Traditional Women

When she asks her dependable husband, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, to fix her tiny white van, Precious Ramotswe fears he might just sell the vehicle and buy her something more modern. And so he does. But this will not do. So Precious tries to track her beloved van down - and learns it has already been stolen from its new owner.

New York Times best-selling author Alexander McCall Smith, winner of the first-ever Saga Award for Wit, has entertained millions with his beloved No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency mysteries. Now this phenomenally popular author introduces a fresh series, brimming with the charm and humor his stable of dedicated fans can't get enough of.

London, 1850: A young Charles Lenox struggles to make a name for himself as a detective...without a single case. Scotland Yard refuses to take him seriously and his friends deride him for attempting a profession at all. But when an anonymous writer sends a letter to the paper claiming to have committed the perfect crime - and promising to kill again - Lenox is convinced that this is his chance to prove himself. The writer's first victim is a young woman whose body is found in a naval trunk, caught up in the rushes of a small islets in the middle of the Thames.

Recently engaged and deeply ensconced in her third year of surgical residency in Chicago, Emily Hartford gets a shock when she is called home to Freeport, Michigan, the small town she fled a decade ago after the death of her mother. Her estranged father, the local medical examiner, has had a massive heart attack. At the hospital, she finds her father in near total denial of the seriousness of his condition. He insists that the best thing Emily can do to help him is to take on the autopsy of a senator's teen daughter whose sudden, unexplained death has just rocked the sleepy town.

When small-town Police Chief Arly Hanks returns to Maggody, Arkansas, after vacation, she finds the population has risen to a booming 802. Among the newbies: Madame Celeste, the psychic who's holding locals in thrall with her predictions of doom; a handsome new high school guidance counselor; and a gaggle of mantra-chanting hippies who have turned the old general store into the source for cosmic harmony. Unfortunately, life in Maggody is anything but harmonious.

Meet DI Hillary Greene, a police woman fighting to save her career. Not only has she lost her husband, but his actions have put her under investigation for corruption. Then a bashed and broken body is found floating in the Oxford Canal. It looks like the victim fell off a boat, but Hillary is not so sure. Her investigation exposes a dark background to the death. Can Hillary clear her name and get to the bottom of a fiendish conspiracy on the water?

Mrs. Virgil (Emily) Pollifax of New Brunswick, New Jersey, was a widow with grown children. She was tired of attending her Garden Club meetings. She wanted to do something good for her country. This first in the series sends Emily on her first case after she successfully persuades a skeptical CIA recruitment officer that she is the best person for the job.

This is a land of long memory and hidden corners, a land that had known Vlad the Impaler, a land from whose churchyards the shades creep. When Queen Marie calls, Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes are as dubious as they are reluctant. But a young girl is involved, and a beautiful queen. Surely it won't take long to shine light on this unlikely case of what would seem to be strigoi? Or, as they are known in the West...vampires.

In her best-selling Amelia Peabody mysteries, author Elizabeth Peters has created an award-winning mixture of vivid archeological detail, finely-tuned suspense, and witty romance. This, the 12th Amelia Peabody mystery, opens in 1914. As the tides of war rise, Egypt is threatened by attacks. Espionage abounds, pulling in several members of the Peabody Emerson household even as they embark on a new archeological season.

New York Times best-selling author Laurie R. King has won or been nominated for every major award in mystery writing. King's beloved sleuth Mary Russell here attempts to reverse her legendary husband, Sherlock Holmes', greatest failure.

The idyllic town of Baxter, Michigan, seemed like the perfect place for Dr. Katie LeClair to settle down after years toiling in medical school - until the murder of a patient shattered the peace she had found. Now on the mend and balancing the responsibilities of a new house and the joys of a new romance, Katie is finally ready to start enjoying life. But danger arrives just as the town is gearing up for its annual Halloween festival-and once again, this doctor-turned-sleuth will have to unmask a killer in their midst. Trouble comes in threes this Halloween.

Since she bought her rambling fixer-upper of a house, Jacobia Tiptree has gotten used to finding things broken. But her latest problem isn't so easily repaired. Along with the rotting floor joists and sagging support beams, there's the little matter of the dead man in Jake's storeroom, an ice pick planted firmly in his cranium. Jake's unknown guest turns out to be local boy turned billionaire Threnody McIlwaine.

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.

Robin and Aurora have finally begun their adventure in parenting. With newborn Sophie proving to be quite a handful, Roe's mother pays for a partially trained nurse, Virginia Mitchell, to come help the new parents for a few weeks. One particularly stormy night, Roe wakes to hear her daughter crying and Virginia nowhere to be found. Roe's brother Philip helps her search the house, and they happen upon a body outside. But it isn't Virginia's. Who is this mystery woman dead in their backyard, and what happened to Virginia?

Handsome Mark Callender did not die the way a young gentleman should. He was found hanged, a lipstick stain on his mouth and a nude girl's picture nearby. The official verdict was suicide, but his aristocratic father suspects murder. He hires Cordelia Gray, a fledgling detective, to investigate. And as she follows a trail of guilty secrets and shameful sins, she concludes that the nicest people do the nastiest things!

Mrs. Pollifax has a new hat, and only she and Mr. Carstairs know it conceals eight false passports which she must smuggle into Bulgaria.

Recently retired, Carole Seddon is residing in Fethering in the cottage she purchased with her ex-husband. There she maintains a quiet and sensible life with the companionship of Gulliver, her Labrador retriever. But everything changes when she and Gulliver, while taking their daily constitutional, find a corpse on the beach. What's more, there are two wounds on its neck. The body mysteriously disappears and the police dismiss Carole as a befuddled middle-aged woman.

As far as Carol Spencer is concerned, the war has spoiled everything. She and Don had been engaged for years and were on the verge of marriage when he was shot down in the South Pacific, leaving Carol on the verge of spinsterhood at 24. She wants to take some kind of job in the war effort, but her invalid mother demands that Carol accompany her to the family's summer home in Maine. But when they arrive at the faded mansion, they find it completely locked up. The servants are gone, the lights are dark - and there is a body in the closet.

It's summertime on the Riviera, where the Jazz Age is busily reinventing the holiday delights of warm days on golden sand and cool nights on terraces and dance floors. Just up the coast lies a more traditional pleasure ground: Monte Carlo, where fortunes are won, lost, stolen, and hidden away. So when Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes happen across the Côte d'Azur in this summer of 1925, they find themselves pulled between the young and the old, hot sun and cool jazz, new friendships and old loyalties, childlike pleasures and very grownup sins...

A missing salami leads Mrs. Pollifax to a shocking discovery: a woman is hiding in her house. Even more unsettling is the revelation that ever since the young woman had a chance encounter with the heir to the throne of Ubangiba, she has been followed by deadly hit men. What do these men want?