Holiday Cozy

There's one corpse too many in this ingenious mystery featuring husband-and-wife sleuth duo PI Rosco Polycrates and crossword editor Belle Graham. The residents of the bucolic Massachusetts hamlet are up in arms. A developer has bought the sprawling Quigley homestead, and his construction crew is causing a ruckus digging up the land. The noise stops abruptly when a female skeleton is found buried in the garden.

The best thing about the holiday season is spending time with family. At the same time, sometimes the worst thing about the holiday season is spending time with family. The stories in this collection touch on that and more as Mandy Nichols, Jeff Resnick, and Judi Straub struggle through what's supposed to be the joyous season. One family contemplates murder; another wants to end what they see as a bad relationship, while another can only see their loved one for what she can do for them. Sound familiar? Happy Holidays? puts the Christmas fun into dysfunction!

The Christmas season is supposed to be a time of joy and celebration. But for Private Investigator Melody Clue, the holidays can quickly go awry, as she discovers in this three-story collection.

Librarian and solver of mysteries, Kit Sorel has a lot on her plate this December. The eccentric but cozy island of Greengage can do that to a person. All Kit wants is to settle into her first holiday season on this quaint English isle - torn away from her past home, family, and old friends - as she is.

Depressed at the prospect of spending another Christmas alone, successful crime podcaster Morgan Scott travels to the Endless Mountains of Pennsylvania to research a historic murder. But in the tiny village of Birchardville, past crimes and present dangers collide, placing both Morgan and the local residents in very real peril. This Christmas, there'll be no silent night.

The author of The End of the Road and Small Comforts returns to his fictional Alaska town, The End of the Road, to present more unforgettable stories about its colorful inhabitants and their doings...

Shortly before the holidays, inventor and former assassin Missi Bombay gets orders to perform one last job. It's the granddaddy of all hits-to be carried out on Christmas Eve, no less. Missi knows she has only one chance at success, so she enlists the help of her cousins Gin, Dakota, and Coney. Together the Bombay cousins come out of retirement to stamp out the world's most evil cabal.

Dinner, dancing, dogs, and murder. A festive fundraiser to help the dog rescue turns sinister when somebody salts the tempting spread with something toxic. Food poisoning used to mask a murder, Sheridan agrees to help the victim’s daughter find the killer. As Sheridan and Rachel investigate the prominent accountant’s records, a possible motive emerges and the game is on – with a happy ending for all, except the killer. Join Sheridan and her family and friends for this holiday cozy mystery novella with a dose of holiday cheer and a favorite biscotti recipe.

After suffering a personal tragedy Abby Sullivan buys a huge old seaside mansion she has never even seen, packs up her life in San Francisco, and moves to Holiday Bay Maine, where she is adopted, quite against her will, by a huge Maine Coon Cat named Rufus, a drifter with her own tragic past named Georgia, and a giant dog with an inferiority complex named Ramos. What Abby thought she needed was alone time to heal. What she ended up with was, an inn she never knew she wanted, a cat she couldn't seem to convince to leave, and a new family she'd never be able to live without.

Juliet is happy with her life. She is 38, has been divorced for a decade, has a fulfilling career, a good home, and two wonderful children. She learnt a few tough lessons from her marriage, a few tougher ones from her divorce. She has learnt to be independent, and she has made herself happy. But every Christmas, she goes back to Vermont, to her family, for the holidays. Juliet had a privileged childhood, but one without warmth. Her family approved of her marriage. It was a good match.

A teenager turns up dead in the woods, brutally murdered, and it looks like it might be politically motivated.... The short-handed homicide team can't seem to get a handle on the case...things just keep going wrong.... Is someone trying to intimidate Laurencia Rivera and her investigators, to protect the killer and prevent him from being caught?

Officer Jax Diamond doesn’t always play by the rules, and he’s in the hot seat again with the captain of his precinct. So, when a brazen little puppy alerts him of a crime, Jax is ordered to stand down or get canned. On the city streets, broke and alone, Jax beats himself up for making the wrong decision. Even the little tramp who keeps trailing him everywhere can’t lift his spirits. But crime never stops in New York City and a string of deadly Christmas capers spirals out of control.

It's Halloween, one of the busiest seasons of the year for Samantha Sweet and the crew at her pastry shop, Sweet's Sweets. After baking a zillion pumpkin cookies, ghostly cupcakes, and an all-black cake for a young witch's wedding, the gang is looking forward to a gala costume party at the neighborhood bookshop. But when one of the guests is murdered and a rare book vanishes—practically in front of their eyes—the evening takes a whole different turn and Sam finds herself in the midst of another mystery.

It's Christmas! A year since their last case, and Adam and Colin are called out of semi-retirement when Stonebridge legend and regular town Santa, Gerald Agnew, is found dead in the snow. The police believe his death to be a drunken accident, but evidence that our amateur detectives uncover points to something more sinister. When DI Whitelaw dismisses their claims, Adam and Colin must navigate drug dealers, deception and department store Santas to get to the truth.

For all its merriment, Christmas can also bring melancholy-and in Magic Springs, Idaho, Mia finds that the season has brought her an unhappy ghost who's pulling poltergeist-style pranks to get her attention. When she demands an explanation, the ghost just sends a message: Ask Mary Alice-that is, Mia's beloved Grans, who's been training her to develop her witchy talents. If anyone can figure this out, it's Grans . . . even if she still hasn't managed to free Mia's cat from a previous spell that she cast.

For nearly 20 years, Chester Claus had run a year-round Christmas-themed diner in Wrangler’s Hill. For many Indiana locals, he was the embodiment of the holidays - gregarious, portly, his eyes radiating amusement as he handed out candy to children. The idea of anyone wanting to murder him was simply preposterous. But when Claus is found dead in his kitchen during the Christmas Feast, poisoned with his own favorite knife, it falls on Indiana’s finest amateur detective, Geneva Pomolo, and her partner, Iris Reeves, to investigate.

Private investigator Geneva Pomolo and her partner Iris Reeves are busier than ever. An old foe has challenged them to a contest to see which pair of friends can take the most one-day courses at the local community college. Never one to shirk from a challenge, Geneva now has her hands full three evenings a week learning the basics of sailing, baking, watercolors, Olympic sports, and mystery writing.

Zoe becomes entangled in a complex murder case involving a dead miser, tipsy turkeys, and an eclectic cast of edacious heirs, when she agrees to help Jeremy in his temporary job at a nearby turkey farm two weeks before Thanksgiving.

Seventy-something sisters, Max and Lil, visit western Pennsylvania, partly to see Lil's son Terry and his family, and partly to enjoy to colorful fall foliage. The sisters volunteer to help staff a fundraiser haunted house. The house has amazing special effects and a haunted garden. It is hugely popular and should bring in a lot of money for the new school auditorium. What could go wrong?

When a local group home for orphaned children goes up in smoke right before the holidays, Tillie Winchester volunteers her family to take in some kids - even though her arch nemesis Margaret Little is dead-set against it. Three boys - all of them with a little attitude - have no idea what to expect from the Winchester household. Tillie is determined to prove the boys are innocent while also finding them a forever home...even if she has to take on a local judge and declare all-out war.