Book picks similar to
Simon Said by Sarah R. Shaber


mystery
cozy-mystery
mysteries
fiction

A First Date with Death


Diana Orgain - 2015
     When brokenhearted Georgia Thornton goes looking for romance on reality TV, she has nothing to lose—apart from a good man, a cash prize, and maybe her life… What was Georgia thinking? Sure, some cad ditched her at the altar, but can she really find love on TV? Her best friend—and producer of the reality show Love or Money—thinks so. Ten men. Ten adventure-filled dates. What can go wrong? For starters, a faulty bungee cord that hurls Georgia’s first date into a tragic spiral off the Golden Gate Bridge. He’s replaced by Paul Sanders, Georgia’s former fiancé. But the cop isn’t looking for a TV gig. Suspecting that the lover’s leap was no accident, Paul’s going undercover. When another bachelor gets a fatal kiss-off, the reality is that someone has killer new plans for the show—and for Georgia herself. Now, under the threat of permanent cancellation, Georgia fears that the only man on the set she can trust is the one man she just can’t count on…

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.

Sharpe Shooter


Lisa B. Thomas - 2015
    They found a skeleton in the closet…literally. When they identify the man’s body 40 years after his disappearance, the family turns to their niece, Deena Sharpe, to uncover the truth about his murder. Deena, a burned-out high school teacher, soon discovers that a mysterious author is about to implicate her dead uncle in his latest conspiracy theory. She must channel her inner Lara Croft and Lois Lane to solve the puzzle and protect her family name. With the help of her off-beat brother and others from the cozy town of Maycroft, Texas, Deena takes on a quest that leads to more questions than answers. Along the way, she discovers some truths about life and herself as well.

Tear Down and Die


Joanna Campbell Slan - 2013
    She never expected to uncover an old boyfriend and a dead body… Stuart, Florida--With her parents deceased and her son away at college, Cara Mia Delgatto longs to reinvent herself. And a sentimental purchase of a fixer-upper in a small, coastal town seems ideal for a new business selling repurposed relics. But when she trips over a corpse at her rundown building, she flips from renovator to prime suspect. Desperate to clear her name, it shocks Cara to discover that her property once housed a multi-million dollar art collection—stolen after the original owner’s death. And when her first love shows up and tugs at her heartstrings, her whirlwind life upgrades to a hurricane. With accusations of murder and theft looming, she’s running out of redos. Can Cara crack the case and rebuild her reputation, or will her desire to upcycle treasures send her to jail? Tear Down and Die is the charming first novel in the Cara Mia Delgatto traditional mystery series. If you like cozy reads, witty heroines, former flames reconnecting, and Florida’s beautiful Treasure Coast, you’ll adore Joanna Campbell Slan’s captivating tale.

Borrower of the Night


Elizabeth Peters - 1973
    The prize has called to Vicky Bliss, drawing her and an arrogant male colleague into the forbidding citadel and its dark secrets. But the treasure hunt soon turns deadly. Here, where the blood of the long forgotten damned stains ancient stones, Vicky must face two equally perilous possibilities. Either a powerful supernatural evil inhabits this place. . .or someone frighteningly real is willing to kill for what Vicky is determined to find.

Chef Maurice and a Spot of Truffle


J.A. Lang - 2015
    By this measure, Chef Maurice was very trustworthy indeed.” Take one sleepy Cotswold village, mix in one Poirot-esque murder mystery, add a larger-than-life French chef with an appetite for solving crime, and season with clues and red herrings galore . . . It’s autumn in the Cotswolds, and Chef Maurice is facing a problem of mushrooming proportion. Not only has his wild herb and mushroom supplier, Ollie Meadows, missed his weekly delivery—he’s missing vital signs too, when he turns up dead in the woods near Beakley village. Soon, Chef Maurice is up to his nose in some seriously rotten business—complete with threatening notes, a pignapping, and an extremely well-catered stake-out. Can he solve Ollie’s murder before his home-made investigation brings the killer out for second helpings?

How to Murder a Millionaire


Nancy Martin - 2002
    They gave me the land--and a property tax bill for two million dollars. Which is why I, Nora Blackbird, a former socialite who never really held a job in all of my thirty-one years, found myself in dire need of a paycheck. . ."Now Nora has a job as a society page columnist for a Philadelphia paper. This down—and almost,—out former debutante is happy to reclaim her place within the city's elite. Until her first party assignment, when she stumbles upon the murdered body of the host—a millionaire art collector and old family friend. Her sisters—sexy, hard-edged Emma and flaky earth mother Libby, who has her hands full with husband number two and four kids—only complicate matters as Nora investigates. And meanwhile the son of a rumored New Jersey crime boss is pursuing her with bone-melting come-ons she can barely resist. Priorities, Nora, think priorities...

Girl Jacked


Christopher Greyson - 2013
    They were old friends. He knew only one way to deal with pain. Hunt it down and kill it." Police Officer Jack Stratton is hiding. Hiding from the world. From pain. From the memories of losing his best friend, Chandler, in Iraq. Suffering from PTSD and isolated from those he cares about, the last thing Jack expects to hear is his foster sister Michelle, Chandler’s sister, is gone. The words cut straight to his core. Although the police think she just took off, he knows Michelle would never leave those she loved behind–like he did. Now he must take action, find Michelle, and bring her home or die trying. The first novel in the Jack Stratton Collection introduces us to handsome rogue, Jack Stratton. A debt of honor to his dead foster brother drives Jack into a world of deception and lies. As Jack’s walls begin to crumble, he must navigate the quirky characters that seep into the mystery of his foster sister’s disappearance. And in the sleepy community of Darrington, like so many places in this world, nothing is as it appears. The hidden mysteries that often go unnoticed begin to emerge as Jack and his new unpredictable sidekick begin to turn over the rocks. Following a trail that has grown cold, Jack must tread carefully to protect his job, his family, and his life. This stand-alone novel features rogue hero Jack Stratton. Look for other books in the Jack Stratton Collection including Jack Knifed, Jacks are Wild, and now Jack and the Giant Killer. They can be read in any order, however, they are best experienced in sequence.

