Showing results by publisher "Audible Studios" in Mystery

Aging theater actor Torald Werness' last curtain call is as a corpse. Murdered after his last performance in his last theatrical production, Minneapolis restaurateur-sleuth Jane Lawless finds his body onstage, impaled on a part of the set. Before long, a series of coincidences places Jane in the role of prime suspect. Determined to clear her name, Jane turns to her best friend, Cordelia, for help. Together, their intuition leads them to the dead man's family, a glamorous - and appropriately melodramatic - Midwestern theatrical dynasty. Jane and Cordelia must separate the theatrics from reality before Jane takes the blame for someone else's crime.

At dawn on a lonely stretch of road, a body is found hanging from an ancient gallows the morning after a country show. Hours earlier, DCI Kate Daniels had seen the victim alive. With her leave period imminent, she's forced to step aside when DCI James Atkins is called in to investigate. There's bad blood between them. When Kate discovers that Atkins' daughter was an eyewitness to a fight involving the victim, the two detectives lock horns and he's bumped off the case.

Five years have passed since Alex Toles walked away from the covert world of international espionage. Alex spends her days as an instructor at the police academy, and her evenings coaching the local high school track team. Life in the Toles household has fallen into a familiar routine. But a missing teenager's photography project will lead Alex into the woods of Connecticut, and the twisted mind of a sadistic killer. Paired with an unlikely partner, Alex will face old ghosts and new demons as new adversaries shine light on shadows of the past.

Two brothers from the same criminal family die within hours of each other, five miles apart, one on the edge of a Newcastle industrial estate, the other in a busy A&E department of a local hospital, unseen by the triage team. Both victims have suffered horrific injuries. Who wanted them dead? Will they kill again? Investigating these brutal and bloody killings leads DCI Kate Daniels to break some rules, putting her career as well as her life on the line.

Claire Brackett spent years searching for ways to avoid the pain of her past. Following her father’s direction, she traversed the globe, seducing allies and adversaries to further his agenda. He used her as a pawn to maintain power and thwart enemies. William Brackett made one major mistake. He sent Claire on a mission to get close to FBI Agent Alex Toles. That decision would set Claire on a path that would change her life forever.

After a tumultuous investigation that ended with a surprising and welcome new relationship, Detective Inspector Carol Ashton seems settled. Though she is in the closet to protect her career, life with Sybil is good—until the call that pulls Carol back to the woman who left her three years ago by returning to her husband.But now Christine's husband is dead and she's desperate for Carol's help. Though not assigned to the case, Carol agrees. Quickly drawn into Christine's world of high spending and low values, she finds herself at a personal and professional crossroads.

Jane Lawless has a knack for cooking and a talent for detection. A case gone bad has left her with a serious head injury and vulnerable enough to accept help from former lover Dr. Julia Martinsen. The TLC is welcome, if only Jane didn’t suspect the jittery Julia of hiding something. Disquieted, Jane’s check into the doctor’s past turns up chilling details. Then a shocking death and swirling danger disrupt what’s left of Jane’s recovery, and being in love with Julia doesn’t protect either of them from a killer out for more blood.

When Cordelia Thorn ventures to Summer Green, Wisconsin, for a reunion with some old college friends, she finds trouble in paradise. Twenty-plus years have definitely changed things. Soap opera star Diana has become an alcoholic. Curt and Annie's marriage is falling apart. Orson is hostile and surly. And Theo, the most passionate of them all, suddenly dies - of an apparent heart attack. Alarmed, Cordelia sends for her old friend Jane Lawless to do some quiet snooping. Together they follow their hunches - into the not-so-carefree past and back to the troubled present, where they find a single match could blow up all their lives....

A man who claims to be a journalist has arrived in Lost Lake with an old photograph and some questions for Tess that go back decades. His questions have put her on edge, and when he shows up peeking through her kitchen window, everyone else is right there with her. As beloved as Tess is, there are plenty of people who don't care about any so-called journalist and are happy to protect her, but how far are they willing to take it? And when will they need answers to questions that that only Tess can provide?

