Amateur Sleuth Cozy

Lately, Kate has a lot on her dessert plate. She's launching a cookie-of-the-day challenge in the heart of Coral Cay, providing sweet treats for the reception of the town's handsome new veterinarian - not to mention dealing with tourists in town for a pirate festival and the surprise arrival of her former fiance, Evan, who seems determined to win her back. And if that's not enough, a skeleton has been found - in the backyard behind her best friend Maxi's floral shop. Kate knows Maxi could never hurt a fly.

With her personal life in disarray, Julia Lanchester feels she has no option but to quit her job on her father's hit BBC Two nature show, A Bird in the Hand. Accepting a tourist management position in Smeaton-under-Lyme, a quaint village in the English countryside, Julia throws herself into her new life, delighting sightseers (and a local member of the gentry) with tales of ancient Romans and pillaging Vikings. But the past is front and center when her father Rupert tracks her down in a moment of desperation.

Each December, the faculty of Balaclava Agricultural College goes wild with holiday decorations. The entire campus glitters with Christmas lights, save for one dark spot: the home of Professor Peter Shandy. But after years of resisting the school's Illumination festival, Shandy suddenly snaps, installing a million-watt display of flashing lights and blaring music perfectly calculated to drive his neighbors mad. Then the horticulturalist flees town, planning to spend Christmas on a tramp steamer. He returns home to find his lights extinguished - and a dead librarian in his living room.

Meet Ellie Swan... a history-loving bookworm trying to rebuild her life in her childhood hometown. After solving the mystery of the missing manuscript and saving her grandmother’s beloved bookshop, Meadowfield Books, Ellie is slowly settling into her new role as manager. But just as life begins to feel stable, the quiet village of Meadowfield is shaken by another unexpected mystery. This time, the victim is Tim Baker, a promising young photographer whose life was tragically cut short in 1994. A hidden accusation pointing to a potential murderer has resurfaced under the wallpaper in the ...

Angie Curtis and the Mainely Needlepointers are all too familiar with the Gardener estate. The crumbling Victorian mansion, known as Aurora, has been sitting vacant for nearly 25 years - and some say that it's haunted by the ghost of Jasmine Gardener, the teenage girl who died there in 1970 under mysterious circumstances. Harbor Haven is abuzz with excitement when Hollywood actress Skye West decides to buy Aurora and sell off its furnishings.

Ghostly whispers, shocking secrets, and a Pomeranian on the loose … England, 1941: Evie Harris doesn’t believe in ghosts—not even when she spots a glowing figure outside her bedroom window in the quiet village of Crofter’s Green. But when the same eerie spectre is seen by Lord Hawthorne, tied to a long-buried family scandal, even Evie starts to wonder if the past is haunting Hawthorne Manor. Before she can investigate, Lord Hawthorne is found dead at the bottom of his grand staircase. An accident? Not likely.

Librarian Prunella Pearce has left heartbreak behind to start a new life in the village of Winterbottom, where there's little social life to be had aside from the meetings of The Winterbottom Women's Institute at the parish hall. But a bit of excitement ensues when the group is about to elect a new president—and the nominees for the position begin dropping like flies. One is found facedown in a lemon drizzle cake, stabbed with a crochet needle. Another nearly dies spectacularly in the revolving doors of a Harrogate hotel.

Claire Barclay, owner of a mystery book tour company, collects three women at the Manchester airport who have flown in from Tucson, Arizona, then starts on a tour of Yorkshire and the sites of mystery novels. She meets the rest of the tour in York: two British couples and Phillip, a single man.

England, 1941. The tranquil village of Crofter’s Green seems like a haven from the chaos of wartime. But when a local air raid warden is found dead in the village churchyard, five villagers--some getting on in years and none of them policemen--decide they need to uncover the truth.

With her rent rising faster than her pie crust, bakery owner Winnie Johnson had hoped to be rescued by an inheritance from her wealthy friend and neighbor Gertrude Redenbacher. Instead all she inherits is the widow's hostile hissing tabby, Lovey, and a vintage ambulance, restored by Gertrude's late husband. As her dream crumbles, Winnie makes her final delivery - a peach pie to an elderly widower. But she finds Bart Wagner lying on his kitchen floor, smothered by a pillow.

Even with her life in ruins in New Mexico, Shay feels uneasy about settling into the small seaside town where she grew up on California's Monterey Peninsula, and taking over an estate bequeathed to her by Bridget Early, a woman she had barely known. Her heightened senses—an empathic gift she's had since childhood—go into overdrive upon touring Crystals & CuriosiTEAS, Bridget's eclectic tea and psychic shop brimming with Irish lore and Celtic symbols. They reach a boiling point when Shay looks up to discover a stranger's body sprawled across the shop's greenhouse roof . . .

