English Cozy Crime

Dr. Jim Bob Brady receives a call from Burnet County Sheriff Joan Wilcox, now a family friend, asking for his help in solving several murders in her jurisdiction. After years of trying to weasel his way into criminal investigations, he is taken aback, but not yet humbled, by her request. As Brady delves into the heinous crimes, in which each victim has been slain by a hatchet-like weapon, he discovers a common thread: each victim is missing their driver’s license. After study into the lives of the victims, he also finds that each has at one time been a patient in the same mental health ...

In 1851, private detective Laetitia Rodd is enjoying a well-earned holiday when she gets an urgent request for her services. Mrs. Rodd’s neighbor Jacob Welland is a reclusive rich gentleman dying of consumption, and he wants Mrs. Rodd to find his brother, who has been missing for 15 years. Joshua Welland was a scholar at Oxford, brilliant, eccentric, and desperately poor when he disappeared from the university. Friends claim to have seen him since, in gypsy camps and wandering around the countryside.

On the day he retires, Inspector Ashwin Chopra inherits two unexpected mysteries. The first is the case of a drowned boy, whose suspicious death no one seems to want solved. And the second is a baby elephant. As his search for clues takes him across the teeming city of Mumbai, from its grand high rises to its sprawling slums and deep into its murky underworld, Chopra begins to suspect that there may be a great deal more to both his last case and his new ward than he thought.

Books 4-6 of the Sam & Daisy "Murder Hotel" series, wrapped up in an omnibus edition.

As the sun rises, a wealthy young woman, Samantha Seabrook, is found drowned in the ornamental fountain of a deserted Cambridge courtyard, the only clue: an antique silver chain wound tightly around her throat. It’s Tara Thorpe’s job to discover what happened to Miss Seabrook. But the case becomes personal when she learns that Samantha had been receiving death threats, rather like the one that landed on Tara’s doorstep the night the woman died. Together with Detective Inspector Garstin Blake, Tara tracks the killer to the dank and dangerous fens on the outskirts of the city.

A phone call from Belfast shatters Isobel McKenzie’s sleep and her peace. Her nephew, Jack, is safe but two of his friends from Queen’s University are not. Michael is dead and Charlene is in a coma. Isobel leaves for Belfast immediately. The PSNI suspect theft as the motive for the crime but, as Isobel and Jack investigate, they uncover other possible motives: an online bully, a drug connection and ultimately a web of organised crime. A cross-border drug task force is set up and, amidst politics and talk of corruption, the case becomes more and more complicated. Help arrives from London...

Ngaio Marsh’s most popular novel begins when a young New Zealander’s first contact with the English gentry is the body of Lord Wutherford - with a meat skewer through the eye.... The Lampreys had plenty of charm - but no cash. They all knew they were peculiar - and rather gloried in it. The double and triple charades, for instance, with which they would entertain their guests - like rich but awful Uncle Gabriel, who was always such a bore.

"OH No! How could this happen?" Meggie gets off the phone with the Museum. "The heirloom has vanished without a trace." Meggie, owner of the Willow Inn, was thrilled when Ms. Wren of the Museum asked to display her family's cherished heirloom. But now this! "I don't understand?" Meggie thought out loud, just as she and her loyal beagle, Bentley, were gearing up for the Harvest Festival. Now, Meggie must navigate a tangled web of deceit, suspense, and intrigue to find her family's lost heirloom. Little does she know this heirloom holds the key to a puzzling mystery. As Willow Creek's past ...

When a film shoot on Wharfedale’s vintage railway turns into a grisly crime scene, DCI Oldroyd’s idyllic visit to the countryside with his partner Deborah is well and truly stopped in its tracks. One of the film’s stars has been shot dead in a train carriage while the cameras rolled outside. But nobody else went in—or came out. Has the killer really pulled off the perfect, impossible crime?

In the chilly depths of a Yorkshire winter, a well-liked rector is found bludgeoned to death in her own church. With no sign of a murder weapon, local superstition quickly pins the blame on the ghost of a medieval monk believed to haunt the building. Well accustomed to unusual murder investigations, DCI Jim Oldroyd takes on the case, along with his assistant, Sergeant Andy Carter, but they are hampered at every turn by the deepening snow and the threat of the supernatural.

A mail-order bride mystery romance to warm your heart. Nora expected to be marrying old Peter Shaw, but when she steps off the train as his mail-order bride, she’s flung headlong into a mystery. Her husband-to-be has died and his son, Joseph, has taken over the family business. Reluctantly giving her a job as his housekeeper, Nora finds herself growing closer to Joseph as he begins to open up to her. However, the presence of Mr. Arbuckle, a distant relative of Peter Shaw, throws everything into confusion when Nora discovers that there might be more to Peter Shaw’s death than just a ...

