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First to Find by Morgan C. Talbot


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Innocent in Las Vegas


A.R. Winters - 2013
    She's one small step away from acquiring her Private Investigator license, and has her eye on the prize.Accepting her first real case - investigating the murder of casino-mogul Ethan Becker - should be exciting. Instead, things spiral out of control and Tiffany finds herself in over her head, as she confronts secretive suspects, corrupt casino henchmen and her mysterious, ex-Special Forces bodyguard.Tiffany's poker-hustling Nanna and pushy parents want her to find a nice man and settle down, but Tiffany just wants to track down the real murderer before he finds her first...

Carrots


Colleen Helme - 2011
    Her life is organized and predictable, revolving around her husband and two children. All that changes the day she stops at the grocery store for some carrots. As the cashier rings up her purchases, a gunman is busy robbing the bank inside the store. When a customer grabs the robber's mask, he is shot and everyone runs for cover. Everyone except Shelby, who finds herself face to face with the killer. The next thing she knows, she's lying on the floor with a bullet wound to her head. Luckily, the bullet only grazes her scalp, and she doesn't suspect any lasting affects until later, when she suddenly 'hears' what people are thinking. With this uncanny ability, her life takes on a whole new dimension. Her kids think she's bossy and too old to understand them, but that's nothing compared to her husband. He says he loves her, but what is it about the redhead at work that he doesn't want her to know? As if that isn't enough, the gunman knows she can identify him, and he's out to silence her forever. In her fight to stay alive, she is saved from certain death by a handsome hit-man with ties to organized crime. This pulls Shelby even deeper into danger, where knowing someone's thoughts can not only hurt her feelings, but get her killed.

The Case of the Flashing Fashion Queen


N.L. Wilson - 2011
    firm where she's worked for years, Dix Dodd has hung out her own shingle at the ripe age of 40. There are plenty of cheating husbands to go around, and Dix has a knack for busting them. Problem is, it doesn't always pay so well. Conscious that the guys back at the old firm are laying bets about how soon she'll come crawling back, she figures she's got six months to make a go of it.The going gets even tougher when she hires Dylan Foreman. But when he told her about getting fired from his law firm and disbarred for putting common decency before the firm's interests, she hired him on the spot. In addition to being smart, he's gorgeous enough to remind her she's a woman. And at 28, young enough to make her feel like a total cougar.Things start looking up when Dix gets hired by millionaire businessman Ned Weatherby's wife Jennifer Weatherby, to tail Ned 24/7 for a week, for a cool ten grand. Easy-peasy, right? Wrong! The job lands Dix in the middle of a murder investigation - with her as the prime suspect and her arch-enemy Detective Richard Head (a.k.a., Dickhead, one of the cheating husbands she'd nailed) gunning for her.Dix will need all her ingenuity, as well as the help of Dylan and her oddball cast of supporters to extricate herself from this one.

An Affair to Dismember


Elise Sax - 2013
    That’s why Gladie is more than a little skeptical when her Grandma Zelda — who is more than a little psychic — recruits her into the family’s matchmaking business in the quaint small town of Cannes, California. What’s more, Gladie is also highly unqualified, having a terrible track record with romance. Still, Zelda is convinced that her granddaughter has her clairvoyant “gift.” But when the going gets tough, Gladie wonders if this gift has a return policy. When Zelda’s neighbor drops dead in his kitchen, Gladie is swept into his bizarre family’s drama. Despite warnings from the (distractingly gorgeous) chief of police to steer clear of his investigation, Gladie is out to prove that her neighbor’s death was murder. It’s not too long before she’s in way over her head — with the hunky police chief, a dysfunctional family full of possible killers, and yet another mysterious and handsome man, whose attentions she’s unable to ignore. Gladie is clearly being pursued — either by true love or by a murderer. Who will catch her first?

The Obituary Society


Jessica L. Randall - 2014
    Lila is charmed by the people of Auburn, from the blue-eyed lawyer with the southern drawl to the little old lady who unceasingly tries to set Lila up with her grandson. But when strange things begin to happen, Lila realizes some of her new friends are guarding a secret like it's a precious family heirloom. It's a dangerous secret, and it has come back to haunt them. Lila is caught in the middle, and her life may depend on uncovering it. But even if she can, can she stay in Auburn when not everyone is what they seem, and even the house wants her gone?

Cappuccinos, Cupcakes, and a Corpse


Harper Lin - 2015
    She spends her days making delicious artisan cappuccinos, until she stumbles upon her neighbor’s dead body. When the police discover Mr. Cardosi was poisoned, Francesca becomes a suspect. The victim’s son, Matty, happens to be Francesca’s old high school friend. Together, they uncover the secrets of the locals in order to find the killer in their idyllic beach town. Includes two special cupcake recipes!

