Showing results for "the world" in Amateur Sleuths

When Betsy Devonshire arrived in Excelsior, Minnesota, all she wanted was to visit her sister Margot and get her life in order. She never dreamed her sister would give her a place to stay and a job at her needlecraft shop. In fact, things had never looked so good - until Margot was murdered. In a town this friendly, it's hard to imagine who could have committed such a horrible act, but Betsy has a few ideas. There's an ex-employee who wants to start her own needlework store. And there's the landlord who wanted Margot out. Now Betsy's putting together a list of motives and suspects....

In the summer of 1912, a workman's pickaxe strikes through the basement floor of an old tenement house in Cheapside, London, uncovering a cache of unimaginably valuable treasure that quickly disappears again. Present day. When respected jewellery historian Kate Kirby receives a call about the Cheapside jewels, she knows she's on the brink of the experience of a lifetime. As Kate peels back the layers of London's stories of plague, fire and political turmoil, she is forced to explore long-buried family secrets.

After vowing never to return, Kara Wade is back in New York City. She’s come to claim the body of her twin sister, Kelly, and to find out how she died. No secret as to the cause of death - a nearly nude, 12-story plunge from a room in the Plaza Hotel - but Kara is determined to learn what led to that plunge. Enlisting the help of an old lover, now an NYPD detective, Kara delves into her sister’s life. Startling and bizarre facts begin to surface. Instead of answers, Kara finds more questions. Who was the stranger Kelly became during the months prior to her death?

Lana Lee runs her family’s Chinese restaurant in Cleveland’s Asia Village like nobody’s business. When it comes to actual cooking, however, she’s known to be about a step up from boiling rice. So Lana decides to go to culinary school on the sly―and prove that she has what it takes in the kitchen after all. But when course instructor Margo Chan turns up dead after class, Lana suddenly finds herself on the case, frying pan in hand.

Isaiah Quintabe, the genius PI who combines book smarts, street smarts and enough blistering action to melt the pavement of East Long Beach, is back with a new adventure. Fresh off the beating he took at the hands of a gang of ex-Abu Ghraib thugs working as paramilitary contractors, IQ is determined to build a life for himself with his new girlfriend, Grace. For once, he wants to be normal - a normal guy, with a normal PI business, doing the best he can. But this is IQ, and trouble is never far behind him....

It was a simple favor. Check in on a friend. When Earl Jackson sends Will on a trip to remote Montana things go south quickly when Will discovers the bizarre purpose behind an isolated ranch. Caught in the middle between UFO believers and sinister forces, Will is propelled down a path that leads to cold and deadly depths while Andy finds her future in law enforcement threatened by an out-of-control political movement. Will Stewart encounters new adversaries and uncovers old mysteries in a gripping tale of hoaxes, murder, and questions that span the universe in Nine Lives Lost.

Trapped in a dead-end town, Justin Warren has had his life defined by the suspicious deaths of his grandparents. The unsolved crime happened long before Justin was born, but the ripple effects are still felt after thirty-eight years. Justin always knew he wouldn’t have much of a future. He just never imagined that his life might take him backward.

East Long Beach. The LAPD is barely keeping up with the high crime rate. Murders go unsolved, OAPs are getting hoodwinked, children are missing. But word has spread: if you've got a case the police can't or won't touch, Isaiah Quintabe will help you out. They call him IQ. He's a loner and a high school dropout, his unassuming nature disguising a relentless determination and a fierce intelligence. He charges his clients whatever they can afford. But now he needs a client who can pay.

When Donna branches out from floristry to private investigation and opens The Edge of the World Detective Agency, the last thing she expects is to have a murder fall into her lap almost immediately. Now, normally she wouldn’t be one to look a gift horse in the mouth, but there’s one significant problem with the case – all the evidence points to Donna as the murderer!

Isaiah Quintabe - IQ for short - has never been more successful - or felt more alone. A series of high-profile wins in his hometown of East Long Beach have made him so notorious that he can hardly go to the corner store without being recognised. Dodson, once his sidekick, is now his full-fledged partner, hell-bent on giving IQ's PI business some real legitimacy: a Facebook page, and IQ's promise to stop accepting Christmas sweaters and carpet cleanings in exchange for PI services.

