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

When wealthy banker Sir Gerald Mariner posts a handsome reward for finding his missing infant, all of London joins in, hoping to win that money for themselves. Usually discouraged by a saturated market, photographer and private detective Sarah Bain is instead curiously allured as she realizes the case hits much closer to home than she first thought.

Even though running Crewel World keeps Betsy plenty busy, a little extra cash on the side doesn't hurt. So when the local senior complex, Watered Silk, asks her to teach a class on the tricky punch needle technique, Betsy jumps at the opportunity to win over some new customers.

Herbalist China Bayles' latest adventure takes her to the mountains of North Carolina, where her friend Dorothea Harper serves as the director and curator of the Hemlock House Library, a priceless collection of rare gardening books housed in a haunted mountainside mansion that once belonged to Sunny Carswell, a reclusive heiress. But the most valuable book - A Curious Herbal, created by Elizabeth Blackwell in the 1730s - is missing, and Dorothea is under suspicion.

Idyllic Avril Island, owned by the Bennett family, is where their hundred-year-old cottage sat nestled in acres of forest. Forty-year-old June Bennett believed that the island had been sold after the summer of her father's disappearance when she was only 12 years old. It's months after the shocking death of her older sister, May, in a fatal car accident that June finds out that the cottage was never sold. Avril Island is still owned by the Bennett family, and now it's hers. Still reeling from the grief of losing her sister, June travels back to Avril Island in search of answers.

Struggling photographer Ivy Culpepper has lots of soul-searching to do since returning to seaside Santa Sofia, California - that is, until the 36-year-old enters a bread-making class at Yeast of Eden, the Mexican bread shop in town. Whether it’s the aroma of fresh conchas in the oven or her instant connection with owner Olaya Solis, Ivy just knows the missing ingredients in her life are hidden among the secrets of Olaya’s bakery.

It’s not the kind of thing you’d expect to happen on an ordinary Saturday morning. Her kids are arguing, and her husband is still sleeping. Lisa is tired and wonders why her husband keeps working late. Is he having an affair? Is it the same girl as last time? Lisa’s teenage daughter is acting up, and just as Lisa is about to walk up to her room and tell her who’s the boss around here, she feels the cold steel of a gun pressed against her cheek, while a hand covers her mouth. Years later, it remains a mystery.

It looks like the music has ended for Darling's favorite barbershop quartet, the Lucky Four Clovers, just days before the Dixie Regional Barbershop Competition. Another unlucky break comes when there's a serious foul-up in Darling's telephone system - and not a penny for repairs. And while liquor is legal again, moonshine isn't. Sheriff Buddy Norris needs a little luck when he goes into Briar Swamp to confront Cypress County's most notorious bootlegger - and what he finds upends his sense of justice.

The scene of the crime is lavish but gruesome. In a luxurious mansion on the outskirts of Cleveland, a woman's body lies gutted in a pool of blood on the marble floor. The victim is Joanna Moorehouse, founder of Sterling Financial, and the killer could be any one of her associates. Maggie knows that to crack the case, she and Jack will have to infiltrate the cutthroat world of high-stakes finance. But the offices of Sterling Financial seethe with potential suspects, every employee hell-bent on making a killing. When another officer uncovers disturbing evidence in a series of unrelated murders, the investigation takes a surprising detour.

Jaine has been hired by uber-pushy stage mom Heather Van Sant to write lyrics for her daughter Taylor's song in the talent competition for the Miss Teen Queen America pageant. It's different from anything Jaine has done before, but if nothing else, she's looking forward to a free weekend in a swanky hotel and a chance to see what really goes on backstage at a beauty pageant. But the hotel is a dump, the cattiness is out of control, and Candace - the perfectly coiffed, whip-cracking pageant director - is making even Jaine's life miserable.

A new reign of terror has fallen on the unsuspecting residents of Cocoa Beach. They think their worst nightmare is the environmental catastrophe causing the thousands of dead fish in the river until the first body turns up among the dead fish. Young girls are being kidnapped. Behind these kidnappings stands a ghostly person who calls himself the Boxer. He stalks the girls and chats with them until he decides whom to pick up and sell.