When Krissy Hancock and her best friend, Vicki, decide to open a bookstore cafe in their new town of Pine Hills, they decide to call it Death by Coffee, after Krissy's father's most famous mystery novel. Little do they know how well the name fits.... On their very first day of business, Brendon Lawyer huffily takes his coffee...to the grave. It seems he had a severe allergy to peanuts...but how could there have been nuts in his coffee? And who stole his emergency allergy medication?

Contractor and part-time sleuth Shannon Hammer specializes in improving the quirks and flaws of the Victorian homes in Lighthouse Cove, California. The quirks and flaws of their residents are another story... Valentine's Day is approaching, and while Shannon is delighted to be friends with not one but two handsome men, not everyone in town is feeling the love. After her elderly neighbor Jesse Hennessey fails to make his daily appearance at the local diner, Shannon swings by his place to check on him.

It’s springtime in Provence! Trees are in bloom and critters are abuzz— including a murderer or two. Pastry chef Julie Cavallo is gearing up for the Easter weekend. Life is blissfully tranquil… until she learns of a wrongful conviction. Chiropractor Quentin Vernet was found guilty of fatal malpractice, stripped of his license and imprisoned for a year. And now he has lost all hope of clearing his good name. If only there was a way to help him! Unfortunately, Julie has nothing to go on. Her crew of amateur sleuths deems the case too cold and too sticky. Her gendarme boyfriend warns her...

Romaine Wilder, big-city medical examiner with a small-town past, has been downsized and evicted. With few other options, she’s forced to return to her hometown of Roble in East Texas, leaving behind the man she’s dating and the life she’s worked hard to build. Suzanne Babet Derbinay, Romaine’s Auntie Zanne and proprietor of the Ball Funeral Home, has long since traded her French Creole upbringing for Big Texas attitude. She’s a member in a number of ladies’ auxiliaries and clubs, including being in charge of the Tri-County Annual Crawfish Boil and Music Festival. Hanging on to ...

For Brenna Miller, teaching the popular decoupage class is the only way to gloss over her painful past. But it hasn't been easy making friends in a town that doesn't warm up to outsiders. And it doesn't help when the pushy mayor asks her to convince her enigmatic landlord, Nate Williams, to sell his lakefront property to land developers. But just when Brenna thinks the mayor's given up, his body is found stuffed in a trunk at Morse Point Lake. And a witness claims that Nate's truck was at the docks on the night of the murder.

Until now, Odessa Jones's inherited ability to read emotions and foretell danger has protected her. But second sight didn't warn her she would soon be a widow - and about to lose her home and the catering business she's worked so hard to build. The only things keeping Dessa going are her love for baking and her sometimes-mellow cat, Juniper. Unfortunately, putting her life back together means taking a gig at an all-kinds-of-shady real estate firm run by volatile owner Charlie Risko. Until Charlie is brutally killed - and Dessa's bullied coworker is arrested for murder.

Trudell Becket, known to her friends as Tru, finds herself in a bind when her library in lovely Cypress, South Carolina, is turned into a state-of-the-art bookless "technological center". A library with no books breaks Tru's book-loving heart. Then the town manager, who was behind the big push for the library's transformation, is crushed by an overturned shelf of DVDs. Tru becomes the prime suspect as she hadn't hid the fact that she hated having all of those wonderful books replaced by tablets and computers.

Olivia Limoges is the subject of constant gossip. Ever since her mysterious return to the small coastal town of Oyster Bay, North Carolina, Olivia has kept to herself, her dog, and her unfinished novel. With a little cajoling from charming writer Camden Ford, she agrees to join the Bayside Book Writers to break her writer's block and even make a few friends. But when townspeople start turning up dead with haiku poems left by the bodies, anyone with a flair for language is suddenly suspect.

Norma is a modern-day nomad. Living out of her van and teardrop trailer, she revels in self-reliance, solitude, and reading in the glorious peace of nature. Jovial, wise, and scrupulously honest, she's become an uplifting presence in the little town of Quindicott, Rhode Island, where bookseller Pen is thankful to have her part-time help. But it's Norma's other job, working as a housekeeper at the Finch Inn, that gets her into terrible trouble. Norma is accused of stealing jewels from a guest's room: the legendary Valentino Teardrops.