Every nosy neighbor, gossipy friend, and meddling relative is just one good mystery away from becoming a detective. From behind locked doors or out in broad daylight, driven by chance or curiosity, amateur sleuths get in over their heads in these six hair-raising, hilarious stories.

Frances Wynn, the American-born Countess of Harleigh, enjoys more freedom as a widow than she did as a wife. After an obligatory year spent mourning her philandering husband, Reggie, she puts aside her drab black gowns, leaving the countryside and her money-grubbing in-laws behind. With her young daughter in tow, Frances rents a home in Belgravia and prepares to welcome her sister, Lily, arriving from New York - for her first London season.

Majestic mountain views, whisky by the fire and… a murder to solve? Join Ally McKinley at her cosy little guesthouse in the Scottish Highlands as she tackles her first puzzling case!For recently retired Ally McKinley, the tiny village of Locharran is the perfect place to open the guesthouse of her dreams in a lovingly restored old Scottish malthouse. Before long she is making friends with the locals, including Hamish Sinclair, the earl who owns the nearby castle. But things take an unexpected turn when her first paying guest is found sprawled across her cobblestoned courtyard.

London, 1921: Mabel Canning is proud to be a modern woman working for the Useful Women’s Agency, carrying out tasks for gentlewomen from flower arranging to washing muddy dogs. But when she answers the door for wealthy widow Rosalind Despard, she almost chokes on her cucumber sandwich when she finds a soldier’s body on the doorstep. As she offers tea to the policemen of Scotland Yard, Mabel can’t resist getting drawn into the investigation.

Meet Agatha Dorn, cantankerous archivist, grammar pedant, gin afficionado and murder mystery addict. When she discovers a lost manuscript by Gladden Green, the Empress of Golden Age detective fiction, Agatha's life takes an unexpected twist. She becomes an overnight sensation, basking in the limelight of literary stardom. But Agatha's newfound fame takes a nosedive when the 'rediscovered' novel is exposed as a hoax. And when her ex-lover turns up dead, with a scrap of the manuscript by her side, Agatha suspects foul play.

English girl Ellie is a "fish out of water" when she arrives in sunny Florida for a vacation with her aunt at a luxury beach resort. But she's barely dipped her toe in the ocean before she stumbles on a sinister murder. Now, Ellie must battle sunburn, jet lag and a cheeky parrot named Hemingway, while trying to unravel the mystery.

The tenacious Lizzie Bennet has earned her place at Longbourn, her father’s law firm. Her work keeps her busy, but luckily it gives her plenty of reasons to consult with Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, a stern but secretly softhearted solicitor at Pemberley. Lizzie is hired to investigate a deadly warehouse fire and to find the mysterious woman who was spotted at the scene moments before the flames took hold. But when the case leads to the sitting room of a woman Darcy once proposed marriage to, the delicate balance between personal and professional in their relationship is threatened.

Spring, 1918. The Great War is at a crucial stage, the Germans are making one last push into France, and the Allies are struggling to hold them back. Battle lines are shifting, and men, and their machines, are being sent up and down the front to shore up defenses. Major Heathcliff Lennox, and his batman Greggs, are told to report to their new HQ. They set off on a sunlit day to fly the distance, but the enemy is never far away, and disaster strikes. They're sent crashing to the ground behind enemy lines, where life, death, and love await.

When the misanthropic Dr Miriam Price wakes up dead, her day has only just started to go wrong. With everyone mistakenly thinking she killed herself, she's condemned to half a century in Limbo as a 'Death By Misadventure' - unless she can prove that she was murdered. Unable to communicate with anyone living, Miriam's investigative options look decidedly limited.

Clare Cosi used to manage the historic Village Blend coffeehouse…until she opted for quieter pastures and a more suburban life. But after ten years and a little friendly cajoling from the owner (a fresh pot of Jamaican Blue Mountain was all it took), she's back to the grind. With a sprawling rent-free apartment directly above the Village Blend, her cat Java by her side, and plenty of coffeehouse redecorating ideas, Clare is thrilled to return to work. Until she discovers the assistant manager unconscious in the back of the store, coffee grounds strewn everywhere.