While her life is going from bad to worse, journalist Mary Mills receives a phone call from her father telling her that her brother has been arrested for murder. Mary decides to go back to her hometown of Cocoa Beach, Florida, which she left 20 years back and has never visited since. Working with her old friends from the 7th Street Crew, she tracks down the most disturbing and surprising killer this town has ever faced before a shocking conclusion turns everything upside down for them.

When Arlene Wood, a mother of two, crashes her car against a tree at four in the morning, the case seems pretty straightforward. But evidence found in the remains of the car soon raised the question of whether this was really an accident. Shortly after, her husband is taken in and later convicted of having murdered his wife. But many questions remain unanswered. Why was Arlene driving in the middle of the night? Why did she leave the house, her husband, and her sleeping children, then get into her car and drive away? Was she meeting someone? A friend? A lover? A killer?

In the quirky, picturesque lakeside community of Lily Dale, where the residents can talk to the dead, young widow Bella Jordan is the lone skeptic among believers. She doesn't believe in ghosts…but after a year in the village, she would admit that her new friends do sometimes seem to know impossible things. Still, when a Black stranger dressed in old-fashioned clothing arrives unexpectedly at Bella's guesthouse at midnight on Juneteenth, only to vanish the next day as if he'd never existed, Bella's sure there has to be a logical explanation.

New Orleans, 1944. Sabotage—that's the word on factory worker Justine Byrne's mind as she is repeatedly called to weld machine parts that keep failing with no clear cause. Could someone inside the secretive Carbon Division be deliberately undermining the factory's war efforts? Raised by her late parents to think logically, she also can't help wondering just what the oddly shaped carbon gadgets she assembles day after day have to do with the boats the factory builds....

It's Alpenfest in Upper Sprocket! Yodelers are congregating in the square, tourists flocking to the town, and Trinidad Jones is scooping up some fall flavors at her Shimmy and Shake Shop. The cherry on the sundae is her upcoming feature in The Scoop magazine. She's determined to serve up the perfect interview, but it won't be easy, thanks in part to her meddling Cuban grandfather, Papa Luis, who has decided to make Sprocket his home, setting himself up as a taxi driver in his classic 1951 Buick. But things take a turn when Papa Luis tells her he's found a corpse in his trunk.

It’s been nine months since widowed mom Bella Jordan and her young son, Max, moved to Lily Dale, the quirky, close-knit New York community populated by people who can speak to the dead...if one believes in that kind of thing. Now she counts Valley View, the guesthouse she runs, as home and her psychic medium neighbors as friends - even haughty British Pandora, who used to own Valley View before her difficult divorce. So when Pandora sweeps in, requesting an urgent tête-à-tête, Bella expects it to be another complaint about book club. It isn’t.

The late summer heat in Echo Valley, Colorado, turns lush greenery into a tinder-dry landscape. When a young girl mysteriously disappears, long-buried grudges rekindle. Of the two Flores girls, Marisa was the one people pegged for trouble. Her younger sister, Lena, was the quiet daughter, dutiful and diligent - right until the moment she vanished. Detective Jo Wyatt is convinced the 11-year-old girl didn’t run away and that a more sinister reason lurks behind her disappearance.

Since she started penning dialogue for Some Day My Prince Will Come - a cheesy dating show that features bachelorettes competing for the heart of Spencer Dalworth VII, a very distant heir to the British throne - Jaine's life has been a royal pain. She's been fending off golf-ball-size bugs on the sweltering tropical island and having her patience tested by an irritable production crew and the fierce contestants who will do anything to get their prince. But Jaine never expected murder to enter the script.

It seems Jaine's life couldn't get any better - until her cat, Prozac, is tapped to star in a Skinny Kitty commercial. But Jaine never would have guessed the world of cat food could be quite so catty. Jaine is nervous that Prozac won't be able to take direction, but the finicky furball ditches her diva behavior for the camera, eating and napping on cue like a seasoned pro. But just as Jaine begins dreaming of fame and fortune, Skinny Kitty's inventor drops dead on the set. Everyone is a suspect - including Jaine.

Tired of waiting tables at Lou's Joint, Amy Flowers doesn't just quit - she offers to buy the place from her bully of a boss. Amy has dreamed of making the kind of Southern, down-home treats and dishes that her grandmother always loved to serve the kooky cast of regulars at the restaurant. At first Lou refuses to sell, but when she seems ready to make a deal, she tells Amy to come see her. Showing up at the eatery ready to negotiate, Amy is shocked to find her former employer murdered.