Her sometime boyfriend's gone for good. The death of her beloved cat opened a bigger void. And the career leap she's made from copy editor to freelance writer has left her finances and her spirit flat. She desperately needs a headline to get her life back on track.One day, out for a stroll in her Cambridge neighborhood, Theda spies an adorable stray kitten. This charmer leads Theda to an old woman holed up in a decrepit house full of cats. Is this one of those "crazy cat ladies," a classic hoarder, or is the old woman a neighborhood do-gooder?More important, is this the story to catapult Theda out of the dumps?But when she returns to interview Lillian Helmhold, Theda finds her fascinating subject dead of an apparent accident. The neighbors are celebrating, the police aren't interested, and the cats are removed to a shelter. End of story. Not for Theda--one or two things don't compute. So Theda marshals her investigative journalism skills to turn gumshoe.

    In her younger days, she traveled the exotic parts of the world with her husband. These days, she’s retired and founded the local charity shop. Her niece, Megan Pencarrow, transferred nearby, and was recently promoted to the rank of Detective Sargent. Perhaps the only downside is that she is now working for a DI who doesn’t approve of women on the police force and who really doesn’t much approve of Megan’s aunt Eleanor, as she is something of a thorn in his rather substantial side.All of these factors collide when, the day after collecting donations, Eleanor and the vicar’s wife find the dead body of a longhaired, scruffy-looking youth hidden in the stockroom of the charity shop. Then they discover that some donated jewelry thought to be fake is actually very real, very expensive, and the haul from a violent robbery in London. Making matters more complex, the corpse found in the storeroom is apparently not one of the robbers. Carola Dunn's Manna from Hades is a confounding Cornish case of daring theft, doublecross, and a wily older woman confronted by a case of murder most foul.

    Suddenly Lindsay finds herself battling poisoned chocolate, a dead man who doesn't seem very dead and a psycho stalker. Her best friend and co-worker, Paula, dyes her blond hair brown, hides from everybody and insists on always having an emergency exit from any room. Secrets from Paula's past have come back to put lives in jeopardy. Determined to help Paula and to save her own life, Lindsay enlists the reluctant aid of another neighbor, Fred, an OCD computer nerd. In spite of his mundane existence, Fred possesses tidbits of knowledge about such things as hidden microphones, guns and the inside of maximum security prisons. Lindsay needs more than a chocolate fix to survive all this chaos. Lindsay Powell's only secret is the recipe for her chocolate chip cookies, but she is surrounded by neighbors with deadly secrets. Suddenly Lindsay finds herself battling poisoned chocolate, a dead man who doesn't seem very dead and a psycho stalker. Lindsay needs more than a chocolate fix to survive all this chaos.

    The mansion that Ashley Wilkes, historic preservationist, is restoring, with its crescendo-thumping spectral organist, is no exception. When Ashley makes a grisly discovery, the residents of quiet, quaint Orange Street are horrified. Halloween weekend finds Ashley and Melanie dressed to kill at the Cape Fear Crime Festival's costume party where an evil trickster treats them to murder.

    Now, when China's friend Jo dies of an apparent suicide, China looks behind the quaint facade of Pecan Springs. Though she finds a lot of friendly faces, China is sure that one of them hides the heart of a killer.

    Regan Reilly attends a class reunion in England, the long-dead body of her former roommate turns up. Clues to the mystery follow Regan as she sails home--and into the hands of a killer.

    Instead she finds herself heartbroken and in the middle of a murder investigation. Daisy is in the middle of a decorating job at a famed local celebrity's mansion when the arrogant painter is found murdered in his backyard studio. Suddenly there's a house full of suspects, each with a bigger reason to want the victim dead than the next. When the local police get stumped during their investigation, Daisy realizes she'll have to take matters into her own hands. But she can't crack the case alone. She recruits her cupcake-baking best friend Samantha, wise-cracking Granny Annie, and her feisty West Highland Terrier Shamus to find the killer. Other Daisy McDare books: Daisy McDare And The Deadly Legal Affair Daisy McDare And The Deadly Directorial Affair

