Showing results by publisher "Dreamscape Media, LLC" in Amateur Sleuths

Halloween is coming to North Yorkshire, and the seaside town of Whitby is getting ready for its annual Goth Festival, where Goths of all ages descend on the town for a week of music, costumes, and spooky fun. When one of Liz McLuckie’s friends has a terrifying encounter with the Barghest—Yorkshire’s legendary Dog of Death—it sparks a series of mysterious fatalities in the town. Are supernatural forces at work, or is there another, more human, explanation?

The Murder Mystery Book Club has found a treasure map that might lead to Ernest Hemingway’s secret treasure. When they head out to uncover this priceless treasure, nothing will stand in their way. Even a dead body only motivates them further. Can they solve a murder mystery and find a long lost treasure?

After a falling out with a friend flips interior decorator Madison Night's world inside out, she's determined to revamp her life. Jane Strong, fellow mid-century modern enthusiast, encouraged Madison's entry in an upcoming design competition, but their rift makes collaboration no longer an option. When Jane is found dead, Madison tops the suspect list. And when anonymous computer hackings interfere with both the investigation and the competition, Jane's murder no longer seems random.

On March 4, 1861, the air at the inaugural ball is charged with hope and apprehension. The last thing anyone wants is any sort of hitch in the proceedings, so Lincoln's trusted entourage is on their guard: Allan Pinkerton, head of the president's security team, is wary of potential assassins, and Lincoln's oldest friend, Joshua Speed, is by his side, along with Speed's nephew, Adam Quinn, who's been called to serve as Lincoln's assistant. But despite the tight security, trouble comes anyway: a man is found stabbed to death in a nearby room.

It's hard to say no to Tripp Blackston. That's how Abby found herself on yet another committee, organizing a bachelors' auction to raise money for Tripp's veterans' group. The former Special Forces soldier is mortified when Abby enlists him to be one of the prizes, but she has a covert plan to bid on him herself. Before she can, she's foiled by a sniper bid from Tripp's ex-wife Valerie. Still reeling and wondering what his ex is suddenly doing in town, Abby goes looking to pay the auction's emcee, radio personality Bryce Cadigan. She finds him in the parking lot, dead in his car.

Lyla Moody loves her sleepy little town of Sweet Mountain, Georgia. She likes her job as a receptionist for her uncle's private investigative firm, her fellow true-crime obsessed Jane Doe members are the friends she's always wanted, and her parents just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. But recently, with her best friend Melanie on vacation and her ex-boyfriend and horrible cousin becoming an item and moving in next door to her, her idyllic life is on the fritz. The cherry on top of it all is finding Carol, a member of the club, dead and shoved into a suitcase.

It's summertime in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and Bertie James' college class is having their 40th-anniversary reunion. The opening-night reception is held at the Lighthouse Library, and Lucy and her colleagues have assembled an exhibit of library artifacts showing how libraries have changed over the years. After the reception, some of the women take a walk down the boardwalk to the pier, using flashlights to illuminate the dark path, but what's scarier than the dark is finding the former director of the Lighthouse Library floating lifeless in the water.

It's August 1984, and paperboy Christopher Stewart has gone missing. Hours later, 12-year-old Sammy Cox hurries home from his own paper route, red-faced and out of breath, hiding a terrible secret. Crystal, Sammy's 17-year-old sister, is worried by the disappearance but she also sees an opportunity: the Stewart case has echoes of an earlier unsolved disappearance of another boy, one town over. Crystal senses the makings of an award-winning essay, one that could win her a scholarship - and a ticket out of their small Iowa town.

After solving a murder and getting her organic farm ready to overwinter, Shiloh Bellamy still expects the next few months to be busy with repairs, spring planning, and networking with local businesses. She might even be able to broker a new partnership with Fields Brewery and its organic brewer's association. Well, she could've if the owner wasn't found murdered at the county Ice Fishing Derby. Once again, Shiloh gets tangled up in the investigation when the police ignore an entire crop of suspects to blame one of her friends.

In the third installment of the Arsène Lupin series, we find our gentleman burglar up against Isidore Beautrelet, a young but gifted amateur detective who is determined to foil Lupin once and for all. As he hunts down the Hollow Needle, a needle that contains secrets that have been passed down from French kinds since Julius Caesar, Beautrelet is never too far behind.

Valerie Cooper has inherited a majority partnership in the family’s company, New Orleans Fine Antiques. Valerie knows nothing about antiques, but she decides to learn the business and become an active partner. She’s also got her hands full fending off Collette, a woman who wants to sell the huge old house in the Irish Channel neighborhood that Valerie and her husband painstakingly renovated. Valerie isn’t interested in selling—but when her best friend drags her to a costume party, she stumbles over Collette’s body, a jeweled dagger sticking out of her chest.

