Cat Mystery Thriller

Charlene's parents are in town for Christmas, and her mother is driving her up a tree. Her bed-and-breakfast's resident ghost, Jack, isn't fond of her either - and he's showing it with some haunting high jinks. But when Charlene takes her mom and dad out for dinner, the less-than-seasonal spirits take a deadly turn.

A man is found stabbed to death on the Southampton morning commuter train. But why can't Detective Sophie Allen's team find out anything about his history? And why was he staying in a house that seems to be owned by a government security unit? Then there is another stabbing, this time in a refuge for abused women. And again, Sophie can find very little about the victim's life.

Leta Parker is both saddened and happy. Though the second anniversary of her husband's sudden death makes her wistful, her revitalized life in the Cotswolds and a long-distance boyfriend have brought her joy. But when her beau visits for a literature festival, she finds herself immersed in a book collector's suspicious demise . . . Though she's thrilled to once again team up with the Little Old Ladies' Detective Agency and her precocious pets to crack the case, Leta fears her new love will worry about the danger.

Collins brings the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie, to English language learners. Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language. Now Collins has adapted her famous detective novels for English language learners. These carefully abridged versions are shorter with the language targeted at learners of English.

A young man's body is spotted in the stormy sea off Dancing Ledge in Dorset. Did he lose his footing in the gale force winds and fall in? Or is there a more sinister cause of death? Detective Sophie Allen's team discover some curious links to a suicide that happened six months earlier. A strikingly attractive female student connects the cases. Alarming facts slowly come to light as the team probes more deeply.

"People hire me, Zack Smith, to pull their chestnuts out of the fire. This time I have to track down a fourteen-year-old runaway, Jessica. Her trail leads to the streets of Portland, where pimps, drug dealers, and pornographers offer runaways an illusory security in exchange for their innocence - and sometimes their lives."

In Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit, feline PI Midnight Louie's roommate, powerhouse PR freelancer Temple Barr, discovers a strip club opening in a nearby empty building threatens her elderly landlady's wedding chapel business. Electra Lark's troubles go supernova with a murder charge for a death that echoes a bizarre slaying decades earlier.

After a holiday trip to the Big Apple, Midnight Louie returns home to death on the Nile when battling Egyptian barges outside the Oasis hotel cause a dead body to rise to the surface. The soggy victim is well known to Temple Barr, Louie's redheaded, high-heeled human companion. Her two best beaux have been closely involved with the dead man, and both have reasons to want him dead.

A caravan of trucks hauling building materials up a mountain road is nothing out of the ordinary, but in the Town of Green, it’s news. Gwen Paris has that feeling again that something is up...but what? Gwen Paris is hanging out at Gunderson’s vintage coffee shop, more to see the fetching owner Kevin Pearson than for the caffeine, when all conversation turns to trucks climbing Perryville Foothills to the only address worth noting there: Brightston Mansion. Just as Gwen is about to ask who? what? A name is uttered: Derek Payne.

Mia Anderson is an invisible woman. An unremarkable thirty-two-year-old Tennessee librarian, she’s accustomed to disappearing in a crowd, unseen and unheard. Then she receives an anonymous note: You look beautiful today. It doesn’t stop there. The attentive stranger—a secret admirer named Adam—has plans for Mia. With each new text comes a suggestion for her hair, clothes, or attitude, and for the first time in memory, Mia feels noticed. Slowly, she develops a confidence in herself she’s never had. But Adam has a surprise coming....

Rick Brant and his friend Scotty travel to Egypt with a Spindrift expert to help with some radio astronomy scientists that are attempting to decipher and interpret some very odd signals that the telescopes are receiving. Before Rick and Scotty leave the United States for Egypt, an Egyptian man asks them to take a plastic figurine of a cat with them and deliver it to a man in Egypt. Thinking that it is nothing more than the simple delivery of a token, Rick and Scotty agree to deliver the item. However, it quickly becomes evident there is far more to the situation than they believed.

It is 1948. William Thomas Cochrane, an American intelligence agent, is in England with his wife, Laura, visiting friends and family. But when summer arrives, so does the first major international crisis of the postwar years. Cochrane’s country is calling him back to active duty for a special assignment in the newly divided Germany, one which will take him behind newly drawn enemy lines and into a perilous netherworld of ruthless black marketeers, petty criminals, prostitutes, ex-Nazis, and Soviet spies.

The beautiful, serene village of Molena Point, California is the type of place where people go to get away from the harsher realities of life - which is what attracted classic film star Patty Rose to buy the village inn and settle down to enjoy her golden years. But as the town gathers to celebrate and honor the beautiful, aging actress with a festival of her old films, Patty is brutally murdered - to the horror and shock of this peaceful burg.

Love - and murder - are in the air.

It took Joe Grey’s human, Clyde Damen, nearly forever to pop the question to his girlfriend, Ryan Flannery, and what more romantic time to tie the knot than on Valentine’s Day? But dark secrets from the past soon threaten to destroy everyone’s happiness. First, a body discovered many miles away reopens a 10-year-old cold case involving a man who disappeared days before his own wedding. Then another body is found closer to home, on the grounds of a ruined estate, deserted save for a band of unusual feral cats.

When a serial murderer dubbed "The Spare Change Killer" by the Boston press surfaces after three decades in hiding, the police immediately seek out the cop, now retired, who headed the original task force: Phil Randall. As a sharp-eyed investigator and a doting parent, Phil calls on his daughter, Sunny, to help catch the criminal who eluded him so many years before.

Normally the arrival of an art exhibition at the Mayville Heights library would be cause for celebration. But thanks to the overbearing curator and high-tech security system that comes with it, Kathleen's life has been completely disrupted. Even Owen and Hercules have been affected, since their favorite human doesn't seem to have a spare moment to make their favorite fish crackers or listen to Barry Manilow.

Tikka Malloy was 11 and one-sixth years old during the long hot summer of 1992, living in an Australian suburb with her sister and their three best friends. That summer was when the Van Apfel sisters, Ruth, Hannah, and the beautiful Cordelia, mysteriously disappeared. Did they just run - far away from their harsh, evangelical parents - or were they taken? While the search for the girls united the small community, the mystery of their disappearance was never solved. Now, years later, Tikka has returned home to try to make sense of that strange moment in time.

When Rachel Murdock and her sister Jennifer receive a call for help from their favorite niece, Lilly, in Breakers Beach, California, they quickly hop a train from Los Angeles to see her-but not before collecting their prized cat Samantha in a picnic basket and bringing her along for the ride.

When Olive Harrington is found dead, local Baker and her loyal French Bulldog Smudge, end up looking after the woman’s cat. Smudge is not impressed, and Melody knows she must solve the crime soon or have more trouble at home. All the clues point to Olive’s relative and a dispute over not only the lamp but her fortune. Will Melody and Smudge sniff out the clues and find the truth? What will happen to Taffy, the poor misunderstood cat?

The long-promised Jamieson-Armstrong family camping trip takes a pause with news of murder at the local fish farm, where the vacationing families recently visited. Even worse, it looks like their campsite neighbor's brother-in-law, Adam, is the prime suspect in the fish farm Manager's murder.