Animal Mysteries

Charlie and Diesel, along with Charlie's fiancee, Helen Louise Brady, are heading to Asheville, North Carolina, to spend a week at a boutique hotel and participate in a gathering of a mystery reader's club composed of patrons of the Athena Public Library. The always spry Ducote sisters, friends of the hotel's owners, are helping underwrite the expenses, and they've insisted that Charlie, Helen, and Diesel join them. When an intrusive, uninvited guest turns up dead, only one mystery club member with a connection to the deceased appears to have a motive to kill.

Holiday time in the Valley, and in the holiday spirit - despite the dismal shape of the finances at the Little Detective Agency - Bernie refers a potential client to Victor Klovsky, a fellow private eye. It’s also true that the case - promising lots of online research but little action - doesn’t appeal to Bernie, while it seems perfect for Victor, who is not cut out for rough stuff. But Victor disappears in a rough-stuff way, and when he doesn’t show up at his mom’s to light the Hanukkah candles, she hires Chet and Bernie to find him.

Spring has come to charming North Harbor, Maine, and with the new season comes a new haul for Second Chance, the shop where Sarah Grayson sells lovingly refurbished and repurposed items. Sarah is turning her keen eye to the estate of collector Edison Hall, hoping for fabulous finds for Second Chance - but when her rescue cat, Elvis, discovers a body in the kitchen, everything goes paws up. The body belongs to an appraiser who had been hired to check out Edison's wine collection.

Things have been quiet in the coastal town of North Harbor, Maine, since Sarah Grayson and her rescue cat, Elvis, solved their first murder. Sarah is happy running Second Chance, the shop where she sells lovingly refurbished and repurposed items. But then she gets dragged into a controversy over developing the waterfront. Most of the residents - including Sarah - are for it, but there is one holdout: baker Lily Carter.

Sarah Grayson is the happy proprietor of Second Chance, a charming shop in the oceanfront town of North Harbor, Maine. At the shop she sells used items that she has lovingly refurbished and repurposed. But her favorite pet project so far has been adopting a stray cat she names Elvis. The big black cat with a scar across his nose turned up at a local bar when the band was playing the King of Rock and Roll's music and hopped in Sarah's truck.

In Ilmarsh, England, local police detective Alec Nichols discovers sixteen horses' heads on a farm, each buried with a single eye facing the low winter sun. After Veterinary Forensics expert Cooper Allen travels to the scene, a pathogen is discovered lurking within the soil, and many of those who have come into contact with the corpses grow critically ill. A series of crimes comes to light—disappearances, arson, and mutilations—and in the dark days that follow, the town slips into panic and paranoia.

When Mercy Watson the pig goes missing, all of Deckawoo Drive is in an uproar. The Watsons are inconsolable, and the local police, fire, and animal control departments are no help whatsoever. Bossy neighbor Eugenia Lincoln is not quite as sad as she might be, but thankfully her sister, Baby Lincoln, has the idea to hire a private investigator. Granted, Percival Smidgely, PI, may be more bumbler than gumshoe, but his pigeon, Polly, is there to point the way.

Willow Feathers McBeaver, aka Detective Duck, is a crime-solving (and very precocious) little duck. She and her animal pals live on Dogwood Pond, a beautiful pond in New England adjacent to Lazy Days, a human campground. Dogwood Pond has always been a pristine spot with clear water, abundant wildlife, and shady willow trees, but now it is encountering puzzling problems—mysteries that arise from human-caused disruptions in nature, such as water pollution, refuse, warming climate, and human encroachment.

When the downtrodden animals of Manor Farm overthrow their master Mr Jones and take over the farm themselves, they imagine it is the beginning of a life of freedom and equality. But gradually a cunning, ruthless élite among them, masterminded by the pigs Napoleon and Snowball, starts to take control. Soon the other animals discover that they are not all as equal as they thought, and find themselves hopelessly ensnared as one form of tyranny is replaced with another.

Minnie Hamilton and her rescue cat, Eddie, cruise around lovely Chilson, Michigan, delivering good reads in their bookmobile. But the feisty librarian is worried that the bookmobile's future could be uncertain when a new library board chair arrives and doesn't seem too friendly to her pet project. Still, she has to put her personal worries aside when she and Eddie are out on their regular route and one of their favorite customers doesn't turn up to collect her books. Minnie, at Eddie's prodding, checks on the woman and finds her lying dead in her snow-covered driveway.

