Run a Crooked Mile—A Mystery Novel
Janet LaPierre
ISBN 978-1-880284-88-9, 1-880284-88-X
240 pages, Trade Paperback Original, $14.95
Rosemary Mendes, looking for a new life after her husband's death, believes she has found refuge in remote Trinity County, California. But a tale offered in passing by a young neighbor is enlarged by information from women she's working with at the local senior center: a young woman, another in-comer "kind of like you, Rosemary," has been shot dead in the forest, apparently by a careless deer-hunter, and no one knows who she really was. Rosemary, caught by a growing sense of identification with the woman, tries to learn more about her, and her efforts prove both successful and dangerous.
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Docketful of Poesy—A Poetic Death Mystery
Diana Killian
ISBN 1-880284-97-1
240 pages, Trade Paperback Original, $14.95
"Theater of the Absurd" takes on a whole new meaning when former high school teacher and literary scholar Grace Hollister is hired as a script doctor for a straight-to-cable film production of her own academic exploits. Although the film's budget seems boundless, almost no one in the cast or crew seems to have any experience making movies. It would almost be comical in a Woody Allen sort of way?until history repeats itself for real, and it's curtains for one of the cast.
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Indigo Christmas—A Hilda Johansson Mystery
Jeanne M. Dams
ISBN 978-1-880284-95-7
256 pages, Trade Paperback Original, $14.95
Publication Date: September 2008
MOOD INDIGO FOR CHRISTMAS
The secret to Dams’s success is in the details.... We learn, without realizing we’re being taught anything at all, about social customs, class divisions, even the day-to-day operations of a wealthy turn-of-the-century household. Great characters, fascinating history, compelling mystery: this series could go on forever.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“If you’re a classic mystery lover, you’re sure to enjoy the books of Jeanne M. Dams. Her characters, setting, and stories have a depth not often seen in this subgenre.”
—Mystery News
Once housemaid to the wealthy Studebaker family in South Bend, Indiana, Hilda Johansson is now married and living a well-to-do life with her new husband. But her Swedish family doesn’t get along with his Irish relations. She’s having trouble finding friends, since she no longer fits into her old world and isn’t accepted in the new one. Just before Christmas, when the husband of her sole remaining friend is accused of theft, arson, and murder, Hilda has to find new ways of investigating a crime that seems to make no sense.
In the hard times of 1904 with bank failures weekly, Hilda tries to help the unemployed youth of South Bend by helping to form a Boys’ Club (modeled after Hull House founded in Chicago).. And she also enlists some of them as “Baker Street Irregulars” in her mystery investigation, giving the reader a vivid sense of the city and street life of the times.
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Buffalo Bill’s Defunct—A Latouche County Mystery
Sheila Simonson
ISBN 978-1-880284-96-0
280 pages, Trade Paperback Original, $14.95
Publication Date: September 2008
COLUMBIA RIVER CRIME
“Sheila Simonson can always be relied on for appealing, intelligent protagonists, witty dialogue, a great sense of place, and suspense galore.”
—Carola Dunn, author of the Daisy Dalrymple mysteries
“Sheila Simonson’s Buffalo Bill’s Defunct had me from the title. Meg McLean just wants to escape to western Washington and work as a librarian. She didn’t count on the stolen petroglyphs or the body in her garage. The book’s plot, characters, setting, and theme all click together just right to make for highly entertaining reading.”
—Bill Crider, author of the Sheriff Dan Rhodes mysteries
Sheriff’s investigator Rob Neill made a mess of his first case, the theft of sacred artifacts belonging to the Klalo, a Native American tribe from the western end of the Columbia River Gorge. Ten years later, a stolen petroglyph emerges—along with a body buried in a garage. Neill sees a chance to redeem himself, with the help of his new neighbor, librarian Meg McLean. Her information-retrieval skills work together with the police investigation—but the partnership threatens to turn unprofessionally romantic. Meanwhile, two more people are murdered, and the Klalos’ feisty chief, Madeline Thomas, has her own agenda that seems to hinder as much as help. Can a kind of justice finally come to Latouche County?
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Chasing Cans—A Gail McCarthy Mystery
Laura Crum
ISBN 978-1-880284-94-0
192 pages, Trade Paperback Original, $14.95
Publication Date: April 2008
HORSE WRECK—OR WAS IT MURDER?
“If you haven’t discovered Laura Crum yet, please jump at any chance to catch up on the series. The Gail McCarthy books are among my very favorite contemporary mysteries and Crum is, for my money, the successor to mystery giant Dick Francis.”
