Mystery Women Sleuths

For one brief hour on a sunny Texas morning, amateur baker Rosie Hart glimpses the life she’s always dreamed about - thanks to a surprise inheritance from the late Miss Alice. But her benefactor is barely cold in the ground when Rosie is accused of her murder. As the only stranger in the tight-knit Airlie Falls community, and the only person with an obvious motive, all eyes turn to Rosie. Especially when more bodies begin to pile up and mysterious letters from the grave start circulating faster than Rosie can pull a tray of cherry nut clusters out of the oven.

When Eleanor Wooley's best friend Rette suddenly disappears, Eleanor abandons her job as a crime reporter for the Gold Strike Tribune in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and sets off in desperate pursuit. What begins as a search and rescue operation quickly becomes an obsession and a personal quest for truth. Spurred by gut instinct, Eleanor scours Northeastern Nevada during the worst heat wave in recorded history. Obscure signs appear-an intruder's dire warning, a casino's mysterious graffiti, a random sighting of a killer on the run.

While Augusta Hawke is a successful author of eighteen crime novels, since her husband's death, she's been living vicariously through her Jules Maigret-like detective Claude and his assistant Caroline. Then a handsome police detective appears investigating a real-life mystery. Where are her neighbors, the Normans? No one has a clue what's happened—except Augusta. Although she isn't nosy, spending all day staring out the windows for inspiration means she does notice things. Like the Normans arguing. And that they've been missing a week.

Hello. My name is Stevie Cartwright, and I've been witchless for 30 days. If only there was a support group for down-on-their-luck ex-witches who've had their powers slapped right out of them (literally). Just as I was licking my wounds after returning to my hometown of Ebenezer Falls, Washington, and navigating my suddenly nonmagical existence with the help of my familiar, Belfry, things got sticky. Enter an ex-spy and newly departed spirit named Winterbottom, who's infiltrated my life with his sexy British accent and a couple of requests....

Young architect Wren Fontaine lands her dream job: restoring Greenleaf House, New York’s finest Gilded-Age mansion, to its glory days. But old homes have old secrets: Stephen Greenleaf—heir to what’s left of his family’s legacy—refuses to reveal what his plans are once the renovation is completed. And still living in a corner of the home is Stephen’s ninety-year-old Aunt Agnes who’s lost in the past, brooding over a long-forgotten scandal while watching Wren with mistrust.

After her divorce from her thrice-married embezzler husband, Trinidad Jones is ready for a fresh start. So when she's left one of her ex's businesses in Upper Sprocket, Oregon, she decides to pack up her dog, cash in her settlement, and open the Shimmy and Shake Shop, introducing the world to her monster milkshakes. Soon Trinidad's life seems to be churning along smoothly. That is, it was until she discovered her neighbor, the Popcorn King, face down in his giant popcorn kettle.

Five feet two inches of slick repartee, near-purple hair, and poetic imagination, twenty-year-old Rune hasn't been in Manhattan for very long. But she's crafty enough to have found a squatter's paradise in an empty TriBeca loft, and a video store job that feeds her passion for old movies. It's a passion she shares with her favorite customer, Mr. Kelly, a lonely old man who rents the same video over and over. The flick is a noir classic based on a real-life unsolved bank heist and a million missing dollars. It's called Manhattan Is My Beat.

When Kate Fox receives a late-night phone call, her seemingly perfect life on the Nebraska prairie shatters in an instant. Eldon, shirt-tail relative and owner of one of the largest cattle ranches in Grand County, has been killed. Kate's husband, Ted, the Grand County sheriff, has been shot and may never walk again. And worst of all, Ted is the prime suspect in Eldon’s murder. Desperate to clear Ted's name, Kate throws herself headlong into the hunt for the real killer. When she finds herself the victim of several mysterious “accidents”, she knows she’s running out of time.

Tara Sharp can see auras, and it’s ruining her life. When she tries to turn her inconvenient secret into a paying gig, her first job lands her in the middle of a tug of war between the biggest, baddest crime lord in town and the hottest business man Tara has ever met. A narcoleptic ex-roadie sidekick, a cranky pet parrot, and a psychic investigator with an uncanny ability to read auras—what could go right?

