Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio" in Amateur Sleuth

Melanie West is getting her life back on track after a messy divorce when her grandmother, Liza Harris, asks her to join her in opening a bed-and-breakfast inn. Together, Liza and Melanie purchase a purportedly haunted mansion on the Oregon coast and jump right into clearing out the cobwebs. But while attempting to remove wallpaper in an upstairs bedroom, the new B&B owners stumble upon a very real skeleton in their closet.

Despite the dismal Broadway season, Gunplay continues to draw crowds. A gangland spectacle, it's packed to the gills with action, explosions, and gunfire. In fact, Gunplay is so loud that no one notices the killing of Monte Field. In a sold-out theater, Field is found dead partway through the second act, surrounded by empty seats. The police hold the crowd and call for the one man who can untangle this daring murder: Inspector Richard Queen.

When Holly White's fiancé cancels their Christmas Eve wedding with less than two weeks to go, Holly heads home with a broken heart. Lucky for her, home in historic Mistletoe, Maine is magical during Christmastime - exactly what the doctor prescribed. Except her plan to drown her troubles in peppermints and snickerdoodles is upended when local grouch and president of the Mistletoe Historical Society, Margaret Fenwick, is bludgeoned and left in the sleigh display at Reindeer Games, Holly's family tree farm.

Erin Coleridge's used bookstore in Kirkbymoorside, North Yorkshire, England, is a meeting place for the villagers and, in particular, for the local Jane Austen Society. At the Society's monthly meeting, matters come to a head between the old guard and its young turks. After the meeting breaks for tea, persuasion gives way to murder with extreme prejudice when president Sylvia Pemberthy falls dead to the floor. Poisoned? Presumably, but by whom? And was Sylvia the only target?

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.

One afternoon while standing outside her newly renovated Malibu house, Diana Poole sees a woman across the highway waving at her, but Diana doesn't recognize her. Still waving, the woman walks into the oncoming cars and is killed instantly. Why would anyone do such a thing? The next night, still horrified by the accident, Diana is held at gunpoint by a man demanding the dead woman's scorpion. What kind of scorpion? A live one? A brooch? A pendant? Diana searches the accident scene and finds a diamond-encrusted object in the shape of a scorpion.

Outside the pale of the Abbey of Saint Peters and Saint Paul, in September of the year of our Lord 1140, a priestly emissary for King Stephen has been reported missing. But inside the pale, what troubles Brother Cadfael is a proud, secretive 19-year-old novice. Brother Cadfael has never seen two men more estranged than the Lord of Aspley and Meriet, the son he coldly delivers to the abbey to begin a religious vocation. Meriet, meek by day, is so racked by dreams at night that his howls earn him the nickname the Devil's Novice. Shunned and feared, Meriet is soon linked to the missing priest's dreadful fate. Only Brother Cadfael believes in Meriet's innocence, and only the good sleuth can uncover the truth before a boy's pure passion, not evil intent, leads a novice to the noose.

When a body turns up in the dumpster behind Caroline's Cupcakes, Holly White is horrified to learn her best friend, Caroline, is the main suspect. Everyone in town, including Mistletoe, Maine's sheriff, saw Caroline fighting with the victim on the night of his death. Worse, Caroline's fingerprints are all over the murder weapon, a custom-designed marble rolling pin. Now, just 10 days before Christmas, Holly's up to her jingle bells in holiday shenanigans and in desperate need of a miracle.

Colorado's Redstone Ridge is a place of extraordinary beauty, but this rugged mountain wilderness harbors a horrifying secret. When a charred body is discovered in a shallow grave on the ridge, officer Mattie Cobb and her K-9 partner, Robo, are called in to spearhead the investigation. But this is no ordinary crime - and it soon becomes clear Mattie has a close personal connection to the dead man.

Thanksgiving is nearly here, and Key West food critic Hayley Snow has just one more assignment to put to bed for Key Zest magazine before she gets to celebrate with her family and her police officer fiance, Nathan Bransford. Then, just days later, wedding bells will ring - if death doesn't toll first. The sweet potatoes and stuffing will have to wait when Hayley picks up a distraught phone call from her friend Analise Smith. On the last stop of a seafood tasting tour run by Analise, one of the customers collapsed - dead.

