Lauren Crenshaw, and her Norwegian Forest Cat Annie, run the Norwegian Forest cafe in a picturesque town in Northern California. Lauren's cousin Zoe also helps out. When one of Annie's favorite customers is murdered, the three of them try to figure out "whodunit"!
The last thing 11-year-old Robin wants to hear is that his mother and her new husband are extending their honeymoon indefinitely. Not that staying with his Aunt Mags is so bad, but there's her boyfriend to contend with, and the members of the school gang are insisting that he complete a dare before they let him join the group. They want Robin to kidnap Mrs. Nordling's prize-winning cat when no one is home. Getting into the Nordling's house is easy, and Robin manages to find the cat and put him...
Douglas Perkins of Perkins and Tate (Public Relations) Ltd believed that the business of a PRO was to put the client's best foot forward, and try to hide the other three cloven hooves. He even went on believing it when Black Bart and his Troupe of Hillbilly Singers were wished on the firm by their American associates, who had arranged for the Troupe to make a few appearances on English TV shows. The tangled personal relationships and professional jealousies within the Troupe soon gave Perkins a...
A lifetime of craving more cuddly companionship than her hectoring mother has led fortyish Bettina Bilby to board her neighbors' felines for a long holiday weekend: an expectant tabby, a pampered blue-eyed Balinese, a depressed ginger Persian with a cod-liver-oil addiction, and Adolf, an imperious mouser with a patchwork face. But a freak storm sets the pigeon among the cats—a carrier bird downed on the doorstep with a tiny load of large flawless diamonds. And Bettina's dilemma escalates, as...
Written by Marian Babson. When two grand dames of Hollywood, silent film star Eve Sinclair ('she put the sin in Cinema') and ex-hoofer Trixie Dolan set out for London to attend a film retrospective held in Eve's honour, they fully expect to be the centre of attention. What they don't expect is that all the lovely attention will be generated not by an appreciation of their talents but by a series of grisly murders associated with the retrospective. Even less do they expect to find themselves...
Vanessa and her twin brother Vance are very close. So when someone pushes Vanessa down a flight of stairs and puts her into a coma, Vance wants revenge. He decides that masquerading as Vanessa will lead him to the villain. With her clothes, her makeup, and what he knows about his beloved sister, he pulls it off very well and is on the verge of learning what he needs to know. ..Until he discovers a serious threat that might destroy all his efforts. There is one pair of eyes he can’t pull the wool...
The cat's out of the bag: dead bodies are piling up in Brimful Coffers, a picturesque English village. Among the deceased is Boswell, a pet white rat. His killers were caught: Had-I and But-Known, two mischievous felines belonging to Lorinda Lucas, mystery writer. Unfortunately, the other victims were all too human--and their killer remains at large... The danger in Brimful Coffers was unforeseen when several authors created an informal writers' colony in this lovely town outside of London. In...
Margot returns to her well-to-do family in England on the eve of her Aunt Chloe's murder trial—she is accused of fatally stabbing her twin sister with a kitchen knife in the garden. Nothing has been the same since Claudia's body was found: her 14-year-old daughter, Lynette, refuses to leave her bedroom, the paparazzi are relentless, and Tikki, the family's beloved Abyssinian, goes to stay with the neighbors. When another body, whom no one recognizes, shows up facedown in the pond while the...
When millionaire Arthur Arbuthnot mistakes gossip maven Annabel Hinchby-Smythe for a decorator—and hires her to redecorate his apartment—the fiscally challenged Annabel can't refuse. When she sees Arbuthnot's tatty London flat, she knows anything will be an improvement. And any gossip she can dig up will be pure gold for the tabloids. But when Arthur is found dead, his frisky relatives begin to lick their chops. Arbuthnot's beloved tabby, Sally, was the only witness to the homicide—and the sole...
