Women Sleuths Detective

Like your mysteries cozy and set during the Golden Age of Crime? This is the first audiobook in the Posie Parker mysteries, although this novel can be enjoyed as a stand-alone story in its own right. Set in London in 1921, Murder Offstage is full of intrigue and red herrings. When Posie Parker’s childhood friend is robbed of a priceless jewel and becomes a suspect in a cold-blooded murder case, budding detective Posie vows she will clear his name.

Months after discovering the mastermind behind her own kidnapping, Detective Jude Fontaine is dealing with the past the only way she knows how: by returning to every dark corner of it. But it’s a new, escalating series of mass slayings that has become her latest obsession at Homicide. At first, Jude and her partner, Detective Uriah Ashby, can see no pattern to the seemingly random methods, the crime scenes, or the victims - until they’re approached by a brilliantly compulsive math professor.

November, 1923. Olive’s school chum, Gigi, invites Olive to London because Gigi’s dotty grandmother fears for her life—or so she’s said to Gigi. However Olive is surprised to find that the dowager is far from muddled. The sharp and imperious matriarch refuses to admit to her worries and sends Olive on her way. Without a client or case, Olive is swept into the glittering lifestyle of the “fast set,” and their decadent excess. But then among the cocktails and champagne, a murderer strikes during a frivolous party game, and Olive realizes the dowager’s fears were well-founded.

On a hot summer’s day, the sleepy town of Mount Chester is thrown into turmoil when 17-year-old local girl Jenna goes missing. Within hours, the case takes an agonizing turn when her body is discovered in the isolated mountains. Detective Kay Sharp rushes to the scene, hiking for miles to the base of Wildfire Ridge. From the markings on Jenna’s body, it’s clear that she was brutally murdered. Near the victim, Kay finds a butterfly-shaped hair clip with a set of fingerprints that could be a vital clue. In the hunt for the truth, Kay turns the small town upside down.

Christmas has come to Lighthouse Cove, but business hasn’t slowed down for Shannon Hammer. She’s been contracted to renovate a local hotel owned by the Garrisons, a family that’s so devoted to the holidays they serve a seven-course dinner every night from Thanksgiving through Christmas. Last year’s festivities featured a train that transported guests around the breathtaking Cliffside property. This year, Shannon and her crew have been commissioned to build a Victorian-style carnival midway with games and prizes galore.

Anthony Hetheridge, ninth baron of Wellegrave and chief superintendent for Scotland Yard, will marry Kate Wakefield in three weeks. It's inevitable - the invitations are out, the flowers are ordered, the cake is chosen. But murder waits for no man - and no wedding.

World War II has finally come home to Britain, but it takes more than nightly air raids to rattle intrepid spy and expert code breaker Maggie Hope. After serving as a secret agent to protect Princess Elizabeth at Windsor Castle, Maggie is now an elite member of the Special Operations Executive–a black ops organization designed to aid the British effort abroad–and her first assignment sends her straight into Nazi-controlled Berlin, the very heart of the German war machine. Relying on her quick wit and keen instincts, Maggie infiltrates the highest level of Berlin society, gathering information to pass on to London headquarters. But the secrets she unveils will expose a darker, more dangerous side of the war–and of her own past.

Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs are on the warpath in the village of Balfour, and the local shop owners fear that their financial sins are about to catch up with them. Meanwhile, Abbey Glen’s new Whisky Masterclass is a resounding success...until the latest group of students starts to drop dead in the night and Abi Logan fears that what they are really offering is a Masterclass in Murder. Missing money, dead bodies, and a whistle blower who may not be as virtuous as he appears leave Abi scrambling for clues in the dark. Will Abi find the killer before the inevitable happens?

As Christmas of 1804 approaches, Jane Austen finds herself "[I]nsupportably bored with Bath, and the littleness of a town". It is with relief that she accepts a peculiar commission from her Gentleman Rogue, Lord Harold Trowbridge - to shadow his niece, Lady Desdemona, who has fled to Bath to avoid the attentions of the unsavory earl of Swithin. But Jane's idle diversion turns deadly when a man is discovered stabbed to death in the Theatre Royal. Adding to the mystery is an unusual object found on the victim's body - a pendant that contains a portrait of an eye!

