Showing results for "By the Book" in Women Sleuths

Fiona, Sue, and Daisy, three retired ladies who volunteer at the local charity shop, Dogs Need Nice Homes, can’t believe their favorite customer is dead. Eighty-six-year-old Sarah Brown was found murdered in her hallway by her delivery man, a domino clutched in her hand—with a name scratched on it. When another person is found dead with a domino in their hand, and with the police making no progress, the ladies will need to help unmask a serial killer. At least they have Fiona’s scruffy-haired terrier cross to assist them.

How can a girl who was raised in a trailer park be working at a top D.C. law firm? Cadence Elliott beat graduates from the country's best law schools to the job. No Ivy-League pedigree. No powerful Washington connections. She got there on merit. Cadence found her exceptional drive as a teen when she learned she could never trust her mother again, when she realized the adults who claimed to be looking out for her were liars. She wanted to make damn sure she'd never have to rely on anyone else, ever again. Becoming a lawyer meant she could be someone who stood up for the powerless.

Alison Bergeron has her doubts about hosting a birthday party for her twin stepdaughters, seeing as it’ll include all of her new husband’s ex-in-laws. Still, she’s a good sport, and everyone has a great time, especially the girls, who receive $10,000 from their estranged uncle, Chick. The girls’ father, NYPD Detective Bobby Crawford, and Christine, his ex, think the gift is too much. When Crawford swings by Chick’s apartment to return it, he finds Chick dead, with roughly $250,000 stuffed in his mattress. The death is ruled a suicide, but Christine isn’t convinced, and even Alison can’t help but admit that there must be a lot more to Chick’s death than meets the eye.

This trial should be a slam-dunk. A faceless powerbroker has other ideas.... Small-town prosecutor Mara Brent must be tough as nails to succeed in her male-dominated profession. But she harbors a soft spot for the victims who rely on her courtroom skill, especially the wheelchair-bound rape survivor she’s known since her first day on the job. So when her friend’s unsolved case reopens with a DNA match and an arrest, she’s determined to finally bring a monster to justice.

St. Thomas, the small college north of New York City where Professor Alison Bergeron teaches, has had its share of scandals - on and off campus; among both students and staff; and, lo and behold, with Alison herself. So when one of St. Thomas’ resident directors goes mysteriously, scandalously missing, the administration wants to keep a lid on it. With only five weeks left in the semester and no time to interview replacements, Alison is tapped for the job.

She's an unconventional lady who has traveled the world, practices the art of self-defense most excellently, and has an interesting tattoo in—ahem—a very unusual place. He's a former member of the Metropolitan Police, now a private investigator, who grew up on the poverty-ridden streets of Edinburgh and has worked the dangerous back alleys of London's notorious East End. A vicious murder brings them together in a race against time that takes them from the sordid back streets of London into the elite private clubs of the powerful and rich.

Lily, a librarian with a bookmobile, arrives in the small California town of Nolan to help start a book club. Across the ocean in an Alsatian chateau, the ancient Book of Cures is stolen and surreptitiously travels to a California coast library, then on to Nolan. Suspicion swirls around the three lonely club members. Unaware of the theft, they secretly pursue their curiosity about classical erotica while sipping a strange tea infused with herbs grown in a gypsy garden.

Forty-something Maggie Sharpe is returning to her quaint childhood town of Dogwood Mountain, Missouri, nestled in the beautiful Ozark Mountains, Maggie recently inherited Dogwood Bakery, along with a cute little cottage, from her aunt Marjorie. With a son in the Navy, deployed six months at a time, and an ex in Kansas, Maggie decided that it was time for a change, but she soon learns that life back home is not all sprinkles and jelly-filled donuts.

College English professor Alison Bergeron thought that dating a cute NYPD detective like Bobby Crawford would be exciting and involve a lot of riding around in cruisers and putting away sleazy crooks, but he has yet to invite her on any stakeouts.... Then when a friend asks her to help him find his nephew, she goes to Bobby for advice only to find out that he already knows about the case. He pulled the boy out of the Hudson River a few days earlier. The boy’s employer calls it an accident, but Alison and Bobby aren’t convinced.

When Cordelia Thorn ventures to Summer Green, Wisconsin, for a reunion with some old college friends, she finds trouble in paradise. Twenty-plus years have definitely changed things. Soap opera star Diana has become an alcoholic. Curt and Annie's marriage is falling apart. Orson is hostile and surly. And Theo, the most passionate of them all, suddenly dies - of an apparent heart attack. Alarmed, Cordelia sends for her old friend Jane Lawless to do some quiet snooping. Together they follow their hunches - into the not-so-carefree past and back to the troubled present, where they find a single match could blow up all their lives....

