Showing results by publisher "Dreamscape Media, LLC" in Mystery

For Chloe Abbington, the transition from fine-art painter in New York City to painting-event business owner in charming Whisper Cove is more than a little jarring. But when poison-pen journalist Fiona Gimble writes a viciously negative review of the newly opened Paint with a View, Chloe learns that critics are the same everywhere. And when she finds Fiona's body behind her shop with a painting knife in her neck, Chloe realizes that this picture-perfect town offers anything but peace and quiet.

No nine-to-five cubicle career will suit Stacie Calder—the naturalist much prefers working in the great outdoors. Specifically, the spacious and spectacular Alaskan wilderness, whose rugged charms she shares with sightseers on the top deck of the tour boat where she works. But one May afternoon, Stacie’s passengers see more than glittering glaciers, frolicking harbor seals, climbing bears, and soaring seabirds…they also witness a man lying dead in the frigid Alaskan waters. And it seems likely that someone gave him a fatal push.

Kenni Lowry likes to think the zero crime rate in Cottonwood, Kentucky is due to her being sheriff, but she quickly discovers the ghost of her grandfather, the town's previous sheriff, has been scaring off any would-be criminals since she was elected. When the town's most beloved doctor is found murdered on the very same day as a jewelry store robbery and a mysterious symbol ties the crime scenes together, Kenni must satisfy her hankerin' for justice by nabbing the culprits.

The rugged landscape of Sequoia National Park is a challenge on the best of days - but when a park ranger discovers an abandoned exclusive campsite with an empty tent and high-end technical gear scattered on the shores of an alpine lake, the wilderness takes on a sinister new hue. Thirty-two-year-old Felicity Harland - a former FBI agent who left the service in the wake of a personal tragedy and has taken her skills off the grid - is brought in as chief investigator.

Crime-scene photographers Sarah, Hugh, and Mick are summoned to the goriest crime scene they've ever encountered. A pub owner named Harry Warbrick has been found hanged. His murder becomes a sensation because he was England's top hangman. Sir Gerald, owner of the Daily World, announces that they‚ meaning Sarah and her friends‚ will investigate and solve Warbrick's murder before the police do. She and her friends discover a connection between Warbrick's murder and the most notorious criminal he ever executed: Amelia Carlisle.

When wealthy banker Sir Gerald Mariner posts a handsome reward for finding his missing infant, all of London joins in, hoping to win that money for themselves. Usually discouraged by a saturated market, photographer and private detective Sarah Bain is instead curiously allured as she realizes the case hits much closer to home than she first thought.

Even though running Crewel World keeps Betsy plenty busy, a little extra cash on the side doesn't hurt. So when the local senior complex, Watered Silk, asks her to teach a class on the tricky punch needle technique, Betsy jumps at the opportunity to win over some new customers.

Herbalist China Bayles' latest adventure takes her to the mountains of North Carolina, where her friend Dorothea Harper serves as the director and curator of the Hemlock House Library, a priceless collection of rare gardening books housed in a haunted mountainside mansion that once belonged to Sunny Carswell, a reclusive heiress. But the most valuable book - A Curious Herbal, created by Elizabeth Blackwell in the 1730s - is missing, and Dorothea is under suspicion.

Idyllic Avril Island, owned by the Bennett family, is where their hundred-year-old cottage sat nestled in acres of forest. Forty-year-old June Bennett believed that the island had been sold after the summer of her father's disappearance when she was only 12 years old. It's months after the shocking death of her older sister, May, in a fatal car accident that June finds out that the cottage was never sold. Avril Island is still owned by the Bennett family, and now it's hers. Still reeling from the grief of losing her sister, June travels back to Avril Island in search of answers.

After the dead body of a beloved Cottonwood resident is found tangled up in an electric fence, Sheriff Kenni Lowry has a hunch that somethin' ain't right. Her investigation heats up with a fierce cook-off competition, a euchre game where the intel is sweeter than the brownies, and a decades-old family recipe that may just be the proof in the pudding. The icing on the cake is that Kenni is fighting an attraction to her recently sworn-in deputy sheriff, and election season is hot on her tail.

