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An aging strippers fresh corpse turns up in an old family tomb at Boston Common in this first-rate suspense whodunit (The Cincinnati Post).   Like many old New England families, the Kellings live to die. Although their family vault is spacious and comfortable, it will not do for Sarah Kellings Great-Uncle Frederick. In his will, he demands to be buried inside the ancient family tomb at Boston Common, which hasnt admitted a new member in over a century. But when the Kellings crack the old vaults door, they find a recently built brick walland behind it lays a surprisingly fresh corpse, a skeleton with rubies in its teeth. Her name was Ruby Redd, and many years ago she was the toast of Bostons burlesque scene. Her murder case is ice cold, but when Sarah begins investigating it, she finds that the fiery passions behind Rubys death still burn white hot. With the help of art-fraud investigator Max Bittersohn, Sarah will solve the mystery of the strippers murderor take her own place in the family vault.

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A poisoned potpie pulls botanist Peter Shandy into a local Maine mystery in the series that offers a blooming good time (The Baltimore Sun).  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 hes staying. He may grow wretched lupines, but no gardener can solve a murder like Peter Shandy. The corpse belongs to the late Jasper Flodge, a local loudmouth with a toupee and a sizeable gut. Shoveling down the last bites of a chicken potpie, Flodge clutches his chest and falls dead. Suddenly with more to do than stopping to smell the lupines, Shandy must ask himself: Which Maine cook has the bad taste to flavor chicken with cyanide?

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A copycat crime on Groundhog Day brings out Professor Peter Shandy's inner sleuth in this Edgar Award finalist from the international bestselling author.

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.


First on the scene is Peter Shandy, horticulturalist andwhen the college requires itdetective. But solving this nineteenth-century murder mystery will take more than Shandy's knack for growing rutabagas. Relying on his wife's expertise in local history, the professor dives headfirst into a gilded-age whodunit that cloaks secrets potent enough to kill.

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Chasing a vile English plant, Professor Peter Shandy and his friends go on a most peculiar tripThe 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 worlds finest rutabaga, can save the day. But when Shandy and his colleagues set out to find hogweed samples, they stumble into an unusually mystical adventure. Quite by accident, Shandy trips through a publicans portal, and finds himself conversing with a giant. Trapped in a land of castles, wizards, and knights, Shandy must use every scrap of his horticultural genius to get back homelest the hogweed triumph in his absence.

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A horticulturist and amateur sleuth roots out an irritating professors killer in the Nero Awardwinning mystery series.  An unpleasant man in every respect, university professor Herbert Ungley is exceedingly vain. One morning, his landlady catches her cat coming in with Ungleys hairpiece between its teeth. Its 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: How did Ungley come to have such a bulging bank account? Who was Ungleys long-lost heir, and what did he have to do with the professors lost hair? And whose is the second body in the woods? Shandy must answer these questions and more if hes to discover who pulled the rug out from the balding corpse.

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At Balaclava Agricultural College, a kidnapping and pig-napping are followed by murder Newlyweds Peter and Helen Shandy are picking out flatware when a pair of gun-toting hooligans bursts into the silversmiths shop, emptying the safe and leaving with Helen as their hostage. Although the police recover Helen quickly, her professor husband is badly shaken by the ordeal. Early the next morning, the colleges head of animal husbandry frantically reports another hostage situation in progress. Belinda, the schools beloved sow, has been kidnapped, and only Peter can bring home the bacon.   Theres a possible witness to the pig-napping in Miss Flackley, the farrier, but before she can point Peter toward the vanished porker, shes found dead in the barns mash feeder. By the time Peter discovers the link between the two heists, pigs may really fly.

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The curtains almost close on an actor in this cozy gardening club mystery featuring amateur sleuth Dittany Henbit and her husband, Osbert Monk.    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 playwrightnot only is he married to their club leader Dittany Monk, but hes famous the world over as Lex Laramie, bestselling 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. To play McGrew, Dittany picks town cad Andrew McNaster, who has recently improved his manners in an attempt to woo Osberts aunt, Arethusa. The gunslingers performance gets a bit too real on opening night, though, when his prop bullets are replaced with real ones, and claim the toe of a fellow thespian. Is McNaster as nice as he pretends to be? Or has he taken his part too close to heart, and decided to become very dangerous indeed? 