With no one to help her ring in the new year, Jane Lawless reluctantly agrees to accompany her good friend Cordelia Thorn to the wedding of Cordelias' estranged sister, Broadway star Octavia Thorn. Octavia getting married is no surprise - but her candidate for hubby number four certainly is. Roland Lester is a reclusive 83-year-old retired Hollywood director. No one can understand how the two met. When the bodies start to drop, Jane realizes it might not be love at all that brought the young diva and the aged director together, but something more sinister.

Everyone knows Arno Heywood. He's been a Minneapolis TV personality for years. So when he jumps to his death from a downtown high-rise, it's a shocker--especially since he dies wearing women's clothes, a suicide in drag.

The first of the dead is wealthy Belle Dumont, who vanished from her home in the Minnesota woods only hours before she was to reveal startling news to her three grown children. The kids and Belle's lover deny any knowledge of this mysterious bombshell, but amateur sleuth Jane Lawless, Belle's old friend, suspects these charming folk of being less than forthright. In fact, Jane suspects coldhearted murder....

Minneapolis restaurateur and amateur sleuth Jane Lawless is in the middle of ringing in the New Year the best way she knows how - with her family, friends, and some excellent champagne - when the biggest financial backers in Minnesota politics break up the party with a little backroom proposition for her father: How'd he like to be the state's next governor? Flattered, Ray Lawless, a retired defense attorney, agrees to run, and the latecomer's sprint to the state capital is going great until reporters and opponents start digging up the kind of dirt that is more valuable than gold out on the campaign trail.

Joanna Kasimir, an old friend of Jane Lawless, left Minneapolis years ago to make it big in Hollywood and, unlike so many others, she succeeded. Unfortunately, her stardom came at a price. Early in her career, Joanna was involved with a man who quickly went from being an idle interest to a dangerous stalker. Nearly a decade has passed since she sent him to prison, but just as she is about to leave for her hometown to star in her friend Cordelia Thorn's production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, she receives one of his ominous calling cards.

Jane Lawless has worked hard to make her Minneapolis restaurant a success, and she's finally reaping the financial rewards. Yet even the demands and excitement of being a popular restauranteurs and living the good life don't bring the same satisfaction they once did. Jane needs a bigger challenge. A mystery to solve. The thrill of the chase... When Jane rents her quaint third-story apartment to a new tenant, children's book author Elliot Beauman, she unwittingly opens the door to a sinister, decades-old mystery that has been waiting patiently to unfold - in her own house.

The shock that Minneapolis restaurateur Jane Lawless is in for when Chester Garrity, her ex-husband, returns to a city that he swore he'd never see again is nothing compared to Chester's own. After their divorce many years ago, he took off with his inheritance to travel the world, leaving Jane with enough seed money to open her first restaurant, which worked out well for Jane but less so for Chester.

It doesn’t take Jane long to figure out that someone has spiked the food at the party, most likely with hallucinogenic mushrooms. As the police arrive, the groom takes an unfortunate dive off a diving board and Jane realizes that if she can’t figure out exactly what has happened the blame will fall squarely on her own shoulders.

Jane Lawless is at her wit’s end, keeping her Minneapolis restaurants running while volunteering on her father’s campaign for governor. With an eleven-point lead, the race is Ray Lawless’s to lose, but all that changes when his rival posts a list of violent criminals that are back on the streets early, thanks to Ray’s work during his career as a defense lawyer.

After years spent mourning the death of her partner, Christine Kane, Minneapolis restaurateur Jane Lawless thinks she's ready to move on. That is, until she finds a gun among Christine's belongings. The night before Christine died of cancer, three members of the Simoneau family, Christine's real estate clients, were murdered. The timing of their deaths appeared coincidental and Jane always assumed Christine knew nothing of the family's secrets. But as she searches for clues to understand what really happened all those many years ago, the gun and a few other discoveries begin to convince Jane otherwise.

Detective Inspector Carol Ashton is back physically recovered from a gunshot wound, but emotionally shaken. She’s feeling the pressure of being out as a lesbian and constantly putting her life on the line. Can she do it again?