It's the grand opening of Daybreak Island's cat cafe, where customers can get cozy with an assortment of friendly felines - and maybe even take one or a few home. Co-owner Maddie James is purring with excitement over her new warm-and-fuzzy venture, until she becomes entangled in a petty drama between one of her volunteers and a wealthy woman who insists on adopting a calico kitty. The catfight that ensues is bad enough for business. But when the snubbed socialite is found dead with a tell-tale catnip toy on the scene, suspicion lands squarely on Maddie's staffer.

A lovable dog helps his human girl solve a mystery. Thor has been accused of wrecking Mr. Gary’s yard, knocking over trash cans, eating the vegetables out of the garden, and pooping. But King and Kayla, with the help of some other neighbors, are determined to clear his name, using a wide variety of familiar and new detecting skills. With simple, straightforward language and great verbal and visual humor, the King & Kayla series from Geisel Honor Award-winning team Dori Hillestad Butler and Nancy Meyers is perfect for newly independent readers.

For Sophie it’s a trip home and for Hector it’s time to meet Sophie’s parents... Though their trip has village tongues wagging about a stop at Scotland’s notorious elopement spot, Gretna Green. No matter what, it’ll make a nice break from the murder and mayhem that has been plaguing their beautiful Cotswolds village. But Sophie and Hector are barely across the border on the way to Inverness before a sinister encounter leaves them shaken.

Lacey Doyle, 39 years old and freshly divorced, has made a drastic change: She has walked away from the fast life of New York City and settled down in the quaint English seaside town of Wilfordshire. Everything’s going perfectly - until someone mysteriously dies in her friend’s new B&B. Their village turned upside down and her new friend’s livelihood now in jeopardy, it’s up to Lacey and her dog to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Aspiring P.I. Geri Sullivan's new case has got her talking Chihuahua, Pepe, hot under the collar. Wealthy widow Lucille Carpenter left her entire fortune to her beloved dogs, and someone is trying to poison them. Anyone who would hurt a perro is lower than a cucaracha in Pepe's book. But when Geri and Pepe investigate, they discover that it's not just the coddled canines who are in danger. Now there are human targets too.

“Sharks are as timid as rabbits,” says a superintendent of the Coast Guard, dismissing the possibility that a shark could be the culprit in an unprecedented fatal attack at the Jersey Shore. It’s July, and swimming in the sea is a popular new pastime, but people up and down the East Coast are shocked and mystified by the swimmer’s death. A prominent surgeon at the shore, Dr. Edwin Halsey is the one who examines the victim, and the only one who believes the perpetrator was a shark—and that it will strike again.

Susan Wittig Albert delights mystery lovers with this series based on the life and stories of beloved English children's author Beatrix Potter. When Beatrix finds an abandoned infant, Captain Woodcock and Dimity care for the child as Beatrix and her furry and feathered friends search for its mother.

When Sarah Grayson opened a secondhand shop in the quaint town of North Harbor, Maine, she was expecting peace and quiet. Then she was adopted by a rescue cat named Elvis and a kooky trio of senior sleuths known as Charlotte's Angels. Now she has nine lives' worth of excitement.... Sarah's friend and employee Rose is delivering a customer's purchase when the quick errand becomes a deadly escapade. Rose arrives just in time to see the customer murdered by his wife, but before she can call the police, she is knocked out cold.

June wedding bells are ringing! Cameron Cripps Hayman is the matron of honor, and her five furry good boys are all ushers, so what could go wrong? The day before the wedding, the new pastor is found hanging from the choir loft. It's ruled a suicide by the police, but Cam and her Action Agency suspect foul play. Cam's police-officer husband warns her to not stir up trouble where none exists, but when the pastor's home is ransacked, it's clear to Cam that she was murdered.

Despite the sweltering summer, Maddie's problems keep snowballing. A freak accident sends her K-9 search and rescue team racing to locate the victim, but a gruesome discovery makes her question everything . . . and everyone around her. Her partner, Sheriff Oliver Desjardins, is keeping secrets. Her flirtatious veterinarian friend is spending a suspicious amount of time with an enticing widow. A loathsome new deputy threatens her. And Maddie must work with wild and extraordinary Vixen.