When Tiffany is contacted by an old childhood friend and asked to investigate her fiancé, Ricardo, she doesn’t expect to end up in the middle of a deadly dance-off… But when Ricardo is killed, Tiffany and Rosie must uncover the secrets and schemes Ricardo was involved in: although he seemed a nice guy on the surface, Ricardo had hurt and harmed enough people to have a long line of enemies. Can Tiffany and Rosie expose the killer before it’s too late? Meanwhile, Tiffany and Stone make an interesting decision about their relationship…

Delaney Nichols has settled so comfortably into her new life in Edinburgh that she truly feels it's become more home than her once beloved Kansas. Her job at the Cracked Spine, a bookshop that specializes in rare manuscripts as well as other sundry valuable historical objects, is everything she had dreamed. Her latest task includes a trip to Castle Doune to retrieve a hard-to-find edition of an old Scottish comic, an "Oor Wullie", in a cloak-and-dagger transaction that Edwin has orchestrated.

STAND DOWN, THELMA & LOUISE... Sam and Daisy have made a success of The Cairncroft Hotel. Where do they go from here? If it was up to Daisy, well—she’s always wanted to be a private investigator ... and Daisy usually gets her way In The Cairncroft Detective Agency, Sam and Daisy set off down a new path - but this time, have the girls bitten off more than they can chew? The Cairncroft Detective Agency is a cozy murder mystery, the next in series after "The Murder Hotel", and with a (now trademark) twisty, high-tension ending WHAT READERS ARE SAYING: "This book is so much fun. I was ...

The sudden death of a pupil in Fleat House at St Stephen’s—a small private boarding school in deepest Norfolk—is a shocking event that the headmaster is very keen to call a tragic accident. But the local police cannot rule out foul play and the case prompts the return of high-flying Detective Inspector Jazmine ‘Jazz’ Hunter to the force. Jazz has her own private reasons for stepping away from her police career in London, and reluctantly agrees to front the investigation as a favour to her old boss.

He thought he knew everything about his wife... He was wrong! Tom and Amy Pearce have built a seemingly perfect life - a loving marriage, a beautiful daughter, fulfilling careers, and a comfortable home. They couldn't ask for more. So why is Amy hiding something? When Tom stumbles upon an object he believed was lost in a tragic accident, memories flood back, catapulting him into an emotional whirlwind. A few days later, Tom observes an encounter between Amy and a mysterious stranger. The subtle shift in her demeanour piques his concern, stirring a deep unease within him. Desperate for ...

The most original crime novel in years - British ‘Golden Age’ sleuth meets American hard-boiled crime! It’s the summer of 1920: Kit Aston travels to San Francisco for his cousin’s marriage to the mysterious Dain Collins. When a private investigator tailing Dain Collins is killed, Kit Aston, his fiancée Mary and Aunt Agatha team up with Pinkerton detective, Dashiell Hammett, in a case involving murder, kidnap and the theft of a certain legendary bird from Malta. The latest Kit Aston mystery is a delightful reimagining of some of Dashiell Hammett’s greatest novels: the Maltese ...

When staffing shortages continue to hamper the Union County homicide squad, Detective Sam Spader once again turns to his secret weapon, reluctant amateur sleuth Anastasia Pollack. How can she and husband Zack Barnes refuse when the victim is their new neighbor?

He’s trying to forget all about crime. But now targeted as a suspect, can he keep from going down for murder? England, 1964. Retired inspector Tom Ramsay wants to leave the past behind. Hoping to get on with his plans to hike the beauty spots of his homeland, a vacation to North Yorkshire strikes him as just the ticket. Yet while exploring the beach with his young border collie, he’s shocked to discover a decomposing body hidden in a cave. Happy to put the case in the hands of local police, he’s relieved not to be involved in the ugly matter. But as the small-town rumor mill churns ...

Seventy-seven-year-old Dorothy Darling has lived in Shelley House longer than any of the other residents, and if you take their word for it, she’s as cantankerous as they come. But Dorothy has her reasons for spying. And none of them require justifying herself to Kat Bennett. Twenty-five-year-old Kat has never known a place where she felt truly at home, and crumbling Shelley House is no different. Her neighbors find her prickly and unapproachable, but beneath her tough exterior, Kat’s plagued by a guilty secret from her past.