Showing results by publisher "-emdashery books-" in Cosy

Post-university life doesn’t suit Phyl. Time passes slowly living back home with her parents, working a zero-hour contract serving Japanese food to holidaymakers at Heathrow’s Terminal 5. As for her budding plans of becoming a writer, those are going nowhere. That is, until family friend Chris comes to stay. He’s been on the path to uncover a sinister think-tank, founded at Cambridge University in the 1980s, that’s been scheming to push the British government in a more extreme direction. One that’s finally poised to put their plans into action.

Gemma never expected to be invited to a total stranger’s will reading, and she’s even more baffled when she receives a vintage set of encyclopaedias and a letter with strict instructions to read it in private. The letter contains a cryptic code; a long sequence of numbers. Wanting to keep a promise to his late wife, but also unburden his conscience, the deceased man wanted to expose a long-hidden family secret connected to a sixty-year-old unsolved murder. Gemma, the owner of The Bookworm Bookshop and her sharp-witted business partner, Mavis, must solve the code and uncover the truth.

Elderflower Tea Shop is next door to Cardinal Woolsey's, the yarn shop Lucy runs and home to the late-night Vampire Knitting Club. The tea shop owners are a pair of octogenarian spinsters and old family friends, so Lucy wants to help clear up the mystery that's keeping their shop closed. But murder isn't the only issue troubling the Miss Watts. A man has come between them. Miss Florence Watt is being romanced by an old flame, one Mary Watt distrusts.

Mrs. Gillespie is famous around the northwest of Sutherland for being the best charwoman ever. Of course, if anyone has any social pretensions one does not say charwoman, one talks about "my maid". Hamish Macbeth wins Mrs. Gillespie's services in a church raffle but spends most of the day trying to avoid her. She is a malicious gossip and she bangs around the furniture and clanks pots--he wonders how on earth she managed to get such a good reputation.

A country house murder, artistic insight and the postwar reunion of Alleyn and Troy combine in Ngaio Marsh’s wittiest and most readable novel. Agatha Troy, world-famous portrait painter, is inveigled into accepting a commission to paint the 70-year-old Sir Henry Ancred, Bart., the Grand Old Man of the stage. But just as she has completed her portrait, the old actor dies.

Lily and Ian have finally returned home with Connor, Sadie, and the newest addition to their family. Across the street, Walt and Danielle are settling into parenthood, and down the street Heather is no longer worried about a certain annoying ghost surprising her in the middle of the night. But the calm on Beach Drive doesn't last long. It isn't just the arrival of Lily's parents, or the surprise visit from Lily's sister, Laura, who has been in Europe. It's the woman who shows up on Lily's doorstep, young boy in hand named Christopher, looking for directions to Chris Johnson's house.

Promoting her latest books brings best-selling mystery writer Jessica Fletcher to New York for Christmas. Her schedule includes book signings, chat-show appearances, department store shopping...and murder. But it all begins with a sidewalk Santa staring at Jessica with fear and recognition.

When the body of a talented photographer is found on the rocks beneath the ruins of Dunstanburgh Castle, DCI Ryan and his team of detectives immediately suspect the worst. But, since none of their potential suspects seems to have a motive, the case runs cold. Then, when another body is found dead on a lonely stretch of road near Hadrian’s Wall and their only suspect has an airtight alibi, the team are faced with another crime without a perpetrator.

Hell has unleashed a demon - and he's coming for you.... Detective Chief Inspector Ryan's worst nightmare has just become a reality. Notorious serial killer The Hacker has escaped prison and kidnapped one of his best detectives from her own home. His brutality is the stuff of legend - Ryan lost his sister and nearly his own life bringing the man to justice first time around. Can Ryan do it again to save his friend? There's a nationwide manhunt underway but the trail has gone cold and fear spreads like a virus.

Writer Mark Endicott moves to a Dorset village, where he buys the small, almost derelict Corpse Path Cottage. It occurs to him that it would make the ideal setting for a murder. Before long, one of the village’s residents is mysteriously shot dead nearby. Mark’s life begins to unravel even as he helps the police solve the mystery. In the process he uncovers a tale of intrigue, bigamy, and blackmail.

