Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio, Inc." in Amateur Sleuths

There's trouble brewing at the Village Blend. Business is booming--but Clare's customers are starting to die. Soon after stopping at the coffeehouse, a regular jumps to her death in the subway. Or was she pushed? Detective Quinn is convinced that someone has an axe to grind, especially after the "suicide" of another female customer. Unfortunately, his prime suspect is Bruce Bowman--the new man in Clare's life. Bruce is the perfect blend of rugged good looks and potent personality.

It's bad enough when someone you know is brutally murdered; it's worse when the guy was a paranoid schizophrenic helplessly bound to a wheelchair. Sam Acquillo and Jackie Swaitkowski tried to look after Alfie Aldergreen, as had others around the Village of Southampton, but now they were forced to wonder what else they could have done.

In a momentous period of British history, Donald Thomas' latest Sherlock Holmes adventure pits the great detective and his faithful biographer, Dr. John Watson, against an international conspiracy led by a disgraced English officer. Colonel Hunter Moran bears upon him the "Mark of the Beast"; his satanic ingenuity leaves a spectacular trail of devastation. It runs from the annihilation of a British armored column by Zulu tribesmen - armed only with shields and spears - to a life-and-death struggle on the sinking passenger steamer Comtesse de Flandre.

The charming Minnesota town of Mayville Heights is hosting a music festival, and the whole place is bustling with musicians and tourists. Kathleen is looking forward to taking in some fabulous performances - and her two cats, Owen and Hercules, are looking forward to taking in some fabulous sardine crackers. But then the trio stumbles across a dead body by the river. The victim is a close friend - who also happens to be a lookalike of a popular cabaret singer set to perform at the festival. Who could have wanted to harm this innocent girl? Was it a case of mistaken identity?

Russell Mullins has left intelligence work. When his wife died of cancer, Rusty quit the Secret Service to repurpose his life. He joins a private protection company in Washington, DC, and is assigned to guard Paul Luguire, a Federal Reserve executive and chief liaison with the US Treasury. Mullins and Luguire form a strong friendship. So when a police detective calls in the middle of the night with word of Luguire’s suicide, Mullins doesn’t buy it.

His doubts are reinforced by Amanda Church, a former Secret Service colleague now in the Federal Reserve’s cybersecurity unit. She uncovered a suspicious financial transaction initiated by Luguire only days before his death.

Junior Bender is back to untangle one of the weirdest mysteries in Tinseltown. LA burglar Junior Bender has, unfortunately, developed a reputation as a competent private investigator for crooks. The unfortunate part about this is that, regardless of whether he solves the crime or not, someone dangerous is going to be unhappy with him - either his suspect or his employer. Now Junior is being bullied into proving aging music-industry mogul Vinnie DiGaudio is innocent of the murder of a nasty tabloid journalist he'd threatened to kill a couple times.

Lady Frances Ffolkes is incensed when she finds out that her dear friends Gwendolyn and Thomasina have been subject to vicious threats. Promising to uncover their attacker, she travels with them to Kestrel's Eyrie, the fabled estate belonging to Gwen's family. But soon Frances faces an even greater problem, when Gwen's father, a powerful diplomat, is stabbed to death with his prized ruby dagger.

An extraordinary woman living in extraordinary times, Lady Frances Ffolkes is an Edwardian era suffragette who has an uncanny ability to attract danger and romance. When Major Colcombe, a family friend and war veteran, dies under mysterious circumstances, the good Lady discovers that he was working on a manuscript, about South Africa's bloody Boer War, that reportedly revealed a scandalous mistake that cost many innocent lives.

Betsy is still new enough to Excelsior, Minnesota, to not know a scandal when she causes one. So, when she hires Foster Johns to fix her roof, the resulting uproar has her needled. The whole town has pinned a five-year-old unsolved double murder on him. Betsey believes Johns when he says he isn't guilty. But she'll have to use every stitch of her sleuthing skills to tie up all the loose ends that will prove his innocence once and for all.

