Classic Women Detective

As far as Carol Spencer is concerned, the war has spoiled everything. She and Don had been engaged for years and were on the verge of marriage when he was shot down in the South Pacific, leaving Carol on the verge of spinsterhood at 24. She wants to take some kind of job in the war effort, but her invalid mother demands that Carol accompany her to the family's summer home in Maine. But when they arrive at the faded mansion, they find it completely locked up. The servants are gone, the lights are dark - and there is a body in the closet.

August 1911. Emily Hardcastle and her inimitable lady’s maid Florence Armstrong are enjoying a fine summer until Harry, Lady H’s brother, turns up out of the blue with a mystery for them to solve. A routine parachute test at a local aeroplane factory has gone horribly wrong - with pilot Dickie Dupree plummeting to his death. Harry is certain there is more to this ‘tragic accident’ than meets the eye, having discovered that someone at the airfield is leaking top secret intelligence to foreign rivals.

When a gay Los Angeles magician named Parsifal dies suddenly, he leaves behind his heartbroken assistant, Sabine, and a secret past that leads her to Nebraska and a father she never knew he had.

Meet Cordelia Gray: twenty-two, tough, intelligent and now sole inheritor of the Pryde Detective Agency. Her first assignment finds her hired by Sir Ronald Callender to investigate the death of his son Mark, a young Cambridge student found hanged in mysterious circumstances. Required to delve into the hidden secrets of the Callender family, Cordelia soon realises it is not a case of suicide, and that the truth is entirely more sinister.

Art teacher Walter Hartright is on the road to London when he encounters an enigmatic woman dressed entirely in white. She's an unnerving portent of strange things to come as Hartright starts a new job as drawing-master at Limmeridge House. There the teacher falls in love with Laura, his betrothed pupil, who bears a striking resemblance to the woman in white. Soon Walter is drawn into a family intrigue of greed, secrets, madness, and revenge.

Travelling home from a European holiday, Iris Carr ends up alone at the station after a quarrel with her friends. Struck by a mysterious assailant and waking up just in time to board the train which will take her on her journey to London, things seem to be looking up after a chance meeting with the affable Miss Froy. But when Iris passes out and reawakens, Miss Froy is nowhere to be found. The other passengers deny any knowledge of her existence and as the train speeds across Europe, Iris spirals deeper and deeper into a strange conspiracy.

It’s Christmas Eve in New Chapel, Indiana. But this night will be anything but silent in a brand new Flower Shop Mystery Novella from New York Times bestselling author of Moss Hysteria and Yews With Caution. After being hired to deliver poinsettias to Churchill’s department store in downtown New Chapel, feisty flower shop owner Abby Knight finds herself mixed up in the disappearance of everyone’s favorite Santa Claus, Mr. Churchill himself. Promising Churchill’s daughter that the legendary Christmas Eve celebration will not go on without her father, Abby must recruit her whole staff...

In the first century, under Domitian's reign, strange and brutal goings on are nothing new in Rome. Flavia Albia, daughter of Marcus Didius Falco, has taken over her father's business as a private informer but she tries to shy away from the brutal, the complicated, and the political—because nothing good comes of any of them. Unfortunately, she's not very good at turning them down. This time a commission shows up on her doorstep—someone is staging brutal murders in some of the most beautiful buildings in Rome, each staging different.

Mary Connon froze out her husband, Sam, long ago. She likes the attention of other men—like the fellow members of Sam's rugby club. Naturally, when she's found dead in her sitting room with a hole in her head, Sam is a suspect. If only he hadn't suffered a dizzying scrum injury that's left everything a blur. He isn't sure that he didn't kill her. But Det. Inspector Andrew Dalziel and his partner, Peter Pascoe, are looking outside the unhappy home. Because it seems everyone within spitting distance of the suburban femme fatale wanted Mary dead.

Mordecai Tremaine's hobby of choice - crime detection - has left him in need of a holiday. A break away from that gruesome business of murder will be just the ticket, and the picturesque island of Moulin d'Or seems to be just the destination. Amid the sunshine and the sea air, Mordecai falls in with a band of fellow holidaymakers and tries to forget that such a thing as foul play exists. He should have been wiser, of course, because before too long, villainy rears its head, and a dead body is discovered.