Lady Augusta Colebrook, “Gus,” is determinedly unmarried, bored by society life, and tired of being dismissed at the age of forty-two. She and her twin sister, Julia, who is grieving her dead betrothed, need a distraction. One soon presents itself: to rescue their friend’s goddaughter, Caroline, from her violent husband. The sisters set out to Caroline’s country estate with a plan, but their carriage is accosted by a highwayman. In the scuffle, Gus accidentally shoots and injures the ruffian, only to discover he is Lord Evan Belford, an acquaintance from their past.

Having recently moved from London to a small Cornish seaside village, Nova Davies started a book club at the local community center, but so far it’s a disaster. The five members disagree on everything, and to make matters worse, a significant sum of money is stolen during one of the meetings, putting the much-loved community center at risk.

When Dr. Gul Delani receives a call in the middle of the night from the Sindh police, she thinks they may have finally found her niece, Mahnaz—a precocious, politically conscious teenage girl who went missing three years prior. Gul has been racked with grief since Mahnaz’s disappearance, and distracts herself through work: she’s a talented curator at the Museum of Heritage and History in Karachi, one of the country’s leading experts in archaeology and ancient civilizations, a hard-won position for a woman.

It is the summer of 1919, and Constance Haverhill is without prospects. Now that all the men have returned from the front, she has been asked to give up her cottage and her job at the estate she helped run during the war. While she looks for a position as a bookkeeper or—horror—a governess, she’s sent as a lady’s companion to an old family friend who is convalescing at a seaside hotel. Despite having only weeks to find a permanent home, Constance is swept up in the social whirl of Hazelbourne-on-Sea after she rescues the local baronet’s daughter, Poppy Wirrall, from a social faux pas.

At the end of her first unsuccessful season out in society, Lady Georgiana has all but given up on attracting a suitable man - until she receives an invitation to a masked Halloween ball at Broxley Manor. Georgie is uncertain why she was invited, until she learns that the royal family intends to marry her off to a foreign prince, one reputed to be mad.

The tenacious Lizzie Bennet has earned her place at Longbourn, her father’s law firm. Her work keeps her busy, but luckily it gives her plenty of reasons to consult with Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, a stern but secretly softhearted solicitor at Pemberley. Lizzie is hired to investigate a deadly warehouse fire and to find the mysterious woman who was spotted at the scene moments before the flames took hold. But when the case leads to the sitting room of a woman Darcy once proposed marriage to, the delicate balance between personal and professional in their relationship is threatened.

From Katherine St. John, author of The Lion's Den, comes another sublimely escapist thriller: When Hollywood heartthrob Cole Power hires his ex-wife, Stella Rivers, to act in his son's film, he sparks a firestorm on an isolated island that will unearth long-buried secrets - and unravel years of lies.

As the London Daily Gazette’s popular gossip columnist, she is extremely adept at sneaking into houses, assuming disguises and overseeing a vast network of spies to ensure she stays abreast of the beau monde’s comings and goings. If it sometimes seems as though she was hiding behind the settee during a particularly fierce quarrel between a husband and his wife, it’s most likely because she was hiding behind the settee during their fierce quarrel.

Summer, 1958. Vivienne Rhodes thinks she’s finally landed her break playing Helen of Troy in Apex Pictures’ big-budget epic, A Thousand Ships, an anticipated blockbuster meant to resurrect the failing studio. Naturally, she’s devastated when she arrives on the remote Italian island of Tavalli and finds herself cast as the secondary character, Cassandra—while her nemesis, the fiancé-stealing Lottie Lawrence, America’s supposed “sweetheart,” is playing the lead role instead.

Every nosy neighbor, gossipy friend, and meddling relative is just one good mystery away from becoming a detective. From behind locked doors or out in broad daylight, driven by chance or curiosity, amateur sleuths get in over their heads in these six hair-raising, hilarious stories.

