has penned them all. But no one needs her help more than geeky, gawky Howard Murdoch. His request is simple enough: a letter proclaiming his undying love for Stacy Lawrence, a gorgeous aerobics instructor. The fact that he's never actually met the woman gives Jaine pause - yet she soon overcomes her misgivings, and the unlikely Romeo lands a date! But his triumph is short-lived. On Valentine's Day, Howard finds Stacy bludgeoned to death with a Thigh Master - and is quickly named the prime suspect.

A young nanny who plunged to her death, or was she pushed? A nine-year-old girl who collects sharp objects and refuses to speak. A lawyer whose job it is to uncover who in the family is a victim and who is a murderer. But how can you find out the truth when everyone here is lying? Rose Barclay is a nine-year-old girl who witnessed the possible murder of her nanny—in the midst of her parent's bitter divorce—and immediately stopped speaking.

Finlay Donovan is killing it...except, she’s really not. The new book she promised her literary agent isn’t written, her ex-husband fired the nanny without telling her, and this morning she had to send her four-year-old to school with hair duct-taped to her head.

It is the spring of 1885, and wealthy New York socialite Beret Osmundsen has been estranged from her younger sister, Lillie, for a year. Then she gets word from her aunt and uncle that Lillie has died suddenly in Denver. What they do not tell her is that Lillie had become a prostitute and was brutally murdered in the brothel where she had been living. Detective Mick McCauley may not want her involved in the case, but Beret is determined.

It is 1918. Coming out of retirement, an aging Sherlock Holmes travels to Palestine with his 19-year-old partner, Mary Russell. There, disguised as ragged Bedouins, they embark on a dangerous mission. If they fail, the holy city goes up in flames.

Ellie Simons stands to inherit her Uncle Merlin's huge English country house. But on three utterly bizarre conditions. One: she must lose sixty-three pounds (rude!). Two: she must marry the fake fiance she's been passing off as her true love all weekend. And three: she must catch whoever killed Uncle Merlin in the first place.

In the late nineteenth century, Charlotte Bell is growing up at Fayne, a vast and lonely estate straddling the border between England and Scotland, where she has been kept from the world by her adoring father, Lord Henry Bell, owing to a mysterious condition. Charlotte, strong and insatiably curious, revels in the moorlands, and has learned the treacherous and healing ways of the bog from the old hired man, Byrn, whose own origins are shrouded in mystery.