Photographer Ivy Culpepper is soon to make a home with her husband-to-be in the California beach town of Santa Sofia—but the Yeast of Eden bakery remains her second home. A regular who used Yeast of Eden as a workspace, Josh Prentiss always turned heads with his startlingly good looks and thousand-watt smile. But Ivy can’t help noticing one morning that he seems off his game. Later, during a visit to the park where she and Miguel plan to hold their engagement party—with plenty of baked goods on the menu—her pug Agatha sniffs out Josh lying in a bed of poppies…scone cold dead.

Amid a mountain of rain-soaked donations to the Ohnita Harbor Public Library rummage sale, Gabriela Domenici finds a small box that contains an odd-looking cross. The carved center turns out to be ivory, and a clue links the cross to Catherine of Siena, a medieval saint. Gabriela turns to her expertise as an authenticator of historic documents to lead the quest to discover the truth about this mysterious object. But the cross isn’t the only secret in town: first, a beloved Ohnita Harbor resident is found floating in the harbor; then, someone else is murdered on the library lawn.

Leila Khoury has always believed that everyone loved her father as much as they loved his artisanal maple syrup. But when he's killed and she returns to Sugar Ridge, Vermont, to take over his business, she starts to realize how much of his life she's left untapped. With her brother under suspicion, her mother just barely holding it together, and the police not producing any leads, Leila will have to investigate herself if she wants answers about her father's sticky end. But the more she learns, the more she worries that there won't be a sappy ending to the story.

Laid-off journalist Lana Lewis is thriving as the proprietor of Perkatory, a coffee shop on quirky Devil’s Beach Island, Florida. She’s juggling a relationship with police chief Noah Garcia, enjoying the company of her best friend, Erica, and relishing the companionship of her golden Shih Tzu, Stanley. The only problem is her neighbor, Gus, who incessantly uses his leaf blower, disturbing everyone in the neighborhood. Lana has learned to tune it out, but Erica’s rage boils over, and she confronts Gus. Then Gus is found dead, and Erica immediately becomes suspect number one.

What could go wrong when baker Rosie Hart heads to a snowy Colorado mountain lodge for a week of elaborate pre-wedding festivities at her friend’s wedding? The better question would be...what could go right? Rosie’s fears for the nervous bride are confirmed when one of the wedding guests turns up dead. All evidence points to the groom being the intended victim, but with the guests dressed in Christmas-themed attire and a dead Santa on their hands, Rosie’s not so sure. What if the killer did hit the right target all along?

Chloe Abbington and her sister, Izzie, are enjoying huge success running Paint with a View, their paint party business in the tranquil western New York lakeside town of Whisper Cove. Now, their aunt Constance—president of the local chapter of the Chautauqua Sisterhood—has hooked them up with a gig hosting a Halloween painting party. The guests will be painting a local ghost legend, the Lady of Chautauqua Lake, who died a hundred years earlier and rises from the lake every October to haunt anyone who dares venture out on All Hallows’ Eve.

With spring’s arrival in Goosebush, Lilly and the Beautification Committee turn their eyes to new projects. A cleanup of the historic Goosebush Cemetery may be in order after Lilly and Delia find the plots there sorely neglected and inexplicably rearranged. Lilly soon discovers that Whitney Dunne-Bradford snapped up custodianship of the graveyard once she inherited Bradford Funeral Homes. But before Lilly can get to the bottom of the tombstone tampering, she stumbles upon Whitney’s body at the Jayne family mausoleum.

For decades, the unsolved murder of Father Michael Leary has haunted Billings, Montana, the community he served. And it’s haunted no one more than Lindsay Keller, who admired and confided in him as a teenager. Compelled by his example to work for justice, she became a prosecutor. But after a devastating case left her shattered, she fled the rough-and-tumble for the safety of a desk, handling real-estate deals and historic preservation projects. Now Lindsay finds herself in possession of the priest’s wallet, the photo of a young girl tucked inside.

Lyla Moody and her book club, the Jane Does, are hosting a Halloween party at Magnolia Manor, tailored after Agatha Christie’s A Murder Is Announced, but when the lights come on after the staged murder, a real victim lies dead from a gunshot wound in her chest. The victim was an estranged relative of Elaine Morgan, operator of the B&B, who’d earlier been seen arguing with her about the fate of the property. Suspicion immediately falls on Elaine, and she’s arrested.