Take the Monkeys and Run


Karen Cantwell - 2010
    Typical, that is until she sets out to find the missing link between a bizarre monkey sighting in her yard and the bone chilling middle-of-the-night fright fest at the strangely vacant house next door. When Barb talks her two friends into some seemingly innocent Charlie’s Angels-like sleuthing, they stumble upon way more than they bargained for and uncover a piece of neighborhood history that certain people would kill to keep on the cutting room floor.Enter sexy PI Colt Baron, Barb’s ex-boyfriend who would love to be cast as new leading man, filling the role just vacated by her recently estranged husband, Howard. When Colt flies in from out of town to help Barb, events careen out of control and suddenly this mini-van driving mother of three becomes a major player in a treacherous and potentially deadly FBI undercover operation. It’s up to her now. With little time to spare, she and she alone, must summon the inner strength necessary to become a true action heroine and save the lives of those she loves. The question is can she get them out alive before the credits roll?

Death Turns a Trick


Julie Smith - 1982
    That dirty job done, a lovely evening turns even more delightful when she’s picked up by the cops and spends the next two hours at the Hall of Justice. Could this day get any worse? Of Course! Guess who arrives home to find a dead hooker on her living room floor?Handsome Parker Phillips, Rebecca’s new beau and the most attractive man she’s met in ages, is arrested for the murder. (Worse, she suspects he might actually have done it.)On the plus side, another very attractive man is following the case--reporter Rob Burns of the San Francisco Chronicle, a possible ally. And there are other possibilities.Fans of Janet Evanovich, Joan Hess, and Elizabeth Peters will get a kick out of this one.

Loose Screw


Rae Davies - 2011
    She even lets a cat shove her around.When Lucy trips over the body of a buckskin-clad relics trader, her ex-boss asks her to cover the story. She tries to tell him no, but old habits die hard and soon she finds herself directly in the path of a killer and the exasperating, if attractive, detective in charge.Can Lucy catch a killer or is this the last confrontation for her—period?

Moon Signs


Helen Haught Fanick - 2011
    Her sister Andrea has an altogether different point of view. When the sisters go to the Canaan Valley to search for paintings mentioned in a document found in an old hotel once owned by their grandparents—paintings that might be Monets—Andrea immediately becomes involved in tracking down a murderer. Kathleen would much rather be looking for the paintings, but she goes along with Andrea, since the victim was their hotel-keeper, murdered just down the hall from their room. The question is: Does the murder have something to do with the elusive paintings?There are many clues and many suspects, including hotel staff, valley residents, and the mysterious foreigners who come from the Eastern Seaboard for skiing. There are also many types of danger—icy roads, sub-zero temperatures, and a killer who doesn’t care how many people die in the attempt to make sure the right ones do.

An Invitation to Murder


Leighann Dobbs - 2017
    Not only to stop the killing but also to prove her skills at detection to her father and win her dowry and independence. There’s only one catch—she has to take one last matchmaking job to do it. Never mind that the match is impossible, all the better because if she fails, then no one will seek her services again. The job provides the perfect cover especially when her peculiar investigatory techniques are mistaken for unconventional matchmaking attempts. Things would go a lot smoother if she weren’t knee-deep in suspects and thwarted at every turn by a rival matchmaker. But when the killer strikes again, Katherine’s investigation leads down a dangerous path. Too late, she discovers that she has a lot more to lose than her dowry…

Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes


Denise Grover Swank - 2011
    She’s had plenty of visions, usually boring ones like someone’s toilet’s overflowed, but she’s never seen one of herself before. When her overbearing momma winds up murdered on her sofa instead, two things are certain: There isn't enough hydrogen peroxide in the state of Arkansas to get that stain out, and Rose is the prime suspect.Rose realizes she’s wasted twenty-four years of living and makes a list on the back of a Wal-Mart receipt: twenty-eight things she wants to accomplish before her vision comes true. She’s well on her way with the help of her next door neighbor Joe, who has no trouble teaching Rose the rules of drinking, but won’t help with number fifteen-- do more with a man. Joe’s new to town, but it doesn’t take a vision for Rose to realize he’s got plenty of secrets of his own.Somebody thinks Rose has something they want and they’ll do anything to get it. Her house is broken into, someone else she knows is murdered, and suddenly, dying a virgin in the Fenton County jail isn’t her biggest worry after all.

Picking Lemons


J.T. Toman - 2013
    When Professor Edmund de Beyer is found in his office strangled to death by his own PhD hood, the police don't have to look any further than his colleagues in the Economics Department for suspects. After all, Edmund was the most despised faculty member in the department. CJ Whitmore, the department's only tenured female (who also has a penchant for wearing pink-cowboy-boots to class), resolves to get to the bottom of the mystery using economic principles. Comparing tracking down murder suspects to selecting a used car, she attempts to discern the real deals from the "lemons." That is, which suspects are really telling the truth and which are lying to protect their guilt? Will CJ be able to pick the lemon before her clever adversary strike again?

Undertaking Irene


Pamela Burford - 2014
    To dead people.Life gets complicated for Jane and her Death Diva business when she’s hired to liberate a gaudy mermaid brooch from the corpse during a wake—on behalf of the rightful owner, supposedly. Well, a girl’s got to make a living, and this assignment pays better than scattering ashes, placing flowers on graves, or bawling her eyes out as a hired mourner. Unfortunately for Jane, someone else is just as eager to get his hands on that brooch, and he’s even sneakier than she is, not to mention dangerously sexy.Just when she thinks her biggest problem is grand theft mermaid, things take a murderous turn. But hey, when you’ve teamed up with a neurotic seven-pound poodle named Sexy Beast, how can you go wrong?

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.