Showing results for "veronica" in Women Sleuths

When a celebrity author dies under mysterious circumstances in a small Florida town, a vulnerable young woman is the only witness, and Willow Bay's new chief of police must begin the hunt for a ruthless serial killer who will stop at nothing to hide his true identity. As reporter, Veronica Lee investigates the breaking story: A local woman is brutally killed, exposing a disturbing connection to a dangerous con man who has eluded capture for almost a decade.

The sisters at a lonely Cornish convent share a chilling secret they cannot confess...Sister Sophia is dead. Another disappears. And a mysterious last letter from a dying nun is sent to the prioress. Sister Joan has faced her own demons. Now she is sent to the convent to investigate, as well as teach the local children. There are whispers of virgin sacrifice and suicide, and the mother prioress certainly wears pink nail varnish. And who is the young man hiding in the bracken?

Veronica Ruiz is on the run for the first time in her life—though certainly not the last. After being falsely accused of stealing money from her college sorority, she packs up and heads to her cousin Ramón's apartment, planning to change her name and rebuild start over away from backstabbing girls and university drama (and far, far away from her arrest warrant in Maryland). At the local bank on the first morning of her new life, it occurs to Vero that she'd be a better bank teller than most of the current employees.

Meet Sister Veronica Angelica, a secret crime fiction writer and lover of custard cream biscuits. When she discovers a dead man in the grounds of the Catholic Youth Hostel, a building next door to her Convent, she can see he's been brutally murdered. What she doesn't know is that Jamie had a secret he'd been about to confess. Being forbidden by the Cardinal to contact the police, the nuns at The Convent of the Christian Heart are instructed to contain news of the murder. As Sister Veronica tries to uncover the truth, another murder takes place, plunging her deeper into the mystery.

The sixth book in the Sister Joan murder mystery series. Two newcomers are visiting the convent in the hope of joining the nuns. But soon after their arrival, there’s a mysterious late-night intruder. Who left the single red rose on the chapel steps? And are they connected to the new-age travellers camping on the moor? When one of the women is found bludgeoned to death, Sister Joan knows that their isolated convent is no longer safe. Teaming up with Detective Sergeant Mill, Sister Joan must once again investigate the grisly goings-on.

The fake diamond in Dilys Holland's engagement ring implies that all is not well with her marriage. And Bea Abbot has already clashed with Dilys's husband, the bullying Benton, when she refuses to help him rescue his ailing company. But matters are about to turn a great deal worse when Dilys tries to commit suicide. Or does she?

Bea Abbot's friend, Leon Holland, has asked for her help in establishing an alibi. But why would he need one? First, he tells her, he had a narrow escape from being run down in the road, and then he was lured to a car park to meet someone who didn't turn up. Matters escalate when two bodies are found in the car park stabbed to death. Then everything is thrown into chaos as a devastating virus infects the agency's systems. A hidden camera. Hate mail. A nasty practical joke.

Velma is charm itself, especially when she's being inexact with the truth. Now she wants Bea, widowed owner of the Abbot Agency, to check up on her stepson Philip - he's somehow acquired a valuable picture last seen in the flat of an elderly lady who's been murdered. Maggie, Bea's assistant, moves into a flat in Philip's building, to investigate. However, Rafael a professional art thief who aims never to leave his victims alive, is also after the picture.

Bea Abbot and her husband have been running a highly successful domestic agency for many years, but when he falls ill and dies, she is pressured by her MP son and novelist daughter to retire. Bea is so tired from the long years of nursing her husband that all she wants is peace and quiet, and to have her pretty early Victorian house in Kensington, London, all to herself. What she gets is a couple of young lodgers with troubled backgrounds and an old friend banging on her door, asking for help.

Sixteen-year-old Valerie vanishes from home in the small hours clad only in her robe and slippers. Three days later, Sister Joan finds her body abandoned in the convent's little Moor Schoolhouse. The dead girl is dressed in wedding white. A garland of leaves encircles her head, and a thin red line runs round her neck. Valerie has been strangled. Then a second young Catholic girl, also dressed in white, turns up dead. Sister Joan is once again torn between her religious duties and helping Detective Sergeant Mill’s inquiries...but time is running out.

