Amateur Sleuth Cozy

Thanksgiving is nearly here, and Key West food critic Hayley Snow has just one more assignment to put to bed for Key Zest magazine before she gets to celebrate with her family and her police officer fiance, Nathan Bransford. Then, just days later, wedding bells will ring - if death doesn't toll first. The sweet potatoes and stuffing will have to wait when Hayley picks up a distraught phone call from her friend Analise Smith. On the last stop of a seafood tasting tour run by Analise, one of the customers collapsed - dead.

As eager as Beatrice, Duchess of Kesgrave, is to meet her husband’s newly discovered illegitimate half sister, she does not want it to happen like this: in the keeper's house at Newgate. Yes, that Newgate, the abject prison filled with squalor and misery to which Verity Lark has been consigned for murder. Found standing over the slain corpse of an old tormentor with a still-warm pistol in her hand, she is obviously guilty. It is an open-and-shut case with little for an unduly curious duchess to investigate. Except it all seems a little too simple and straightforward.

She keeps house for Inspector Witherspoon...and keeps him on his toes. Everyone's awed by his Scotland Yard successes - but they don't know about his secret weapon. No matter how messy the murder or how dirty the deed, Mrs. Jeffries' polished detection skills are up to the task...proving that behind every great man, there's a woman - and that a crime-solver's work is never done.

Wealthy businessman Jay Ruddle is considering donating his extensive collection of North Carolina historical documents to the Bodie Island Lighthouse Library, but the competition for the collection is fierce. Unfortunately, while the library is hosting a lecture on ghostly legends, Jay becomes one of the dearly departed in the rare books section. Now, it's up to Lucy Richardson and her fellow librarians to bone up on their detective skills and discover who is responsible for this wicked Halloween homicide.

Miracle Springs is a place of healing. Strangers flock there hoping the natural hot springs, five-star cuisine, and renowned spa can cure their ills. And, if none of that works, they often find their way to Miracle Books, where, over a fresh-baked scone from the Gingerbread House bakery, they exchange their stories with owner Nora Pennington in return for a carefully chosen book. That's Nora's special talent. But when a visiting businessman reaches out to Nora for guidance, he's found dead on the train tracks before he can keep their appointment.

I'm finally accepting that my psychic talents serve a purpose, that I can use them to help people. But two mysteries plague me. What happened to my good friend Lucas' sister after she disappeared then years ago? And if my father was murdered when I was young, why do I keep seeing him? When I find the long-buried remains of Lucas' sister, her murdered body only opens more questions.

Dessert chef Casey Feldstein is running a new retreat called From Sheep to Shawl at a resort on the atmospheric Monterey Peninsula. Participants will learn about sheep-shearing, fixing up the fleece, and spinning, and will eventually knit a lovely shawl. Nicole Welton has been hired to teach the fleece-to-fiber portion of the retreat. She's an expert spinner, and her small shop in Cadbury by the Sea houses a beautiful assortment of spinning wheels and drop spindles.

Claire Barclay is enthusiastic about her British Mystery Book Tour business. She enjoys taking her guests, usually from America, to the settings of mystery novels where bodies are long dead. Her neighbor's plea for help to deal with a recently murdered well-known author unsettles her. She leaves the body to the police and takes her guests to Cornwall, including a British tourist who far is too interested in the dead author.

Two things got Rarity Jones through her breast cancer treatments: friends and books. Now cancer-free, Rarity is devoting her life to helping others find their way through the maze to healing. She's opened a bookstore focusing on the power of healing—Eastern medicine, Western medicine, the healing power of food, the power of meditation, and the importance of developing a support community. To that end, she's also started the Tuesday Night Survivors book club. But their therapeutic unity is disrupted when one of their members suddenly goes missing.

A horrific explosion at a gunpowder mill sends Bess Crawford to war-torn France to keep a deadly pattern of lies from leading to more deaths, in this compelling and atmospheric mystery from the New York Times bestselling author of A Question of Honor and An Unwilling Accomplice. An explosion and...

