Showing results by narrator "C.S.E Cooney" in All Categories

Rarity is excited about expanding the romance section of her store—but not nearly as excited as her best friend Sam is about reuniting with her brother after many years. Marcus makes the trek from California to Arizona, is welcomed with a party, and hints that he may stick around now that remote work is an option. But is it just a coincidence that not long after his arrival, a body is found near a local swimming hole? Especially considering that the dead woman had recently gone on a date with him—and even worse, that Marcus has a startling secret in his past?

When Lee Barrett joins a former student's bridal party as maid of honor, she expects cake tastings and dress fittings. But wedding planning becomes more peculiar than Lee's scrying talents could ever predict. There's a magical baker, a best man with a checkered past, and a talking crow named Poe as the ring bearer. There's also a kindly old man dead under his apple tree - one of a series of unexplained deaths hanging over the Wiccan community....

Field reporter Lee Barrett is not happy that her hours are being cut back at WICH-TV, although it is nice to spend more time volunteering with Aunt Ibby, a research librarian. But Lee's least favorite task is going up to the stacks, a spooky, seldom-frequented upper section of the library. On this day she has good reason to be afraid - she finds a dead man, surrounded by hundreds of scattered books and torn-out pages. Her police detective beau, Pete Mondello, is soon on the scene, and the deceased is identified as a former minor league baseball player - and ex-con....

A cold case update in Salem, Massachusetts... Life at the house on Winter Street is abuzz with preparations for Aunt Ibby's 45th high school reunion, and Lee Barrett is happy to pitch in, tracking down addresses, and licking envelopes. But as a field reporter for Salem's WICH-TV, her priority is to be on top of the town's latest news before anyone else.

Lee Barrett has landed her dream job at Salem's WICH-TV. As the new field reporter, she'll be covering events live as they're unfolding. Next on her holiday checklist is an interview with the beloved chairman of a popular walking tour through Salem's historic districts. But it may be his ghost walking this snowy Noel season after Lee finds him murdered in his stately offices, bloody Santa hat askew.

With adopt-a-cat month in full swing in Fox Hollow, pet shop owner Shell McMillan decides that hosting a night of murder mystery dinner theater will be a fun way to raise funds for the cause. But she didn't realize that the celebrity chef she'd hired for the event would turn out to be a tyrannical snob, or that her scoundrel of an ex-fiancé would turn up with his own shady agenda. Still, the show must go on, and as the lighthearted plot on-stage unfolds, the scene off-stage turns decidedly darker when the chef is found murdered.

Cat Latimer and her neighbor, Dante, are throwing a party the weekend before her monthly writers' retreat starts. Dante had asked her to help find out who stole money from the Covington College endowment fund. The party's going strong until a dead body is found in Dante's conservatory after the desserts are served. With a retreat to run, Cat doesn't have time to find a killer, but when it looks like the dead guy was setting Dante up for the fall, the list of suspects explodes and includes Dante, who's now the primary suspect on Uncle Pete's list.

The Red Empress is the only home Erzelle has known since the day her family was lured aboard and murdered, victims of a grisly ritual meant to make the elite immortal. Erzelle plays her harp for the diners inside this ghoul-infested riverboat, knowing her own death looms, escaping through the music that’s all she has left of her parents. Her nightmare’s upended in the space of a day by the arrival of Olyssa, a fellow musician, but so much more.

Restaurant critic Derek Schumaker, notorious for his bitter reviews, is about to visit Daisy's Tea Garden, and Daisy and Aunt Iris are simmering with anxiety. A bad word from the culinary curmudgeon could really hurt their business, but Daisy tries to stay confident. After all, how can he resist her cucumber sandwiches with pimento spread—not to mention the cheesy cauliflower soup and strawberry walnut salad?