The beloved author of The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared returns with an enchanting adventure that skewers the greed and hypocrisy that dominates our time and holds lessons about what’s truly important in life.

It’s the summer of 1994, and all Maeve Murray wants are good final exam results so she can earn her ticket out of the wee Northern Irish town she has grown up in during the Troubles—away from her crowded home, the silence and sadness surrounding her sister’s death, and most of all, away from the simmering violence of her divided community. And as a first step, Maeve’s taken a summer job in a local shirt factory working alongside Protestants with her best friends, kind, innocent Caroline Jackson and privileged and clever Aoife O’Neill.

Aging Herb’s charmed life with his dear wife, Susan, in their Key West house is coming undone. Susan now needs constant care, and Herb is in denial about his own ailing health. The one bright spot is the arrival of an endlessly optimistic manicurist calling herself Renee. She sings to Susan during manicures, gets her to paint, and brings her a sense of contentment. But then Herb and Susan’s adult children arrive to stage an intervention on their stubborn, independent father, and as a consequence, Renee’s gig with Susan—and her grand plans for her own life—start to unravel as well.

Jane Start is thirty-three, broke, and recently single. Ten years prior, she had a hit song—written by world-famous superstar Jonesy—but Jane hasn’t had a breakout since. Now she's living out of four garbage bags at her parents’ house, reduced to performing to Karaoke tracks in Las Vegas. Rock bottom. But when her longtime manager Pippa sends Jane to London to regroup, she’s seated next to an intriguing stranger on the flight—the other Tom Hardy, an elegantly handsome Oxford professor of literature. Jane is instantly smitten by Tom, and soon, truly inspired.

The vacation house is a luxurious getaway for a wealthy English family, windows open to sun and the sea, a sparkling swimming pool, and a verdant garden. One hot summer night, while the parents and their friends drink wine and amuse themselves, a young woman—the teenage daughter of the Greek caretaker—ventures for a walk on their private beach. Her life will never be the same again.

London, 1921: Mabel Canning is proud to be a modern woman working for the Useful Women’s Agency, carrying out tasks for gentlewomen from flower arranging to washing muddy dogs. But when she answers the door for wealthy widow Rosalind Despard, she almost chokes on her cucumber sandwich when she finds a soldier’s body on the doorstep. As she offers tea to the policemen of Scotland Yard, Mabel can’t resist getting drawn into the investigation.

England, 1865: Newspaper columnist Lady Katherine Bascomb finds herself the subject of speculation when her latest article leads to an arrest in the murders plaguing London. The English believe women ought not to write about such vulgar things as crime, and a particularly attractive detective inspector is incensed that she's interfered with his investigation. To escape her sudden notoriety, Katherine heads to the country - only to witness a murder upon her arrival.

De’Andrea Whitman, her husband Malik, and their five-year-old daughter, Nina, are new to the upper-crust white suburb of Rolling Hills, Virginia—a move motivated by circumstance rather than choice. De’Andrea is heartbroken to leave her comfortable life in the Black oasis of Atlanta, and between her mother-in-law’s Alzheimer's diagnosis, her daughter starting kindergarten, and the overwhelming whiteness of Rolling Hills, she finds herself struggling to adjust to her new community. To ease the transition, her therapist proposes a challenge: make a white girlfriend.

Born on the ninth day of the ninth month in the year 1900, Kitty Deverill grows up in Castle Deverill, on the sunning green hills of West Cork, Ireland - the same place her ancestors have always dwelt. She isn't fully Irish, as the son of the local veterinarian likes to tease her; but this doesn't stop Kitty and Jack O'Leary from falling in love....

For lovers of the supernatural and the macabre comes this collection of ghostly and chilling stories from legendary mystery writer Agatha Christie. Fantastic psychic visions, specters looming in the shadows, encounters with deities, a man who switches bodies with a cat - be sure to keep the light on whilst listening to these tales. The Last Séance gathers 20 stories, some featuring Christie’s beloved detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, in one haunting compendium that explores all things occult and paranormal, and is an essential omnibus for Christie fans.