Jane Ladling cordially invites you to the world’s most romantic wedding. But first, there's a few items to check off her to-do list: actually plan the festivities, find a way to pay for said festivities, and avoid finding a dead body . . . OOPS—solve a murder. As the owner of a landlocked cemetery and self-proclaimed expert amateur sleuth, Jane knows death inside and out. After receiving an invite to speak at a local writer’s club, she discovers a dead body upon arrival, plus an invitation from the killer.

A young woman with a foothold in two cultures, Rei Shimura has gone wherever fortune and her unruly passions have led her throughout her chaotic 20s. Now, after the streamers for her 30th birthday celebration have been taken down, the Japanese-American antiques dealer and part-time sleuth finds herself with an assignment to find and authenticate an ancient Middle Eastern pitcher that disappeared from Iraq's national museum.

Named after her beloved tabby Deputy Donut, Emily Westhill's donut shop in small-town Fallingbrook, Wisconsin, is doing so well, she's expanding into catering weddings. When the owner of the clothing shop Dressed to Kill asks Emily to design a donut wall for her reception, she's immediately sweet on the idea and hangs the treats from dowels on the wall, so guests can help themselves. But that night, when the groom ends up on the floor with signs of poisoning, Emily suspects someone has tampered with her treats.

Stella Krakus, a curator at Manhattan's renowned Central Museum of Art, is having the roughest week in approximately ever. Her soon-to-be ex-husband is stalking her, a workplace romance with "a fascinating, hyper-rational narcissist" is in freefall, and a beloved colleague, Paul, has gone missing. Strange things are afoot: CeMArt's current exhibit is sponsored by a Belgian multinational that wants to take over the world's water supply, she unwittingly stars in a viral video that's making the rounds, and her mother wants to have lunch.

August is Ghost Month in Taiwan - a time to commemorate the dead: Burn incense, visit shrines, honor ancestors, and avoid unlucky situations, large purchases, and bodies of water. Jing-nan, a young man who runs a food stand in a bustling Taipei night market, doesn't consider himself superstitious, but this August is going to haunt him no matter what he does. He is shocked to the core when he learns his ex-girlfriend from high school has been murdered.

US Army Lieutenant Billy Boyle, an ex-cop who serves as detective for General Ike, is sent to Caserta, Italy, to investigate the murders of two American officers stationed there. The MOs are completely different, and it seems like the officers had no connection to each other, but one frightening fact links the murders. Each body was discovered with a single playing card: the lieutenant’s with the ten of hearts; the captain’s, the jack of hearts. The message seems clear—if the murderer isn’t apprehended, the higher ranks will be next.

It’s a stormy summer day when Ottawa coroner Dr. Cate Spencer is called to the scene of an alleged suicide. Inside a narrow vault in the Dominion Archives’ nitrate film storage facility—kept separate from the rest of the collection due to its dangerous combustibility—officers pressure her to rule the death a suicide. When parts of the scene don’t add up and a deliberately set spark threatens her life, she suspects that this death might be a murder.

After driving through a violent storm, young married couple Riley and Jake Marshall wind up stranded with a flat tire off the I-95 near Yemassee, South Carolina. They thought this would be the worst part of their day. They were wrong. When the tow truck arrives ahead of schedule, Riley and Jake think their luck may have changed. Wrong again. Jakes’s expensive car is loaded onto the flatbed, and the unsuspecting couple climb aboard. What begins as a car theft and mugging turns much darker when the backwoods car thieves discover Jake’s family is worth millions.

Midnight, June 13, 1942: Peter Burger stands on a foggy beach, ears primed as a submarine hull scrapes the sandy sea bottom. He has endured seventeen months in a Gestapo prison and seventeen days on a Nazi U-boat only to have landed on American shores with six boxes of explosives and no escape. After slipping into New York City, Peter finds himself at a massive military parade where he meets Grete Baum, a German-Jewish refugee grappling with loneliness and loss. Grete is drawn to Peter’s brooding vulnerability, and the pair instantly bond.

Travel writer Jill Curtis loves her job, but she desperately needs a break if she's to achieve her dream of becoming an investigative reporter. Sent to Kentucky by her boss to find out why thousands of tourists flock to Bourbon Country every year, Jill's dream seems to be slipping further away. After all, nothing interesting ever happens in small-town America...does it? Staying at an estranged relative's B&B, Jill's plan to uncover what makes the state's bourbon tours so popular goes awry when she trips over a body at one of the distilleries.