—Ron Miller, author of Mystery! A Celebration
Chasing Cans is rodeo slang for barrel racing, a competition that can bring its winners fame and big bucks. To Gail McCarthy, a horse vet turned stay-at-home mom, chasing cans also stands for the ambitious pursuit of empty career goals at the expense of personal and family tranquility. While Gail is wrestling with this question in her own life, she witnesses a mystifying riding accident that kills a neighbor, a barrel-racing trainer. Whether it’s her veterinarian’s integrity or just stubborn curiosity, Gail’s unofficial investigation into strange happenings at the ranch could make her the object of a chase that might cost her own life.
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How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries
Kathy Lynn Emerson
ISBN 978-880284-92-6
226 pages, Trade Paperback Original, $14.95
Publication Date: April 2008
THE ART & ADVENTURE OF SLEUTHING THROUGH THE PAST
“Kathy Lynn Emerson takes the mystery out of writing a historical mystery. The book is a comprehensive guide, full of seasoned advice and rich examples.”
—Hallie Ephron, author of Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel and the Peter Zak series
“I can’t imagine a question about historical mysteries that isn’t answered here. The past is a foreign country, and Kathy Lynn Emerson is a wonderfully informative tour guide. Do not start writing your historical mystery without this book!”
—Carolyn Wheat, author of How To Write Killer Fiction and the Cass Jameson series
This useful, fascinating, and complete guide will inspire and delight writers (and readers, too) of historical mysteries. These books are the most enjoyable and memorable way to experience history up close and personal—with a brain-teasing puzzle thrown in as a bonus. Ranging from the eras of ancient civilizations to Japanese samurai to the twentieth-century private eye, from Renaissance Europe to the American frontier, they open a vast historical panorama to the curious reader who enjoys murder and mayhem along with past mores and morals. This sub-genre is growing in popularity every year. Writing these mysteries is an art, and you can learn here how it’s done.
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Deadly Vintage—A Molly Doyle Mystery
Elaine Flinn
ISBN 978-1-880284-87-2
264 pages, Trade Paperback Original, $14.95
Caveat Emptor should have been Molly Doyle’s watchword when she took on the redecoration of a celebrated winery—along with In Vino Veritas.
“You don’t need to know anything about antiques to recognize when you’ve found a genuine treasure. Elaine Flinn’s Molly Doyle series gives the reader that same warm glow. Witty and skillfully plotted, Deadly Vintage has a cast of characters you can believe in. Look no further for the perfect traditional mystery.”
—Stephen Booth (Barry and CWA Dagger award-winning author of The Dead Place)
“Barry Award-winner Elaine Flinn is at the top of her game. Deadly Vintage is champagne and caviar, the best yet in the intriguing and delightful Molly Doyle series. Flinn’s story-telling will pop your cork.”
—Julia Spencer-Fleming (Agatha, Anthony, Barry, and Macavity award-winning author of All Mortal Flesh)
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Face Down O’er the Border—A Lady Appleton Mystery
Kathy Lynn Emerson
ISBN 978-880284-91-9
232 pages, Trade Paperback Original, $14.95
When Catherine, Lady Glenelg is accused of murder in Scotland, what else can her old friend and sister-in-law Lady Appleton do but head for the Border?
“Face Down O’er the Border is just wonderful. Susanna Appleton is as fresh and clever as in the first volume; in fact, I think she has grown more appealing over the years. In addition, the Scots setting provides some new and surprising quirks to historical law. I am already looking forward to the next book.”
—Roberta Gellis, author of Chains of Folly
“Susanna, Lady Appleton sallies forth to the north into a Scottish intrigue that kept me guessing (usually wrong) throughout. Real characters face real perils, interspersed with political machinations and studded with lots of nifty period details. When everything looks at its bleakest, you want Susanna on your side. It is good to encounter her again.”
—Alan Gordon, author of The Lark’s Lament
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Hot Rocks—A Nick Hoffman Mystery
Lev Raphael
ISBN 978-1-880284-83-4
216 pages, Trade Paperback Original, $14.95
Fitness = Death, when Nick Hoffman heads back to the gym after his Caribbean vacation, finding himself caught in a Desperate Housewives-type mystery.
Just back from their Caribbean vacation, SUM professor Nick Hoffman and his partner, Stefan Borowski, need to get back in shape. Michigan Muscle is a luxurious health club near the State University of Michigan. With the latest equipment and top-notch personal trainers, it‘s a palatial complex for fitness. But every palace has its intrigue, and when Nick finds a dead trainer in the steam room, he‘s drawn into a web of passion and privilege unlike anything he‘s experienced before. The prime suspect because he discovered the body, Nick has to work out this mystery to its bitter end.
