Womens Mystery Fiction

When the organizing committee for her upcoming high school reunion needs a caterer, Halia agrees to help out. Soon she's serving up her signature macaroni and cheese and famous chicken wings to a host of appreciative ex-classmates. Some folks have blossomed since graduation. Others, like manipulative Raynell Rollins, currently married to a former football star, haven't changed nearly enough. When Raynell is found dead the morning after the reunion, the role call of possible suspects could fill the school gymnasium. Extramarital affairs, mega-church scandals and sports secrets...

The Tail Waggin' Winterfest is the highlight of the season in the famously pet-friendly Pocono Mountains town of Sylvan Creek. But despite attractions like an ice sculpture display, a dogsled race, and gourmet hot chocolate, Daphne Templeton finds herself annoyed by TV producer Lauren Savidge, who's filming the festivities. She's critical, controlling, and as chilly as the January air. Daphne would like to tell her to go jump in a lake - and as a matter of fact, that's exactly what they're both going to do....

Josie Way loved working among the Library of Congress' leather-scented stacks - until she uncovered corruption and made herself a target. As Wilfred, Oregon's new librarian, Josie can stay undercover until the case goes to court. But life in this little town isn't as subdued as she expected. The library, housed in a Victorian mansion, is slated to be bulldozed. Still digesting the news that her safe haven is about to become scrap lumber, Josie discovers a body in the woods....

I only wanted a cup of coffee. Alone. It was a simple request, right? Just stroll into the coffee shop on the corner, grab my usual cup of liquid nitrogen, and walk back out. All while minding my own business. But I had to walk in at that exact moment. Not 10 minutes earlier. Not 10 minutes later. Precisely when Savannah Fields needed someone to help her. When no one except me had the courage to stand up for her. After the incident, she looked at me like I was her hero. But I'm no hero. I don't even know who or what I am anymore. Who is Nick Tucker? A DEA agent? A criminal? Both?

Doreen Diller wants to be a movie star. But after 15 years of failed auditions, she’s yet to garner a single callback from a Hollywood producer. Determined to hit the big time before she turns 40, she pins her hopes on a job assisting soap opera heartthrob Tad Longmire. He could be the answer to her dreams—or the beginning of her nightmares. While filming a new TV series starring Tad, a stabbing death rocks the set. Unfortunately for Doreen, the role of murder suspect is finally one she appears ideally suited to play.

Emily “vacations” at an opulent Swiss resort in the hope of locating nine pounds of hijacked plutonium intended for an atom bomb.

All Mrs. Pollifax has to do is help a bumbling CIA agent confirm the identities of seven undercover informants in Morocco. A simple assignment. But right away, things go wrong. The first informant is murdered just after Mrs. P. identifies him in Fez. Worse, she has the frightening sensation that her associate is not who or what he says he is.

Posing as a tourist, Emily makes her way to China with the job of protecting a CIA treasure.

Alison Kerby's guesthouse is already crowded with spirits. The last thing she needs is a whole new batch of haunts settling in. As Alison's reputation as "the ghost lady" grows, so does her business - and not always in a way she'd like. Tourists may be flocking to her guesthouse for a chance to glimpse her resident spirits, but her special abilities are also bringing unwanted private investigation cases to her door.

Field reporter Lee Barrett is not happy that her hours are being cut back at WICH-TV, although it is nice to spend more time volunteering with Aunt Ibby, a research librarian. But Lee's least favorite task is going up to the stacks, a spooky, seldom-frequented upper section of the library. On this day she has good reason to be afraid - she finds a dead man, surrounded by hundreds of scattered books and torn-out pages. Her police detective beau, Pete Mondello, is soon on the scene, and the deceased is identified as a former minor league baseball player - and ex-con....

The Fourth of July: In a late-night showdown after a near-fatal chase, San Francisco police lieutenant Lindsay Boxer has to make an instantaneous decision - and sets off a chain of events that leaves a police force disgraced and an entire city divided. As summer comes into full swing, Lindsay and her friends in the Women's Murder Club battle for her life on two fronts: before a judge an jury as her trial comes to a climax, and facing unknown adversaries who will do anything to keep her from the truth. Also included: The Fifth Horseman and The Sixth Target.