Murder with Peacocks


Donna Andrews - 1999
    Down in her small Virginia hometown, she's maid of honor at the nuptials of three loved ones--each of whom has dumped the planning in her capable hands. One bride is set on including a Native American herbal purification ceremony, while another wants live peacocks on the lawn. Only help from the town's drop-dead gorgeous hunk, disappointingly rumored to be gay, keeps Meg afloat in a sea of dotty relatives and outrageous neighbors.And, in whirl of summer parties and picnics, Southern hospitality is strained to the limit by an offensive newcomer who hints at skeletons in the guests' closets. But it seems this lady has offended one too many when she's found dead in suspicious circumstances, followed by a string of accidents--some fatal. Soon, level-headed Meg's to-do list extends from flower arrangements and bridal registries to catching a killer--before the next catered event is her own funeral...

Deep Fried and Pickled


Paisley Ray - 2012
    She has barely had time to acquaint herself to the dorm food before finding herself threatened by a jealous She-Devil, fending off the advances of a thirty-something redneck, and stumbling upon an art fraud scheme. To top things off, her parents go their separate ways: her mom to follow a psychic calling; her dad adrift in his midlife crisis.Bad decision-making, law-bending behavior, and surprise romances make freshman year memorable in Paisley Ray's DEEP FRIED AND PICKLED.

A Cold Day For Murder


Dana Stabenow - 1992
    But the world has a way of beating a path to her door, however remote. In the middle of one of the bitterest Decembers in recent memory ex-boss - and ex-lover - Jack Morgan shows up with an FBI agent in tow. A Park ranger with powerful relatives is missing, and now the investigator Jack sent in to look for him is missing, too.Reluctantly, Kate, along with Mutt, her half-wolf, half-husky sidekick, leaves her wilderness refuge to follow a frozen trail through the Park, twenty thousand square miles of mountain and tundra sparsely populated with hunters, fishermen, trappers, mushers, pilots and homesteaders. Her formidable grandmother and Native chief, Ekaterina Shugak, is - for reasons of her own - against Kate's investigation; her cousin, Martin, may be Kate's prime suspect; and the local trooper, Jim Chopin, is more interested in Kate than in her investigation. In the end, the sanctuary she sought after five and a half years in the urban jungles may prove more lethal than anything she left behind in the city streets of Anchorage.

Hollywood Homicide : The First Detective by Day Humorous Mystery


Kellye Garrett - 2017
    All the semi-famous, mega-broke black actress wants is to help her parents keep their house. After witnessing a deadly hit-and-run, she figures pursuing the fifteen-grand reward isn’t the craziest thing a Hollywood actress has done for some cash.But what starts as simply trying to remember a speeding car soon blossoms into a full-on investigation. As Dayna digs deeper into the victim’s life, she wants more than just reward money. She’s determined to find the poor woman’s killer too. When she connects the accident to a notorious Hollywood crime spree, Dayna chases down leads at paparazzi hot spots, celeb homes and movie premieres. She loves every second—until someone tries to kill her.And there are no second takes in real life.

No Game For a Dame


M. Ruth Myers - 2011
     Moving through streets where people line up at soup kitchens, Maggie draws information from sources others overlook: The waitress at the dime store lunch counter where she has breakfast; a ragged newsboy; the other career girls at her rooming house. Her digging gets her chloroformed and left in a ditch behind the wheel of her DeSoto. She makes her way to an upscale bordello and gets tea – and information – from the madam herself. A gunman puts a bullet through Maggie’s hat. Her shutterbug pal on the evening paper warns her off. A new cop whose presence unsettles her thinks she’s crooked. Before she finds all the answers she needs, she faces a half-crazed man with a gun, and a far more lethal point-blank killer. If you like Robert B. Parker's hard boiled Spencer series and strong women sleuths, don't miss this one-of-a-kind Ohio detective from a time in United States history when dames wore hats -- but seldom a Smith & Wesson.

Murder is Elementary


Diane Weiner - 2014
    What a joy to be able to attend the holiday concert without worrying about how her chorus will perform. But wait. Where's the principal? Susan offers to check, only to find the principal lying dead on her office floor. Of course, now that she's retired she has time to help the local police (one of whom is her daughter) solve the mysterious crime. Did the principal die of natural causes? The bruise on her face doesn't seem severe enough to be fatal. What about that funfetti cupcake sitting on her desk? Could she have been poisoned? Susan has just found the perfect retirement activity, much to her daughter's chagrin. And when the principal's teenage daughter, one of Susan's all time favorite students, asks for help - how can she say no? Little does she realize that this crime will take her far from the schoolhouse doors, as she investigates a mystery that extends back into one family's painful past.

Gin & Daggers


Jessica Fletcher - 1989
    She's also looking forward to seeing her mentor, Marjorie Ainsworth, who will be hosting a party on her estate to celebrate her latest book. Marjorie is the grand dame of mystery writing. But a routine business trip becomes murderous business--when Jessica discovers Marjorie stabbed to death in her own bedroom.Librarian's note: the first five books in the Jessica Fletcher / Donald Bain "Murder She Wrote" series are #1, Gin & Daggers, 1989 with a 2nd edition in 2000; #2, Manhattans & Murder, 1994; #3, Rum & Razors, 1995; #4, Brandy & Bullets, 1995; and #5, Martinis & Mayhem, 1995.