    She also has a job to do—report on the event for the society page of the Newport Observer.But Emma observes much more than glitz and gaiety when she witnesses a murder. The victim is Cornelius Vanderbilt’s financial secretary, who plunges off a balcony faster than falling stock prices. Emma’s black sheep brother Brady is found in Cornelius’s bedroom passed out next to a bottle of bourbon and stolen plans for a new railroad line. Brady has barely come to before the police have arrested him for the murder. But Emma is sure someone is trying to railroad her brother and resolves to find the real killer at any cost…

    Returning to her hometown of Moosetookalook, Maine, she decides to help her aunt run her Scottish emporium. But when murder rears its ugly head in the idyllic, quiet village, Liss will have to add sleuthing to her repertoire...Liss hasn’t been in Moosetookalook in over ten years, but the quaint little town, nestled in the hilly terrain of western Maine, looks exactly as she remembers it. Only home a day before her aunt takes off on a tour of Scotland, Liss mans the emporium’s booth at the annual Western Maine Highland Games. There she gets reacquainted with some old friends and new local characters, including an obnoxious real estate agent and his spoiled girlfriend who insists on ordering a custom-made kilt sewn from a plaid called the Flower of Scotland.Liss knows a sale is a sale and returns to the emporium that night exhausted yet happy. But her bliss soon turns to dread when she finds the dead body of her aunt’s nosy neighbor, Amanda Norris, under a bolt of the Flower of Scotland fabric in the stock room. And if things weren’t bad enough, the state police hone in on Liss as the prime suspect.With the help of Dan Ruskin, a neighbor and former high school classmate, Liss begins her own investigation that uncovers secrets about the residents of Moosetookalook–secrets she wished had stayed buried. Now Liss will have to do some fancy footwork to prove she’s innocent while avoiding becoming the killer’s next victim...

    Greg’s in the kitchen at the grill while Victoria runs the register and takes care of any trouble that comes their way, something that happens all too often. When a stranger shows up one day and tells Victoria that he owns the land the diner was built on, there’s a scramble to dig up secrets from the past that lead into the present when the stranger is found murdered in The Charming Moose’s freezer! Victoria and Moose make an unlikely sleuthing team at first, but they soon learn how to work together to track down a killer.Recipes for real Diner comfort food are included!

    Blackballed by the producers of her hit TV show, she returns home to the affluent town of Westdale, chock full of Mayflower descendants, to enroll in college and lead a quiet life...until she discovers a skeleton in her house. Kit quickly finds herself embroiled in a murder investigation led by the handsome detective, Romeo Moretti. With the help of her new neighbors, Kit channels her former character, hotshot detective Ellie Gold, in order to solve the murder so she can get back to renovating her house and avoiding the Mayflower Madam, who also happens to be her hypercritical, gin-swilling mother. Saints & Strangers cozy mystery series: Book 1: A Dead End Book 2: The Deep End Book 3: The Bitter End

    Gloria uncovers scientific fraud, solves a murder, and engages in her first physical combat, all in the same week.

    But when Felicity becomes the suspect in a local murder, Maggie must enlist Felicity's wiccan friends for help--and discover her own spellbinding talent.

    But her friendship with troubled newcomer Allison McBride takes a dangerous turn when Allison's husband turns up dead in Em's studio. Now Emmeline is involved in a murder investigation that reaches beyond the sunny Southwest. And when the killer acts again, it's up to her to pick up the shards of Allison's life before it's too late.

    Nowadays twenty-two-year-old Siobhán O’Sullivan runs the family bistro named for her mother, along with her five siblings, after the death of their parents in a car crash almost a year ago.   It’s been a rough year for the O’Sullivans, but it’s about to get rougher. One morning, as they’re opening the bistro, they discover a man seated at a table, dressed in a suit as if for his own funeral, a pair of hot pink barber scissors protruding from his chest.   With the local garda suspecting the O’Sullivans, and their business in danger of being shunned—murder tends to spoil the appetite—it’s up to feisty redheaded Siobhán to solve the crime and save her beloved brood.