After the Armistice Ball


Catriona McPherson - 2005
    And what could be better than to seek out the Duffy diamonds, stolen from the Esselmont's country house, Croys, after the Armistice Ball? Before long, though, the puzzle of what really happened to the Duffy diamonds has been swept aside by the sudden, unexpected death of lovely young Cara Duffy in a lonely seaside cottage in Galloway. Society and the law seem ready to call it an accident but Dandy, along with Cara Duffy's fiancé Alec, is sure that there is more going on than meets the eye. What is being hidden by members of the Duffy family: the watchful Lena, the cold and distant Clemence and old Gregory Duffy with his air of quiet sadness, not to mention Cara herself whose secret always seems just tantalizingly out of view? Dandy must learn to trust her instincts and swallow most of her scruples if he is to uncover the truth and earn the right to call herself a sleuth.

Murder at Archly Manor


Sara Rosett - 2018
    A spirited lady detective. Can she out-class the killer before an innocent person takes the fall?London, 1923. Olive Belgrave needs a job. Despite her aristocratic upbringing, she’s penniless. Determined to support herself, she jumps at an unconventional job—looking into the background of her cousin's fiancé, Alfred. Alfred burst into the upper crust world of London’s high society, but his answers to questions about his past are decidedly vague. Before Olive can gather more than the basics, a murder occurs at a posh party. Suddenly, every Bright Young Person in attendance is a suspect, and Olive must race to find the culprit because a sly murderer is determined to make sure Olive’s first case is her last. Murder at Archly Manor is the first in the High Society Lady Detective series of charming historical cozy mysteries. If you like witty banter, glamorous settings, and delightful plot twists, you’ll love USA Today bestselling author Sara Rosett’s series for Anglophiles and mystery lovers alike.Travel back to the Golden Age of detective fiction with Murder at Archly Manor.

Moonlighting In Vermont


Kate George - 2009
    She becomes the prime suspect when she finds her boss dead in a pool of blood and can’t convince the officer in charge, hunky Lt. Miles Brooks, that she isn’t capable of murder. Lt. Brooks believes two things: The first is that everyone is capable of murder, and the second is that the simplest solution is usually correct. So when it appears that Bree MacGowan has both motive and opportunity, he’s confident he’s found his killer. Meg Maverick owns the local paper, and Bree’s been her paste-up tech and friend from the beginning. She has no doubt of Bree’s innocence, but she’s worried. If her husband Tom, the captain-in-chief at the local state police barracks, insists on sticking up for Bree, he could end up ruining his reputation. Then there’s Beaux Maverick, Tom’s younger brother, who has been waiting 15 years for his chance to ask Bree MacGowan out on a date. He doesn’t give a rat’s ass if the whole town thinks Bree is guilty. He’d be the happiest guy alive—if only she’d stay out of trouble.

Design on a Crime


Ginny Aiken - 2005
    Has she been caught in the perfectly designed crime?

Murder by the Book


Lauren Elliott - 2018
    But she didn't expect her sleuthing skills to come in so handy in a little seaside town . . .Addie left some painful memories behind in the big city, including the unsolved murder of her fiancé and her father's fatal car accident. After an unexpected inheritance from a great aunt, she's moved to a small New England town founded by her ancestors back in colonial times—and living in spacious Greyborne Manor, on a hilltop overlooking the harbor. Best of all, her aunt also left her countless first editions and other treasures—providing an inventory to start her own store.But there's trouble from day one, and not just from the grumpy woman who runs the bakery next door. A car nearly runs Addie down. Someone steals a copy of Alice in Wonderland. Then, Addie's friend Serena, who owns a nearby tea shop, is arrested—for killing another local merchant. The police seem pretty sure they've got the story in hand, but Addie's not going to let them close the book on this case without a fight . .

Murder by Misrule


Anna Castle - 2014
    He recruits his unwanted protégé Thomas Clarady to do the tiresome legwork. The son of a privateer, Clarady will do anything to climb the Elizabethan social ladder. Bacon's powerful uncle Lord Burghley suspects Catholic conspirators of the crime, but other motives quickly emerge. Rival barristers contend for the murdered man's legal honors and wealthy clients. Highly-placed courtiers are implicated as the investigation reaches from Whitehall to the London streets. Bacon does the thinking; Clarady does the fencing. Everyone has something up his pinked and padded sleeve. Even the brilliant Francis Bacon is at a loss — and in danger — until he sees through the disguises of the season of Misrule.

