South American Mystery

Thirteen bitter sweets. Thirteen bitter suspects. One unhappy ending. World-famous Chandler's Chocolates has unveiled a new storybook-inspired chocolate collection, Once Upon a Truffle. It's up to Anna Clementine, the company's event coordinator, to promote the product by hosting a fairytale-themed beauty pageant. To set the scene, contestants are invited to an abandoned castle deep in the Smoky Mountains. After all, every little girl dreams of being a princess in a palace- unless that castle turns out to be haunted. Anna soon finds herself in a cursed castle, surrounded by spoiled ...

Iggy Guerra is out of prison, but his homecoming is anything but smooth. His beloved mother is gone, his grief-stricken father Armando is deep in debt, and they are about to lose the butcher shop that has been in their family for generations. Iggy must earn his father’s lost trust in order to save La Carnicería Guerra from the threats imposed by a new rival business, a vigilante activist, and big-game hunter Orin, who has dragged Armando into his dangerous money-making schemes deep in the Everglades, where more than secrets are buried.

As a young man, Virgil Moody vowed he would never be like his father, he would never own slaves. When he moves from his father's plantation in Savannah to New Orleans, he takes with him Annie, a tiny woman with sharp eyes and a sharper tongue, who he is sure would not survive life on the plantation. She'll be much safer with him, away from his father's cruelty. And when he discovers Annie's pregnancy, already a few months along, he is all the more certain that he made the right decision. As the years pass, the divide between Moody's assumptions and Annie's reality widens ever further.

“Dispute in progress, lethal weapons involved.” Deputy Pegasus Quincy takes the call to resolve violence on a Friesian horse ranch in Arizona. Intent on his own personal vendetta, partner Shepherd Malone refuses to declare a murder in a fatal fire at the ranch. Peg unwisely circumvents the law to investigate anyway. Two families feuding over water rights, a Gypsy clan suspected of drug dealing, and a blackmailer on the loose, all lead Pegasus astray on her quest to find the killer in a desert mountain town beset by flash floods and arsenic-laced creeks.

Something is exciting and chilling about a pursuit to identify the remains of a murdered victim and the victim’s murderer—especially when the crime was committed 49 years ago in a small Southern town. The remains were found on Great Aunt Hannah’s property after she died, and Vett Brayborn, Great Aunt Hannah’s most trusted niece and executor of her estate, works as an amateur investigator to solve the murder mystery. The mystery must be solved before the sale of Great Aunt Hannah's properties occurs because an unsolved murder has a way of devaluing properties. Needless to say, the ...

“The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether” is an Edgar Allan Poe short story that expertly blends his dark perspective with the comic. -This is the original story—only word order and difficult vocabulary have been updated. -End notes, interpretation, and discussion of major themes follow the text. -Biographical information on Edgar Allan Poe is included. -For other classic short stories in easy to understand updated English search for “Simplified for Modern Readers Series.”