Books to the Ceiling

Everyone loves a good wedding--and a good mystery. Combine the two and what do you get? Malice, Matrimony, and Murder!

Over two dozen authors have teamed up to offer you this wedding-themed collection of brand-new cozy mystery and cozy crime fiction stories that will keep you wondering whodunit and what's next from the first page to the last. Between bad bridesmaids, conniving caterers, greedy guests, ill-mannered in-laws, savvy sleuths, and vengeful villains, this anthology has it all! All of the stories are clean and fun, with a general feel-good tone. If you read to be entertained, surprised, and uplifted, then this collection is for you!

Plus, the anthology as a whole contains an overarching wedding whodunit woven throughout. As you're reading, collect the clues, identify whodunit, and access a special ebook filled with bonuses and extras. Inside you'll find recipes, character interviews, bonus stories, and more!

Here's where you can find Malice, Matrimony, and Murder

Embarking on their most daring time-travel experiment to date, Depression-era cop Steven Blackwell and his 21st-century partner-in-crime Olivia Watson travel to the Adirondack Mountains for a Christmas party at one of the legendary Great Camps. Their host, a wealthy New York publisher, has planned a weekend filled with holiday activities, but, as the last guest arrives, temperatures plummet and a blizzard hits. Before long, the area is buried in snow, the roads are impassable, and the publisher is poisoned.

Unwilling to wait until the local police can arrive, the victim’s widow convinces Steven to launch an unofficial investigation. Soon, a family member goes missing and Steven and Olivia discover a second victim.

Sheriff Jax Turner is learning to live again. Holding tight to the hope of reconciling with his FBI agent ex-wife, the wary man is determined to keep his focus on his coastal Oregon community. And after a concerned brother requests a welfare check, Jax is troubled to find the absent surf shop owner’s tracks lead to a pool of blood.

Now investigating a potential homicide, Turner chases a tip from his former spouse about a severed foot found on the beach. But when a torrent of leads links the victim to a politician's son, a jealous competitor, and a get-straight program for youth, the steadfast lawman fears layers of lies and secret agendas will keep him from stopping a vicious killer.

Can he unravel the fatal agenda before he’s the next corpse to wash ashore?

Johnny Miracle thinks he’s got it all… and he’s in love, just not with his wife, Mary. He wants a divorce and he’s got leverage. Johnny knows her deepest, darkest secret. He’s going to use that to take everything: her vineyard, her money, and her priceless family heirloom. He’ll do whatever it takes to get it all.

But, as Grandma Nellie used to say, “No man, no matter how smart or strong, can compete with a motivated woman.” Mary is a motivated woman, she’s got her own agenda, and it doesn’t include losing. She’s going to kill Johnny. To get away with it, she needs a plan and an alibi. And she thinks she has both.

Next time you rent a house, make sure you’re the only occupant.

If it wasn’t for a flamboyant, self-absorbed ghost occupying Katie Aubrey’s rental house, the thirtysomething former business tech turned charcuterie chef would be able to concentrate on her new sandwich shop and catering business. But as luck would have it, former food critic and septuagenarian Edith Ellory, will not let go. Not until she convinces Katie to find out who killed her.

In spite of a coroner’s report stating Edith had died peacefully in her sleep, her apparition insists she was murdered. Not only that but she’s convinced she knows who did the dastardly deed. Vowing not to give Katie, or her laidback beagle a moment’s peace, Edith takes them on a wild goose chase through all the restaurants that received scalding reviews from her.

If Katie ever expects to have her new charcuterie business up and running, she’ll have to do more than arrange cured meats and cheeses. The real killer is closer than she thinks and no amount of culinary design sense will prevent her from the same fate as Edith’s.

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US Army retiree Tessa Treslow and her Aunt Edna put their auto restoration business on hold to host an "American Pickers"-style TV show, hoping their trash might be treasure to fund their new business. But not only do the pickers come with cameras and likeable stars, but a murderer…

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Fire!

St. Patrick’s Day, New York City, 1899. Spectators along Fifth Avenue, unaware of impending doom, enjoy the parade and the bands playing Irish tunes. Suddenly marchers halt at the immense and luxurious Windsor Hotel, watching terrified women at upper-floor windows cringe at the flames—and then leap. Within two hours, the fire kills close to one hundred people.