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Christmas crimes hit close to home for Bostons favorite art sleuths. Charlotte MacLeods mysteries are witty and full of humor (Maine Crime Writers).  The angry old men of the Comrades of the Convivial Codfish club celebrate yuletide doing what they do best: eating, drinking, and greeting the season of giving with a spirited bah, humbug! Though well past sixty, Jem Kelling is a relative infant compared to some of the clubs elder statesmen, and he has waited decades to host their annual Christmas scowl. And during his first evening as Exalted Chowderhead, he is thrilled to find the wine abundant, the chowder superb, and the humbugs as lusty as ever. But as the night winds down, Jem is horrified to find that the ceremonial Codfish necklace has vanishedright off of his neck! His nephew-in-law, art investigator Max Bittersohn, is convinced his new uncle was the victim of a practical joke. But when the old man takes a hip-snapping tumble, Max is forced to conclude that one of the scrooges is trying to perpetrate a deadly Christmas jeer.

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A widowed gardener meets a ghost from frontier times whos out for revenge: The screwball mystery is Charlotte MacLeods cup of tea (Chicago Tribune).   Zilla Trott is pouring her cat some chamomile tea when the drifter appears in her kitchen. He is grubby and crudenot at all the kind of person youd usually find in the pleasant town of Lobelia Fallsbut something about him intrigues the aging widow. Perhaps its his rugged good looks, or the way he seems to come from another time and place. Or perhaps its the fact that hes been dead for nearly a century. When Lobelia Falls was in its rough-and-tumble frontier infancy, Hiram Jellyby was the best mule driver the town had ever seen, until an argument over a hidden cache of gold left him bleeding to death in a back alley. He returns in spectral form to secure a proper burial, and finds that in modern-day Lobelia Falls, no one knows more about turning the soil than Zilla Trotts gardening buddiesall members of Dittany Monks fearless Grub-and-Stake Gardening and Roving Club.

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A murder in a yarn store leads to some wild and woolly adventures in this energetic and merry mystery (Publishers Weekly).  When word gets out that Dittany Monk, the sleuthing gardener of Lobelia Falls, is expecting twins, every knitter in town races to Miss Jane Fuzzywuzzys Yarnery to begin work on a complete wardrobe of hats, booties, and tiny sweaters. One customer, however, has even more urgent business: the man with the gunshot wounds in his back. The victim stumbles out of a bullet-ridden car, dripping blood all over the freshly cleaned sidewalk, and dies with a peculiar phrase on his lips: The raveled sleeve! Before Miss Jane can offer advice on how to rescue an unraveling sweater, her unfortunate customer expires. To ensure her twins can be raised in a safe hometown, Dittany will have to get the yarn-store murder sewn up.

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A small town gardeningand archeryclub must solve a murder case and save their town from developers in the first cozy mystery featuring Dittany Henbit.  Anyone growing up in Lobelia Falls is taught to learn the elegant, ancient, and occasionally deadly art of shooting with a bow and arrow. Practicing the craft, freelance secretary Dittany Henbit is strolling through the woods with her bow at her side when she meets a surveyor making surveys where he shouldnt. Dittany is giving him what-for when an arrow goes whizzing above her head. It is sharp enough to kill, and was not fired by accident, but Dittany wasnt the target. She and the surveyor find Mr. Architrave, the head of the water department, not far awaylying dead beneath the trees that he loved so much. Progress is coming to Lobelia Falls, and one resident will do anything to stop it. But in a town where every child can shoot, how can Dittany discover who drew the killer bow?