When two young girls disappear from their primary school, the village of Heighington is put on high alert—and not for the first time. Called in to investigate, Detective Karen Hart is sure that parallels with a previous disappearance are anything but coincidental. DS Hart is still reeling from a case she tried and failed to solve eighteen months ago, when a young woman vanished without a trace. She’s no nearer to the truth of what happened to Amy Fisher, but with two children missing now, too, the stakes have never been higher.

When firefighters tackling a blazing house in a quiet suburb of Pine Valley, California, discover human remains, Detective Katie Scott races to 717 Maple Street. She calls a halt to the excavations the moment she sees the full number and size of the bones; someone has buried a whole family down here. Working night and day, it’s up to Katie to prove her theory that the fire was no accident, that someone wanted to expose the secret in the basement. Tiny traces of explosives residue found at the scene is all the proof she needs.

Late one night, a distraught young man knocks on the door of retired and recently widowed Ally Bright’s remote home on the Cornish coast. But before she can make sense of his confused words, he’s gone—not to be seen again until he’s found the next morning at the foot of the nearby cliffs.

DCI Matilda Darke has returned to work after a nine-month absence. A shadow of her former self, she is tasked with reopening a cold case: the terrifyingly brutal murders of Miranda and Stefan Harkness. The only witness was their 11-year-old son, Jonathan, who was too deeply traumatised to speak a word. Then a dead body is discovered, and the investigation leads back to Matilda's case. Suddenly the past and present converge, and it seems a killer may have come back for more....

Sorenson, Wisconsin's deputy coroner, Mattie Winston, is back on the job...in a nursing home examining the body of Bernie Chase - the now former president of the Twilight Home's board of directors - who is covered in a powder used to turn liquids to solids. The home's residents are certain Bernie was offing the patients who cost him too much...and the patient who found him can't remember a thing.

Detective Madison Knight is called to investigate the murder of a man who was stabbed multiple times and found in his home. Madison arrives on scene, but it isn’t the bloody mess that shakes her—it’s the victim’s identity. His name was Jimmy Bates, and he’s the man who killed her grandfather. When a woman—also connected with the mob—turns up murdered, a picture starts forming for Madison. If she’s right about why Jimmy and the woman were targeted, there’s something very dark and sinister going on in her city, and it puts Madison squarely in a killer’s crosshairs.

Lori Shepherd travels to New Zealand in Aunt Dimity's fifteenth charming adventure. Mystery readers everywhere continue to be won over by Nancy Atherton's popular cozy series. In the latest installment, Lori Shepherd is bereft when she learns that her beloved neighbors, Ruth and Louise Pym, may be dying. Summoning her to their sickroom, the elderly sisters have a favor to ask: Will Lori find their long-lost brother, Aubrey, before death claims them? Despite her misgivings, Lori sets out for distant New Zealand-where Aubrey fled after being cast out of the family in disgrace. With the help of a charming kiwi bird and her otherworldly friend, Aunt Dimity, Lori tries to heal a family broken by deceit.

When Detective Amanda Steele’s niece, Ava, begs her to look for a missing schoolfriend, she immediately agrees to take on the case. Eighteen-year-old Reese left home three nights ago after fighting with her mother and hasn’t been seen since. But when the teenager’s body is discovered brutally murdered, poised dramatically at the prom venue, Amanda is devastated she didn’t save the girl in time.

When friends Louise and Irina find a dead body in the local park whilst walking their dogs, they are soon drawn into the mystery of who murdered local entrepreneur Phil Creasey. Phil used to be a member of their dog walking community – nicknamed The Pack – until the death of his cockapoo, and The Pack feel they owe it to Phil to investigate his death. With Louise and Irina leading the charge, they soon come up against local drug dealers, stolen cars and a disturbing incident of poisoned dog biscuits.

Revered mystery writer Josephine Tey is traveling from Scotland to London for the final week of her play Richard of Bordeaux, the surprise hit of the season, with pacifist themes that resonate in a world still haunted by war. But joy turns to horror when her arrival coincides with the murder of a young woman she had befriended on the train ride - and Tey is plunged into a mystery as puzzling as any in her own works.

On a cold night in February, the popular Lighterman's ball festivities are cut short when a guest of honor, Stephen Bremmer, goes into spasms and abruptly collapses. Once again Inspector Witherspoon returns to the Wrexley Hotel to investigate a murder. The victim was considered a boorish snob who felt entitled to anything and anyone he wanted. Yet despite his Oxford education, he was barely literate, lazy, and prone to make stupid mistakes - his last mistake turned out to be crossing a killer.