What set it off? An ember from a cigar? Robbers who sparked the fire as a distraction? Broken boilers in the basement?

Spunky hotel guest Marguerite Wells decides she and her two wealthy friends can discover what started the terrible inferno while three newly jobless hotel maids struggle to figure out how they can survive.

Inspired by the true story of the shocking fire that leveled one of Manhattan’s elegant hotels twelve years before the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, Inferno on Fifth prompts readers to ask how they would react in the defining seconds of an irreversible tragedy.

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Lily Cranston is soaring high as the manager of the Calico Rock Mine and Ghost Town in Grady, California. Cash is finally flowing in and improvements to the theme park, like the new zipline, are drawing crowds. Even Lily's previously stalled love life seems to be heading on the right track with CSI Cody West. But all that comes to a halt when the park's board of directors suddenly comes to Lily with accusations of embezzlement! Someone’s had their fingers in the till and all eyes are on her. To make matters worse, before Lily even has a chance to prove her

innocence, murder strikes her small town!

Melvin J. Rinehart is the arrogant, browbeating bank auditor who's determined to prove Lily has been stealing from the ghost town. But when Lily arrives at his office to set him straight, she finds someone's beat her to it—killing the man before Lily has a chance to plead her case! Now not only is Lily in danger of facing embezzlement charges, but she's also a prime murder suspect. Even her family and new boyfriend in law enforcement may not be enough to keep Lily out of jail. She’s worked too hard to lose it all, so Lily puts her skills to the test to find the real guilty party, uncovering shocking truths and unscrupulous practices along the way. Will she be able to find the missing money and the killer before it’s too late? Or will her time run out as the killer sets their sights on her...

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After his father dies, Grayson Dyle, the owner of a fledgling product design firm, observes his mother hiding an envelope in the casket. He retrieves the letter, revealing that he and his brother Dean, a home automation guru, were adopted. Eager to learn more, he submits a DNA sample online and connects with a prominent attorney who claims to be their father and who tells the brothers their birth mother died as she was giving Grayson life.

When the attorney is brutally murdered, Grayson has little time to mourn the loss of two fathers because he quickly becomes a prime suspect and the killer’s next target. The brothers investigate and soon discover their mother died suspiciously as well. Their search for justice leads them to a local Catholic Bishop, whose stonewalling and lies are designed to protect the Church and keep family secrets hidden. As Grayson struggles to save his business from collapse, he must overcome his internal conflicts about being adopted, prevent his brother from going off the rails, and find the design flaws in the murderer’s plans before he or Dean becomes the next victim.

When Nora Alexander drives into Piney Woods, Texas, to fulfill her dying mother’s last wish, she has no idea what awaits her. First she is run off the road, then the sealed letter she delivers turns out to be a scathing rebuke to the town’s most beloved citizen and favored candidate for Piney Woods Pioneer: Adam Brockwell. Next thing you know, Adam has been murdered in a nasty knife attack. Suspicion instantly falls on Nora, one of the last people to see him alive. After all, everyone in Piney Woods loved him. Or did they? Turns out Nora’s mother had a complicated past she never shared with her daughter. Told not to leave town by Tuck the flirty sheriff, Nora finds a job with Tuck’s Aunt Marty trying to get the rundown Tunie Hotel back in the black. The old hotel was Piney Woods’ heart and soul in its heyday as an oil boomtown. Now the secrets it harbors may be the key to getting Nora off the hook. She’s going to need to solve the mystery quickly to avoid arrest, or worse: becoming the killer’s next victim.
Book 1 in the Piney Woods Mystery series.

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The border is a hostile place with searing heat and venomous serpents. Yet the deadliest predator targets the innocent.

A sniper strikes in the Valley of the Sun and Detective Nathan Parker soon finds a connection between the victims—each of them had a role in an organization founded to help undocumented migrants make the dangerous crossing. Parker discovers no one is exactly who they seem.

There’s the devil you know and then there’s the devil within—when the two collide, no one is safe.

