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

Pub owner Maura Donovan hasn't seen her mother for over 20 years, so when she suddenly shows up in Maura's pub, Maura's not sure what to expect. Her mother is trying to find a life for herself back home and has taken up a position working with the new owners of the Crann Mor hotel just outside Skibbereen. That is until her new boss is found dead in the gardens, dumped down the hillside behind the hotel.

Snow is a rarity in Maura Donovan's small village in County Cork, Ireland, so she wasn't sure what to expect when a major snowstorm rolled in around Sullivan's pub. But now she's stranded in a bar full of patrons - and a suspected killer in a long-ago murder. Maura's been in Ireland less than a year and hasn't heard about the decades-old unsolved crime that took place nearby, let alone the infamous suspect, Diane Caldwell.

Let Ellery Queen clue you in on his special brand of high tension, brain-teasing mystery! This collection consists of novelettes and short stories from Queen's many escapades.

Lucie Montgomery and winemaker Quinn Santori have decided to make champagne, a first for the Montgomery Estate Vineyard in Atoka, Virginia. But then Gino Tomassi, Quinn's uncle, turns up on their doorstep, demanding help in solving the mystery of what happened to Zara Tomassi, the first wife of his grandfather, who died in a San Francisco hotel in 1923 under suspicious circumstances. It seems there's no coincidence that her death came the day after President Warren Harding passed away in that same hotel.

This rare volume is a collection of some of Queen's best, containing three novelettes and two short stories. The stories include "The Death of Don Juan", "The Wrightsville Heirs", "The Case Against Carroll", "E = Murder", and "Diamonds in Paradise". Ellery Queen stars in all of them, making this collection a must-listen for mystery fans.

Queen's Bureau of Investigation is now open for business - and in each department of this new enterprise Ellery finds ample opportunity to exercise the brilliant, ingenious, and at times startling talents of his crime-lab mind. For to the bureau come some of the most plaguey cases in Queen's career.

Trick I - The first thing to vanish is a worthless doorstop. Then, in the twinkling of an eye, goes its rich and elderly owner. And, for the grand finale, both reappear - each as dead as the other. Trick II - From the House of Darkness issues more bafflement. In total darkness and from a distance of 12 feet, four bullets are pumped within an inch of each other into a spectator's back - a feat utterly impossible to perform yet brazenly and undeniably done.

At the tail end of the long summer of 1940, there is nowhere in the country more charming than Wrightsville. The Depression has abated, and for the first time in years the city is booming. There is hope in Wrightsville, but Ellery Queen has come looking for death. The mystery author is hoping for fodder for a novel, and he senses the corruption that lurks beneath the apple pie façade. He rents a house owned by the town's first family, whose three daughters star in most of the local gossip.

Ellery Queen is persuaded to accompany an old friend and sculptor to his ancestral home when the latter arrives at Ellery's house covered in blood and unable to remember anything from the past few weeks. Once there, tensions erupt and foul play results in the murder of one of the household's members. Among the many transgressions Ellery will uncover are adultery, blackmail, and deceit.

Time is not on Faye Longchamp’s side. She and her husband Joe are working near the mouth of the Mississippi, researching archaeological sites soon to be swamped by oil. The Deepwater Horizon disaster has morphed her run-of-the-mill contract job into a task that might swamp her fledgling company. It isn’t helping that an injured babysitter has left Faye to work with a toddler underfoot.

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.

The London summer of 1854 is drawing to a close when a deadly outbreak of cholera grips the city. Florence Nightingale is back on the scene marshaling her nurses to help treat countless suffering patients at Middlesex Hospital as the disease tears through the Soho slums. But beyond the dangers of the disease, something even more evil is seeping through the ailing streets of London. It begins with an attack on the carriage of Florence's friend, Elizabeth Herbert, wife of Secretary at War Sidney Herbert. Elizabeth survives, but her coachman does not.

School psychologist Skye Denison-Boyd had hoped that her maternity leave would be at least a little relaxing, but when she and her husband, Wally, meet with the priest to discuss their newborn twins' christening, an explosion at the nearby bowling alley rocks the rectory. And although the business was closed at the time of the blast, there's a body inside. As police chief, Wally is inevitably drawn into the investigation, which seems to indicate that foul play is afoot again in Scumble River, and Skye can't help but do a bit of her own sleuthing.

The silent rush of footsteps, the muffled shriek, the ever-tightening noose of exotic silk…the mark of the Cat. The Cat had claimed number nine.

The Cat had nine kills, but Ellery Queen found number ten alive and offered the victim temptingly to the killer. The trap was baited, and Ellery and the police poised for the strike that had to come. But the strangler struck elsewhere - and Queen's heart chilled at the thought of what he would find.

Joshua Speed, the enterprising second son of a wealthy plantation owner, has struck off on his own. But before long he makes a surprising and crucial new acquaintance - a freshly minted lawyer by the name of Abraham Lincoln. When an orphaned girl from a neighboring town is found murdered and suspicion falls on her aunt, Speed makes it his mission to clear her good name. Of course he'll need the legal expertise of his unusual new friend.

On a lovely moonlit night, while carrying a gift of mice to a litter of kittens, Joe Grey stumbles upon a murder scene. Behind an empty house, in an empty swimming pool, there’s blood, the smell of human death, and drag marks. But there’s no victim—and it’s hard to prove a crime without a corpse. Driven by stubborn feline curiosity, Joe Grey sets out to investigate. With Dulcie and Kit following him along a killer’s trail, Joe discovers evidence of conflict among the residents of this seemingly peaceful neighborhood.

It's harvest season at Montgomery Estate Vineyard - the busiest time of year for winemakers in Atoka, Virginia. A skull is unearthed near Lucie Montgomery's family cemetery, and the discovery of the bones coincides with the arrival of handsome, wealthy aristocrat Jean-Claude de Merignac. He's come to be the head winemaker at neighboring La Vigne Cellars, but he's no stranger to Lucie - he was her first crush 20 years ago when she spent a summer in France. Not long after his arrival, Jean-Claude is found dead.

After agreeing to stay in Lily Dale through the winter as caretakers of the Valley View Guesthouse and its feline residents, widowed mom Bella Jordan and her son, Max, are looking forward to the peaceful off-season after a hectic summer. That is until the medium next door, Odelia Lauder, recruits Bella to host a destination wedding for the world's most petulant bride, Johneen Maynard, a friend of Odelia's granddaughter.

A shocking hit-and-run in front of her Village Blend coffeehouse spurs Clare Cosi into action. A divorced single mom, Clare is also a dedicated sleuth, and she's determined to track down this ruthless driver who ran down an innocent friend and customer. In the meantime, her ex-husband, Matt, the shop's globetrotting coffee buyer, sources some amazing new beans from Brazil. But he soon discovers that he's importing more than coffee, and Clare may have been the real target of that deadly driver.

Twenty-nine-year-old Abraham Lincoln has spent his entire adult life running from his past - from the poverty of the dirt-floor log cabin where he was raised, from the dominion of his uneducated father, and from a failed early courtship. But now, Lincoln's past is racing back to haunt him. It is the summer of 1838, and Springfield is embroiled in a tumultuous, violent political season. All of Springfield's elite have gathered at a grand party to celebrate the Fourth of July. Spirits are high - until a prominent local politician is assassinated in the midst of fireworks.