“At the start of Raphael‘s entertaining seventh Nick Hoffman mystery, the State University of Michigan English professor stumbles on a corpse in a steam room…(has) many amusing and eclectic literary references that alternate with salacious gossip and humorous philosophical rants.”
—Publishers Weekly
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Blood Matters—A Roxanne Prescott Mystery
Taffy Cannon
ISBN 978-1-880284-86-5
248 pages, Trade Paperback Original, $14.95
Everybody loved adoption guru Sam Brennan, a compulsive collector who made his life’s work the creation of adoptive families and the reunion of birth relatives—until somebody beat him to death with a statuette of Michael Jackson. San Diego Homicide Detective Roxanne Prescott takes on the baffling murder and looks for answers in Brennan’s contradictory past, among the women who loved him, and in the business deals that formed the framework of his rags-to-riches life and death.
“In Cannon’s suspenseful second Roxane Prescott mystery…Prescott sets a trap to entice the killer as this expertly paced police procedural advances to a startling conclusion.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A transplanted Texan helps solve a quirky California murder…. The solid police procedural moves along smoothly until the well-disguised villain is revealed.”
—Kirkus Reviews
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Family Business
A Port Silva Mystery
Janet LaPierre
ISBN 978-1-880284-85-8
296 pages, Original Trade Paperback, $13.95
“Set in 2002, LaPierre's crisply plotted ninth Port Silva mystery features mother-daughter sleuths.… Blending contemporary issues and family conflicts with a solid mystery plot, the author reaffirms her fluid mastery of the cozy.” —Publishers Weekly (7/17/06)
In October 2002, after the Port Silva City Council denies a group of citizens permission for a demonstration against an ever-more-likely war in Iraq, the organizers take their planning underground. A few days later, some one thousand silent anti-war protesters march the city streets to a coastal park, where their peaceful demonstration degenerates into a riot that crowds jail cells and the emergency ward, and leaves one local man lost in the stormy sea, another simply missing. As Chief Gutierrez struggles to protect angry citizens from one another and find the missing man, Patience and Verity Mackellar are hired to look into the background of the man who presumably drowned, and find that he’s not who he said he was.
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Eye of God
A Mystery
Jon L. Breen
ISBN 978-1-880284-89-6
216 pages, Original Trade Paperback, $13.95
Al Hasp and Norm Carpenter are partners in a successful Orange County, California, private investigation firm. When Norm, the brains of the outfit, announces he has become a born-again Christian and will be quitting the business, Al gets him to stay aboard for one final case: going undercover for a televangelist Vincent Majors (who Al believes is a phony) to find out who’s been leaking secrets to a hostile journalist and an atheist organization. The case gets more complicated when Majors’s son-in-law, a pro-basketball coach, is murdered. Norm, Al, and their female operative Chris Borden are all on the scene when the case reaches a climax at a Christian college on the Southern California coast.
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Moonblind
A Gail McCarthy Mystery
Laura Crum
ISBN 978-1-880284-90-2
192 pages, Original Trade Paperback, $13.95
Gail, seven months pregnant, is on leave from her work as a horse vet. Despite her firm intention to rest and prepare for her baby, she is drawn into the odd situation surrounding her cousin Jenny, who claims that she is being stalked. Newly relocated from Michigan, Jenny hints at nefarious dealings in her past as a racehorse trainer that may return to haunt her; and accidents seem to happen with astonishing frequency at her Thoroughbred lay-up farm. As Jenny’s only relative and friend in the area, Gail feels the need to support and help her cousin, but can hardly sort out truth from fiction as she tries to discover who the stalker might be. Jenny’s ex-husband, her former lover, the lover’s ex-wife, an unscrupulous player on the racehorse scene? Gail finds herself confused and frustrated, while she struggles at the same time to solve a medical mystery involving one of her own horses. As the accidents at Jenny’s farm become more serious, Gail’s concern becomes desperate and personal, leading her to a dark confrontation where she must use all her wits to survive.
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Face Down Beside St. Anne's Well
A Face Down Mystery
Featuring Susanna, Lady Appleton
Kathy Lynn Emerson
ISBN 978-1-880284-82-7
240 pages, Original Trade Paperback, $13.95
The year is 1575, and Rosamond, sleuth Susanna Appleton's twelve-year-old foster daughter, is certain her French tutor has been murdered. Lady Appleton is not so sure, but she knows something is wrong at Buxton. The ancient Roman baths there are popular with courtiers and spies alike…and the imprisoned Mary, Queen of Scots is clamoring to pay another visit to the healing waters.