When murder trends too close to home, social media influencer Coco Cline will have to swipe through a sea of trolls to tag a killer.
After cracking her first case, Cordelia "Coco" Cline's life is finally getting back to normal—or as normal as life can be when you have over three million followers online. With a thriving business, a devoted boyfriend, and her two besties living right up the street, Coco is set to have the most fun summer of her life until Larry and Rosalynn Dunmer move into the condo next door.
Coco and her friends do their best to avoid the confrontational duo, but when a party at a swanky new wine bar brings everyone together, things become less than neighborly faster than a celebrity-themed hashtag goes viral. Larry levels some super shady threats toward Coco and her BFF Jasper, which could have dire consequences for their multimedia empires. Just as Coco begins to wonder if she'll have to spend the rest of the summer looking over her shoulder, she gets a shocking request from police. As part of her PR gig with the Central Shores PD, they need her to come to the beach and keep the public at bay. A body has washed ashore. Find #Tag Me for Murder at These Online Retailers

Secret's Don't Sink Loose lips may sink ships, but bodies and secrets inevitably float to the surface.Audrey O’Connell has returned from Portland to her hometown of Chattertowne, Washington, a place where gossip is currency but knowing when to stay tight-lipped is priceless. Procuring a part-time job at the local newspaper to keep an eye on her impetuous sister following Vivienne’s latest romantic scandal, Audrey is assigned a feature series for the upcoming festival which has her digging through the town archives. When her former boyfriend is found floating dead in the marina not long after reaching out to her in hopes of utilizing her research skills, her investigation reveals his conspiracy theories about Chattertowne and corruption within its leadership might not have been so crazy after all.As she plumbs the depths of the town’s 150-year history, she discovers that beneath the façade of this idyllic hamlet lie secrets long-submerged–including within her own family–and finds herself in the crosshairs of those who guard them.Now with three dead bodies, a severe case of aquaphobia, and a narrow window before her deadline, Audrey looks to the handsome City Manager, the town’s octogenarian historian, and her enigmatic almost-boyfriend to help her discover the truth that will forever change her and Chattertowne. Find Secrets Don't Sink at These Online Retailers

The death by bizarre means of his mentor, Professor Barrington Holmes, draws Mathew Shane into the quest of five archeologists, known to each other as "The Monkey's Paws", for an obscure object of unprecedented historic and financial value. The suspected murders of others of the Monkey's Paws follow their pursuit of five clues found in a packet of five ancient parchments. Shane's commitment to disprove the police theory of suicide by Professor Holmes carries him to the steamy bayous of New Orleans, the backstreets of Montreal, the sunken wreck of a pirate vessel off Barbados, and the city of Maroon descendants of escaped slaves in Jamaica. By weaving a thread from the sacrificial rites of the Aztec kingdom before the Spanish conquest of Mexico through the African beliefs of Jamaican Maroons and finally to the ventures of Captain Henry Morgan during the Golden Era of Piracy in his conquest and sacking of Spanish cities on the Spanish Main, Shane reaches a conclusion he could never have anticipated. Excerpt begins at 1:49.

Ex-FBI profiler River Ryland still suffers from PTSD after a case went horribly wrong. Needing a fresh start, she moves to St. Louis to be near her ailing mother and opens a private investigation firm with her friend and former FBI partner, Tony St. Clair. They're soon approached by a grieving mother who wants them to find out what happened to her teenaged son, who disappeared four years ago. River knows there's almost no hope the boy is still alive, but his mother needs closure, and River and Tony need a case, no matter how cold it might be.

But as they follow the boy's trail, which gets more complicated at every turn, they find themselves in the path of a murderer determined to punish anyone who gets in his way. As River and Tony race to stop him before he kills again, an even more dangerous threat emerges, stirring up the past that haunts River and plotting an end to her future.

Twenty years after a high school student’s bullying driven suicide, former students at Landen Creek High are being systematically shot to death in the town of Landen Creek, Oregon.
Homicide detectives Paige Lombard and Garrison Stanton investigate the crimes and search for the killers or a possible serial killer. The case becomes personal for Paige as she attended the high school and knew the victims, including being once romantically involved with the first victim, Ben Huxley.
One of the chief suspects in the case is Ben Huxley’s widow, Rachel Huxley. Garrison finds himself falling for the medical director of a women’s health center who could be a cold-blooded killer or accomplice in her husband’s murder.
Quinn Vogel, a real estate developer, returns to Landen Creek for Ben’s funeral, and finds himself attracted to Paige and vice versa; as Quinn harbors secrets about his high school years as a bully that may catch up to him.
Lily Aberdeen is Paige’s best friend and a bestselling author, who is leading a double life. Having been the victim of high school bullying that escalated into a sexual assault, Lily is out to settle some scores and no one will stop her till she made them all pay.
The spinetingling twists and turns leads up to the Landen Creek High twenty-year class reunion and a never saw coming conclusion in this psychological thriller. Find Till She was Done at these online retailers.