Comic Book Women offers a feminist history of the golden age of comics, revising our understanding of how numerous genres emerged and upending narratives of how male auteurs built their careers. Considering issues of race, gender, and sexuality, the authors examine crime, horror, jungle, romance, science fiction, superhero, and Western comics to unpack the cultural and industrial consequences of how women were represented across a wide range of titles by publishers like DC, Timely, Fiction House, and others.

Daisy's orange pekoe is flowing at a fundraiser - and she's also made a new friend, Piper, a young woman whose hopes for motherhood were dashed by a foul-up at a fertility clinic. But before they can settle into a long conversation, the event is disrupted by masked protestors who object to building a shelter in Willow Creek. Among the angry crowd is Eli - who left his Amish community some time ago, with help from a lawyer named Hiram.

The faculty of Willow Creek High School are having a get-together after the spring concert with refreshments provided, courtesy of Daisy's Tea Garden. Oolong tea and chocolate biscuits are just what the staff needs to help them unwind from Althea Higgins's demanding curriculum. Her lessons on such controversial subjects as school uniforms and under qualified substitute teachers are earning her an F from her colleagues. But a failing grade was preferable to Althea falling victim to foul play.

As local merchants unite to attract tourists for a much anticipated weekend quilting event, business is sure to spill over into eateries like Daisy's Tea Garden. Reese Masemer had been dating one of Daisy's employees, Tessa, an artist, though their last interaction was as strained as a cup of loose leaf tea. Now Reese has been found dead near a covered bridge where Tessa's been practicing her sketches.

For the first time collected all together, C. S. E. Cooney releases fiction including the novella "The Witch in the Almond Tree," her erotic fairy tale "Witch, Beast, Saint," and the haunting "Braiding the Ghosts."

Eight years have passed since the Mayhem Wave forever altered the world to a blend of science and magic and since Harrison Cody rescued 28 teenage girls from human traffickers. Now they are disappearing, and he suspects their former captors, followers of an entity of ultimate power and evil, of an elaborate revenge scheme. An assistant director in the New Chicago Security Agency, Harrison puts his government resources to the task of protecting these women, and recovering the ones already lost.

A year has passed since the Mayhem Wave reshaped the world, erasing most of its population and replacing civilization with random artifacts of advanced technology and magic. Harrison Cody now works as a special agent for the government of New Chicago. When an expedition is launched to determine the Mayhem Wave's origin, Harrison joins them. They learn of other nations that have arisen in the ashes of the old world, not all of them friendly. They find the ruins of a once-great city and the possible source of the wave, the work of a man acting alone with uncertain motives.

Despite multiple waves of feminist revolution, today's single woman is still mired in judgment or, worse, pity. But for one brief exclamatory period in the 1930s, she was all the rage. Marjorie Hillis was working at Vogue when she published the radical self-help book Live Alone and Like It: A Guide for the Extra Woman. With Dorothy Parker-esque wit, she urged spinsters, divorcees, and old maids to shed derogatory labels, and her philosophy became a phenomenon.

In the early 20th century over 200 of New York's most glamorous socialites joined the suffrage movement. Their names - Astor, Belmont, Rockefeller, Tiffany, Vanderbilt, Whitney, and the like - carried enormous public value. These women were the media darlings of their day because of the extravagance of their costume balls and the opulence of the French couture clothes, and they leveraged their social celebrity for political power, turning women's right to vote into a fashionable cause.

Sora is having visions. Strange, terrifying visions brought on by her Cat's Eye necklace, an ancient and magical device. Spurred to action, she leaves her mother's cabin to find Crash, the mysterious assassin who once changed her life. She is certain that together, they can discover what the necklace is trying to tell her. Crash is still on the run from the dark sorcerer, Volcrian, but now a plague is spreading across the land.

Livvy Flynn is a big deal - she's a New York Times-best-selling author whose YA fiction has sold all over the world. She's rich, she's famous, she's gorgeous, and she's full of herself. When she's invited to an A-list writer's conference, she decides to accept so she can have some time to herself. She's on a tight deadline for her next book, and she has no intention of socializing with the other industry people at the conference. And then she hits the detour.