Cozy Crime Fiction

He is a record collector and a connoisseur of vinyl, hunting out rare and elusive LPs. His business card describes him as the Vinyl Detective, and some people take this more literally than others. For example, the beautiful, mysterious woman who wants to pay him a large sum of money to find a priceless lost recording on behalf of an extremely wealthy yet shadowy client. And so begins a painful and dangerous odyssey in search of the rarest jazz record of them all....

A new Miss Julia novel from New York Times best-selling author Ann B. Ross is a special treat for her devoted fans as well as those new to the adventures of the titular senior citizen. This time out, the proper Southern lady has a couple doozies on her plate. It seems that her friend Hazel’s PI husband, J.D,. has gotten himself in some trouble in West Virginia - and he’s one tirade away from landing in a jail cell. Meanwhile, a crew of misfits has followed wealthy Agnes Whitman back to Abbotsville, and they have all the makings of a crazy religious cult!

Mumbai is a city that thrives on extravagant spectacles and larger-than-life characters. But as Chopra is about to discover, even in the city of dreams, there is no guarantee of a happy ending.

In the chilly depths of a Yorkshire winter, a well-liked rector is found bludgeoned to death in her own church. With no sign of a murder weapon, local superstition quickly pins the blame on the ghost of a medieval monk believed to haunt the building. Well accustomed to unusual murder investigations, DCI Jim Oldroyd takes on the case, along with his assistant, Sergeant Andy Carter, but they are hampered at every turn by the deepening snow and the threat of the supernatural.

Steeped in a history of award-winning Yorkshire ale, the town of Markham boasts not one but two breweries. Richard Foster runs one; his sister, Emily, along with her partner, Janice, runs the other. And not without some resentment. The unwelcome return of the town’s former bad boy, Brendan Scholes, threatens to ignite the sibling rivalry further. Scholes claims to have found the long-lost secret recipe to the beer that made Richard and Emily’s father famous, and he wants money.

It's summer in the Dordogne. The heirs of a Périgordian sheep farmer learn that they have been disinherited, and their father's estate sold to an insurance company in return for a policy that will place him in a five-star retirement home for the rest of his life. But the farmer never gets his life of luxury - he dies before moving in. Was it a natural death? Was there foul play? Bruno begins the investigation that leads him to several shadowy insurance companies owned by a Russian oligarch with a Cypriot passport.

After a successful first season of Domestic Partners chronicling the renovation of their historic Craftsman Colonial, Peter and JP are taking on a renovation of a local Tudor Revival inherited by identical twin brothers Terry and Tom Cash. But linoleum floors and a pink-tiled bathroom aren't the only unwelcome surprises awaiting inside the house. Just as the show is set to start filming, Peter and JP discover Tom Cash dead at the foot of the house's staircase. And when the police ruling changes from accidental death to homicide, the list of suspects grows fast.

Ari Thor returns to investigate a chilling series of crimes that are rooted in tragic events from the past. Siglufjörður: an idyllically quiet fishing village on the northernmost tip of Iceland, accessible only via a small mountain tunnel. Ari Thór Arason: a local policeman whose tumultuous past and uneasy relationships with the villagers continue to haunt him.

One winter's night, bookseller Delaney Nichols and her coworker Hamlet are invited to a Burns Night dinner, a traditional Scottish celebration of the poet Robert Burns. She's perplexed by the invitation, but intrigued. The dinner takes place at Burns House itself, a tiny cottage not far from the Cracked Spine bookshop but well hidden. There, it becomes clear that Delaney and Hamlet were summoned in an attempt to make amends between Edwin, Delaney's boss, and one of the other invitees, who suspected Edwin for burning down his own bookshop.

Newly minted PI Emma Holmes and her partner Sam Collins are just settling into their business when they’re chosen for a high-profile case: retired music-hall star Verity Malone hires them to find out who poisoned her husband, a theater impresario. Verity herself has been accused of the crime. The only hitch—the Brighton police are already on the case, putting Emma in direct competition with her husband, police superintendent Edgar Stephens.