When a top-ranked competitor keels over at a dog obedience trial, photographer Janet MacPhail is swept up in a maelstrom of suspicion, jealousy, cut-throat competition, death threats, pet-napping, and murder. She becomes a “person of interest” to the police, and apparently to major hunk Tom Saunders as well. As if murder and the threat of impending romance aren’t enough to drive her bonkers, Janet has to move her mother into a nursing home, and the old lady isn’t going quietly. Janet finds...
Carrie Singleton is just about done with Clover Ridge, Connecticut until she's offered a job as the head of programs and events at the spooky local library, complete with its own librarian ghost. Her first major event is a program presented by a retired homicide detective, Al Buckley, who claims he knows who murdered Laura Foster, a much-loved part-time library aide who was bludgeoned to death fifteen years earlier. As he invites members of the audience to share stories about Laura, he suddenly...
*Dessert chef Casey Feldstein doesn’t know a knitting needle from a crochet hook. But after her aunt dies unexpectedly, leaving Casey to run her yarn retreat business, the sweets baker finds herself rising to the occasion—and trying to unravel a murder mystery* When Casey finds out that her late aunt’s business, Yarn2Go, has one more yarn retreat scheduled, she decides to go ahead and host the event, despite her complete lack of experience as a knitter. At least the retreat is on the beautiful...
Someone is trying to kill leading British Shakespearean actor, husband, father, ladies man, and soon-to-be Knight of the Realm Winstanley Fortescue. The actor, rehearsing his starring role in the forthcoming play *Serpent in the Heather* , is conked on the head backstage. He falls off a ladder and lands on the resident Pest Control Officer, Montmorency D. Mousa (otherwise known as Monty), the company cat. When Fortescue comes to, he finds to his horror that he has been switched into Monty's...
Sydney McCall left behind an ex-fiance and a New York advertising job to return home to Deer Park, North Carolina and help her sister, Kat, run the local animal shelter, Friendly Paws. Determined to save the shelter from financial trouble, Sydney and Kat organize a cat cafe fundraising event at a local coffee shop. Things are looking up until their landlord, Trowbridge Littleton, threatens to shut down the event. When Sydney drops by his art gallery to make peace, she finds Kat--along with...
### From Publishers Weekly Animals play a passive role in Johnston's less than engaging first in a new series featuring Lauren Vancouver, who runs HotRescues, a private no-kill animal shelter in Granada Hills, Calif. After raiding a puppy mill, Lauren is certain that Efram Kiley, an animal care apprentice who'd abused his own dog and was working for her as part of a legal agreement, tossed beagle puppies down a drainpipe. When Efram is later found stabbed to death at Lauren's shelter, she...
With side-splitting humor, an irresistable cast of characters--both human and canine--and an intimate small town setting, *Yappy Hour* is sure to delight fans of Rita Mae Brown and Diane Kelly. Every Friday night in the idyllic seaside town of Pacific Cove, CA, the Roundup Crew, a group of dog-loving friends, meet at a neighborhood wine bar for Yappy Hour. When Rachel, the owner, mysteriously leaves town and asks her sister, Maggie (who is neither pet friendly nor business savvy), to run the bar...
After a few years as a police officer in Chicago, Michael Keane has no trouble relaxing into the far less stressful job of deputy sheriff in his small hometown. After all, nothing ever happens in Hidden Springs, Kentucky. Nothing, that is, until a dead body is discovered on the courthouse steps. Everyone in town is a little uneasy. Still, no one is terribly worried—after all the man was a stranger—until one of their own is murdered right on Main Street. As Michael works to solve the case it...
**Playing With Poison was a Quarter Finalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award! Murder meets menopause. Take a guess which wins. ** **PRAISE for Playing With Poison** "I just love Jessie Hewitt. She is the bomb." Melina Mason, *Melina's Book Blog* "This was one of my favorite submissions so far. I loved the main character, Jessie Hewitt, a middle aged romance writer (ex-pool hustler) having the time of her life." *Amazon contest review* "These characters are a hoot!! A lighthearted cozy...