Subscribe to Books to the Ceiling and don't miss a single episode! When Jill Madison returns to her hometown to become executive director of a new art center, she never dreams unexpected secrets from the past will put her life in danger. Her parent’s old friend and Jill’s mentor, Judge Ron Spivey, is murdered. He leaves behind more than a few secrets from the past. His baffling will makes Jill a rich woman if she survives the will’s six-month probate period.
She finds a target on her back when the judge’s estranged children return. They form an unholy alliance with a local muckraking journalist who specializes in making up the news. According to the judge’s will, if Jill dies, the family inherits.
Jill and her best friend, Angie Emerson, launch their own investigation determined to find the judge’s killer. In the meantime, Jill must run her first national juried exhibit, launch a new seniors group, and move the weavers guild into the art center. Easy peasy, right?

Firefighter Pat Ryan is stunned when he hears gunfire and two strangers crash through his door. An anonymous tip led journalist Rachel Davenport to a ramshackle cabin, where she helped an abducted teen escape. With Pat and his K-9 rescue dog’s help, they go on the run with deadly kidnappers in pursuit. But with innocent lives at stake, Rachel and Pat must battle foes and fears to live through the night.

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Journalist Lisa Jamison wants to blow off some steam after an argument with her boyfriend, so she heads to her friend Ricky’s kickboxing studio for an early morning workout. She expects to find Ricky alone, setting up for his first class of the day, but someone was there before Lisa, uninvited. Ricky is dead, shot only moments before she arrived, and now Lisa is a suspect in his murder. Lisa wants two things: to clear her name and seek justice for Ricky. But the deeper she digs, the more the danger mounts. Can she find Ricky’s killer before the killer eliminates the last obstacle, silencing Lisa for good?

Coming out of retirement can be deadly…

After tragedy struck three years earlier, art sleuth Carmen De Luca vowed to never work in the field again. But fifty is too young to fill her days with water aerobics and bingo, so when her former partner calls and begs for her help, Carmen gladly agrees.

Yet after their first assignment – the recovery of a rare medieval prayer book from an eccentric collector living in rural France – goes horribly wrong, Carmen ends up in the crosshairs of both the local police and a murderer!

With her target dead and the stolen book missing, she and her partner will have to pull out all of the stops to sleuth out the true killer’s identity – before their stay in France becomes permanent.

Introducing Carmen De Luca, an art sleuth with a nose for mystery and the job of locating valuable artwork stolen from museums around the world.

After losing her job as an investigative reporter for The Phoenix Gazette, Kat Lawson has a new gig. The FBI has asked her to work undercover as a reporter for Travel International to cover Munich, Germany’s festive holiday scene—an excuse to get close to Hans von Hausmann, a very charismatic and popular museum curator suspected of hiding a cache of stolen masterpieces believed to be part of the World’s Largest Art Heist. The job comes with lots of perks: airfare, travel expenses, the opportunity to see the world...and for a seasoned reporter like Kat, nothing she can’t handle. But, when a trusted source is found dead, Kat realizes the tables have been turned. Armed with evidence that will expose a cache of artwork stolen from museums and the homes of wealthy Jews during the 2nd World War, Kat must find a way to avoid being caught by the German Polizie, who have enough evidence to charge her with murder, and those who want her dead to keep their hidden treasures forever secret. The hunter has become the hunted; now, Kat has a target on her back.

Crime writer turned amateur sleuth, Jen, has taken over the running of the local bookstore in her hometown of Riddleton.
But balancing the books at Ravenous Readers is nothing compared to meeting the deadline for her new novel.
Dodging phone calls from her editor takes a back seat, however, when the local police chief is poisoned. To solve the murder, Jen must dust off her detective hat once more.
With everyone in town seemingly a suspect, and evidence planted to incriminate local police officer and close friend Eric, Jen is working against the clock. Can she find the killer and beat her own writer’s block before it’s too late? Find the Murderous Type at these online retailers:

