Amateur Detectives Mystery

Radio star Nelle Brown is known coast-to-coast for her sweet and sultry voice. But her press agent and manager, Jake Justus, is familiar with another side of the darling of the airwaves: her crackpot marriage to a penniless tycoon, disastrous string of lovers, and propensity for flying into spectacular fits of rage. Now, it appears she’s being burned by an ex-flame who’s holding her scandalous love letters for ransom. The missives could ruin Nelle’s career, but so could the scoundrel’s murder.

At first, the mystery they're tasked with seems to have nothing to do with Aerin or her kidnapper. But as Seneca, Maddox, and Madison hit the Jersey Shore to gather clues, they begin to uncover the true background of the killer and the horrors that shaped him into who he is. The scavenger hunt leads them to the family of a recently kidnapped boy, a serial child-snatcher, and dark secrets they could never have seen coming.

Texas genealogist Lucy Lancaster deals with murders in both the past and present in this captivating first mystery in the Ancestry Detective series.

Residents are sneezing and coughing all over town, and it seems like a brutal allergy season is upon us—until someone dies. When Dr.Verity reveals a supernatural cause, I'm on the case, but how do I track a culprit whose only evidence seems to be the infection it leaves behind? In the meantime, neighbors, new and old, bring trouble to Munster Close, and I need to intervene before the wicked witches escalate matters. With the annual cheese festival on the horizon and a stealthy demon on the loose, I know I'll need to set aside my misgivings and use my magic to prevent a catastrophe.

Trapped on a burning mountain, the Queens take refuge with a killer. Dashing detective Ellery Queen and his father are driving over the pothole-scarred Arrow Mountain Road when they come face to face with a wall of flame. They tear back in the other direction, fire at their fenders, and finally find safety in a clearing, at the home of Dr. Xavier, a renowned surgeon. He is a genial man, but his distracted, mysterious smile conceals dark secrets.

When Donna branches out from floristry to private investigation and opens The Edge of the World Detective Agency, the last thing she expects is to have a murder fall into her lap almost immediately. Now, normally she wouldn’t be one to look a gift horse in the mouth, but there’s one significant problem with the case – all the evidence points to Donna as the murderer!

It was the perfect night for a party. That is, until 21-year-old Chelsea Dawson disappeared. The social media star was last seen enjoying a beautiful summer night at the Jersey Shore with her friends. But after an explosive fight with her ex-boyfriend, she vanished without a trace. When Seneca, Maddox, Aerin, and Madison hear about the suspected kidnapping, they notice a jarring detail about the victim: she looks exactly like Aerin's sister, Helena, who was killed five years earlier.

When Cookie Berelli, a dress designer for full-figured women, discovers her private investigator dead in her salon, she calls on a few friends to get her out of trouble. This cozy mystery with a dog includes a cute little dachshund she named Sigmund Freud because he's such a good listener. She has a bunch of crackpot ideas for how to catch the murderer, and Sigmund, the trustworthy dog he is, follows right along, sometimes even discovering a clue or two himself.

When real estate pro Helen Morrisey’s bombshell daughter, Lizzie, a popular home-shopping network host, invites her to meet an internationally famous chef, Helen jumps at the chance. What woman doesn’t want to shake hands with a celebrity and do a little shopping at the same time? Even more intriguing, this culinary superstar is about to sell his waterfront mansion, and it’s her opportunity to talk business. After all, he couldn’t choose a sharper agent than Helen, could he?

Mrs. Laetitia Rodd, aged 52, is the widow of an archdeacon who makes her living as a highly discreet private investigator. Her brother, Frederick Tyson, is a criminal barrister living in nearby Highgate with his wife and 10 children. Frederick finds the cases, and Laetitia solves them using her arch intelligence and her immaculate cover as an unsuspecting widow. When a case arises involving the son of the highly connected Sir James Calderstone, Laetitia sets off for Lincolnshire undercover as the family's new governess.

