Women Sleuths Mystery Suspense

The International Butter Festival has come to town! When Harlow Torrent, part-time journalist and full-time Slip witch stumbles upon a dead body, frozen and drained of blood, she's pulled into a murder mystery. Someone has murdered one of the Butter Festival competitors. Was it Zero Bend, punk sculptor extraordinaire with a history of violence? Perhaps Fusion Swan, a sleazy agent playing the publicity game when his clients meet their untimely end?

After surviving a horrific trauma in Nigeria, international aid worker Amanda Doucette returns to Canada to rebuild her life and her shaken ideals. There, the once-passionate, adventurous woman needs all her strength and ingenuity when a friend and fellow survivor goes missing along with his son. A trained first-aid and crisis responder, Doucette - always accompanied by her beloved dog Kaylee - joins forces with RCMP officer Chris Tymko to discover the truth about the disappearance.

Victorian London, 1897: Sherlock Holmes has been asked by South African mogul Cecil Rhodes to stop an international ring of diamond smugglers. An alluring woman wants Watson to help raise funds for her charity. Lucy and Jack are looking forward to their wedding and moving into a new home. But then a new series of murders take place in Whitechapel, and Lucy is targeted by a notorious killer. The Baker Street team will need more than their usual deductive brilliance to defeat their latest adversary, or else the case of the Ripper could be their last.

Melanie West is getting her life back on track after a messy divorce when her grandmother, Liza Harris, asks her to join her in opening a bed-and-breakfast inn. Together, Liza and Melanie purchase a purportedly haunted mansion on the Oregon coast and jump right into clearing out the cobwebs. But while attempting to remove wallpaper in an upstairs bedroom, the new B&B owners stumble upon a very real skeleton in their closet.

Only, asking questions can be hazardous to her health. The closer she gets to finding the truth, the more her own life might be in danger. Sheridan’s self-defense classes are put to good use as she eliminates suspects. But her involvement strains her increasingly serious relationship with Detective Brett McMann. Are some secrets better left untold? Join Sheridan and her friends as they search to prove Zoe’s innocence and identify the killer, who is determined to stop them.

Olivia Greer is counting the days until her date with Michael Bellemare, when her sister, Sage, calls in a panic. As the principal of Lily Rock Music Academy, she meticulously planned the parent orientation weekend. Then, an academic tutor is found dead.

The year started badly and only got worse - blizzards, strikes, power cuts, and political unrest were the norm. For journalist Allie Burns, however, someone else's bad news was the unmistakable sound of opportunity knocking, and the year is ripe with possibilities. But Allie is a woman in a man's world. Desperate to get away from the "women's stories" the Glasgow desk keeps assigning her, she strikes up an alliance with wannabe investigative journalist Danny Sullivan. From the start, their stories create enemies.

Forty-something Maggie Sharpe is returning to her quaint childhood town of Dogwood Mountain, Missouri, nestled in the beautiful Ozark Mountains, Maggie recently inherited Dogwood Bakery, along with a cute little cottage, from her aunt Marjorie. With a son in the Navy, deployed six months at a time, and an ex in Kansas, Maggie decided that it was time for a change, but she soon learns that life back home is not all sprinkles and jelly-filled donuts.

Young widow Penelope Thornton-McClure and her old Aunt Sadie are making ends meet by managing a mystery book shop - a quaint Rhode Island landmark rumored to be haunted. Pen may not believe in ghosts, but she does believe in good publicity - like nabbing Timothy Brennan for a book signing. But soon after the bestselling thriller writer reveals a secret about the store's link to a 1940s murder, he keels over dead - and right in the middle of the store's new community events space. Who gives Mrs. McClure the first clue that it was murder?

Erin Coleridge's used bookstore in Kirkbymoorside, North Yorkshire, England, is a meeting place for the villagers and, in particular, for the local Jane Austen Society. At the Society's monthly meeting, matters come to a head between the old guard and its young turks. After the meeting breaks for tea, persuasion gives way to murder with extreme prejudice when president Sylvia Pemberthy falls dead to the floor. Poisoned? Presumably, but by whom? And was Sylvia the only target?