For Frances Wynn, widow to the late earl of Harleigh, life has a cosmopolitan flavour of late. No sooner has she sent her mother and daughter off on a shopping trip to Paris than she and her fiancé, George Hazleton, are socializing with visiting members of the Russian royal family. Yet amid this whirlwind, scandal also comes calling when Inspector Delaney turns up outside Frances' house with a young French woman with a shocking claim: she is Mrs. George Hazelton.

Erin Coleridge's used bookstore in Kirkbymoorside, North Yorkshire, England, is a meeting place for the villagers and, in particular, for the local Jane Austen Society. At the Society's monthly meeting, matters come to a head between the old guard and its young turks. After the meeting breaks for tea, persuasion gives way to murder with extreme prejudice when president Sylvia Pemberthy falls dead to the floor. Poisoned? Presumably, but by whom? And was Sylvia the only target?

1929, December: Snow is falling, and Miss Clara Vale is wrapped up against the cold as she braves the icy streets of Newcastle in her latest investigation. When a young actress from the touring pantomime of Cinderella arrives at her door, Clara isn't sure what to make of her request. Sybil Langford, the legendary fairy godmother in their production, has mysteriously vanished. Could Clara help track her down? But a few days into Clara's search, Sybil's body is pulled from an icy river, and Clara finds herself in the middle of yet another murder mystery.

Newlyweds Lady Swift and Detective Hugh Seldon are honeymooning in the most romantic city on earth. Clifford, her butler, has come along for the trip to make sure everything goes to plan for the happy couple. And Gladstone, the mischievous bulldog, to make sure it doesn’t!

Dashiell Dawson Dane might have a problem. It’s not a huge problem. In fact, all things considered, life is good—he’s got a wonderful boyfriend, fantastic friends, and a home where he’s genuinely happy, maybe for the first time ever. He’s even writing regularly. (Okay, mostly regularly.) There is, however, the teensiest issue with money—in that, he doesn’t have any. And it turns out Dash isn’t the only one strapped for cash. The Hastings Rock Public Library has recently been defunded by the mayor and the city council, and the town is in an uproar.

In 1965, when Frances Adams was seventeen, a fortune teller told her that one day she'd be murdered. Thus began a lifetime of trying to prevent the crime that would be her eventual demise. No one took Frances seriously for sixty years - until, of course, she was murdered. But for Frances, being the village busybody was a form of insurance. She'd spent a lifetime compiling dirt on every person she met, just in case they might turn out to be her killer.

In a poisonous cloud of spray, the curtain falls on a drama queen. Little did beloved British actress Mary Bellamy know that she would be done in at her own birthday party - choked by toxic mist from the bottle of Slaypest, a deadly insecticide. Basking in the glow of her most adoring fans - who all happened to be her most duplicitous enemies - Mary would make her final performance.

As grape harvest season rolls around, retired DCI Dan Armstrong and his beloved canine companion, Oscar, are looking forward to a nice quiet September. But when Dan is contacted about a mysterious death out in the Tuscan Hills, it seems that work must come before pleasure. At first it appears that the body found lying outside a prestigious winery has been the result of a tragic hit and run. But then the police discover that this is a cover up for murder…but who would kill in such an idyllic spot and why?

When a mint copy of the final album by Valerian - England's great lost rock band of the 1960s - surfaces, all hell breaks loose. Finding this record triggers a chain of events culminating in our hero learning the true fate of the singer of Valerian, who died under equivocal circumstances just after...or was it just before the abduction of her two-year-old son? Along the way the Vinyl Detective finds out what happened to the missing child, and it wasn't what anyone expected - or wanted - to hear.

Detective Chief Inspector Ryan believes he has put his turbulent history behind him. Then, in the early hours of the summer solstice, the skeleton of a young woman is found inside the Roman Wall at Sycamore Gap. She has lain undiscovered for 10 years, and it is Ryan's job to piece together her past. Enquiry lines cross and merge as Ryan is forced to face his own demons and enter into a deadly game of cat and mouse with a killer who seems unstoppable.