Special Collections
Agatha Award
Description: Named for Agatha Christie, the Agatha Awards are literary awards for mystery and crime writers who write in the cozy mystery subgenre. #award
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Do Unto Others
by Jeff AbbottJordan Poteet has left the big city to work as a librarian in his hometown of Mirabeau, Texas. But his dream of the quiet life is shattered when he locks horns with Miss Beta Harcher, the town's prize religious fanatic, in a battle over censorship. When Jordan finds her murdered body in the library, he becomes the prime suspect. And when the police find a cryptic list stashed next to her fanatical heart, it seems as if Beta Harcher has the whole town in a death grip . . .From the Paperback edition.
The Doctor Digs A Grave (Dr. Fenimore Mysteries)
by Robin HathawayHathaway introduces sleuth cardiologist Dr. Andrew Fenimore, whose expert medical knowledge helps unravel the mysterious death of a Lenape woman. When Fenimore spots a street kid named Horatio unsuccessfully trying to bury his dead cat in a public park on Philadelphia's affluent Society Hill, he befriends the youth and offers to help him lay his pet to rest in what is rumored to be an ancient burial ground of the Lenape. Descendants of this East Coast tribe still live in the eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey area. While burying the animal, the doctor and Horatio stumble upon the body of a young girl who is buried in an upright position facing east as is traditional with the Lenape. From this curious discovery, Hathaway's novel weaves the forgotten culture of this tribe, the doctor's unconventional avocation as a P.I., and a cast of lovable but eccentric characters into a well-crafted tale of suspense. -Amazon.com
Detecting Women 2
by Willetta L. HeisingIf you love the Fantastic Fiction website, you'll love Detecting Women 2. It's a small book of lists of series of women detectives with the authors and the books in the series. More than 600 series detectives created by women. Over 3400 mystery titles in correct series order.
Death On A Silver Tray
by Rosemary StevensIn the days of Regency England, Beau Brummell stood as the uncrowned king of genteel society. The quintessential style-maker, trend-setter, and fashion-forger, Brummell was the last person one would expect to find in the middle of a murder mystery. But then, Beau Brummell was never one to do what was expected. When the Duchess of York begs for his help, Beau Brummell wouldn't think of refusing. The Countess of Wrayburn has been poisoned, and her paid companion is the prime suspect. Unfortunately, the Duchess is the one who arranged the young woman's employment with the late Countless, and the scandal could ruin the Duchess' good name.
Death Al Dente
by Leslie BudewitzFIRST IN A NEW SERIES! The town of Jewel Bay, Montana--known as a Food Lovers' Village--is obsessed with homegrown and homemade Montana fare. So when Erin Murphy takes over her family's century-old general store, she turns it into a boutique market filled with local delicacies. But Erin's freshly booming business might go rotten when a former employee turns up dead... Murphy's Mercantile, known as the Merc, has been a staple in Jewel Bay for over a hundred years. To celebrate their recent makeover as a gourmet food market, Erin has organized a town festival, Festa di Pasta, featuring the culinary goods of Jewel Bay's finest--including her mother Fresca's delicious Italian specialties. But Erin's sweet success is soured when the shop's former manager, Claudette, is found dead behind the Merc on the Festa's opening night. With rival chef James Angelo stirring up rumors that Fresca's sauce recipes were stolen from Claudette, Erin's mother is under close scrutiny. Now Erin will have to hunt down some new suspects, or both her family and her store might wind up in hot water... INCLUDES FRESH, DELICIOUS RECIPES!
Dead Man's Island
by Carolyn G. HartHart, whose fanciful Death on Demand series captured every major mystery award, debuts a sassy, sixtyish new sleuth: former journalist, crime writer and amateur detective Henrietta O'Dwyer Collins. When a media magnate narrowly escapes a murder plot, he enlists Henrie O's help in uncovering the would-be murderer.