Miss Julia has promised her husband, Sam, to mind her own business. What a relief! She doesn't have to spring into action when a dead body is found in a toolshed six blocks from her house. Instead, she can concentrate on what's really important-like figuring out who's been passing bad checks in her name and, most important, preparing for Hazel Marie's impending due date. Then again, who else can figure out why that awful Thurlow Jones is trying to cast suspicion on someone Miss Julia feels certain is innocent? And, after all, what Sam doesn't know won't hurt him, right?

When she finds a wounded member of British Intelligence in her bedroom, Patricia really isn’t that surprised. I mean, it happens all the time, doesn’t it? However, she is surprised, and really not delighted, to hear that he has a secret task for her. Find his contact, hand over a harmless looking data storage device that just happens to have the details of a superweapon on it, and save the world from certain disaster. Her country needs her. Well, that’s just perfect.

Melissa Craig is struggling with her new novel, so when the invitation arrives to visit a nearby country house for some writing time, she decides a bit of peace and quiet is just what she needs. The house is everything she could have hoped for, even if the staff do seem rather unsettled. She has barely unpacked when the owner of the house persuades Melissa to investigate some threatening notes he has received. But before she can do any digging, he is found murdered in his own orchard.

When a new restaurant with a starred American chef opens in Cherringham, it seems the Spotted Pig has a worthy rival. But a series of disturbing incidents turns that rivalry into something dangerous - perhaps even fatal. Jack and Sarah get involved and soon discover dark secrets about the new chef Anna... Can they uncover what is really happening before both restaurants go belly-up? Cherringham is a serial novel à la Charles Dickens, with a new audio episode released every two weeks.

When widow Mrs Pargeter decides to have her morning coffee on the patio of her mansion in Chigwell, her intention is to admire her beautiful garden in peace and quiet. Little does she expect one of the patio's paving slabs to crack in two, depositing her on the ground—and revealing a human skull with a neat hole in the middle of its forehead! Not wanting to bother the police just yet, Mrs Pargeter decides to save them some trouble and starts investigating the curious find herself.

Kosuke Kindaichi arrives on the remote Gokumon Island bearing tragic news—the son of one of the island’s most important families has died, on a troop transport ship bringing him back home after the Second World War. But Kindaichi has not come merely as a messenger—with his last words, the dying man warned that his three step-sisters’ lives would now be in danger. The scruffy detective is determined to get to the bottom of this mysterious prophesy, and to protect the three women if he can.

On the set of The Suffolk Seagull nobody really knows what is going on - least of all Felix Smythe, whose bit part is constantly changing, much to Felix’s chagrin. But the unambiguous death by gunshot of a female cast member brings a drama to proceedings lacking in the film itself, and Lady Fawcett, Rosy, Felix and even Cedric Dillworthy are once again at the centre of a murder mystery in which further victims may face the cut.

Two years ago, Miff Ferguson chose to opt out of the rat race. Since then he's been living rough and happily so. That is until now. For, as the first signs of winter approach, everything changes. While looking for shelter, Miff stumbles across the dead body of a young woman inside a dilapidated warehouse. Quickly realising he's not alone, and what's worse he's been spotted, Miff becomes embroiled in a game of cat and mouse with a killer that forces him to abandon his life on the streets and take refuge with his aunt and uncle in the village of Weston St Ambrose.

Dense fog masks foul play in the streets of London, as Ann Granger brings us her seventh Victorian mystery featuring Scotland Yard's Inspector Ben Ross and his wife, Lizzie. It is March 1870. London is in the grip of fog and ice. But Scotland Yard's Inspector Ben Ross has more than the weather to worry about when the body of a young woman is found in a dustbin at the back of a Piccadilly restaurant.

Widowed Georgina Drake has no regrets about moving to beautiful, sleepy Little Wenborough in rural Norfolk. Until she opens the door to her rental property and finds the dead body of her latest guest, irritable university professor Roland Garnett. And on top of that she’s suddenly hearing a woman’s voice through her hearing aids. Completely shaken by the discovery, Georgina can hardly believe it when the police conclude that Professor Garnett was poisoned, with a dinner delivered by Georgina herself.