From author Erica Wynters comes a fresh new series about a florist whose life is anything but rosy... Florist Gwen Stevens knows two things to be true. One—her parents are never going to retire and hand over the reins to the family flower shop, Camelot Flowers, if Gwen can’t handle the business while they’re on their yearly trip to escape the cold of central Illinois in the Florida Keys. And two—she needs to get over her unrequited crush on her best friend, Chris Crawford. But when Gwen stumbles on the dead body of a high school friend, everything else in her life suddenly takes a backseat. Especially when Chris becomes the main suspect in the murder, and it seems only Gwen believes in his innocence. With her friend's freedom on the line, Gwen will use every lifelong connection she has in her small town of Star Junction to find the real killer, even if the sexy new police detective, Finn Butler, doesn’t want her help. Gwen trades gathering flowers for gathering evidence as she hunts down a murderer, and as the stakes grow higher—and Gwen grows closer to Detective Finn—Gwen's heart may not be the only thing on the line. Can she navigate the seas of suspects who all wanted the victim dead? Can she trust her torn feelings between Chris and Finn well enough to follow the right clues? Or will she be too late to stop the killer from striking again...this time even closer to home? Find Marigolds, Mischief and Murder at these online retailers.

May 1943. Betty Ahern is studying for her private investigator’s license when a new client—Edward Kettle—hires her to clear his name after he was dismissed from his job at the American Shipbuilding Company. When Edward is brutally murdered, the dead man’s sister hires Betty to finish the original job and find the killer.
The job hurls Betty back into the world of wartime espionage, but with a twist: Edward Kettle was a homosexual. Did he know something about underhanded activities at American Shipbuilding? Or was his secret life the motive for murder?
Once again, Betty must unravel the mystery, which requires uncovering truths that others would prefer to keep hidden—a job that threatens not only her morals and beliefs, but also her life.

In 1870, orphaned Daisy François takes a position as housemaid at a Wisconsin castle to escape the horrors of her past life. There she finds a reclusive and eccentric Gothic authoress, who hides tales more harrowing than the ones in her novels. With women disappearing from the area and a legend that seems to parallel these eerie circumstances, Daisy is thrust into a web that threatens to steal her sanity, if not her life.

In the present day, Cleo Clemmons is hired by the grandson of an American aristocratic family to help his grandmother face her hoarding in the dilapidated Castle Moreau. But when Cleo uncovers more than just the woman's stash of collectibles, a century-old mystery of disappearance, insanity, and the dust of the old castle's curse threaten to rise again. This time to leave no one alive to tell the sordid tale.

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Jhonni Laurent is the first female sheriff of Field’ s Crossing, Indiana— and now she has her first murder case 
 
Two days after a blizzard hits Field’ s Crossing, Indiana, Sheriff Jhonni Laurent discovers the frozen body of a high school senior under a fifteen-foot pile of snow and ice. Murder is rare in farm country, and this death marks the beginning of Jhonni’ s first homicide case. 
 
Just as the investigation gets underway, Jhonni’ s opponent for sheriff from four years ago wages a bitter reelection battle to oust her. Then, Jhonni finds another body, and further complications arise when a century-old feud between two families reaches its breaking point. 
 
Soon, a slew of newspaper articles causes the Indiana State Election Board to doubt her credibility. Jhonni must fight to maintain her reputation, keep the small farming community together, and find the murderer at large— all while demons from her own past threaten to crush her. Can she find the killer and mend her battered spirit before it’ s too late?  Find Bones Under the Ice at These Online Retailers

With a serial killer on the loose A homicide detective is on the hunt…
On Maui, Hawaii, to research a mass murder, author Daphne Dockery seeks out the lead detective on the case. Kenneth Kealoha is glad to help—and eager to get to know her better. They’re exploring their instant connection when Daphne realizes that she’s being followed. Has an obsessed fan tracked her to the island paradise? Or has the serial killer Kenneth is hunting chosen Daphne as his next victim
From Harlequin Intrigue: Seek thrills. Solve crimes. Justice served.

Would the assassins plotting to kill Theodore Roosevelt on his visit to the Panama Canal succeed? Until this trip, no president while in office had ever traveled abroad. White House secretary Maurice Latta, thrilled to accompany the President, could never have anticipated the adventures and dangers ahead. Latta befriends watchful secret service agents, ambitious journalists, and anxious First Lady Edith Roosevelt on their hot and humid trip, where he observes a country teeming with inequalities and abounding in opportunities. Along the way he learns about his own strengths—what he never imagined he could do, and what he discovers he can’t do.  