Lord Rosemorran has purchased a wax figure of a beautiful reclining woman and asks Stoker to incorporate a clockwork mechanism to give the Rosemorran Collection its own Sleeping Beauty in the style of Madame Tussaud’s. But when Stoker goes to cut the mannequin open to insert the mechanism, he makes a gruesome discovery: this is no wax figure. The mannequin is the beautifully preserved body of a young woman who was once very much alive. But who would do such a dreadful thing, and why?

Bea Abbot is asked to find the man or woman who laid a booby trap for Sir Lucas Ossett, the powerful head of an international company. She finds Sir Lucas’ wife in a state of fear, while gossipy elderly ladies cast doubt on their neighbours; these include a "therapist", an ex-employee of Sir Lucas’, and a cross-section of yuppies and oddballs. Call-girl cards have been left in tenants’ letterboxes, a cat has met an untimely end, and snow is forecast.

Bea Abbot's domestic agency does not investigate murder...that is, until she finds herself in the company of a dead man dressed as a pantomime dame. It looks like suicide, but why don't his red-spangled shoes fit? Matthew Kent was an entertainer known to be a modest man in private, so why had he staged this grotesque charade in death? And why is his daughter so keen to hustle away his remains?

Ellie has always disliked the local big estate agent - aka Great White Shark - and is distressed when her daughter Diana announces that she is carrying his child and about to become his fourth wife. But Ellie is soon drawn into the family circle when one of the Hooper children dies in their private gym and another succumbs to a peanut allergy. The police want to write off the deaths as accident and misadventure, but Ellie believes someone is targeting members of the Hooper family. Surely Diana wouldn't… or would she?

There is clearly something weird going on in their quiet corner of Cornwall. There's been some obscene vandalism in the kitchen. A dog is kidnapped. And when a cat is killed, Joan knows there's evil afoot. Then Sister Joan goes to visit Mrs. Pearson. She's met with a horrifying scene. Are these crimes just practical jokes gone horribly wrong? Or does someone have a dangerous obsession with the occult? Sister Joan teams up with Detective Sergeant Mill to get to the bottom of things. But can they stop anyone else getting hurt?

Evil has crept into the peaceful lives of the Daughters of Compassion. At first there are only small signs of its presence. The children at Sister Joan’s school are eerily well behaved. Holy water and candles mysteriously disappear from the chapel. The beautiful au pair of one of Sister Joan’s pupils flees in the middle of the night. Then a handsome young teenager vanishes. Murder has come to this quiet corner of Cornwall. Sister Joan must battle the evil forces threatening the nuns - as well as the temptations aroused in her by the dashing police detective on the case.

Sister Joan receives a photo of her art school classmates, reminding her of a reunion pact they made 20 years ago. But for three of group, it’s too late - they’re already dead. Joan is more determined than ever to attend the get-together. Then another copy of the photo arrives, again anonymously, with the dead friends crossed out and an ominous black circle drawn around Sister Joan. Ten old friends. Three are dead. Is she next?

January 1889. As the newest member of the Curiosity Club - an elite society of brilliant, intrepid women - Veronica Speedwell is excited to put her many skills to good use. As she assembles a memorial exhibition for pioneering mountain climber Alice Baker-Greene, Veronica discovers evidence that the recent death was not a tragic climbing accident but murder.

A new lay sister joins the nuns at the convent, but is there another new arrival? A sinister figure has been skulking around, and a bloody axe appears on the altar of the chapel. When the housekeeper at the local rectory is found dead, it’s assumed she committed suicide. But Sister Joan, surreptitiously investigating along with Detective Sergeant Mill, is not so sure. Then the discovery of the mutilated corpse of an unidentified young man, followed quickly by two more unexpected deaths, leads Sister Joan to another crime from 20 ago....

Sister Joan heads to the serene shores of Loch Morag for a spiritual retreat in a cave up a steep hill. She’s hoping for peace and quiet, but she soon finds trouble. Six years ago, the womanizing husband of the local store-owner disappeared. Then the minister’s wife died of an overdose. Was it an accident or suicide? Then, after a sudden storm, a body surfaces in the loch. What’s going on? The grumpy villagers don’t want to talk about it. Sister Joan must abandon her solitude to search for the killer and unearth the truth.