New York, January 1896: Arthur Conan Doyle, the renowned creator of Sherlock Holmes, arrives at the Britannic Hotel with his wife, Louisa, ready to begin his first American tour. While he prepares his lectures, Louisa becomes mesmerised by this brash, vibrant, dangerous city, especially when a woman's brutally butchered corpse is found in a Bowery alley and Louisa is convinced from the artist's sketch in the paper that she'd seen the victim at the hotel.

Just as a murderer dumps his corpse into the lake across Valley View in Lily Dale, Bella Jordan happens to be at her window, not quite realizing what she's seeing. Jiffy Arden, a neighborhood kid looking for the black cat and stumbling across the killer, begins to have premonitions of being kidnapped during the season's first snowstorm. Sure enough, he vanishes. A body shows up in the lake. Now everyone is pulling out all the stops to find the missing child, identify the victim, and collar the killer - and fast, because he's coming for Bella next in Dead of Winter.

Bayou transplant Odessa Dean has a lot to learn about life in Brooklyn. So far she's scored a rent free apartment in one of the nicest neighborhoods around by cat-sitting, and has a new job working at Untapped Books & Café. Hand-selling books and craft beers is easy for Odessa, but making new friends and learning how to ride the subway? Well, that might take her a little extra time. But things turn more sour than an IPA when the death of a fellow waitress goes viral, caught on camera in the background of a couple's flash-mob proposal video.

Newly single magician Eli Marks reluctantly attends his high school reunion against his better judgment, only to become entangled in two deadly encounters with his former classmates. The first is the fatal mugging of an old crush's husband, followed by the suspicious deaths of the victim's business associates.

An extraordinary woman living in extraordinary times, Lady Frances Ffolkes is an Edwardian era suffragette who has an uncanny ability to attract danger and romance. When Major Colcombe, a family friend and war veteran, dies under mysterious circumstances, the good Lady discovers that he was working on a manuscript, about South Africa's bloody Boer War, that reportedly revealed a scandalous mistake that cost many innocent lives.

Press agent Jake Justus doesn’t care if all of Chicago drops dead. He’s just tied the knot with debutante Helene Brand, and a Bermuda honeymoon is only three in-flight martinis away. But the shooting death of a man in broad daylight, on the busiest shopping day of the year, with plenty of witnesses, is particularly ill-timed. Jake’s pal, attorney John J. Malone, agrees. Only a day before, wedding guest Mona McClane, notorious jet-setter and tipsy big-game hunter, bet the two men she could bag an innocent stranger and they’d never be able to prove a thing.

After getting reassigned from the North Pole by a jealous Mrs. Claus, misfit elf Holly Hopewell is sent to work in the worst place imaginable - The North Pole Emporium Department store in Mistletoe, Oregon. The elves call it Mistletoe Row, a place so devoid of joy and Christmas spirit, that many a curly-toed folk has lost their poor mind working there. But just when Holly thinks things can’t get any worse, the store’s manager, who also happens to be Mrs. Claus’s nephew, is found murdered in his office.

The Queens are intrigued when a grisly murder mars a small town's Christmas. It's Christmas in Chicago, and Detective Richard Queen is enjoying a busman's holiday at a conference on gangland violence - but his son, amateur sleuth Ellery, is bored silly. Until, that is, Ellery reads of an unusual killing in rural Arroyo, West Virginia. A schoolmaster has been found beheaded and crucified. Ellery hustles his father into his roadster and heads east, since there is nothing he'd like better for Christmas than a juicy, gruesome puzzle.

Ellery Queen is persuaded to accompany an old friend and sculptor to his ancestral home when the latter arrives at Ellery's house covered in blood and unable to remember anything from the past few weeks. Once there, tensions erupt and foul play results in the murder of one of the household's members. Among the many transgressions Ellery will uncover are adultery, blackmail, and deceit.

For Ellery Queen, there is no puzzle that reason cannot solve. In his time, he has faced down killers, thugs, and thieves, protected only by the might of his brain - and the odd bit of timely intervention by his father, a burly New York police inspector. But when a university professor asks Queen to teach a class, the detective finds there are people whom reason cannot touch: college students. Queen's adventure on campus is only the first of this incomparable collection of short mysteries.