Sprinkled


Gina LaManna - 2014
    She just never expected the lows to be so… sparkly. After falling on her face during an attempt to follow in her recently-deceased mother’s stripper-boots, Lacey realizes she’s not cut out for life on stage. She sets out on a year-long investigation to find her true family, never expecting she’ll find it with a capital “F.” With a rumbling stomach, a need for money (check engine lights don’t fix themselves!), and a conscience that operates at 78% on a good day, Lacey is sucked into a whirlwind of Family secrets, hard-as-cement cookies, and mysterious, sexy men who unfortunately shoot guns, sometimes aimed at her face. The long-lost-granddaughter of Carlos Luzzi, the Godfather of the Italian Mafia, Lacey accepts her first assignment for the mob: finding fifteen million dollars of ‘the good stuff.’ Even after she enlists the help of her mouthy best-friend and her cousin, a technical genius and social disaster, she finds that going toe-to-toe with the rival Russian mob is more dangerous than expected. No one chooses their Family, but Lacey Luzzi will be lucky if she can survive hers. ** ** Lacey Luzzi: Sprinkled, is a full-length, laugh-out-loud, humorous cozy mystery with a strong female protagonist in the spirit of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum, albeit one working for the wrong side of the law…

Pumpkins in Paradise


Kathi Daley - 2013
    When the handsome new deputy closes the case without so much as a “why” or “how,” Tj turns her attention from chili cook-offs and pumpkin carving to complex puzzles, prophetic riddles, and a decades-old secret she seems destined to unravel.

Armoires and Arsenic


Cassie Page - 2013
    Granville, OMG to her friends and foes, as though the award-winning architect, interior designer and antiques dealer didn’t have enough on her hands.Olivia, a transplanted Los Angeleno, is the newest resident of Darling Valley, a picturesque town just outside of San Francisco and home of the DV Bills, as Olivia calls the largest concentration of billionaires anywhere in the country. Like the Astors and Rockefellers of old who outdid each other building humongous summer cottages in Newport, the DV Bills outdo each other with eye-popping piles of sticks stuffed with museum quality art hidden in the Marin hills. It was Olivia’s plan to make a killing decorating them.What Olivia liked best about moving to sleepy Darling Valley from LA was the absence of crime. No worrying about parking her car on a side street because it might get stolen. Nobody slipping sticky fingers into her purse and lifting her wallet while an accomplice distracted her at the sale rack at Neiman’s. Not having to trip over a dead body blocking the doorway of her office building while the LAPD took their sweet time locking down the crime scene. But the best part of living in Darling Valley was never having to find herself sitting across from Brooks at a dinner party while he romanced his new girlfriend and referred to Olivia as a client.What she hated about Darling Valley was the 400 miles between its pristine mansions and gritty but happening LA. Not far enough to save her from becoming Detective Gurmeet Richards’ lead suspect in a killing of a different kind. Yes, that’s Detective Richards of the devastating velvety eyes.Olivia should have remembered the advice her tea-leaves reading friend, Tuesday, gave her before she left LA. You get what you resist.Watch what happens when Olivia and Tuesday get to work proving her innocence amid the opulence and deception of her, idyllic but deadly new home.

Dying for a Change


Kathleen Delaney - 2002
    Change can be exciting, invigorating, fun, but murder is more than Ellen McKenzie bargains for when she returns to her small hometown of Santa Louisa to start a new career and a new life.

Still Life with Murder


P.B. Ryan - 2003
    Born into dismal poverty, young Nell Sweeney scratches by on her wits and little else until fortune blesses her with a position as nursery governess to the fabulously wealthy Hewitts. But she soon learns that ugly secrets lurk beneath the surface of their gold-plated world.The Hewitts’ eldest son, William, a former Union Army battle surgeon and the black sheep of the family, was reported to have died three years before in a notorious Confederate prison camp. But one snowy February afternoon, his parents learn that he is, in fact, still alive—and in jail for having murdered a man while intoxicated on opium. Infuriated by his son’s deception and convinced of his guilt, August Hewitt forbids his wife from coming to Will’s aid, so she begs Nell to help exonerate him. Nell finds that she must delve into the kind of dark and treacherous underworld she thought she’d left far behind if she is to unearth the truth before the hangman’s noose tightens around William Hewitt’s throat.