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Death pays a visit to Sarah Kellings Boston boardinghouse in this cozy mystery from the bestselling author of the Peter Shandy series.  Though the inheritance from her dearly departed Alexander was meant to set Sarah Kelling up for life, it vanishes quickly in the face of hounding from charitable organizations and the IRS. Facing the loss of her stately Back Bay brownstone, Sarah opens her home to lodgersdeciding she prefers a boardinghouse to the poorhouse. Soon shes cooking meals and serving tea for a cast of quirky residents, a cozy little family that would be quite happy were it not for the unpleasant presence of a certain Barnwell Augustus Quiffena man so rude that no one really minds when hes squashed beneath a subway car. Sarah replaces her lost boarder quickly, and the family dynamic is restored. But when another lodger dies suddenly, the boardinghouse appears to be cursed. Now itll take more than a glass of sherry to soothe Sarahs panicked residents, and she must turn to detective Max Bittersohn for help before her boarders bolt. The epitome of the cozy mystery (Mostly Murder), award-winning author Charlotte MacLeods Sarah Kelling and Max Bittersohn Mysteries have charmed readers the world over.

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When a Western movie star is gunned down at a rodeo, the legendary detective Ellery Queen saddles up to catch the killer.  Buck Horne has roped thousands of cattle, slugged his way out of dozens of saloons, and shot plenty of men dead in the streetbut always on the backlot. He is a celluloid cowboy, and his career is nearly kaput. The real box office draw is his daughter, Kit, a brawling beauty who can outshoot any rascal the studio has to offer. Desperate for a comeback, Buck joins Wild Bill Grants traveling rodeo for a show in New York, hoping to impress Hollywood and land one last movie contract. But he has scarcely mounted his horse when he falls to the dirt. It wasnt age that made him slipit was the bullet in his heart. Watching from the stands are Ellery Queen, debonair sleuth, and his police detective father. They are New Yorkers through and through, but to solve the rodeo killing, the Queens must learn to talk cowboy.

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When an amnesiac friend wakes up with blood on his handsand it seems to be someone elsesEllery Queen takes the case in this enigmatic entertainment (Kirkus Reviews).    Howard Van Horn wakes up in a Bowery flophouse. His knuckles are bruised, his head is bloodied, all his valuables are gone, and he has a strong urge to leap out the window. He has been unconscious for nineteen daysanother in a long line of amnesiac episodes that have destroyed this once-promising sculptor. As he comes to grips with this latest blackout, he realizes something awful. The blood on his clothes suggests that another life has been wrecked. Van Horn goes to an old friend, amateur sleuth Ellery Queen, who works hand in hand with the New York Police Department. Though Queen has solved countless murders, never before has he been asked to determine whether a crime was committed at all. To get to the root of the sculptors attacks, Queen forces him to return to Boston, to confront a family secret so dark that Van Horns mind destroyed itself rather than face it.  

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A White Arrest, Taming the Alien, and The McDead

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Hip, violent and funny vignettes of the mean streets of southeast London tie together this rowdy set of short novels from the Irish crime writer (Publishers Weekly). At sixty-two, Chief Inspector Roberts is nearly too old to be a cop, but he makes up for his age with a ferocity that the younger detectives cannot match. After four decades on the force, he has a daughter who hates him, a wife who cheats, and a bank account that grows emptier every year. But on Londons darker streets, Roberts is a force to be reckoned with. With his partner, the gleefully brutal Detective Sergeant Brant, Roberts looks for every policemans dream: the White Arrest, a high-profile success that makes up for all their past failures. In A White Arrest, their target is a bat-wielding lunatic who knocks off drug dealers. In Taming the Alien, they hunt a mysterious hit man who earned his nickname by carrying out a hit while watching Ridley Scotts sci-fi classic. And in The McDead, Roberts and Brant set their sights on a cunning kingpin ruling Londons southeast side. Gripping and gritty, Ken Bruens White Trilogy is an unforgettable noir portrait of Londons seedy underworld.

