Murder Most Mirthful
Agatha has moved to a picture-book English village and wants to get in the swing. So she buys herself a quiche for the village quiche-making contest and is more than alarmed when it kills a judge. Hot on the trail of the poisoner, Agatha is fearless, all the while unaware, that she's become the next victim....
Also available on audio.
Somewhere between "L.A. Confidential" and "Jurassic Park," readers can find this comic noir mystery about a private investigator (who happens to be a dinosaur) in contemporary New York.
Running back home after news of her affair with a politician leaks out, Lilly Bennett starts up her own international security consulting business and finds her first client in a murdered head of a ranching dynasty.
There is a new broom at Scotland yard: Nimrod Frost. His first little job for Lestrade is to investigate the reported appearance of a lion in Cornwall, a supposed savager of sheep and frightener of men. Hardly a task for an Inspector of the Criminal Investigation Department...
A beautician, reporter, and sleuth, Lehigh, Pennsylvania's Bubbles Yablonsky is saddled with an ex-husband, a precocious daughter, and a shoplifting mother. From solving dark crimes to lightening dark roots, Bubbles has everyone talking. when she trips over a corpse and implicates a wealthy town socialite in the crime, Bubbles teams with a well-muscled photographer to blow the lid off the murder.
The cat's out of the bag: dead bodies are piling up in Brimful Coffers, a picturesque English village. Among the deceased is Boswell, a pet white rat. His killers were caught: Had-I and But-Known, two mischievous felines belonging to Lorinda Lucas, mystery writer. Unfortunately, the other victims were all too human-and their killer remains at large... The danger in Brimful Coffers was unforeseen when several authors created an informal writers' colony in this lovely town outside of London. In act, the location was heaven until the undesirables-critics and scholars-began to show up. Soon Lorinda and her friends feel as if they're living in a fishbowl. Worse, they're getting chilling threats, supposedly from their fictional characters! But when fatal "accidents" begin to claim the colony's residents, death isn't make-believe. And unless Lorinda can sniff out the killer, even a cat's nine lives might not be nearly enough...
It was the time of the Great Game of European powers. Spies and soldiers traded information, risking betrayal and death. Into this unsettled territory trips Amelia Peabody, intrepid heiress and would-be Egyptologist.
First of the Amelia Peabody series.
Also available as an audiobook.
It's So Hard to Kill Good Help These Days. . .
With three kids to raise on her own, Jane Jeffry sometimes needs a hand with the housework. But many of her complaining neighbors believe that the Happy Helper cleaning lady they all share wouldn't know a dustball if she was choking on it. That hardly seems reason enough, however, to do the disreputable domestic in.
So when the charwoman in question is discovered strangled to death with a vacuum cleaner cord, Jane decides to dig up the real dirt--if the tenacious single mom can find any time to spare between her PTA meetings and car-pooling duties. But despite her busy schedule, Jane is determined to tidy up the whole murderous mess--even if it means provoking a killer who may live as close as next door.
Gumshoe Conrad Metcalf has problems-not the least of which are the rabbit in his waiting room and the trigger-happy kangaroo on his tail. Near-future Oakland is an ominous place where evolved animals function as members of society, the police monitor citizens by their karma levels, and mind-numbing drugs such as Forgettol and Acceptol are all the rage. In this brave new world, Metcalf has been shadowing the wife of an affluent doctor, perhaps falling a little in love with her at the same time. But when the doctor turns up dead, our amiable investigator finds himself caught in the crossfire in a futuristic world that is both funny-and not so funny.
Also available on audio.
When crop circles begin appearing in her little town, Police Chief Arly Hanks finds herself more than occupied with tabloid reporters, officers for UFORIA (Unidentified Flying Objects Reported in Arkansas), cattle mutilations, and the murder of a young ufo-ologist.
Out-of-work Stephanie Plum blackmails her bail bondsman cousin into giving her a try as an apprehension agent. Her first case involves tracking down a former vice cop on the run from a charge of murder one, a man who also happens to be her former lover.
Reluctant to show up at her family reunion carrying so many extra pounds, unmarried, overweight Ellie Simons hires Bentley T. Haskell to pose as her fiance, thus beginning a weekend of romance, jealousy, and murder.
Charleston antiques dealer/amateur sleuth Abigail Timberlake Washburn reluctantly attends a seance at her friend C.J.'s newly-bought fixer-upper. When the psychic who conducts the seance is forced to the other side prematurely, Abby leaps into action.
Lucy is asked by her friend Sue Finch to help plan the wedding of Sue's daughter to an Internet millionaire. When the groom's body is found floating beside his yacht, Lucy's not convinced this was an accident. Soon, Lucy finds herself contemplating her own funeral as she launches a harrowing pursuit of a killer.
"Curiosity just might be the death of Mrs. Murphy--and her human companion, Mary Minor "Harry" Haristeen. Small towns are like families. Everyone lives very close together. . .and everyone keeps secrets. Crozet, Virginia, is a typical small town--until its secrets explode into murder. Crozet's thirty-something post-mistress, Mary Minor "Harry" Haristeen, has a tiger cat (Mrs. Murphy) and a Welsh Corgi (Tucker), a pending divorce, and a bad habit of reading postcards not addressed to her.
"When Crozet's citizens start turning up murdered, Harry remembers that each received a card with a tombstone on the front and the message 'Wish you were here' on the back. Intent on protecting their human friend, Mrs. Murphy and Tucker begin to scent out clues. Meanwhile, Harry is conducting her own investigation, unaware her pets are one step ahead of her. If only Mrs. Murphy could alert her somehow, Harry could uncover the culprit before the murder occurs--and before Harry finds herself on the killer's mailing list."