Dating Dead Men
by Harley Jane Kozak&“Dating Dead Men, Harley Jane Kozak&’s hilarious debut novel, proves that the search for love can be as funny as it is deadly.&”—Kris Neri, author of the Agatha, Anthony and Macavity Award-nominated Tracy Eaton mysteriesLos Angeles greeting-card artist Wollie Shelley is dating forty men in sixty days as research for a radio talk show host's upcoming book, How to Avoid Getting Dumped All the Time. Wollie is meeting plenty of eligible bachelors but not falling in love, not until she stumbles over a dead body en route to Rio Pescado--a state-run mental hospital--and is momentarily taken hostage by a charismatic "doctor" who is on the run from the Mob. Wollie fears that her beloved brother, a paranoid schizophrenic living at Rio Pescado, is involved in the murder, so rather than go to the authorities, she decides to solve the crime on her own. As she meets up with an array of small-time crooks and swaggering mobsters only slightly more sinister than the men she&’s been dating, Wollie realizes that "getting dumped" is the least of her problems. Finding true love, she discovers, sometimes means learning how to avoid getting killed . . . Dating Dead Men will keep readers guessing until the final bullet is shot--and cheering for the irresistible Wollie as she makes her way out of confusion and into the welcoming embrace of Mr. Right.
Dandy Gilver and an Unsuitable Day for a Murder
by Catriona McPhersonA cosy Dandy Gilver mystery set in 1920s Scotland. For fans of PG Wodehouse, Alexander McCall Smith and Agatha Christie.'Dan Brown meets Barbara Pym . . . Dandy is brisk, baffled, heroic, kindly, scandalised and - above all - very funny.' Guardian 'One of several authors recreating the Golden Age of the British crime novel and a legion of fans adore the tongue-in-cheek cases that come the way of Dandy Gilver, a very Scottish middle class sleuth.' Northamptonshire Evening TelegraphFriday 3rd June, 1927Dear Alec,'Careful what you wish for, lest it come true' is my new motto, and here is why. I was summoned to Dunfermline, that old grey town, in the matter of a missing heiress.She had flounced off in a sulk over forbidden love and I, suspecting elopement, was loath to take the job of scouring guesthouses to find the little madam and her paramour. Before I could wriggle out of it, though, there was a murder in the mix - or was it suicide? I had hardly begun to decide when it happened again. Then I was sacked. Actually sacked! By two separate people, and both dismissals in writing. And that's not even the worst of it, darling: matters here are careering downwards much in the style of a runaway train.Please hurry - or who knows where it might end,Dandy xxCatriona McPherson's latest novel in the series, Dandy Gilver and a Spot of Toil and Trouble is now available for pre-order.
The Cruellest Month
by Louise PennyThe award-winning third novel from worldwide phenomenon and number one New York Times bestseller Louise PennyIt's Easter, and on a glorious Spring day in peaceful Three Pines, someone waits for night to fall. They plan to raise the dead . . .When Chief Inspector Gamache of the Surete du Quebec arrives the next morning, he faces an unusual crime scene. A séance in an old abandoned house has gone horrifically wrong and someone has been seemingly frightened to death. In indyllic Three Pines, terrible secrets lie buried, and even Gamache has something to hide. One of his own team is about to betray him. But how far will they go to ensure Gamache's downfall?'A cracking storyteller, who can create fascinating characters, a twisty plot and wonderful surprise endings' Ann Cleeves'Louise Penny's Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series gets better with each book' Globe and Mail
The Crossroads
by Chris GrabensteinZACK, HIS DAD, and new stepmother have just moved back to his father’s hometown, not knowing that their new house has a dark history.
Fifty years ago, a crazed killer caused an accident at the nearby crossroads that took 40 innocent lives.
He died when his car hit a tree in a fiery crash, and his malevolent spirit has inhabited the tree ever since.
During a huge storm, lightning hits the tree, releasing the spirit, who decides his evil spree isn’t over . . . and Zack is directly in his sights.
Award-winning thriller author Chris Grabenstein fills his first book for younger readers with the same humorous and spine-tingling storytelling that has made him a fast favorite with adults.