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Ellery Queen and his father take refuge with a killer in this classic manor-house mystery starring one of crime fictions most legendary sleuths. Driving along a lonely mountain road, detective Ellery Queen and his father, Richard, round a bend and nearly run headlong into a forest fire. To escape, they race up the mountain and take shelter at the cliffside manor of Dr. John Xavier, a surgeon of considerable repute. Ellery quickly suspects something strange is going on inside the housefrom Xaviers bizarre references to his work to the pair of eyes Ellery sees burning in the darkbut before he can confront Xavier about what hes doing in his laboratory, the good doctor is found shot dead while playing solitaireand the only clue is a ripped six of spades. With the help of his father, a gruff police inspector, Ellery sets about solving the crime. The suspects include the victims valet, a pair of conjoined twins, and the mysterious Mr. Smith. In this game, the stakes are life and death. One of the earliest novels starring the storied Ellery Queen, The Siamese Twin Mystery is a classic golden-age murder mystery. From the manor-house setting to the gothic atmosphere, it presents an Edgar Awardwinning author at his very best. 

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One of the great Golden Age detectives is back in a mystery that pioneered a style which countless writers would follow in the decades to come (American Culture).   Its Christmas in Chicago, and Inspector Richard Queen is enjoying a busmans holiday at a conference on gangland violencebut his son, amateur sleuth Ellery, isbored silly. Until, that is, Ellery reads of an unusual killing in rural Arroyo, West Virginia: A schoolmaster has been found beheaded and crucified. Ellery hustles his father into his roadster and heads east, since there is nothing hed like better for Christmas than a juicy, gruesome puzzle. When the Queens arrive in Arroyo, they learn that the victim was an eccentric atheist, but not the sort to make enemies. What initially looks to be the work of a sadistic cult turns out to be something far more sinister. In the months ahead, more victims will turn up all over the worldall killed in the same horrifying manner. It will take several bodies before Queen divines the clue that unlocks the mystery of the Christmas crucifixion.  

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A pre-op murder leads to a hospital whodunit for Ellery Queenfrom the author hailed as the most important American in mystery fiction (Otto Penzler). The son of a police detective, Ellery Queen grew up in a bloody atmosphere. Since he started lending his deductive powers to the New York City homicide squad, he has seen more than his fair share of mangled corpses. Though he is accustomed to gore, the thought of seeing a living person sliced open makes him ill. So when a doctor invites him to sit in on an operation, Queen braces his stomach. As it happens, his stomach is spared, but his brain must go to work. The patient is Abigail Doorn, a millionairess in a diabetic coma. To prepare her for surgery, the hospital staff has stabilized her blood sugar level and wheeled her to the operating theaterbut just before the first incision, the doctors realize she is dead, strangled while lying unconscious on her gurney. Queen came to the hospital to watch surgeons work, but now its his time to operate. 

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A stylish puzzle mystery from the author who took the intellectual game that was the formal detective novel to greater heights than any American writer (The Weekly Standard). The windows of Frenchs department store are one of New Yorks great attractions. Year-round, their displays show off the finest in fashion, art, and home decor, and tourists and locals alike make a point of stopping to see whats on offer. One afternoon, as the board debates a merger upstairs, a salesgirl begins a demonstration in one of the windows, showing off Frenchs new Murphy bed. A crowd gathers to watch the bed lower from the wall after a single touch of a button. But as the bed opens, people run screaming. Out tumbles a womancrumpled, bloody, and dead. The victim was Mrs. French, wife of the company president, and finding her killer will turn this esteemed store upside down. Only one detective has the soft touch necessarydebonair intellectual Ellery Queen. As Queen and his police inspector father dig into Frenchs secrets, they find their killer is more serious than any window shopper. 

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When the seeds of a mystery are planted, gardening club member Dittany Henbit digs up clues in the cozy series from the international bestselling author.  The Grub-and-Stakers gardening club has traditionally limited its activities to serving tea and gossiping about wildflowers, but when water department supervisor John Architrave is found murdered in the woods, club member Dittany Henbit turns to solving mysteries. After Architraves 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 houses attic when he takes his tumble off the roof. So unlikely is it that he would fall out the tiny attic window, that Dittany has no choice but to attempt to add one captured killer to the young museums permanent collection.