Struggling photographer Ivy Culpepper has lots of soul-searching to do since returning to seaside Santa Sofia, California - that is, until the 36-year-old enters a bread-making class at Yeast of Eden, the Mexican bread shop in town. Whether it’s the aroma of fresh conchas in the oven or her instant connection with owner Olaya Solis, Ivy just knows the missing ingredients in her life are hidden among the secrets of Olaya’s bakery.

It’s not the kind of thing you’d expect to happen on an ordinary Saturday morning. Her kids are arguing, and her husband is still sleeping. Lisa is tired and wonders why her husband keeps working late. Is he having an affair? Is it the same girl as last time? Lisa’s teenage daughter is acting up, and just as Lisa is about to walk up to her room and tell her who’s the boss around here, she feels the cold steel of a gun pressed against her cheek, while a hand covers her mouth. Years later, it remains a mystery.

It looks like the music has ended for Darling's favorite barbershop quartet, the Lucky Four Clovers, just days before the Dixie Regional Barbershop Competition. Another unlucky break comes when there's a serious foul-up in Darling's telephone system - and not a penny for repairs. And while liquor is legal again, moonshine isn't. Sheriff Buddy Norris needs a little luck when he goes into Briar Swamp to confront Cypress County's most notorious bootlegger - and what he finds upends his sense of justice.

The scene of the crime is lavish but gruesome. In a luxurious mansion on the outskirts of Cleveland, a woman's body lies gutted in a pool of blood on the marble floor. The victim is Joanna Moorehouse, founder of Sterling Financial, and the killer could be any one of her associates. Maggie knows that to crack the case, she and Jack will have to infiltrate the cutthroat world of high-stakes finance. But the offices of Sterling Financial seethe with potential suspects, every employee hell-bent on making a killing. When another officer uncovers disturbing evidence in a series of unrelated murders, the investigation takes a surprising detour.

Jaine has been hired by uber-pushy stage mom Heather Van Sant to write lyrics for her daughter Taylor's song in the talent competition for the Miss Teen Queen America pageant. It's different from anything Jaine has done before, but if nothing else, she's looking forward to a free weekend in a swanky hotel and a chance to see what really goes on backstage at a beauty pageant. But the hotel is a dump, the cattiness is out of control, and Candace - the perfectly coiffed, whip-cracking pageant director - is making even Jaine's life miserable.

New Orleans, 1838. When Benjamin January suddenly finds that his services playing piano at extravagant balls held by the city's wealthy are no longer required, he ends up agreeing to accompany sugar planter Henri Viellard and his young wife, Chloe, on a mission to Washington to find a missing friend. Plunged into a murky world, it soon becomes clear that while it is very possible the Viellards' friend is dead, his enemies are very much alive - and ready to kill anyone who gets in their way.

Nick Anthony has retreated to the North Carolina mountains to mourn the untimely death of his wife. Once a popular professor, Nick just wants to be left alone with his grief. But when his estranged brother and sister-in-law die in a house fire, a stunned Nick learns he has a niece, Annalise, who is missing. At the scene of the crime, the men who set the fire have realized Annalise, and the information they are looking for, got away. Feverish and exhausted, she stumbles onto her uncle's porch.

The United States occupation of Iraq is a swamp of incompetence and self-delusion. The CPA has disbanded the Iraqi army and police as a consequence of its paranoid policy of de-Ba'athification of Iraqi society. Tales of hubris and reality-denial abound, culminating in Washington hailing the mess "a glorious mission accomplished". Inspector Muhsin al-Khafaji is a mid-level Iraqi cop who deserted his post back in April. Khafaji has lived long enough in pre- and post-Saddam Iraq to know that clinging on to anything but poetry and his daughter Mrouj is asking for trouble.

A new reign of terror has fallen on the unsuspecting residents of Cocoa Beach. They think their worst nightmare is the environmental catastrophe causing the thousands of dead fish in the river until the first body turns up among the dead fish. Young girls are being kidnapped. Behind these kidnappings stands a ghostly person who calls himself the Boxer. He stalks the girls and chats with them until he decides whom to pick up and sell.

While her life is going from bad to worse, journalist Mary Mills receives a phone call from her father telling her that her brother has been arrested for murder. Mary decides to go back to her hometown of Cocoa Beach, Florida, which she left 20 years back and has never visited since. Working with her old friends from the 7th Street Crew, she tracks down the most disturbing and surprising killer this town has ever faced before a shocking conclusion turns everything upside down for them.