The acidly funny first book starring the subversive sleuth in one of the most successful mystery series of all time. Fletch is an investigative reporter whose methods are a little unorthodox. Currently he's living on the beach. He's taking more than a little flak from his editor. She doesn't appreciate his style. Or the expense account items he's racking up. Or his definition of the word "deadline". Or the divorce lawyers who keep showing up at the office. So when multimillionaire Alan Stanwyk offers Fletch the job of a lifetime, which could be worth a fortune, he's intrigued.

An explosion outside a community dance sends Mattie Cobb and Cole Walker reeling into the night, where they discover a burning van and beside it the body of outfitter Nate Fletcher. But the explosion didn’t kill Nate - it was two gunshots to the heart.

Queen's Bureau of Investigation is now open for business - and in each department of this new enterprise Ellery finds ample opportunity to exercise the brilliant, ingenious, and at times startling talents of his crime-lab mind. For to the bureau come some of the most plaguey cases in Queen's career.

Fletch, now newly engaged and happily living out his days in Italy, finds himself embroiled in yet another scandal. His soon-to-be father-in-law has been kidnapped and is now presumed dead, and the priceless collection of rare art that belongs to his fiancée’s family has been stolen. Ever the investigative reporter, he receives a tip about the missing art that lands him in Boston, where he walks right into a murder scene in his apartment. What clearly looks like a setup to the unfazed Fletch looks quite different to the detective assigned to the case, Mr. Francis Xavier Flynn.

Trick I - The first thing to vanish is a worthless doorstop. Then, in the twinkling of an eye, goes its rich and elderly owner. And, for the grand finale, both reappear - each as dead as the other. Trick II - From the House of Darkness issues more bafflement. In total darkness and from a distance of 12 feet, four bullets are pumped within an inch of each other into a spectator's back - a feat utterly impossible to perform yet brazenly and undeniably done.

Deputy Mattie Cobb is in a dark place and has withdrawn from Cole Walker and his family to work on issues from her past. When she and her K-9 partner, Robo, get called to track a missing junior high student, they find the girl dead on Smoker's Hill behind the high school, and Mattie must head to the Walker home to break the bad news. But that's only the start of trouble in Timber Creek because soon another girl goes missing - and this time it's one of Cole's daughters.

In the winter of 1839, a sensational disappearance rocks Springfield, Illinois, as headlines announce a local man has accused his two brothers of murder. Not one to pass up an opportunity, Abraham Lincoln takes up the case of the accused with the assistance of his best friend, Joshua Speed, to search for evidence of innocence.But just as soon as they begin, Lincoln and Speed find their friendship at grave risk of rupture as they vie for the hand a beautiful new arrival in town: an ambitious, outspoken young woman named Mary Todd. Can Lincoln and Speed put aside their differences?

When a hunted military whistleblower and his family need someplace to hide and someone to trust, Toussaint, Montana, is the place, and Gabriel Du Pre the man. The Metis Indian former cattle inspector and sometimes deputy is happy to offer protection, even though he's got his hands full with an ailing granddaughter, a meddling medicine man, and a Kazakh eagle hunter prowling the hills above town. As a guard at a Kabul prison, Hoyt Poe witnessed his fellow soldiers abusing the Afghan inmates. Poe's testimony threatens to expose the military contractor that led the interrogation program.

Lacy Marie Crocker's whimsical pet couture has gained a following in New Orleans' cozy Garden District, and word of mouth has traveled all the way to her favorite fashion designer, Annie Lane. Lacy is thrilled when Annie schedules a private session at her home to discuss a companion line for her evening wear, but when Lacy arrives for the appointment, she enters the kitchen to two mewling Siamese cats - and one very dead Annie.

Lacy Marie Crocker can hardly believe it's been a year since her return home to New Orleans. There hasn't been a dull moment since opening her pet boutique last summer, and thanks to the popularity of Lacy's organic pet treats and the arrival of the National Pet Pageant, Lacy desperately needs some help before she is overrun by the demand for pupcakes and crinolines. Everything is going spectacularly until Viktor Petrov, the pageant emcee, takes a spill from the balcony during dress rehearsal.