When a giant inflatable Halloween witch goes missing in the Pineapple Port retirement community, Charlotte's eager to nab the culprit. Before she can lift a fingerprint, someone threatens to kill a new neighbor who looks like an adorable Pomeranian but possesses a disturbing talent for revenge. Moments later, a stranger demands the return of a mysterious wooden box - or else.

First-year detective Kathleen Doyle is a plucky Irish redhead of humble origins and modest means. Chief Inspector Michael Acton is her antithesis: a British lord turned cop. He's tall, handsome, and enigmatic - to a fault. He also has a knack for solving London's most high-profile crimes. Acton selects Doyle out of the newbie squad to partner with him on a series of investigations because she always knows when someone is lying - a trait that comes in handy when interviewing suspects and witnesses.

What if the person you thought you knew best turns out to be someone you never knew at all? Andrea Cooper knows everything about her mother, Laura. She knows Laura has spent nearly her whole life in the small beach town of Belle Isle, Georgia; she knows Laura's never wanted anything more than to lead a quiet, normal life in this conventional community; she knows Laura's a kind and beloved speech pathologist who helps others; she knows Laura's never kept a secret in her life. Andrea knows that Laura is everything she isn't—confident, settled, sure of herself.

When Ruth Townsend discovers Tessa Martin’s body in an abandoned factory, sprawled across a Ouija board, she does the responsible thing and calls 911. But by the time Sheriff Blevins arrives, the girl’s body has vanished. Blevins is convinced that Tessa is playing an elaborate hoax. But Ruth and her daughter, Cassie, know better. They both saw the body.

Spring, 1921. Lady Eleanor Swift, explorer extraordinaire and accidental sleuth, hasn’t had a vacation since she arrived in England a year ago. So she books into the Grand Hotel in the fashionable resort of Brighton for some fresh air, fish and chips, and, of course, a dip in the ocean. Eleanor is enjoying her view of the waves and trying to find her bathing suit when calamity strikes: A guest has been found dead at her beautiful hotel. The distraught manager, who can’t afford a scandal, asks Eleanor to solve the case as swiftly as possible.

A teenage girl is boldly kidnapped from her school, minutes after her mother dropped her off. While a frenzied search begins, bringing together the entire police force of the city that never sleeps, for Detectives Baxter and Holt, this isn’t a crime like any other - it is personal. Detective Holt is faced with an inconceivable decision: Sacrifice everything he holds sacred or jeopardize the life of an innocent girl. But the man holding all the cards in this game of life and death isn’t willing to negotiate; he’s only willing to kill.

Kelly Roth, FBI profiler, returns home to Syracuse to stop a sadistic serial killer. Three murders in three separate jurisdictions in central New York State have the same pattern: women killed by fatal headshots from a hunting rifle. Kelly Roth is sent from Virginia to help the local police. Each victim was found murdered in a remote area or in a quiet park. The media call him “The Park Killer.” But Kelly doesn’t think the killer lurks in the bushes. She thinks he hunts his victims somewhere else.

Book eight of the hilarious Pineapple Port mystery series from Wall Street Journal and USA Today best-selling author Amy Vansant has Charlotte awaking to find Mariska and Bob gone, kidnapped from their home. Their disappearance is a message from a familiar killer: Help me or your friends will disappear. To save her loved ones, Charlotte must find a way to clear her boyfriend's crazy ex of a killing.

Escaping New York City and the espionage case that made her question everything, recently widowed FBI Agent Lina Connerly returns home to sell the house she has inherited in Greenfield, California. With her teenage son, Rory, Lina hopes to reassemble her life, reevaluate her career, and find a clear way forward. Adrift and battling insomnia, she discovers that her father’s sleepy hometown has been transformed into a Silicon Valley suburb on steroids, obsessed with an annual exam called the Wonder Test.

Ellie Simons stands to inherit her Uncle Merlin's huge English country house. But on three utterly bizarre conditions. One: she must lose sixty-three pounds (rude!). Two: she must marry the fake fiance she's been passing off as her true love all weekend. And three: she must catch whoever killed Uncle Merlin in the first place.