Showing results by author "Charlotte MacLeod" in All Categories

If she weren't so fabulous, the Countess Lydia Ouspenska might be considered a gangster's moll. The last time she met Max Bittersohn, Boston's famed art-fraud investigator, she was forging minute Byzantine masterpieces to make ends meet. But when Max bumps into her on the Common, the Countess is back on her feet. She has taken up with Bartolo Arbalest, a master forger currently masquerading as an art restorer. And as Bittersohn knows all too well, even the most genteel fraudster cannot be trusted.

Though a few years past 60, Sarah Kelling's aunt Emma is as vigorous as a girl of 22. She sings, she dances, and when the local fire department needs a fundraising boost, she's happy to jump out a window for charity. This summer, she decamps to Maine, to beat the heat at an island retreat for artists and great thinkers. There are writers, painters, a psychic, and a historian, and their company promises to be great fun - until a few of them go treasure-crazy.

An unpleasant man in every respect, university Professor Herbert Ungley is exceedingly vain. One morning, his landlady catches her cat coming in with Ungley's hairpiece between its teeth. It's clear something has happened to the old grouch, because he would never be caught without his toupee. Ungley is found in the yard behind his social club, with his head bashed in and his baldness plain for the world to see. Although the police are content to call it an accident, sleuthing horticulturalist Peter Shandy is unconvinced and finds there are too many unanswered questions.

The weather vanes of the famous craftsman Praxiteles Lumpkin are one of the great cultural treasures of rural Massachusetts. Helen Shandy, librarian at Balaclava Agricultural College, is roaming the countryside, camera in hand, capturing images of these lovely copper sculptures, trying to give them the attention they deserve. But each time she takes a picture, the featured vane vanishes.

When 105-year-old Hilda Horsefall tells young reporter Cronkite Swope of a stone carved with Norse runes that once sat in the nearby woods, the writer starts salivating at the thought of breaking the news that Vikings once marauded through their sleepy Massachusetts countryside. But while he's jotting down notes, a scream rings out, and Cronkite finds an even bigger story. A farmhand has been burned to death by quicklime, and Cronkite gets an exclusive scoop.

The rural town of Balaclava greets Groundhog Day as an excuse for one last cold-weather fling. The students and faculty of the local agricultural college drink cocoa, throw snowballs, and when the temperature allows, ice skate. But Oozak's Pond is not quite frozen this year, and as the celebrations reach their peak, the students see someone bobbing through the ice. Long past help, the drowning victim is badly decomposed and dressed in an old-fashioned frock coat with a heavy rock in each pocket.

After Architrave's will reveals that he bequeathed his ramshackle old house to the Grub-and-Stakers, with instructions for it to be turned into a museum, Dittany resigns herself to weeks of cleaning out the mansion and sorting through donated town "artifacts". The task turns interesting, however, the minute bodies start falling from the sky. The new curator is airing out the house's attic when he takes his tumble off the roof.

When Jenson Thorbisher-Freep announces an amateur theatrical contest, the women in the Grub-and-Stake gardening club race to join in. They enlist Osbert Monk as their playwright - not only is he married to their club leader Dittany Monk, but he's famous the world over as Lex Laramie, best-selling novelist of Westerns. Taking the legend of Dangerous Dan McGrew as his inspiration, Osbert delivers a rough draft faster than the Pony Express. Now all the Grub-and-Stakers have to do is cast it.

Malice Domestic distinguishes the personal and private aspects of crime from the public and impersonal. Our murderers don't kill for the fun of it (serial killers) or for a misguided ideal (assassins and terrorists) or for pay (hired hit men). They only do in people they know and love (or hate).

Although he towers over his neighbors, Jim Feldster is otherwise unremarkable, except for his mastery of cow milking and his membership in every lodge, rotary club, and brotherhood that Balaclava County has to offer. And anyone who's met his wife, Mirelle, a vicious gossip with a hysterical streak, can understand why he never misses a meeting. But one night their neighbors, the sleuthing academics Peter and Helen Shandy, wake at 2:47 a.m. to the sound of Mirelle screaming.

Massachusetts horticulturalist Peter Shandy is famous for his rutabagas, but he comes to Maine with a loftier plant in mind. Specifically, he wants to size up the world-renowned lupines of Frances Rondel, a nonagenarian whose legendary flowers are even more beautiful in life than they are in myth. Shandy is bitterly jealous but finds a major distraction in the dining room of the country inn where he's staying. He may grow wretched lupines, but no gardener can solve a murder like Peter Shandy.

The giant hogweed, a creeping menace known for crushing the life out of any plant foolish enough to get in its way, has put the hedgerows and pastures of the English countryside in jeopardy. Fishermen find their streams clogged, young lovers are caught with rashes in embarrassing places, and the English nudist colony has been all but exterminated. Only Peter Shandy, the famed horticulturalist responsible for the world's finest rutabaga, can save the day.

Peace on Earth isn’t everyone’s cup of tea in Charlotte MacLeod’s “A Cozy for Christmas”. Peter Lovesey’s “The Haunted Crescent” delivers a holiday ghost story with a twist. A training session for department-store Santas turns up Saint Nicks who are anything but angels in Isaac Asimov’s “Ho, Ho, Ho”. Marcia Muller’s “Silent Night” finds a tough private investigator searching San Francisco’s Tenderloin district - and discovering something unexpected.

Weihnachtszeit! Wie jedes Jahr findet im Landwirtschaftscollege von Balaclava, die sogenannte "Lichterwoche" statt. Damit beginnt die alljährliche Leidenszeit von Prof. Shandy. Als der Professor erneut zum Mitmachen genötigt wird, lässt er sein Häuschen übertrieben weihnachtlich schmücken, um anschließend sofort zu einer Kreuzfahrt aufzubrechen. Doch ein Maschinenschaden des Urlaubsdampfers zwingt den Professor zur vorzeitigen Rückkehr.

Das altehrwürdige Landwirtschaftscollege von Balaclava Junction steht Kopf! Belinda von Balaclava, erklärter Liebling der Universität, ist spurlos verschwunden. Merkwürdige Anrufe und finstere Botschaften in Form von Eisbein in Aspik, Schweine schnitzel etc. lassen das Schlimmste befürchten. Wo kann die hochträchtige und immerhin 853 Pfund schwere Schweinedame nur stecken? Handelt es sich um einen missglückten Studentenulk oder einen gemeinen Racheakt der "Militanten Vegetarier"?

Die junge Sarah Kelling hat die undankbare Aufgabe, das Begräbnis ihres Großonkels Frederick vorzubereiten. Auf der Suche nach einer passenden letzten Ruhestätte wird die seit 100 Jahren nicht benutzte Familiengruft der Kelling-Dynastie geöffnet und Sarah muss entdecken, dass sich das Skelett der in den 50er Jahren verschwundenen Striptease-Tänzerin Ruby Redd in der Gruft befindet.