Holiday Thriller

Ainsley decides to set aside her search for answers to her past and enjoy her first Gooseberry Christmas by volunteering along with the rest of the gang for the Christmas festival on the boardwalk. Normally Ainsley didn’t bother much with Christmas and all its trappings, but this year she is excited to join in as most of the locals are prone to do. Of course it does put a bit of a damper on the festivities when a body is found in the tree lot where the gang had offered to help out.

Christmas is on trial, and time is running out. Attorney Thad Raker represents an eccentric client living in a house with a Christmas secret. When the county goes to court to take the client’s property, Raker must battle conspiring adversaries, a cantankerous judge, and his own personal feelings and doubts. If he loses the case, Christmas won’t come for hundreds of thousands of children. Can Raker save Christmas and, in the process, save himself?

Die Ehe von Andreas und Nicola Kantor ist in Routine erstarrt. Da bietet ihnen überraschend ein Freund an, über die Feiertage in sein Ferienhaus in Miramas-le-Vieux zu ziehen. Weihnachten in der Provence, nur sie beide... Tatsächlich reisen sie in einen malerischen, halb vergessenen mittelalterlichen Ort: Das Haus ist romantisch, die wenigen Nachbarn sind freundlich. Doch bereits in der ersten Nacht fällt Schnee in einer Landschaft, in der fast nie Schnee fällt. Langsam, aber unerbittlich wird Miramas-le-Vieux von der Außenwelt abgeschnitten.

Attorney Thad Raker is a man who believes in Santa Claus. And for good reason. He’s won two trials for defendants who said they worked for Santa Claus, and he saved Christmas both times. But when Raker is hired 11 years later to defend the toy company that made the most popular Christmas present in 50 years - the Reindeer Hoverboard - he becomes entangled in the greatest threat to Christmas yet.

Maggie Gerber and those discount divas the Good Buy Girls are gearing up for their first big holiday thrift-shop sale. But one of the Girls - Joanne Claramotta, pregnant with her first child - is acting less than festive. It could be hormones. Or it could be Diane Jenkins, the young knockout her husband Michael hired as his new deli assistant. Calming Joanne’s nerves proves impossible when Maggie finds Michael unconscious on his deli floor - with Diane next to him, strangled to death with her apron strings.

The Sinterklaas has tasked Christmas Special Investigator Steingrim Og with finding a missing spell, but he must first contend with a new assistant and aid an old friend. When mysterious explosions kill elves regardless of race and word of treason among the elves is revealed, Steingrim does not know whom to trust. His investigations uncover plans for an invasion by one of the village’s deadliest nemesis: Jack Frost.

House flippers Jack and Juniper agree to lend and help prep their latest purchase - the Doctor's House, an old Victorian mansion - to act as the eerie setting for the town's Halloween bash. They're expecting to find missing floor boards and pesky bats, not the ghostly specter of the murdered doctor's wife. But when the head of the council is found stuffed in a trunk in the attic, it appears history is repeating.

It's Christmas time at the Paranormal Institute for Witches. Excited to go home for the holidays and be reunited with their families, Mercy, Jax, Holly, Sweets, and Alba say their goodbyes. However, when an unpredicted snowstorm ravages Aspen Falls, the girls must scramble to figure out their next move. Tempers flare as blame is placed and feelings are hurt. By the looks of it, Christmas will surely be ruined. But when a surprise visitor arrives, the girls are forced to find out what friendship really means and decide whether or not it's worth saving.

When a beautiful Christmas package appears on Grandmama's porch, it's much too heavy for the Christmas pudding it holds. With her family away for the holidays, Grandmama digs in to the pudding, only to find a cannon ball baked inside. Instantly, her memory flies back to a friendship she destroyed a decade before. Hoping to make amends, Grandmama travels to Surrey and joins up with her former friend's grandson to solve the murder of his grandfather - who Grandmama once loved and whose death she blamed, out of jealousy, on her friend.

On a bleak Christmas morning, Sewa Tribal Police Officer Heather English patrols a desolate canyon on the Arizona reservation. Back in Kansas, her father, the sheriff of Benteen County, is lonely enough with no family around to go in to work at his office. On the way, Sheriff English calms a wild incident in a church parking lot. Then he hears of a death threat. The crèche, at the center of the town’s largest holiday yard display, has been desecrated, and its owner plans to kill the neighbors he suspects are responsible.

