Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in Women Sleuths

The USA Today bestselling host of the All About Agatha podcast injects the spark and fizz of a Golden Age murder mystery into the present-day, as the ghostwriter’s skills are put to the test aboard a bestselling author’s decidedly insalubrious cruise.

Beneath the sun and sea of South Florida, dark crimes and bone-chilling secrets are lurking. Introducing a brand-new twisty mystery series from award-winning author Elaine Viets. When the body of adult film star Sammie Lant is found buried next to the courtyard pool of the Florodora, Norah McCarthy’s apartment complex, she quickly becomes the police’s prime suspect. Norah was witnessed having an argument with Sammie six months ago, the last day Sammie was seen alive—the day she gained notoriety for a shocking public stunt with a college football player.

After a dog belonging to local pet activist Tilly Lawson is snatched right out of her backyard in Sunflower County, MS, Sarah Booth and the Delaney Detective Agency are up to their ears in concerned pet owners. Could Tilly's work liberating abused animals have come back to bite her, or was this a random act of dognapping?

When American expat and bicycle tour company proprietress Sadie Greene guides a hard-to-impress group of sophisticated seniors on a stunning trip in northeastern France, she expects some twists, turns, and sudden stops to sip the Riesling. She doesn’t anticipate a detour leading straight to murder …

After surviving a terrible attack, Quinn Fleming has recovered in every way but one—her ability to retain new memories. Now, months later, it appears to the outside world as if the San Diego florist’s life is back to normal. But Quinn is barely holding on, relying on a notebook she carries with her at all times, a record of her entire existence since the assault. So when she witnesses a murder in the shadowy alley behind the florist shop, Quinn immediately writes down every terrifying detail of the incident before her amnesia wipes it away.

New Jersey State Trooper Jon Mazer has been charged with killing Black investigative reporter Stewart Marshall in a racially charged, headline-making murder. The evidence against criminal defense attorney Erin McCabe’s new client is overwhelming. The gun used is Mazer’s off-duty weapon. Fingerprints and carpet fibers link Mazer to the crime. And Mazer was patrolling Marshall’s neighborhood shortly before the victim took three bullets to the chest. Mazer’s argument? He’s a gay officer being set up to take the fall in an even bigger story.

After her mother's death, Delaney Byrne faces escalating debts and a sister to support. Their home is burglarized, hinting at her mother’s obsession with a hidden treasure in Arizona's mountains. When her estranged best friend, Joss, proposes one final treasure hunt, Delaney is skeptical but desperate. As they delve into the wilderness, Delaney and Joss navigate a maze of old betrayals and hidden dangers. Each clue they uncover draws them closer to the treasure but deeper into risk. Delaney vows not to repeat her mother’s mistakes, but the mountain’s perils are relentless, and trust is scarce.

Verona Montero loves calling herself a private dick because it makes her sound like she’s in a 1940s detective movie. And it means she gets to say “dick” a lot. So when Miami—a walking Barbie doll with an emoji addiction and bikinis smaller than Verona's patience—needs proof her billionaire husband Javier is cheating, Verona's all over it. Especially when it means working with divorce lawyer Quentin, whose cologne gives her what she professionally diagnoses as “crotch headaches.”

Liz Galin, an out-of-work fashion stylist, lives in a walk up studio apartment in Alphabet City in Manhattan. She has put her life on hold during COVID-19 to care for her mother going through chemo, and cannot see her boyfriend Cary as he is an emergency room doctor during the height of the pandemic. One Monday morning, she receives a cryptic letter from a Miami lawyer indicating that she should call his office. When she does, she and her mother Linda find out she has been bequeathed an asset in a will.

With a theater foundation tea and an art show planned at Violet Vickers’s estate, Courtney is hired to create charming fairy gardens for the event. It’s not so charming, however, when her best friend Meaghan’s ex-boyfriend turns out to be Violet’s latest artistic protégé. Even worse, not long after Meaghan locks horns with him, his body is found in her yard, bludgeoned with an objet d’murder.