In the canton of Yarrowdale, at the very edge of the Empire’s reach, a Treasury officer has disappeared into thin air—vanishing from a room within a heavily guarded tower, its door and windows locked from the inside. To solve the case, the Empire calls on its most brilliant and mercurial detective, the great Ana Dolabra. At her side, as always, is her bemused assistant Dinios Kol. Ana soon discovers that they are investigating not a disappearance but a murder—and one of surpassing cunning, carried out by an opponent who can pass through warded doors like a ghost.

Ellie Avery balances motherhood, marriage, and her own business - Everything in Its Place - with cheerful efficiency. A maestro of organization, she sees her life as an easy checklist that does not include the untimely death of Penny Follette. Unlike the police, Ellie isn't convinced Penny's death was suicide. But it's an uphill battle getting the officials to take her seriously. Then another spouse is strangled, and someone tries to poison an outspoken female Air Force pilot. Poking about in closets and drawers, Ellie hopes to find the common thread tying the crimes together.

Sheriff Harry Moran has a broken heart and a stack of case files on his desk that the corrupt sheriff who came before him might have bungled. Or he may have framed innocent people. The first case Harry dives into, the woman left behind lives just a block away from his office. When Lillian Rainier opens the door to the sheriff, Harry, who’s been a dead man walking since his wife died, comes back to life. As for Lillian, she’s had a crush on Harry for forever, Harry showing at her door, and how he is when he does only makes her fall deeper.

Everyone in Sugar Creek Gap has tried to fix up widow and beloved mail carrier Bernadette Davis on several dates. They say she has to be lonely. What they don't know is how Bernadette's life is filled...filled with everyone's hidden secrets and obsessions. After all, she does deliver their mail and hears all the dirty laundry southern folks love to sweep secrets under the rug. While on her route, Bernadette finds out the beloved Sugar Creek Gap Country Club is being sold and turned into condos. The developer is Bernadette's best friend, Mac Tabor, and right now he's not very popular.

For Colorado caterer Goldy Schulz, business isn’t just booming—it’s skyrocketing. Her friend Marla is constantly warning her, “Success can kill you.” But Goldy doesn’t take the warning literally until her next booking: a cocktail party for the Westside Mall’s Elite Shoppers Club. While setting up, Goldy is nearly run down by a truck with no intention of stopping. Then she finds an old friend in a pile of sale shoes—stabbed with one of Goldy’s new knives. Goldy must catch the real killer between whipping up Sweethearts’ Swedish Meatballs, Quiche Me Quick, and Diamond Lovers’ Hot Crab Dip.

Mrs. Pollifax, Innocent Tourist whisks the gray-haired agent into a perilous web of intrigue that spreads across the drifting sands of the volatile Middle East. An old CIA friend, Farrell, must collect an inflammatory manuscript smuggled out of Iraq into Jordan. Farrell has a simple request for Emily—provide cover during his trip to Jordan by posing as his fun-loving elderly cousin. But before the plane even lands, danger begins stalking the sprightly Mrs. Pollifax.

Detective Constable Kate Wolfe is sent to a Cheshire backwater after falling foul of a disciplinary hearing in London. But before she even has a chance to settle in, Kate finds herself in a situation from which there's no coming back. She's reported as a troublemaker to her new boss, Detective Chief Inspector Helen Taylor, a no-nonsense veteran who once had an esteemed, high-profile career. The pair investigates a spate of arson attacks, a dead body found in a burnt-out building, and a missing architect while fighting their growing attraction for each other.

A serial killer is on the loose in San Diego, and he has a most unusual M.O.: with each kill, he leaves behind objects with unclear meanings. Most of the recent killings are centered near Kendra Michaels' home and office, so it comes as no great surprise when the FBI shows up at her door. The investigators soon make a startling discovery: the left-behind objects are actually souvenirs of other unsolved serial murder cases in various US cities.

Hana Babic is a quiet middle-aged librarian in Minnesota who wants nothing more than to be left alone. But when a detective arrives with the news that her best friend has been murdered, Hana knows that something evil has come for her, a dark remnant of the past she and her friend had shared. Thirty years before, Hana was someone else: Nura Divjak, a teenager growing up in the mountains of war-torn Bosnia—until Serbian soldiers arrived to slaughter her entire family before her eyes. The events of that day thrust Nura into the war, leading her to join a band of militia fighters.