In the pristine world of Virginia foxhunting, hunters, horses, hounds, and foxes form a lively community of conflicting loyalties, where the thrill of the chase and the intricacies of human-animal relationships are experienced firsthand - and murder exposes a proud Southern community's unsavory secrets....

The Year is 1883 and Emma M. Lion has returned to her London neighborhood of St. Crispian’s. But Emma’s plans for a charmed and studious life are sabotaged by her eccentric Cousin Archibald, her formidable Aunt Eugenia, and the slightly odd denizens of St. Crispian’s. Emma M. Lion offers up her Unselected Journals, however self-incriminating they may be. Armed with wit and a sideways amusement, Emma documents the curious realities of her life at Lapis Lazuli House.

Lady Emily Hardcastle is an eccentric widow with a secret past. Florence Armstrong, her maid and confidante, is an expert in martial arts. The year is 1908 and they've just moved from London to the country, hoping for a quiet life. But it is not long before Lady Hardcastle is forced out of her self-imposed retirement. There's a dead body in the woods, and the police are on the wrong scent. Lady Hardcastle makes some enquiries of her own, and it seems she knows a surprising amount about crime investigation...

It’s been 12 years since Sandi Parkman went missing after being dropped off at home by her schoolmate, Nick Larson, now the Sheriff of Freeport, Michigan. When a construction crew unearths Sandi’s bones - along with Nick’s letterman jacket and one of his hairs - Nick becomes suspect number one in the murder.

Rumor has linked Queen Elizabeth I to her master of the horse, Robin Dudley. As gossip would have it, only his ailing wife, Amy, prevents marriage between Dudley and the Queen. To quell the idle tongues at court, the Queen dispatches Ursula Blanchard to tend to the sick woman's needs. But not even Ursula can prevent the "accident" that takes Amy's life. Did she fall or was she pushed? Was Ursula a pawn of Dudley and the Queen?

Girls from immigrant communities have been disappearing for months in the Colorado town of Blackwater Falls, but the local sheriff is slow to act and the fates of the missing girls largely ignored. At last, the calls for justice become too loud to ignore when the body of a star student and refugee—the Syrian teenager Razan Elkader—is positioned deliberately in a mosque. Detective Inaya Rahman and Lieutenant Waqas Seif of the Denver Police are recruited to solve Razan’s murder, and quickly uncover a link to other missing and murdered girls.

As a chill sets in on New York City in the winter of 1888, a jewel thief dubbed the Robin Hood of the Lower East Side has been stealing from the city's wealthiest and giving to the poor. Genevieve Stewart - a young woman whose family is part of Mrs. Astor's famed 400 but who has forged a life of her own as a reporter - decides to chase the story, but gets more than she bargained for: a murder victim sprawled in a dark alley in the dangerous Five Points neighborhood.

In 1914 collisions between motor cars and horse-drawn carriages are an everyday occurrence on the streets of Paterson, New Jersey. But when an out-of-control driver smashes into a buggy driven by Constance, Norma, and Fleurette Kopp, their lives change forever. Constance, the oldest, demands payment for the damages but quickly realizes that she is dealing with a madman.

Ivory’s life changes irrevocably when she discovers the body of Cabrina Brite on the sands of Cape Morning, along with a mysterious poem. How did she die, and why does it seem she was trying to swim to Ghost Cat Island, the center of so many local mysteries? Desperate to uncover the answers surrounding Cabrina’s death, and haunted by her discovery, Ivory begins to see the pale ghost of Cabrina, only to shake it off as a mere hallucination. But Ivory is not alone.

Her marriage over and career gone bust, Arly Hanks flees Manhattan for her hometown: Maggody, Arkansas. In a town this size, nothing much ever happens, so Arly figures she's safe as the town's first female chief of police - until the husband of one of the local barmaids escapes from state prison and heads for town. And that's not all. An EPA official with ties to polluting the local fishing hole has suddenly vanished off the face of the earth.

For years her explorer father promised Dr. Lauren Westlake she'd accompany him on one of his Egyptian expeditions. But as the empty promises mounted, Lauren determined to earn her own way. Now the assistant curator of Egyptology for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lauren receives two unexpected invitations. The first is her repentant father's offer to finally bring her to Egypt as his colleague on a new expedition. The second is a chance to enter the world of New York's wealthiest patrons who have been victims of art fraud.