The Code Busters Club, Case #4
by Penny WarnerEgyptian secrets take center stage in this interactive mystery where boys and girls can solve codes and puzzles right along with the multicultural cast of characters.Cody, Quinn, Luke, and M.E. love playing around with codes. In fact, they love codes so much they have their own club, with a secret hideout and passwords that change every day.After learning about steganography, the study of concealed writing, the Code Busters discover that artists have been hiding secret messages in their artwork for centuries. A clue hunt on a class trip to the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum leads the Code Busters to an artifact that doesn't seem to quite fit with the rest of the collection. Could it be a forgery? The Code Busters code-cracking skills and new knowledge of hieroglyphic messages will help them get to the bottom of this mystery, but they better think fast before the criminal tries to frame them!Winner of the 2012 Agatha Award for Case #2: The Haunted LighthouseNominated for the 2011 Agatha Award for Case #1: The Secret of the Skeleton Key"[A] fun series sure to appeal to graduates of Encyclopedia Brown and Ivy & Bean." -Shelf Awareness"This intriguing tale has vivid characters and such a tantalizing cliffhanger that readers won't be able to resist cracking the next Code Busters." -Kirk
The Code Busters Club, Case #2
by Penny WarnerAn infamous prison may hold a secret only the Code Busters can uncoverCody, Quinn, Luke, and M.E. may all have different talents, but they share one thing in common: they love playing around with codes. In fact, they love codes so much, they have their own club, with a secret hideout and passwords that change every day.When Cody and her friends get a mysterious e-mail hinting at a treasure on Alcatraz Island, they can't wait to get started on their clue hunt. Luckily, a class trip to the prison is the perfect cover to start their search. During the tour, the club members learn that a jewel thief kept at Alcatraz may have hidden his biggest haul on the island and left a series of coded messages to find it. And solving puzzles is what the Code Busters do best! This interactive mystery features more than fifteen codes and puzzles for you to decipher along with the Code Busters, including Morse code, the tap code, LEET, and zigzag code. Answers are in the back, if you ever get stuck. For more code-breaking fun, visit CodeBustersClub.com and join the club!
Chasing Vermeer (Scholastic Gold)
by Blue BalliettChasing Vermeer joins the Scholastic Gold line, which features award-winning and beloved novels. Includes exclusive bonus content!When a book of unexplainable occurences brings Petra and Calder together, strange things start to happen: Seemingly unrelated events connect; an eccentric old woman seeks their company; an invaluable Vermeer painting disappears. Before they know it, the two find themselves at the center of an international art scandal, where no one is spared from suspicion. As Petra and Calder are drawn clue by clue into a mysterious labyrinth, they must draw on their powers of intuition, their problem solving skills, and their knowledge of Vermeer. Can they decipher a crime that has stumped even the FBI?
Butchers Hill
by Laura LippmanTess Monaghan has finally made the move and hung out her shingle as a p.i.-for-hire, complete with an office in Butchers Hill. Maybe it's not the best address in Baltimore, but you gotta start somewhere, and Tess's greyhound Esskay has no trouble taking marathon naps anywhere there's a roof. Then in walks Luther Beale, the notorious vigilante who five years ago shot a boy for vandalizing his car. Just out of prison, he says he wants to make reparations to the kids who witnessed his crime, so he needs Tess to find them. But once she starts snooping, the witnesses start dying. Is the "Butcher of Butchers Hill" at it again? Like it or not, Tess is embroiled in a case that encompasses the powers that-be, a heartless system that has destroyed the lives of children, and a nasty trail of money and lies leading all the way back to Butchers Hill.
Bury Your Dead
by Louise PennyAs Quebec City shivers in the grip of winter, its ancient stone walls cracking in the cold, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache plunges into the strangest case of his celebrated career. A man has been brutally murdered in one of the city's oldest buildings - a library where the English citizens of Quebec safeguard their history. And the death opens a door into the past, exposing a mystery that has lain dormant for centuries . . . a mystery Gamache must solve if he's to catch a present-day killer. Steeped in luscious atmosphere, brimming with the suspense and wit that have earned Louise Penny a massive global following, Bury Your Dead is the most ingenious suspense novel of the year.