When Corie Geller asked her parents to move from their apartment into the suburban McMansion she shares with her husband and teenage daughter, she assumed they'd fit right in with the placid life she’d opted for when she left the Joint Anti-terrorism Task Force of the FBI. But then her retired NYPD detective father gets a call from good-natured and slightly nerdy film professor April Brown—one of the victims of a case he was never able to solve. When April was a five-year-old, she’d emerged unscathed from the arson that killed her parents. Now, two decades later, April is asking for help.

May, 1924. It's been months since young British widow Emma Blackstone arrived in Hollywood to serve as companion to Kitty Flint: her beautiful silent-movie star sister-in-law. Kitty is generous, kind-hearted . . . and a truly terrible actress. Not that Emma minds; she's too busy making her academic parents turn in their graves with her new job writing painfully historically inaccurate scenarios for Foremost Studios. So when one of Kitty's old flames calls Emma and tells her it's imperative he meet with Kitty that morning, she's not surprised. Until, that is, he adds that lives depend on it.

Twenty-five years ago, a body was discovered in the Turney family barn—and the locals were all too ready to believe that killing blood ran through Turney veins. Every member of the family came under suspicion, their reputations crumbled to pieces, and with no convictions, no one has ever been cleared. Daughter Jill, now a Chicago lawyer, is ready for this case to be solved and for her broken family to be repaired at last.

Every small town has one unsolved case that haunts its memory, festering for generations below the surface. Over sixty years ago, Daisy Doe was murdered and discarded outside Pineville, Alabama, buried without a name or anyone to mourn her loss. When Star Cavanaugh's father tried to solve the case, he too was killed. Now a cold-case detective with resources of her own, Star is determined to get to the bottom of both crimes. But to do so, she’ll have to face an entire town locked in corruption, racism, silence, and fear—and the same dangerous killer who took two other lives.

Nantucket Police Chief Meredith Folger is acutely conscious of the stress COVID-19 has placed on the community she loves. Although the island has proved a refuge for many during the pandemic, the cost to Nantucket has been high. Merry hopes that the Christmas Stroll, one of Nantucket's favorite traditions, in which Main Street is transformed into a winter wonderland, will lift the island's spirits. But the arrival of a large-scale TV production, and the Secretary of State and her family, complicates matters significantly.

Courtney has thrown a few fairy garden parties—for kids. But if a local socialite is willing to dip into her trust fund for an old sorority sister’s fortieth birthday bash, Courtney will be there with bells on. To make the job even more appealing, a famous actress, Farrah Lawson, is flying in for the occasion, and there’s nothing like a celebrity cameo to raise a business’s profile.

Crime reporter Mari Alvarez was never able to solve her mother’s murder ten years ago. But when a woman is gunned down on the doorstep of her West Tampa neighborhood, Mari can’t shake the eerie sense of connection. Now there have been two murders in two days. Each crime scene awash with arcane clues―and without a trace of DNA from the killer. And for each victim, a doll. The first is missing an eye. The second is missing a heart. But are these clues leading to the killer…or messages for Mari?

Having been widowed in the First World War, Elizabeth Fairchild lives a quiet life at the home of her wealthy parents in genteel Oak Park, Illinois. Although she does her best to avoid emotional entanglements, Elizabeth forms a close friendship with gentle Mr. Anthony, who owns the local antiques store. But tragedy strikes when Mr. Anthony is found stabbed to death in the alley behind his shop. Why would anyone murder a mild-mannered antiques dealer? A robbery gone wrong? A gangland execution? Could it have something to do with the mysterious customer who bought a gold pocket watch?

Juliet Reid wasn't able to save her murdered brother almost 10 years ago. Can she stop an ice-cold killer in their tracks a decade later? Nine and a half years ago, Juliet's talented brother, Fin, should have returned home. He didn't make it. When Juliet set out to find him that snowy winter evening, she made a devastating discovery.

The pressures of fame and an obsessive stalker have driven pop star Olivia Smith to take shelter at Halcyon Hall, an exclusive spa on a remote island off the coast of Maine. Yet from the moment she arrives, there are rumors about women disappearing and stories about the resort’s grisly past. Then a note arrives from her stalker, proving that nowhere is truly safe....