The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine is another mystifying manor-house stumper for Wodehousian bon-vivant and problem-solver Anty Boisjoly, when his clubmate asks him to determine who died first after a duel is fought in a locked room. The untold riches of the Tenpenny Tontine are in the balance, but the stakes only get higher when Anty determines that, duel or not, this was a case of murder.

Peace and quiet are hard to find in bustling Key West, so Hayley Snow, a food critic for Key Zest magazine, is taking the afternoon off for a tranquil lunch with a friend outside of town. As they are enjoying the wild beach and the lunch, she realizes that her husband Nathan’s dog, Ziggy, has disappeared. She follows his barking and finds him furiously digging at a shallow grave with a man’s body in it. Davis Jager, a local birdwatcher, identifies him as GG Garcia, a rabble-rousing Key West local and developer.

For 10 years Lucy has enjoyed her job poring over rare tomes of literature for the Harvard Library, but she has not enjoyed the demands of her family's social whorl or her sort-of engagement to the staid son of her father's law partner. But when her 10-year relationship implodes, Lucy realizes that the plot of her life is in need of a serious rewrite.

Determined not to be a garden-variety diva, Sophie Winston's neighbor Natasha cultivates a plan to shine on television - using Sophie's backyard. As the cast and crew of the makeover show Tear It Up with Troy bulldoze through her backyard - and vacation - Sophie retreats to her perennial boyfriend Wolf's to replace a dead rose bush. But her tender deed goes awry when she digs up a purse belonging to Wolf's missing wife

It's the dead of winter in the sleepy town of Ashland, which means no tourists - and fewer customers - for Jules Capshaw and her bakery. But when she's asked to cater an off-season retreat for the directors of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, business starts heating up...until Jules finds a dead body in the freezer. Someone at the retreat has apparently iced the bartender, a well-known flirt with a legendary temper - that is, before a killer beat him to the punch. Then, from out of nowhere, Jules' own ex-husband shows up at the shop.

What do steeplechase, playing cards, and daggers have in common? They all play vital roles in the intricately woven plot of Sneaky Pie and her human cohort Rita Mae Brown in this delightful mystery. While Mary "Harry" Haristeen and her cat Mrs. Murphy attend the annual steeplechase at Montpelier, Mrs. Murphy discovers something amiss. During the celebration following the race, one of the jockeys is found dead in the barn, a dagger through his heart and the queen of clubs impaled by the dagger.

As if a run-in with an old flame and a failed marriage proposal weren't enough to horrify Krissy for one night, a woman is found strangled to death in a room filled with ominous jack-o'-lanterns. All signs suggest a crime of passion - but when the hostess's jewelry disappears, malevolent intentions seem way more likely.

Pet Mystery Week brings brisk business to Penelope's Rhode Island bookshop, but a real mystery comes barking at her door when a lost dog turns up in a panic. Pen and her son Spencer follow the furry fugitive to a wooded area where the dog's owner lies unconscious. Mrs. Cunningham is a warm-hearted widow who volunteers at the animal shelter and runs Buy the Book's pet lovers book club. Why would anyone shoot such a sweet soul? The police believe it's an accident, a shot by a careless deer hunter, but Pen remains skeptical.

Ever since her husband’s affair, Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen has taken a sabbatical from men. The 30-ish divorcée is content to tend her farm and gain a bird’s-eye view of the neighbors from her perch as small-town postmistress. Yet when a hunky city slicker comes to town with no clue about farming, she’s happy to show him the ropes. When pieces of a dismembered body crop up around Crozet, however, the wary townsfolk reckon the handsome stranger is the culprit.

South Cove, California, is celebrating St. Patrick's Day - and there's going to be a parade of suspects... Jill Gardner's store, Coffee, Books, and More, is raking in the green as her little coastal town holds a big festival for St. Patrick's Day. But the locals aren't exactly feeling the luck of the Irish, thanks to the rowdy behavior of some of the tourists who are pouring in. Then a woman who just visited Jill's shop is found dead near the shore. The fireworks display on the beach may have already happened, but the real fireworks have just begun....