Bum Steer
by Nancy PickardHours after the Port Frederick Civic Foundation got wind of a highly unusual bequest: a $4 million Kansas cattle ranch, director Jenny Cain hops a flight west. She arrives at the hospital room of the gravely ill benefactor, Charles W. "Cat" Benet, to find that he's already dead. Murdered. Could charming Quentin Harlan, the ranch hand, be Cat Benet's killer? Or did Cat's estranged daughters, unhappy ex-wives and their jealous second husbands have something to do with his death?
Bubbles Unbound
by Sarah StrohmeyerBubbles, a hairdresser with Barbie-doll curves hot pants and a tube top. With an ex-hubby, a precocious daughter, and a shoplifting mother. What can add highlights to her life? Maybe a murder?
The Brutal Telling
by Louise PennyThe fifth novel in the Chief Inspector Gamache series, from worldwide phenomenon and number one New York Times bestseller Louise PennyWhen Chief Inspector Gamache arrives in picturesque Three Pines, he steps into a village in chaos. A man has been found bludgeoned to death, and there is no sign of a weapon, a motive or even the dead man's name. As Gamache and his colleagues start to dig under the skin of this peaceful haven for clues, they uncover a trail of stolen treasure, mysterious codes and a shameful history that begins to shed light on the victim's identity - and points to a terrifying killer...'The best Gamache so far' Globe and Mail'Ingenious and unexpected' Guardian'A cracking storyteller, who can create fascinating characters, a twisty plot and wonderful surprise endings' Ann Cleeves
Bootlegger's Daughter
by Margaret MaronUnconventional, still unwed (at the ripe old age of 34) North Carolina attorney Deborah Knott has done the unthinkable: tossed her hat into the heated race for district judge of old boy-ruled Colleton County. The only female candidate, she's busy defending indigent clients and reeling in voters. Then suddenly, the young daughter of Janie Whitehead begs her to help solve Janie's senseless, never-solved, eighteen-year-old murder. Deborah takes on the case: following twisted, typically Southern bloodlines, turning up dangerous, decades-old secrets, and inspiring someone to go on an all-out campaign to derail her future--political and otherwise. But it will take more than sleazy smear tactics to scare this determined steel magnolia off the scent of down-home deceit...even in a town where a cool slug of moonshine made by Deborah's father can go down just as smoothly as a cold case of triple murder.
Edgar Allen Poe Award Winner.
Books to Die For
by John Connolly and Declan BurkeThe world's greatest mystery writers on the world's greatest mystery novels: Michael Connelly on The Little Sister . . . Kathy Reichs on The Silence of the Lambs . . . Mark Billingham on The Maltese Falcon . . . Ian Rankin on I Was Dora Suarez . . . With so many mystery novels to choose among, and so many new titles appearing each year, where should a reader start? What are the classics of the genre? Which are the hidden gems? In the most ambitious anthology of its kind yet attempted, the world's leading mystery writers have come together to champion the greatest mystery novels ever written. In a series of personal essays that often reveal as much about the authors and their own work as they do about the books that they love, 119 authors from 20 countries have created a guide that will be indispensable for generations of readers and writers. From Agatha Christie to Lee Child, from Edgar Allan Poe to P. D. James, from Sherlock Holmes to Hannibal Lecter and Philip Marlowe to Lord Peter Wimsey, Books to Die For brings together the cream of the mystery world for a feast of reading pleasure, a treasure trove for those new to the genre and for those who believe that there is nothing new left to discover. This is the one essential book for every reader who has ever finished a mystery novel and thought . . . I want more! *** "Why does the mystery novel enjoy such enduring appeal? There is no simple answer. It has a distinctive capacity for subtle social commentary, a concern with the disparity between law and justice, and a passion for order, however compromised. Even in the vision of the darkest of mystery writers, it provides us with a glimpse of the world as it might be, a world in which good men and women do not stand idly by and allow the worst aspects of human nature to triumph without opposition. It can touch upon all these facets while still entertaining the reader." --From the introduction of Books to Die For
The Body in the Transept
by Jeanne M. DamsDorothy, a charming amateur sleuth and widowed American, relocates to England. The Christmas service is painful as her first holiday without her husband. She stumbles over the body of Canon and finds herself in the case very much alive & sleuthing.
