Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Amateur Sleuths

1851, Angel Meadow Asylum. Dr. Rutherford, principal physician to the insane, is found dead, his head bashed in, his ears cut off, his lips and eyes stitched closed. The police direct their attention towards Angel Meadow's inmates, but to Jem Flockhart and Will Quartermain the crime is an act of calculated retribution, rather than of madness. To discover the truth Jem and Will must pursue the story through the darkest corners of the city.

The town's psychic cat, Irene Peggledrip, is being visited by a band of malevolent spirits who all claim to be murderers. The stage is set for Hettie and Tilly to solve an old murder mystery, where all the cats involved appear to be dead. Will our feline sleuths finally lay the ghosts to rest? Can Molly Bloom’s new cafe survive the seance? And will the moving claw give up its secrets before the gravy congeals? Join Hettie and Tilly for another spirited adventure.

London, 1846. Ramshackle and crumbling, St Saviour's Infirmary awaits demolition. Within its stinking wards and cramped corridors the doctors bicker and fight. Ambition, jealousy and hatred seethe beneath the veneer of professional courtesy. Always an outsider, and with a secret of her own to hide, apothecary Jem Flockhart observes everything, but says nothing. And then six tiny coffins are uncovered, inside each a handful of dried flowers and a bundle of moldy rags.

Izzie Mallon will be shutting herself away from the festive season, and the snowstorm that has brought the city to a standstill, in her apartment on Henrietta Square - the beautiful home she shared with her beloved husband, Sam, until his tragic death a few months ago. Then, there’s a knock at the door - a stranger, stranded by the bad weather. He tells Izzie that he’s Eli Sanders, her husband’s long-time friend. Izzie has never met him in person, but feels she owes it to Sam to welcome Eli into her home. Even though her instincts say otherwise....

As night falls, 17-year-old Cassie Baker leaves Winchcome and takes her usual shortcut down a moonlit country lane. She never makes it home. With no body and no evidence, she's just another teenage runaway.

When a police detective is found murdered in the town of Wakestead, all clues point to local woman Amma Reynolds. Amma has a clear motive. She hates the police for failing to properly investigate her brother's death, which was written off as an accidental drowning. Amma has always believed her brother was murdered. Could she have killed DI Mark Stormont in revenge? Former detective and private investigator Erin Crane is hired to find out.

Gianni Peroni is at a loose end. He's got nothing urgent to do but he notices that the pathologist has a busy day ahead: during the night two corpses were picked out of the Tiber. At first glance, it seems that the similarities between the two men end there. But then Gianni notices something very strange...

The 16th title in Mandy Morton's delightful No. 2 Feline Detective Agency series.

Stoke Newington, 1863: Little Margaret Lovejoy is found brutally murdered in the outhouse at her family’s estate. A few days later, a man is cut down in a similar manner on the doorstep of courtesan and professional detective Heloise Chancey’s prestigious address. At the same time, Heloise’s maid, Amah Li Leen, must confront events from her past that appear to have erupted into the present day. Once again Heloise is caught up in a maelstrom of murder and deceit that threatens to reach into the very heart of her existence.

In the most remote spot of the hills surrounding Loch Tay, a woman’s remains were found. She had lay there a while, but any evidence of who she was had long gone–or never existed. Crime podcaster Cal Lovett seeks to put ‘Hillside Jane’ to rest, but is he merely running from his own troubles? With the wife of his sister’s alleged killer missing and a sense that any chance he had of getting justice for Margot is slipping from his grasp, Cal is at a crossroads.

Kit Pelham is a professional fan, interviewer, host of the podcast The First Cult is the Deepest, and occasional obituary writer. Except this time the obituary is for her friend, maverick podcaster Wolf Tyler, who is murdered in his shed during a live broadcast, moments before revealing a huge secret about the cult TV show Vixens from the Void. Kit and her group of friends and fellow superfans soon realise Wolf had discovered something about the disappearance of Lily Sparkes, an extra on Vixens from the Void, back in 1986. And it was a secret worth killing for.

Jacob Taylor is driving home from a roadside bar and sees a young woman walking barefoot, covered in blood. Desperate, she asks if she can stay with him just for one night. Next morning, local sheriffs burst in, search the place and arrest him, finding blood and DNA all over the place. She’s missing, presumed kidnapped, with two dead in her wake. The following night, two cops enter his cell with a mind to kill him and stage it as suicide. He manages to fight them off and escape, determined to clear his name and discover the dark truth hiding in his seemingly peaceful town.

When Jerry Delfont, a travel writer with writer’s block, receives a letter from an American philanthropist, Mrs Merrill Unger, with news of a scandal involving an Indian friend of her son's, he is sufficiently intrigued to pursue the story. Jerry is swiftly captivated by the beautiful, mysterious Mrs Unger, but the circumstances surrounding the scandal cause him to doubt the exact nature of her philanthropy.

Stella Darnell is a cleaner. But when she isn't tackling dust and dirt and restoring order to chaos, Stella solves murders. Her latest case concerns a man convicted of killing his mistress. His daughter thinks he's innocent, and needs Stella to prove it. As Stella sifts through piles of evidence and interview suspects, she discovers a link between the recent murder and a famous case from forty years ago: the shocking death of six-year-old Sarah Ferris, killed in the shadows of an empty playground. Stella knows that dredging up the past can be dangerous.

When Kit and her best friend Binfire head to a stately home in Lincolnshire to view five ultra-rare Vixens from the Void action figures–the main exhibit at the opening of a new toy museum–they come across more than just nerds and toy-collectors. The figures are stolen from their glass case and, just as Kit and Binfire begin to get their heads around this mystery, they start to reappear, broken into pieces, left for their distraught owners to discover. And that’s when the real killings start.

The Cambridgeshire hamlet of Jude’s Ferry is a lonely, forgotten spot. Requisitioned decades earlier by the Ministry of Defence for military training, one of its few claims to fame is that in its entire thousand-year history, it never recorded a single crime. But when a Territorial Army exercise is held amongst the ruins, a skeleton is found hanging in a bricked-up cellar, a noose round the neck. It seems that the ghostly village may hide many secrets and local newspaper reporter Philip Dryden is soon on the case.

Stage manager Hattie Cocker is looking around the West End theatre where she's about to start her new temporary gig, when she stumbles across the dead body of the current musical's composer.

As mid-winter temperatures grip the cathedral city of Ely, a man is found frozen to death in his high-rise flat. The police may think that Declan McIlroy killed himself, but journalist Philip Dryden is not convinced, and he begins digging for the truth. All too soon, there's another frozen corpse to consider–that of Declan's best friend. And suddenly a routine suicide gives way to a chilling trail of cruelty and betrayal stretching back thirty years, towards a mystery from Dryden's own childhood.