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The Last Full Measure
A Katy Green Mystery
Hal Glatzer
ISBN 978-1-880284-84-1
240 pages, Original Trade Paperback, $13.95
A pleasure cruise, a treasure hunt, swing music, and murder—who could ask for anything more? In late November 1941, swing musician Katy Green joins two old friends in a dance-band on the SS Lurline, enroute to Honolulu. Hidden treasure at their destination could make them rich, but international intrigue could kill them first, because murder—as well as World War II—is in the offing.
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Crimson Snow
A Hilda Johansson Mystery
Jeanne M. Dams
ISBN 978-1-880284-79-7
256 pages, Original Trade Paperback, $13.95
“It is always a pleasure to visit the Studebaker Mansion with Hilda Johansson, the likeable, quick-thinking Swedish maid. In addition to the suspense of a mystery based on a true crime, Jeanne Dams gives us a great feel for immigant life at the turn of the century, with the gulf between rich and poor and the tensions between various ethnic groups. Not to mention the cold of an Indiana winter—brrr! Dams captures it all so well.”
—Rhys Bowen, author of In Like Flynn and Evan Blessed,
and winner of the Agatha, Anthony, and Herodotus awards
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Paradise Lost
A Novel of Suspense
Taffy Cannon
ISBN 978-1-880284-80-3
288 pages, Original Trade Paperback, $13.95
“Smart and atmospheric, Paradise Lost is paradise found for anyone who loves a brain-tickling mystery. Taffy Cannon delivers a textured tale filled with nuanced characters and authentic detail, set in the affluent seaside resort of Santa Barbara. At an exclusive health spa—where beauty is sought at any price—crime, desire, and misplaced idealism clash with riveting drama in Cannon’s talented hands. This is bedtime reading at its best.”
—Gayle Lynds, author of The Coil and The Last Spymaster
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Face Down Below the Banqueting House
A Lady Appleton Mystery
Kathy Lynn Emerson
ISBN 978-1-880284-71-1
232 pages, Original Trade Paperback, $13.95
Shortly before a royal visit to Leigh Abbey, the home of sixteenth-century sleuth Susanna Appleton, a man dies in a fall from a banqueting house. Is his death part of some treasonous plot against Elizabeth Tudor? Or is it merely murder?
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Evil Intentions
A Feng Shui Mystery
by Denise Osborne
ISBN 978-1-880284-77-3
186 pages, Original Trade Paperback, $13.95
A shocking and questionable suicide linked to white slavery and to members of an elite Washington D.C. family embroils Feng Shui practitioner Salome Waterhouse in an investigation that threatens everyone involved.
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Tropic of Murder
A Nick Hoffman Mystery
Lev Raphael
ISBN 978-1-880284-68-1
216 pages, Original Trade Paperback, $13.95
Professor Nick Hoffman flees mounting chaos at the State University of Michigan for a Caribbean getaway, but his winter paradise turns into a nightmare of deceit, danger, and revenge.
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Death Duties
A Port Silva Mystery
Janet LaPierre
ISBN 978-1-880284-74-2
288 pages, Original Trade Paperback, $13.95
The mother-and-daughter private investigative team introduced in Keepers, Patience and Verity Mackellar, take on a challenging new case. A visitor to Port Silva hires them to clear her grandfather of anonymous charges that caused his suicide there thirty years earlier.
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A Fugue in Hell's Kitchen
A Katy Green Mystery
Hal Glatzer
ISBN 978-1-880284-70-4
240 pages, Original Trade Paperback, $13.95
Hal Glatzer has been a journalist and novelist for more than 30 years. He plays swing guitar and composed three songs for the audio-play of his Too Dead To Swing. Classically trained, once employed as a music conservatory librarian, and a director of the Art Deco Society, Glatzer has the ideal background to write this book. He and his wife divide their time between homes in San Francisco and New York City.
For swing musician Katy Green in 1939, a classical music conservatory ought to be a tranquil oasis in New York City’s roughest neighborhood. So she agrees to help a friend teaching there hunt for a stolen music manuscript. A Fugue in Hell's Kitchen deals with rare manuscript theft and forgery, crooked land developers, and the gangs of New York. The rare and valuable autograph manuscript of a Paganini guitar quartet has inexplicably vanished from the friend's possession—and it may even be a forgery. What Katy first thinks will be easy pursuit of a petty thief swiftly turns into a deadly fugue of greed, jealousy, and zealotry, and a fight for her life.
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The Affair of the Incognito Tenant