The Body in the Snowdrift
by Katherine Hall PageCaterer Faith Fairchild has a bad feeling about her father-in-law's decision to celebrate his seventieth birthday with a family reunion ski week at the Pine Slopes resort in Vermont -- the Fairchilds' favorite getaway since Faith's husband, the Reverend Thomas Fairchild, was a toddler. At first her unease seems unfounded -- until Faith comes across a corpse on one of the cross-country trails, the apparent victim of a heart attack. Then one catastrophe follows another: the mysterious disappearance of the Pine Slopes' master chef, a malicious prank at the sports center, a break-in at the Fairchild condo, the sabotage of a chairlift. And when a fatal "accident" with the snow-making machines stains the slopes blood red, Faith realizes she'll have to work fast to solve a murderous puzzle -- because suddenly not only are the reunion and the beloved resort's future in jeopardy . . . but Faith's life is as well.
Blanche on the Lam
by Barbara NeelyIt's hard enough making ends meet on the pittaful Blanche White earns doing day work for the Southern families of North Carolina. But when her fourth bad check lands her a jail sentence, Blanche goes on the lam. Inadvertently, she finds work at the summer home of a well to do family, the members of which have plenty of secrets of their own And when a dead body is discovered, Blanche finds herself the prime suspect. Using her wit and intelligencenot to mention the remarkably efficient old-girl network among domestic workersshe gets to work uncovering the real duller before she lands in more hot water.
The Black Heart Crypt
by Chris GrabensteinHalloween is nearing, the one day of the year when the ghostly plane is close enough to the human plane to allow mischief and mayhem. But the ghosts who have their eye on Zack aren't thinking mischief, they are thinking murder. In this fourth volume of Chris Grabenstein's popular Haunted Mysteries series, Zack must once again do battle with malevolent spirits. And with his usual pluck, and the assistance of three dotty aunts, he must save his town from a 200-year-old threat.Once again Chris Grabenstein proves his mastery of the frightening and funny tale. Young readers, especially reluctant ones, have found an inspiration to read in Grabenstein's quirky characters and deadly situations.From the Hardcover edition.
Birds of a Feather
by Jacqueline WinspearPraise for Maisie Dobbs: "Maisie Dobbs is a quirky literary creation. If you cross-pollinated Vera Britain's classic World War I memoir, Testament of Youth, with Dorothy Sayers's Harriet Vane mysteries and a dash of the old PBS series 'Upstairs, Downstairs,' you'd approximate the peculiar range of topics and tones within this novel... Its intelligent eccentricity offers relief."-Maureen Corrigan, "Fresh Air" on NPR. "Deft... Prepare to be astonished at the sensitivity and wisdom with which Maisie resolves her first professional assignment... Winspear takes her through her ordeal with great compassion."-Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review. "Surprisingly fresh... Winspear does a fine job with the 'Upstairs, Downstairs' aspects of the story, depicting the class tensions that inevitably arise as Dobbs climbs to a new station in life. Her progression from domestic staff to college student to wartime nurse to private investigator is both believable and compelling."-San Francisco Chronicle. Maisie Dobbs is back and this time she has been hired to find a wealthy grocery magnate's daughter who has fled from home. What seems a simple case at first becomes complicated when Maisie learns of the recent violent deaths of three of the heiress's old friends. Is there a connection between her mysterious disappearance and the murders? Who would kill such charming young women? As Maisie investigates, she discovers that the answers to all her questions lie in the unforgettable agony of The Great War. Jacqueline Winspear was born and raised in England and later worked in publishing and as a marketing communications consultant in the U.K. before emigrating to the United States. She now lives in California and is a regular visitor to the United Kingdom. Birds of a Feather is her second novel featuring Maisie Dobbs.