In an elaborate house known as the Cloisters, Maud Wainwright rules supreme. The queen of society in the small town of Beverly, she has a table long enough to seat 100, and she keeps an iron grip on the guest list. Her right-hand woman is Pat Abbott, a local girl who is beautiful, innocent, and kind. Pat has no idea how cutthroat high society can be, but she's about to get a deadly first lesson.

Crescent Place was once a peaceful country green surrounded by five tasteful suburban houses and populated by polite, responsible citizens. But as the city enveloped it, the residents built a gate to keep the world out. With each passing year, the subdivision grew stranger and stranger - until it began to look like a time capsule of the 1890s.

Elizabeth Bell runs a quiet household, with no family and no more than the usual number of servants. She passes her time thinking about crime and working on her biography of a relative. When a young cousin comes to stay, life in the house becomes uncharacteristically lively. First, cousin Judy burns a hole in Miss Bell's desk. Next, they spy a burglar on the staircase - a shadowy figure who vanishes without a trace. And finally, Sarah, the nurse, takes the dogs for a walk and never returns.

The house called Sunset has been Marcia's summer home for her entire life. Both of her parents died there, and she and her brother spent their youth exploring its rambling hallways and seaside grounds. They love the old house, but Marcia's sister-in-law has never taken to it. Juliette loathes the sea, and soon comes to loathe her husband as well. After they divorce, Juliette pays a final visit to Sunset, demanding alimony. She is there for a few tense days before she disappears. It takes them a week to find her body.

Miss Cornelia Van Gorder has left her New York City home for a vacation in an isolated country mansion with her beautiful young niece, neurotic maid, pompous butler and a mysterious but genteel young man, only to find herself the victim of a elusive master criminal, the Bat.

This unique collection for connoisseurs of detection done female style brings back six of the greatest fictional women sleuths of the era of gaslights and horseless carriages. Long out of print and unobtainable, these celebrated women 'tecs were once nearly as famous as the fictional sleuth of Baker Street himself. Their fame waned in the long decades of the 1930s through the '80s, when female sleuths took a backseat to Sam Spade, Nero Wolfe, and the like. But, they are back to baffle and thrill contemporary readers in The Legendary Women Detectives edited by Jean Marie Stine.

The Disappearance of Lisaby Harper Stanwick, Sr. is a gripping mystery novel set in the bustling streets of 1920s New York. Carmen Sinclair, a determined and independent young woman, finds herself entangled in a web of mystery and intrigue when she becomes the secretary to the enigmatic Kensington family. Living under the strict and watchful eye of Mrs. Kensington, Carmen forms a close bond with Lisa Kensington, the sheltered and ethereal daughter of the household. One fateful night, Lisa mysteriously disappears, leaving behind only a few cryptic clues. The family, particularly Mrs. ...

~ The Truth Is Out There. We Make Sure They Don't Get It. ~ Wrongfully fired LAPD officers, desperately in need of work, start a Celebrity Sitter service, figuring, it's the opposite of what they used to do. Instead of arresting celebrities, they keep them from getting arrested by offering two primary services, "Don't let me do anything stupid." and "Don't let me get caught doing anything stupid.” One night while Celebrity Sitting, “CSing”, the group’s leader, James meets the love of his life in a sexually complicated situation only a Celebrity Sitter could get into. Hired to verify...

Jazz Ramsey is just getting used to the idea that her on-again-off-again beau, Nick, might actually be a permanent fixture, when she gets an alarming call in the middle of the night from his mother, Kim: There's a dead man in her backyard. Kim has a long history of drinking and a vivid imagination, so when Jazz's human remains detection dog, Wally, finds no evidence of a body, Jazz thinks she can breathe easy. But when the body of a middle-aged man is discovered in a nearby park, and a photo of Nick and his mom is found in his pocket, Jazz has to admit that something isn't adding up.

'Anyone who murdered Colonel Protheroe,' declared the parson, brandishing a carving knife above a joint of roast beef, ‘would be doing the world at large a service!' It was a careless remark for a man of the cloth. And one which was to come back and haunt the clergyman just a few hours later. From seven potential murderers, Miss Marple must seek out the suspect who has both motive and opportunity.