In Hummelstich scheint die Welt noch in Ordnung zu sein: Die Dächer der niedlichen Fachwerkhäuser funkeln und glitzern unter strahlend blauem Himmel und die Bewohner gehen emsig ihrem Tagewerk nach. Aber der schöne Schein trügt - denn hinter der Bilderbuchfassade tun sich mörderische Abgründe auf... Aber zum Glück ist die energische Hobbydetektivin Bea von Maarstein vor Ort! Zusammen mit ihrem persönlichkeitsgestörten Papagei Dr. Jekyll und dem Dorfpolizisten Sven Grüneis löst sie jeden noch so verzwickten Fall.

The summer solstice is the longest day of the year, but even the light can't keep away all that goes bump in the night. From rituals and witches to summer slasher and sunny horror, this anthology has it all.

Georgia Winston is now dating Detective Cal Perkins, planning a Christmas program, and navigating her relationship with her twin stepbrothers. Just another day. But then her church’s youth pastor dies of poisoning, and she’s the only one who hears his final word, “Anchor.” After the youth pastor’s girlfriend disappears, Georgia starts asking questions. Too many. When she’s almost run off the road, she goes on the offensive - with her stepbrothers’ help - and starts putting the pieces of the murder together.

In book 6 in the series, It’s summertime in Holiday Bay, and between the outdoor dining option provided by the new rooftop bar and eatery, and the summer concert series held on the roof every Thursday night, the Bistro is busier than they’ve ever been. Beck has an interesting case involving a woman whose mother disappeared when she was a child, Amy is entered into the annual clam chowder cookoff, Dawson has an important decision to make, Nikki has a new guy in her life, and Kennedy is struggling with empty nest syndrome while Addy is visiting her brother in Boston.

Scotty Parker is a former child star who once played Tiny Tim, but now he's grown up into the role of the neighborhood Scrooge. He thinks he can stage a comeback with the screenplay he's working on, and Jaine's been reluctantly helping him edit it. So when Scotty is bludgeoned with a frozen chocolate yule log and the police start making a list of suspects and checking it twice, Jaine's name is unfortunately included.

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.

Death has come twice to Ravenbank, a remote community in England’s Lake District, each time on Halloween. Just before the First World War, a young woman’s corpse was found, with a makeshift shroud frozen to her battered face. Her ghost - the Faceless Woman - is said to walk through Ravenbank on Halloween. Five years ago, another woman, Shenagh Moss, was murdered, and again her face was covered to hide her injuries.

An old English Yule has never been merrier or more mysterious. A New Year's celebration has never looked more joyous but been so potentially deadly. Fearing the 12 Days of Christmas of 1564 may be the last for her ailing, elderly friend, Lady Kat Ashley, Queen Elizabeth decrees a nostalgic, old-fashioned holiday. Delicious dishes for the table, holly and ivy, caroling, wassailing, mumming, and a Lord of Misrule to oversee it all are in the recipe for the revels. But one of the queen's kitchen staff is found as dead as the ornate peacock he was preparing for the feast.

Charlie and her husband begin the winter with hopes for a honeymoon in a secluded New Mexico mountain cabin. But their plans are disrupted when police locate an old pawn ticket identifying the gun used in a five year old murder. They trace the ticket back to ski instructor Elroy Romero, who work's for Charlie's husband, Drake. Elroy swears he didn't commit the crime, even though the gun has been in his possession all along. And when it turns out the murder victim was Elroy's brother, a priest, Charlie really begins to question her client's story.

In Sea Harbor, the holidays mean cozy fires, festive carols, and soft skeins of yarn waiting to become hats and sweaters and scarves. And this year, Izzy and the other Seaside Knitters are also knitting tiny ornaments to decorate a tree for the first annual tree-trimming contest. Their holiday cheer is multiplied when Izzy's younger brother, Charlie Chambers, unexpectedly arrives to volunteer at a local clinic. He brings with him outspoken hitchhiker Amber Hanson, who is returning to Sea Harbor to claim an inheritance.