In one of his earliest cases, Ellery Queen confronts a murder in blue blood. From the very beginning, the Khalkis case struck a somber note. It began, as was peculiarly harmonious in the light of what was to come, with the death of an old man. Georg Khalkis, internationally famous art dealer and collector, died of heart failure. After his funeral, his attorney found that the will was missing and immediately called in the district attorney. When Inspector Queen and his son, Ellery, are brought in to solve the mystery, Ellery mentions the one place they have not searched for the will: the coffin.

It's the beginning of a new school year at Normalton University, and Dani Sloan has purchased a table for the big orientation extravaganza on the quad, determined to recruit the incoming freshmen as customers for her innovative packed-lunch business. Her food samples are a hit, but the good always seems to come with a dose of bad, and just a few days later, a man is murdered during the annual college-sponsored zombie crawl.

Jenny Weston and her mother, Dora, have been receiving strange midnight visits. The town of Bear Falls, Michigan, has its own elusive and highly secretive poet, Emily Sutton, who has lived her life cloistered away with her sister in a house at the edge of Pewee Swamp. But now, Emily has started leaving scraps of poetry in Dora's little free library, and Dora makes it her mission to befriend the sheltered woman.

A hotshot real estate developer arrives in Sully's Landing, touting his plans to build a tacky amusement arcade smack dab in the middle of the tasteful cliffside town. No one in Sully's Landing can stand the gaudy developer, but it's still a shock when he ends up murdered. It's even more shocking when Liza's friend Doug emerges as the chief suspect. Melanie and Liza put on their sleuthing caps yet again and set out to clear Doug's name.

Carrie Singleton is just about done with Clover Ridge, Connecticut until she is offered a job as the head of programs and events at the spooky local library, complete with its own librarian ghost. Her first major event is a program presented by a retired homicide detective, Al Buckley, who claims he knows who murdered Laura Foster, a much-loved part-time library aide who was bludgeoned to death 15 years earlier. As he invites members of the audience to share stories about Laura, he suddenly keels over and dies.

When an elderly homeless woman is found dead on the shore of Lake Minnetonka, she's wearing something that holds the key to her identity but also opens up a mystery. Embroidered on her blouse is her will, in which she bequeaths everything she owns to her niece: Emily Hame, a member of the Monday Bunch at Betsy Devonshire's Crewel World needlework shop! Emily's aunt turns out to be the second homeless woman to be found dead under mysterious circumstances.

When an old friend of her ex-husband develops the world's first botanically decaffeinated coffee bean and smuggles it into the country, Clare Cosi believes it's a business opportunity she needs to investigate... at least until the first dead body shows up. With casualties piling up and a complicated blend of old and new loves muddying the waters, it's up to Clare to find the murderer before one of her near and dears takes the fall. Otherwise, her latest addition to the menu will prove to be a real buzz killer….

When a Western star is gunned down at a rodeo, Ellery Queen saddles up to solve the mystery.

Buck Horne has roped thousands of cattle, slugged his way out of dozens of saloons, and shot plenty of men dead in the street - but always on the back lot. He's a celluloid cowboy, and his career is nearly kaput. The real box-office draw is his daughter, Kit, a brawling beauty who can out shoot any rascal the studio has to offer. Desperate for a comeback, Buck joins Wild Bill Grant's traveling rodeo for a show in New York, hoping to land one last movie contract.

Twenty million dollars' worth of missing gems bring Carrie Singleton's long-lost and larcenous dad back into her life, and it's up to Carrie to clear his name.

Madeline Vaughn-Alwin's picture-perfect life fades to gray when her childhood sweetheart perishes in the Great War. The aspiring painter leaves her wealthy New York family behind for Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she's certain she's found her new home amid the striking scenery and inspiring artistic community. To help out around her new adobe cottage, Maddie hires the Anayas, a local Native American family. But when the father is found murdered outside a speakeasy, the police brush off the death as just another inebriated man finding trouble.

The Crozats feared that past murders at Crozat Plantation B&B might spell the death of their beloved estate, but they've managed to survive the scandal. Now there's a très bigger story in Pelican, Louisiana: the upcoming nuptials between Police Chief Rufus Durand and Vanessa Fleer. Maggie Crozat, inexplicably tasked with being Vanessa's maid of honor, quickly discovers why everyone else refused the assignment when the bridezilla hands her a long list of duties.