Amateur Sleuth

Dela Alvaro, head of security for the Spotted Pony Casino, is asked to do a security check of a casino on the Oregon Coast. She no sooner starts her rounds at the casino and a child of a dubious couple is kidnapped. Special Agent Quinn Pierce of the FBI has been out to get the father for some time. One of Dela’s best friends from the Army is also at the casino and they catch up. The next morning, Dela finds her friend strangled.

Peter Bannerman, veterinarian and amateur detective, deserves a summer vacation. Peter and his family head to a remote fishing lodge in northern Manitoba for a canoeing trip with his champion sniffer dog, Pippin. But a series of incidents color their plans. The lodge’s sled team of huskies has been poisoned and, at the same time, a floatplane crashes into the lake, killing the pilot and both passengers. While Peter works to save the huskies, it is discovered that the plane crash wasn’t an accident. It was murder.

Safecracker Ellie McDonnell hasn’t seen Major Ramsey—her handsome but aloof handler in the British government—since their tumultuous mission together two months before, but when she hears about a suspicious robbery in London, she feels compelled to contact him. Together they discover that a rash of burglaries in the city all lead back to a hotbed of spies in the neutral city of Lisbon, Portugal, and an unknown object brought to London by a mysterious courier.

The Ancient Ones walk among the sacred rocks at Petroglyphs National Monument. But are they responsible for the body discovered there one night during the full moon? Multiple jurisdictions of law enforcement are at a loss to find the identity of the dead man. The FBI, National Park Service, and Albuquerque Police wait for answers from the Office of the Medical Examiner (OMI), but they're stumped too. The CIA, lurking in the background, seems no better at finding solutions.

1536, London. Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, is in peril. In the mid of night, court jester Will Somers is summoned to an urgent assignation when she discovers a body in her chamber. The queen wants Will to find out who the man is and how he ended up there. Is someone trying to frame her for his murder?

Josie Posey and her posse of Mahjong Mavens are at it again, in this cozy mystery where the retired big city crime reporter turned small town crime solver uncovers another murder in picturesque English Village. When the clockmaker's daughter returns home for a visit, reporter Josie Posey is assigned the task of interviewing the talented watch designer. That very afternoon the young woman falls from a ladder while inventorying antique clocks.

Lydia stumbles upon a true-crime YouTube channel, Night Shade, hosted by a former classmate, Shane Ellet, who maintains Jess's death wasnst an accident; it was murder. Caught in a web of lies and deception are Cam Rawls, Jess's ex-boyfriend and current hometown sheriff; Brad Pearce, the handsome, young English teacher who was sexually involved with students; and a recovering addict, Mark Burns, employed by Richard Fontaine, Mom Gloria's new boyfriend and general contractor. Will Lydia learn the truth in time?

The South Dakota Gold Rush might be long over, but Zo Jones feels like she's hit the mother lode when she and her friends browse an estate sale, where a rare old book about the history of Spirit Canyon is causing quite a commotion. In addition to local stories and secrets, the book may even contain the location of a famous stash of gold-a treasure worth killing for.

Shayla's wedding planning is nearly complete—the decorations are on order, playlists are set in stone, and the perfect wedding venue has been reserved. Everyone in Seamus' family has been married at the Ballywick Castle, and a June wedding in Ireland will be breathtakingly beautiful. Until they find out that their date has been double-booked.

Politicians fight like cats and dogs, but when things take a deadly turn at the Virginia House of Delegates, Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen calls on her beloved pets to help her crack the case and stop the fur from flying in this latest mystery from Rita Mae Brown and her feline co-author Sneaky Pie Brown.

Dr. Norrie Marconi is in a good place: She’s solved an old friend’s murder and her love life is blooming. She still has issues to deal with, such as her father’s ghost and that malpractice suit, but she feels like things are settling down and she’s getting her life in order. Wrong. The senior doctor in her medical group drops a bombshell that threatens to disrupt her life, some of the patients start acting strange, and one winds up near death from multiple gunshot wounds. Then there’s her father’s ghost who insists he won’t be free until she finds out what happened to his boyhood friend.

Remi McKenna is co-hosting a letterboxing event, but her weekend plans are not all fun and games when best friend Trace Cooper is the target of a stalker. An inheritance of a stone manor house means she hopes this will be the start of her new life in Northern Virginia.

A warm June afternoon in King’s Cove is interrupted by an explosion. Following the sound, Lane goes to investigate. Up a steep path she discovers a secluded cabin and, hiding nearby, a young Japanese girl injured and mute, but very much alive. At the Nelson Police Station, Inspector Darling and Sergeant Ames, following up on a report of a nighttime heist at the local jeweler’s, discover the jeweler himself dead in his office, apparently bludgeoned, and a live wire hanging off the back of the building.

In The Secrets of the Tainted Trough, imagine waking up from a nap to see a donkey and a horse peering through the screen door, both desperately thirsty. Would you give them a drink? And then what? Sally, an energetic 87-year-old woman, faces this exact dilemma. Intrigued by the animals, she decides to investigate why they keep returning to her property. What she discovers shocks her to the core - their water trough is contaminated with a body. But whose body is it? And how did it end up in the water trough?

Falling drunk into Stephen Hawking's wheelchair didn't seem to bother the 23-year-old Canadian. Considering he had already been tied naked to a roundabout and vomited into a vacuum cleaner, Antony was thinking his return to the UK was going quite well. But that all changed in the summer of 1993, when he visited his great-aunt, or what was left of her. Someone had wanted her dead, and whatever secrets she held, a brick to the head made sure she took them to her grave.