Womens Mystery Fiction

Everything has changed for Ruth Galloway. She has a new job, home, and partner, and she is no longer North Norfolk police’s resident forensic archaeologist. That is, until convicted murderer Ivor March offers to make DCI Nelson a deal. Nelson was always sure that March killed more women than he was charged with. Now March confirms this and offers to show Nelson where the other bodies are buried - but only if Ruth will do the digging. Curious, but wary, Ruth agrees.

Between her cheating husband and her on-air meltdown, Marzie Nowak is going through a bit of a bad spell and a heck of a midlife crisis. Her kids have flown the coop to college, and her husband has opted to trade her in for a younger model. With nowhere else to turn, the ex-big-city journalist crawls back to her superstitious hometown of Widow's Bay just in time for their annual pagan festival. Her new, much less glamorous gig has her reporting for a local news website.

For Frances Wynn, widow to the late Earl of Harleigh, life has a cosmopolitan flavor of late. No sooner has she sent her mother and daughter off on a shopping trip to Paris than she and her fiancé, George Hazelton, are socializing with visiting members of the Russian royal family. Yet amid this whirlwind, scandal also comes calling when Inspector Delaney turns up outside Frances’ house with a young French woman and a shocking claim: She is Mrs. George Hazelton.

Molly Appleby is a young writer for Collector's Weekly, and when the attractive reporter isn't covering auctions and antique shows all over the South, she's trying to get her new relationship with a coworker off the ground. When her latest assignment takes her to North Carolina pottery country to cover an exclusive kiln opening, she's certain that the show promises surprising offerings and rare finds. What she doesn't expect to find is a dead body.

A young woman's body is discovered on a deserted footpath. It seems like a simple crime for DCI Sophie Allen and her team to solve. But not when the victim's mother is found strangled the next morning. The case grows more complex as DCI Sophie Allen discovers that the victims had secret histories, involving violence and intimidation. There's an obvious suspect, but Detective Allen isn't convinced. Could someone else be lurking in the shadows, someone savagely violent, looking for warped revenge?

It's 1974 and Ellison Russell's life revolves around her daughter and her art. She's long since stopped caring about her cheating husband, Henry, and the women with whom he entertains himself. That is, until she becomes a suspect in Madeline Harper's death. The murder forces Ellison to confront her husband's proclivities and his crimes - kinky sex, petty cruelties, and blackmail. As the body count approaches par on the seventh hole, Ellison knows she has to catch a killer.

The sedate English countryside can host - or hide - any number of secrets. Frances, the widowed Countess of Harleigh, needs a venue for her sister Lily’s imminent wedding, away from prying eyes. Risings, George Hazleton’s family estate in Hampshire, is a perfect choice, and soon the guests have gathered to enjoy the usual country pursuits - shooting, horse riding, and romantic interludes in secluded gardens. But the bucolic setting harbors a menace, and it’s not simply the arrival of Frances’ socially ambitious mother. Mysterious accidents befall guests and staff alike.

Barbara Holloway has a reputation for taking on the toughest cases - and winning them. But this time she's up against an unbeatable opponent - her father, the lawyer who taught her all she knows.

Claire Barclay, owner of a mystery book tour company, collects three women at the Manchester airport who have flown in from Tucson, Arizona, then starts on a tour of Yorkshire and the sites of mystery novels. She meets the rest of the tour in York: two British couples and Phillip, a single man.

Single mom Hayley Powell is barely keeping her leaking roof over her head in Bar Harbor, Maine, when her boss at the Island Times gives her a new assignment - taking over the paper's food column. Hayley's not sure she has the chops - she's an office manager, not a writer, even if her friends clamor for her mouth-watering potluck dishes. But the extra income is tempting, and Hayley's chatty first column is suddenly on everyone's menu - with one exception.

San Francisco contractor Mel Turner is leading a volunteer home renovation project, and while she expects lots of questions from her inexperienced crew, she can't help asking a few of her own - especially about the haunted house next door . . . the place local kids call the Murder House. But when volunteers discover a body while cleaning out a shed, questions pile up faster than discarded lumber.

Alison and her resident gumshoe ghost are on their next case when the deceased Scott MacFarlane floats in worried that he accidentally killed a prominent local woman. Turns out she's still alive...that is, of course, until she's murdered - in Alison's house. Now, between the demands of her guests and the arrival of a reality television crew, Alison must find the killer before she sees reality from the other side.

After the recent death of her mother and the dissolution of her marriage, 30-something Eden Elliott is seriously in need of a fresh start. At the urging of her best friend, best-selling author Ami Pederson, Eden decides to embark on an open-ended trip to the picturesque village of Glenkillen in the Scottish Highlands, to do some hands-on research for a book of her own. But almost as soon as Eden arrives in the quaint town, she gets caught up in a very real drama....

Officer Luz is lucky she still has a job after tasering a male colleague where it counts the most. Sure, he had it coming - which is why the police chief is giving Megan a second chance. The catch? Her new partner can't carry a gun, can't drive a cruiser, and can't recite the Miranda Rights. Because her new partner is a big furry police dog. So that's what the chief meant when he called Megan's partner a real bitch...With Brigit out on the beat, Megan is writing up enough tickets to wallpaper the whole station.

It's summertime on the Riviera, where the Jazz Age is busily reinventing the holiday delights of warm days on golden sand and cool nights on terraces and dance floors. Just up the coast lies a more traditional pleasure ground: Monte Carlo, where fortunes are won, lost, stolen, and hidden away. So when Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes happen across the Côte d'Azur in this summer of 1925, they find themselves pulled between the young and the old, hot sun and cool jazz, new friendships and old loyalties, childlike pleasures and very grownup sins...

Mma Ramotswe is busy investigating her latest case: a woman who is looking for her family. The problem is, the woman doesn't know her real name of whether any members of her family are now living. Meanwhile, Phuti Radiphuti has bought Mma Makutsi a glorious new bed. Unfortunately, it will inadvertently cause her several sleepless nights.

Most folks associate the city of Salem, Massachusetts, with witches, but for Lee Barrett it's home. This October she's returned to her hometown - where her beloved Aunt Ibby still lives - to interview for a job as a reporter at WICH-TV. But the only opening is for a call-in psychic to host the late-night horror movies. It seems the previous host, Ariel Constellation, never saw her own murder coming.

A missing salami leads Mrs. Pollifax to a shocking discovery: a woman is hiding in her house. Even more unsettling is the revelation that ever since the young woman had a chance encounter with the heir to the throne of Ubangiba, she has been followed by deadly hit men. What do these men want?

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.

It's bad enough that the world's most powerful vampires are following gallery assistant Hanna Harvey like a cloud of undead mosquitos. But finding one of their heads in the trunk of her Mustang? There's not enough cheese in the world to unsee that. Her stud-muffin alpha werewolf boss, Mark Abernathy, suspects that someone stashing vampy bits in Hanna's immediate vicinity is part of a plot to set off an inter-species war . . . with Hanna's own destiny at its heart. Now facing a force older and more sinister than any she's encountered, the stakes have never been higher for Hanna.