Cozy Women Sleuths

By day, Florrie Fox manages Color Me Read bookstore in Georgetown, Washington D.C. By night, she creates her own intricately detailed coloring books for adults, filling the pages with objects that catch her eye. There's plenty of inspiration in her new apartment - a beautiful carriage house belonging to Professor John Maxwell, Florrie's boss. He offers the property to Florrie rent-free with one condition - she must move in immediately to prevent his covetous sister and nephew from trying to claim it. When the professor's nephew, Delbert, arrives, he proves just as sketchy as Florrie

Since childhood, Courtney has loved fairies. After her mother died when Courtney was 10, she lost touch with that feeling of magic. A year ago, at age 29, she rediscovered it when she left her father's landscaping business to spread her wings and start a fairy garden business and teashop in beautiful Carmel, California. At Open Your Imagination, she teaches garden design and sells everything from fairy figurines to tinkling wind chimes. Now she's starting a book club tea.

Nora Best is the envy of her friends. She's just turned 50 and has traded in her home with The Perfect-Ass Husband for an Airstream trailer and an adventure of a lifetime across the US. But during their leaving party, Nora finds her husband in a compromising position with a friend. Storming out of the party, she jumps into her truck with no idea how to tow the Airstream or where she's going. Nora ends up in a campground in the mountains of Wyoming, drowning her sorrows with its managers, Brad and Miranda.

Until now, Odessa Jones's inherited ability to read emotions and foretell danger has protected her. But second sight didn't warn her she would soon be a widow - and about to lose her home and the catering business she's worked so hard to build. The only things keeping Dessa going are her love for baking and her sometimes-mellow cat, Juniper. Unfortunately, putting her life back together means taking a gig at an all-kinds-of-shady real estate firm run by volatile owner Charlie Risko. Until Charlie is brutally killed - and Dessa's bullied coworker is arrested for murder.

Lilly may be losing a husband, but she's gaining a toy poodle. That could be seen as a win-win, since her new adopted pooch, Aggie (named after Agatha Christie), is cute and adorable and Lilly's dirty dog of a spouse is cheating on her with a blonde bimbo - except for one problem: Albert Echosby's just been murdered, and Lilly is the number-one suspect.

Late October 1909, and the season of ghouls and things that go bump in the night has descended on the village of Littleton Cotterell. Lady Hardcastle and her trusted lady’s maid, Florence, find themselves hosting a colorful cast of actors whose spooky moving picture, The Witch’s Downfall, is being shown to mark Halloween. But things take a macabre turn when the first night’s screening ends with a mysterious murder, and the second night with another. One by one the actors turn up dead in ways that eerily echo their film.

Textbook writer Suzie Tuft discovers a body near her rural home and learns he was an attorney from the estate of her deceased ex-boyfriend, who bequeathed her a small fortune. Suzie's life is thrown into chaos when she is threatened by the ex's crazy live-in girlfriend and his unsavory friends looking to recover nearly a million dollars from a con they executed him. Fortunately, Suzie has her book club friends to help her unravel the mystery, all while falling in love with the handsome detective investigating the murder.

Charlotte Finn never wanted to inherit the family's produce farm - much less plow a heap of money into it. Her plan is to hammer a great big FOR SALE sign into the farm's fallow furrows, but her sunny hopes of a quick sale succumb to a killing frost when she finds a dead body entwined supine in the tomato vines. The poor man, it seems, was run through...with a pitchfork?

After a rough divorce, Abby McCree only wants to stitch up her life and move on. But other loose ends appear after her elderly Aunt Sybil passes away, leaving Abby to tend to a rundown estate, complete with a slobbery Mastiff of questionable pedigree and a sexy tenant who growls more than the dog. As Abby gets drawn into a tight-knit quilting guild, she makes a twisted discovery - Aunt Sybil's only known rival is buried in her backyard! Despite what local detectives say, Abby refuses to accept that her beloved aunt had anything to do with the murder.

With the social season just around the corner, the women in Cleo’s family are having new outfits made by the most sought-after designer in the city. Madame Poitiers is bold, self-absorbed, and not French, despite her claims. When Cleo stumbles on her dead body in the salon, she is in a unique position to gather clues and speak to witnesses. But she doesn’t expect to find Harry Armitage’s business card in Madame’s possession. What is the alluring private detective’s connection to the victim? And why is he avoiding Cleo?

