Showing results for "Marshall" in Cosy

After Jane's last brush with a murderer landed her with a feature in People magazine, she is eager to get back to her literary life as a book agent - reading book proposals, making deals, talking to authors. She's glad to put fame aside and now that her beloved son Nick's birthday is coming up, she's busy planning a birthday party for him. She selects one of her favorite spots, a local inn, but before anyone can sing Happy Birthday and say "make a wish," the body of a young woman is found hanging from a tree in the woods back behind the inn.

Book agent extraordinaire Jane Stuart finally crawls out from under a stack of unread manuscripts. She starts a much-needed vacation, when her late husband's cousin, Stephanie, calls. She's about to start a new job in Shady Hills and wants to stay with Jane for a few days. Stephanie's new job as book editor is at the hot new publishing house in house. No sooner does Stephanie unpack her file folders at the publisher than it's obvious something fishy is going on.

The last thing a working mom like Jane needs is a call from her young son's school saying his nanny never arrived to pick him up. Now Jane's wondering what happened to pretty, blonde Marlene, the daughter of an old friend she recently hired on a trial basis. It looks as if the nineteen-year-old has left without giving notice, and no one seems to know where she's gone. Her mother can't track her down. The police figure she's run away. Jane thinks she'd better start snooping around.

Schemer Tina Vale, publisher of Corsair Books, slept her way to the top, making many enemies on the way. Now she's going after an old enemy, single mom and literary agent Jane Stuart. Tina and Joan are both at the annual RAT Convention (Romance Authors Together), where the hotel venue is struggling to handle all the romance authors as well as this year's featured cat show. But soon Jane has more serious matters to worry about. After Tina fails to make her grand entrance at the award ceremonies, her body is discovered in the bathtub, along with one of her prized collectible vintage toasters.

Jane couldn't turn down her nanny's sister when she needed a place to stay. Crystal Ryerson turns out to be more than a handful. In two short weeks as the new assistant director of the Shady Hills Public Library, Crystal proves herself to be trouble no matter how you spell it. A pain. Yes. Popular. No. Still, it's a shock when at the next meeting of Jane's book club at The Shady Hills Public Library, book shelves come crashing down and topple on poor Crystal.

Jane Stuart and Ivy Benson were once best friends. Ever since Ivy's daughter Marlene was murdered, things have been rocky. To patch up their friendship, Jane invites Ivy to the writer's retreat Jane organized. Off-season Mt. Munsee Lodge is a mountain-top hotel which is perfect for relaxing and having fun. But Ivy brings Johnny, her new man, who turns out to be on the run. And when an unexpected blizzard leaves everyone marooned in the snow, there's no chance for escape.

In just over a week vineyard owner Lucie Montgomery and winemaker Quinn Santori will be married in a ceremony overlooking what should be acres of lush, flowering grapevines. Instead they are confronted by an ugly swathe of slowly dying vines and a nursery owner who denies responsibility for selling the diseased plants. With neighboring vineyards facing the same problem, accusations fly and the ugly stand-off between supplier and growers looks set to escalate into open warfare.

The police called it an accident. The dead man's wife insisted it was murder. Either way it was maddeningly mysterious. Captain Harold Jeffries, swaddled in his robe, had settled down for a cozy evening with Crime and Punishment when his wife left the house for a bridge party. An hour later he was dead. What could have induced him to dress and go out into the stormy night - much less to walk on the beach, which he hated and never went near?

It's harvest season at Montgomery Estate Vineyard - the busiest time of year for winemakers in Atoka, Virginia. A skull is unearthed near Lucie Montgomery's family cemetery, and the discovery of the bones coincides with the arrival of handsome, wealthy aristocrat Jean-Claude de Merignac. He's come to be the head winemaker at neighboring La Vigne Cellars, but he's no stranger to Lucie - he was her first crush 20 years ago when she spent a summer in France. Not long after his arrival, Jean-Claude is found dead.

When conservative millionaire A. C. King hosts his annual house party at his spacious mountain lodge, he has no idea it will be the last family reunion. Yet the mellow autumn air is tension-filled with the presence of A. C.'s beautiful second wife, the constrained animosities of his two older sons, and the tippling of his flower-child daughter-in-law. But it is the unwelcome arrival of youngest son Lucas, with a ravishing black fiancée in tow, that is the true kiss of death.

Between juggling lunchboxes, piano lessons, and baby-sitters, public defender turned stay-at-home mom Juliet Applebaum promises to help her famous friend clear her brother's name of murder. But what will she do when she begins to suspect her friend may not be as innocent as she seems?

When Jamison Vaughn - billionaire real estate mogul, Virginia vineyard owner, and unsuccessful US presidential candidate - drives his gold SUV into a stone pillar at the entrance to Montgomery Estate Vineyard, Lucie Montgomery is certain the crash was deliberate. But everyone else in Atoka, Virginia, is equally sure that Jamie must have lost control of his car on a rain-slicked country road. In spite of being saddled with massive campaign debts from the recent election, Jamie is seemingly the man with the perfect life.

In 1949, during her junior year abroad in Paris, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis bought several inexpensive paintings of Marie-Antoinette by a little-known 18th-century female artist. She also had a romantic relationship with Virginia vineyard owner Lucie Montgomery’s French grandfather - until recently, a well-kept secret. Seventy years later, Cricket Delacroix, Lucie’s neighbor and Jackie’s schoolfriend, is donating the now priceless paintings to a Washington, DC, museum.

Lucie Montgomery attends a Thanksgiving weekend party for friends and neighbors at Hawthorne Castle, an honest-to-goodness castle owned by the Avery family, the last great newspaper dynasty in America and owner of the Washington Tribune. During the party, Prescott Avery, the 95-year-old family patriarch offers to pay Lucie any price for a cache of 200-year-old Madeira that her great-great-uncle discovered hidden in the US Capitol in the 1920s. By the end of the party Lucie and her fiancé discover Prescott’s body lying in his wine cellar. Is one of the guests a murderer?