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With a theater foundation tea and an art show planned at Violet Vickers’s estate, Courtney is hired to create charming fairy gardens for the event. It’s not so charming, however, when her best friend Meaghan’s ex-boyfriend turns out to be Violet’s latest artistic protégé. Even worse, not long after Meaghan locks horns with him, his body is found in her yard, bludgeoned with an objet d’murder.

There’s a gallery of suspects, from an unstable former flame to an arts and crafts teacher with a sketchy past. But when the cops focus on Meaghan’s business partner, who’s like a protective older brother to her, and discover he also has a secret financial motive, Courtney decides to draw her own conclusions. Fearing they’re missing the forest for the trees, and with some help from Fiona the sleuthing fairy, she hopes to make them see the light . . .

A Flicker of a Doubt is available at these online retailers:

A new job, a brutal murder, and Camelot has ended.

In 1963, Dot Morgan’s life was changed forever. She witnessed the assassination of John F Kennedy through the lens of her boxy Kodak Instamatic camera, bringing traumatic aftereffects of the brutality that happened as they stood on the parade route in Dallas.

She starts her first real secretarial job with a boss who has no sympathy for her trauma. When Dot’s only work friend has a mysterious accident at a demolition site, she digs around on her own only to find very little love between two brothers and no one hammering out justice to find a murderer.

The suspects are all around Dot and as she tries to sift through their motives, her cousin Ellie is going through PTSD on her own, losing interest in work, and her fiancé all the while quoting some of JFK’s finest speeches.

With so much change in her world, can Dot still tell the difference between good and evil?

As the leaves begin to change colors and the weather starts turning cooler in the historic city in the heart of Western Maryland, Parker City Police Detectives Ben Winters and Tommy Mason are called to Saint Paul’s where the recently installed Father Roland Taylor, who has become very popular in the community, has been found dead in his office at the church. By all appearances it seems to be a tragic case of a break-in gone wrong.

Only twenty-four hours later, the detectives find themselves at the home of the city’s well-known morning radio show DJ, Morning Mike Moran, who also seems to have been the victim of a robbery gone wrong. Coincidence?

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Refereeing homeowner association spats over acceptable mulch color was never part of Kylee Kane’s post-Coast Guard retirement plans. The irate combatants are trying the security consultant’s patience when gunfire erupts and a SWAT team swarms in. How did they arrive before any possible report of an active shooter?

Two days later, Kylee discovers a ghost boat. Not a soul onboard. Among the missing—presidents of HOAs managed by her employer. Are the incidents linked?

As Kylee chips away at shift-the-blame deceptions, the ruthless killer expands his hit list to include not only Kylee but everyone she loves. Will it be Kylee’s last Thanksgiving?

When a client’s dog turns up missing and her husband turns up dead, Low Country dog walker Andi Grace Scott will have to rely on dogged determination to track down a killer . . . 
When a frantic client calls, worried about her dog, Andi Grace is happy to drop by the woman’s home and check in on her beloved pet. She’s initially concerned when she discovers the dog’s not in the house, but she’s out-and-out shocked to discover that the woman’s husband is—strangled to death in his office chair. On top of that, she soon finds a ransom note demanding a hefty sum for the dog’s safe return. Andi Grace knows better than to meddle in a murder investigation, but there’s no way she’s going to let a dognapper get away with it.

Where to pick up your copy of A Killer Unleashed!

10-33 Assist PC tells the story of an ambitious young cop with a knack for following hunches on the verge of cracking an international prostitution ring. With only days left before their pimps shuttle the underaged girls out of the country, D/C Mike O’Shea pushes his team into overdrive. Hours later, with too little information, sleep, or luck, the unthinkable happens.

And now, the chase is personal.

In 1962, Dot Morgan was told the best thing she could do besides being a nurse or teacher was to learn to type. While attending secretarial school, she decides to rub elbows with an elite ladies' club to help her father with a struggling campaign for city council. Instead of getting the help she sought, Dot is thrown into a world of adultery, deceit, and murder when one of the town's sons is found dead.

Time to put that 45 on the record player and bring out your best dance moves in The Twist and Shout Murder.