Still smarting over the break-up with her boyfriend, Josh, Chloe Carter takes a job as a cookbook writer's assistant - a job that puts her in contact with Josh's chef friend, Digger. But when Digger dies in a supposed grease fire, Chloe starts mixing ingredients to find out how he really died - and who killed him.

Septuagenarian librarian Cleo Watkins won’t be shushed when an upstart young mayor threatens to permanently shelve her tiny town’s storm-damaged library. She takes to her bookmobile, Words on Wheels, to collect allies and rally library support throughout Catalpa Springs, GA. However, Cleo soon rolls into trouble. A major benefactor known for his eccentric DIY projects requests all available books on getting away with murder. He’s no Georgia peach, and Cleo wonders if she should be worried. She knows she should when she finds him murdered - and evidence points to her best friend.

With no one to help her ring in the new year, Jane Lawless reluctantly agrees to accompany her good friend Cordelia Thorn to the wedding of Cordelias' estranged sister, Broadway star Octavia Thorn. Octavia getting married is no surprise - but her candidate for hubby number four certainly is. Roland Lester is a reclusive 83-year-old retired Hollywood director. No one can understand how the two met. When the bodies start to drop, Jane realizes it might not be love at all that brought the young diva and the aged director together, but something more sinister.

Jane Lawless has worked hard to make her Minneapolis restaurant a success, and she's finally reaping the financial rewards. Yet even the demands and excitement of being a popular restauranteurs and living the good life don't bring the same satisfaction they once did. Jane needs a bigger challenge. A mystery to solve. The thrill of the chase... When Jane rents her quaint third-story apartment to a new tenant, children's book author Elliot Beauman, she unwittingly opens the door to a sinister, decades-old mystery that has been waiting patiently to unfold - in her own house.

In the south of France, where hatred simmers in the heat, a man seemingly admired, and certainly feared, drops dead at a dinner party. All of the guests fall under suspicion, including Welsh-Canadian professor Cait Morgan. A criminologist who specializes in profiling victims, Cait sets out to solve the murder - and clear her name. Add to this the disappearance of an ancient Celtic gold collar said to be cursed and there you have the ingredients for a Nicoise salad of death, secrets, and lies.

It isn’t the first time real estate agent Helen Morrisey has found someone naked in bed while showing a house. But this one is different. One glance at the bluish cast around his lips and the vacant, staring eyes, and Helen knows developer Al Capelli is never going to sign another sales agreement. His death is big news for a small Chesapeake water town where a family empire is built around secrets and their brash money style is resented by locals. Within days, his lover, her old friend, begs Helen to find the killer before she’s arrested for murder.

Jane, a Minneapolis restaurateur, is invited to spend the week at Fothergill Inn, a Victorian house-turned B&B. Jane's old friend Leigh has spent years renovating the house and reopening it as an inn and restaurant. The inn has become so successful that people drive the 50 miles from Minneapolis just for dinner. But when Jane and her best friend, Cordelia, arrive for a week of relaxation, they find that the weekend's guests are anything but pleased, and that relaxing is the furthest thing from their minds. Broken glass litters the parking lot, dead animals turn up in the bedrooms, a bomb scare threatens the lives of the inn's guests. Then the pranks turn deadly....

Bestselling thriller writer Tess Harrow is almost at the end of her rope when she arrives with her teenage daughter at her grandfather's rustic cabin in the woods. She hopes this will be a time for them to heal and bond after Tess's recent divorce, but they've barely made it through the door when an explosion shakes the cabin. Suddenly it's raining fish guts and...is that a human arm?

California, Southern Humboldt County, 1985. Renata Drake steps off a Greyhound bus and into small-town Garberville, hoping to disappear. She checks the papers. She's not headline news. Not yet. But she's made a mistake. The FBI have the cannabis-producing "Emerald Triangle" town—and its corrupt residents—in their sights. Even worse, a teenage girl is missing, and when she turns up dead, the third in three years, it's clear a serial killer is living among them.

When an Irish priest narrowly escapes an attempt on his life at a remote Canadian Seminary, Detective Bernadette Callahan finds herself entangled in a mystery that hits unexpectedly close to home. As Callahan delves deeper into the case, a sinister plot emerges, reaching back to the misty shores of Ireland, where ancient tales and myths hold the key to the mystery.