When Dorothy’s obnoxious date is found dead in a hotel freezer, it not only ruins a gorgeous cheesecake but threatens the elaborate St. Olaf-themed wedding Rose is hosting.

Thirty-year-old fraternal twins Tabby and Sage Winslow own The Book and Candle Shop in Savannah. Sage is hot-headed and impulsive while Tabby is calm and collected, making them the perfect partnership. But when one of their customers is found murdered from a blow to the head, their partnership is put to the test.

Delighted by the promise of living and working in a glittering Gilded Age mansion, Minerva Biggs moves to idyllic Bryd Hollow, North Carolina with her dog Plantagenet. She's looking for a new beginning; what she finds is five quite possibly deranged people, four French bulldogs, two distracting dimples attached to one inconvenient man . . . and one murder. Nope, make that two murders.

Thanks to a series of unfortunate events - and one backstabbing frenemy - home is exactly where I'm headed. Back to Winterspell Lake, where magic runs rampant and humans are outlawed. Faster than you can say hocus pocus I'm unpacking my bags and settling into the guest room of my parents' house, trying to ignore the creeping sensation that I'll never break free again. The one thing Winterspell has going for it is the sweets shop in the center of town, a bakery filled with magical creations designed to enchant the taste buds and charm even the pickiest of connoisseurs.

High school wasn’t a grand time for everyone, but when a group of friends decide to meet up at a B and B ahead of their 10-year reunion, old grudges resurface, and one of them ends up dead. Now the owners, a kindly older couple, are on the hook for the accidental death due to anaphylaxis, but they insist no mistakes were made on their part. Fortune is asked to look into the situation before the inept local sheriff railroads the couple or simply allows gossip to run them out of business, which will cost them their home. Swamp Team 3 heads to Voodoo Island to find a way to clear the couple.

Mercedes Harrigan, novice landlord, is a pro at cleaning up messy apartments but cleaning up after an elderly tenant dies presents a different dilemma. It’s not the dead body lying on the kitchen floor that has Sadie freaked out—she grew up playing among the caskets at her grandmother’s mortuary—it’s the coroner’s suspicion that the wiring in Sadie's vintage apartments could be the culprit. Add a threatened lawsuit by the family of the deceased, along with bizarre clues that pop up but don’t add up, and Sadie’s morale dips lower than the meager balance in her bank account.

Kate knew immediately what to do with it: open a cider house. But her hopeful plans fall far from the tree when she finds the body of the orchard manager, Carl Randolph, leaving her to figure out who is at the core of this murder. She had been in correspondence with Carl, who had agreed with her brilliant idea of opening a cider house. But not everyone is so quick to buy what she was selling—Uncle Stan’s lawyer, Robert Larabee, paints a less rosy financial outlook of the orchard’s past, present, and future.

No matter how great or small, I love to help solve a crime. When I find my mother's ex-boyfriend murdered in our convenience store bathroom with a piece of his skull missing, and my mom's a suspect in a murder investigation, my mystery solving goes from zero to 100. To really make matters worse, the town's local conspiracy theorist and official doomsday prepper, Cappie, somehow finds out the victim isn't just missing a piece of his skull - he's missing a piece of his brain!

Bobbi Brooks has enough trouble keeping her cafe from burning down on the best of days. Learning she has fire-magic? It's bound to go up in flames. Bobbi, who can't step on a cockroach without squealing, is supposed to be a demon-slaying witch? No way. This is just another one of her crazy grandmother’s delusions. But when Bobbi stumbles over a body that's unfortunately very real, and very dead, her life gets even more complicated. This collection contains All Work and No Slay, Slaying with Fire, and Two Can Slay at This Game.

Ever since she moved to Raven Creek, Washington, Phoebe Winchester knew she would have to grow accustomed to having a lot on her plate. She’s beginning to make the Victorian manor she inherited from her dear and adventurous Aunt Eudora feel more like home, successfully running the bookstore and tea shop, The Earl’s Study, and learning to harness her recently discovered magical powers. But when she discovers a dead body at an estate sale, even Phoebe wonders if this is simply too much.