Young architect Wren Fontaine lands her dream job: restoring Greenleaf House, New York's finest Gilded-Age mansion, to its glory days. But old homes have old secrets: Stephen Greenleaf—heir to what’s left of his family’s legacy—refuses to reveal what his plans are once the renovation is completed. And still living in a corner of the home is Stephen's 90-year-old Aunt Agnes who's lost in the past, brooding over a long-forgotten scandal while watching Wren with mistrust.

Wren's job becomes more complex when a shady developer who was trying to acquire Greenleaf House is found murdered. And after breaking into a sealed attic, Wren finds a skeleton stuffed in a trunk. She soon realizes the two deaths, a century apart, are strangely related. Meanwhile, a distraction of a different kind appears in the form of her client's niece, the beautiful and seductive Hadley Vanderwerf. As Wren gingerly approaches a romance, she finds that Hadley has her own secrets.

Then a third murder occurs, and the introverted architect is forced to think about people, and about how ill-fated love affairs and obsessions continue to haunt the Greenleafs. In the end, Wren risks her own life to uncover a pair of murderers, separated by a century but connected by motive. She reveals an odd twist in the family tree that forever changes the lives of the Greenleafs, the people who served them, the mansion they all called home—and even Wren herself.

As if the last few months haven’t been hard enough—complete with threats on her life and the return of her first love, Jon—Annie has to figure out whether or not to believe a woman who claims to be her sister, Sarah, who was abducted twenty-four years ago at age five. Annie’s eight-year-old daughter, Kylie, has plenty of questions about what’s going on in her mother’s life—but there are some stones Annie doesn’t want uncovered.

As Annie grapples with how to heal the gulf between her and her would-be sister and make room in her daughter’s life for Jon, she’s professionally distracted by the case of yet another missing hiker in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

30-year-old fraternal twins Tabby and Sage Winslow own The Book and Candle Shop in Savannah. Sage is hot-headed and impulsive while Tabby is calm and collected, making them the perfect partnership. When one of their customers is found murdered, from a blow to the head, that partnership is put to the test.

Blithe McAdam had been seen in a heated argument with shop clerk Gerard, which immediately makes him suspect number one. The twins are convinced of Gerard’s innocence and start digging into Blithe’s past. But no one is cooperating. The neighbor who found the body isn’t talking, medical examiner Quig won’t give any details about the autopsy, and nasty rumors begin surfacing about the drowning of Blithe’s father years earlier—evidence that could seal Gerard’s fate.

Jessica Fletcher is quick to accept an invitation to replace a speaker who couldn’t attend a Book Festival in Belfast, Ireland. When her Cabot Cove neighbor Maeve O'Bannon hears about the trip, she asks Jessica to deliver some paintings to her family in the village of Bushmills. Happy to extend her travels and see more of the Irish countryside, Jessica agrees.

The festival goes off without a hitch, and it seems like Jessica is in for a relaxing vacation. But then Maeve’s cousin Michael is discovered dead under suspicious circumstances. Jessica finds herself once again in the midst of a murder investigation, and she’ll have to dig into the O'Bannon family’s secrets to unmask the killer.

Tish Tarragon is catering for a wedding, but the weekend goes from sweet to sour when a guest at the venue is poisoned.

Literary caterer and owner of Cookin' the Books cafe Tish Tarragon is pushing thoughts of her impending eviction aside to prepare an appetising welcome buffet for a wedding weekend at Abbingdon Green Bed and Breakfast. While there, Tish witnesses one of the guests, controversial TV chef and restaurant critic, Gunner Randall, threatening staff after missing breakfast and making do with a mushroom omelet.

When Randall is found dead the following day, it soon becomes clear that poisoned mushrooms were behind his demise.

It's Christmas in Pecan Bayou, Texas. Join Betsy (aka The Happy Hinter) for a good old small-town Christmas complete with Christmas carols, over the top light displays, delicious food, loving friends and…a Christmas Creeper. One of the residents of Pecan Bayou has a secret and you'd better lock the door because that isn't Santa out there or even an elf off his shelf.

The Nutcracker ballet is filled with holiday cheer, but no one is happy, least of all lead dancer Leah Siderova. It’s bad enough when Maurice Kaminsky forces her to perform upon a shaky platform, which teeters high above the stage. It’s worse when the curtain opens on the first murder victim, and the scene looks more like the end of Romeo and Juliet than a child’s vision of Christmas.

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