Live and Let Chai


Bree Baker - 2018
    Can she bag the culprit?Life hasn't been so sweet for Everly Swan over the past couple of years, but now that she is back in her seaside hometown and the proud owner of a little iced tea shop and café right on the beach, things are finally starting to look up--until a curmudgeonly customer turns up dead on the boardwalk. With one of her hallmark glass tea jars lying right next to him and an autopsy that reports poison in his system, it doesn't look good for Everly or her brand new business.As the townspeople of Charm, formerly so welcoming and homey, turn their back on Everly, she fights to dig up clues about who could have had it in for the former town councilman. With a maddeningly handsome detective discouraging her from uncovering leads and a series of anonymous attacks on Everly and her business, it will take everything she's got to keep this mystery from boiling over.

Roasted in Christmas River


Meg Muldoon - 2014
    Between planning her big Thanksgiving dinner and baking a mountain of pies at her shop, Cinnamon’s been rushing around like a turkey with its head cut off. But when someone steals a turkey from its pen just days before the big day, Cinnamon finds herself pulled into the plight of the poor family whose Thanksgiving has been ruined. Despite having hardly a minute to spare, Cinnamon and her husband, Sheriff Daniel Brightman, are compelled to get to the bottom of the fowl crime. Will they be able to solve the mystery in time to save the family’s Thanksgiving? Roasted in Christmas River is a lighthearted, standalone Thanksgiving novella of 22,000 words with characters from the Christmas River Cozy series.

Deadly Dye and a Soy Chai


Elizabeth Ashby - 2015
    What she wasn't counting on was a client dying during a dye job. But when eighty-year-old Margaret Appleby comes in for her biweekly appointment, that's exactly what happens: Margaret drinks her usual soy chai, dozes off under the dryer...and doesn't wake up. Now The Clip and Sip is under suspicion, clients are wary, and Cassidi is on a mission to prove that while her styles may be killer, her employees are innocent! But as Cassidi wades through the myriad of suspects in the small, costal town, the killer sets his sights straight on everyone's favorite stylist. If Cassidi doesn't watch her back, she may just end up Danger Cove's latest fashionable victim.The Danger Cove books:Secret of the Painted Lady (a Danger Cove Renovation Mystery)Murder and Mai Tais (a Danger Cove Cocktail Mystery)Death by Scones (a Danger Cove Bakery Mystery)Four-Patch of Trouble (a Danger Cove Quilting Mystery)Deadly Dye and a Soy Chai (a Danger Cove Hair Salon Mystery)Killer Closet Case (a Danger Cove B&B Mystery)Tree of Life and Death (a Danger Cove Quilting Mystery)About Danger Cove:Danger Cove is a sleepy little town in the Pacific Northwest and home to renowned mystery novelist, Elizabeth Ashby. While Elizabeth swears the stories she writes are fiction, you can find the inspiration for her murderous tales all over Danger Cove...from the intriguing cast of local characters to the places to eat, play, and explore in Danger Cove. Don't let our name fool you—we're the friendliest (even if deadliest) town in the Pacific Northwest! Visit us at dangercovemysteries.com

Next to Disappear


Malcolm Richards - 2015
    Until disgraced ex-teacher Emily Swanson moves into the couple’s former home.Emily’s life is in ruins and she’s meant to be making a fresh start. But when she learns about the missing nurse, she sees a chance for redemption. Because finding Alina could help right the wrongs of Emily’s past. It could even mark the start of a new career in private investigation.But what Emily doesn’t know is that Alina had a horrifying secret. One about the care foundation where she worked. And the closer Emily gets to uncovering the truth, the closer she gets to terrible danger.Inspired by a shocking true crime, Next To Disappear introduces a thrilling, twist-filled series and a refreshingly different take on the private investigator genre.Revised edition: Previously published as Lost Lives.