Showing results for "Julia" in Amateur Sleuths

Julia Bird loves a walk in the countryside. There’s nothing quite like the fresh air and green rolling hills of the Cotswolds to clear your head. Unless you come across a dead body, that is… When the local Berrywick vet, Dr Eve Davies, is found dead at the bottom of a cliff, the police believe it’s nothing more than a tragic accident, but Julia isn’t so sure. Just a few days earlier when she took her dog, Jake, to the vets, Dr Eve said she believed something awful was about to happen. It turns out she was right…But who would want the beloved village vet dead?

From death to danger and malice to mystery, Samson and Delilah have weathered many storms. Finally, things should be going smoothly. Except life’s never that simple in Bruncliffe, is it? As the couple are beset with worries about their upcoming wedding, a charismatic celebrity comes knocking on the Dales Detective Agency’s door, seeking their services. Samson is initially reluctant to help, for many reasons. But things quickly escalate following a murder at Fellside Court and, as a friend comes under suspicion, Samson and Delilah must set aside their personal problems to catch a killer.

When Julia Bird’s ex-husband Peter and his lovely partner Christopher decide to get married in Berrywick, Julia is delighted–after all, who doesn't love a country wedding? Little does Julia know that normally calm and collected Christopher will turn into a full-on Groomzilla–and that by the end of the night, someone will end up dead. The morning after the big day, the jolly nuptial mood turns grim when Julia discovers the lifeless body of the caterer, Desmond. Someone locked him in the cold truck and the poor man froze to death.

A woman in tears in the Dales Detective Agency is never the best way to start the week. But when that woman is the wife of Bernard Taylor, town mayor and eminent businessman, there is even more cause for alarm. So when Nancy Taylor asks the detectives to investigate whether her husband is having an affair, Samson O’Brien and Delilah Metcalfe know they will have to tread carefully. The case, however, proves to be more complex than even they had imagined.

Alchemist Zoe Faust is no stranger to magical mayhem, but when her boyfriend's new tea shop is vandalized and his special tea blends stolen, she plunges into a baffling mystery to save him. The clues lead Zoe and her gargoyle sidekick Dorian to an eerie mansion high in the Portland hills, filled with creeping carnivorous plants and enigmatic topiary monsters. When they stumble across a corpse in the conservatory that appears to have been killed by sinister shrubbery, an estranged member of the family is implicated in the murder.

Christmas Eve, 1989. A couple is found slumped in front of their twinkling Christmas tree in an apparent murder-suicide. Today. Librarian Pru Pearce is preparing for her wedding to police detective Andy Barnes. But after one of her Women's Institute friends suffers a suspicious accident at Rookery Grange, a home for the elderly and infirm, Pru and the other ladies are on alert. And when one of the residents is asphyxiated with a pillow, no one can rest easy. With her wedding taking a disastrous turn and a killer on the loose, the part-time detective makes another vow: to solve the mystery.

In Aunt Kate and Lady Jane's second lighthearted cozy mystery, Kate's retired friend Norman West goes missing. But does his disappearance relate to a brutal murder? England, June 1928 The relationship between aunt and niece continues to grow when Lady Jane comes to stay with Kate in Sandham-on-Sea. However, instead of enjoying a week of fine dinners, long lunches, and clotted cream teas, they become entangled with Norman's secret life and a murderous conspiracy—which Scotland Yard's Inspector Ridley insists they stay away from.

Prunella Pearce, Bree, and the other ladies of the Winterbottom Women’s Institute are planning to spend Halloween at the Montgomery Hall Hotel murder-mystery weekend, just as the Hall’s past comes back to haunt it. The hotel is now in the incapable hands of Tarragon Montgomery, with its faltering finances overseen by elderly matriarch Cecily. Meanwhile, the local actress hired to play Psychic Selma for the weekend has been replaced by an impostor. But who is she and what is her agenda?

When the patriarch of a famed hotel empire dies under suspicious circumstances, his daughter and her estranged brother join forces to find out what happened, unraveling a larger mystery about who their father really was.

Rosie Strange doesn't believe in ghosts or witches or magic. It's no surprise therefore that when she inherits the ramshackle Essex Witch Museum, her first thought is to take the money and run. Still, the museum exerts a curious pull over Rosie. There's the eccentric academic who bustles in to demand she help in a hunt for the bones of the notorious Ursula Cadence, a witch long since put to death. And there's curator Sam Stone, a man about whom Rosie can't decide if he's tiresomely annoying or extremely captivating.

Aunt Kate and Lady Jane's third lighthearted cozy mystery takes place at a priory destroyed in 1545. While Jane and her archaeological friends seek the long-lost grave of Prior Wilfred, Kate astounds everyone by unearthing a body buried only twenty years ago. Was it murder?

In 1924 Manhattan, women’s suffrage is old news. For sophisticated booklover Julia Kydd, life’s too short for politics. With her cropped hair and penchant for independent living, Julia wants only to publish books under her own imprint. But as a woman, Julia must fight for what’s hers - including the inheritance her estranged half brother, Philip, has challenged, putting her aspirations in jeopardy.

When stylish young bibliophile Julia Kydd returns to 1920s New York, she’s determined to launch her own private press. Julia’s aspirations take her into the heart of the Harlem Renaissance, a literary movement unlike any she’s known - where notions of race, sexuality, and power are slippery, and identities can be deceptively fluid.

With hundreds flocking to her inaugural garden party, meticulous Lilly Jayne hasn't left a single petal out of place. But the picture-perfect gathering turns unruly upon the arrival of Merilee Frank, Lily's ex-husband's catty third wife. Merilee lives for trouble, so no one is surprised after she drinks too much, shoves a guest into the koi pond, and gets escorted off the property. The real surprise comes days later - when Merilee is found dead in a pile of mulch.

Spring has brought many new beginnings into the world of Persimmon ‘Simmy’ Brown. Not only has her baby arrived, but she and her fiancé, Christopher, have moved to the historic village of Hartsop - and their forthcoming nuptials are only a short month away. But when a former acquaintance of Christopher’s reminds him of an undertaking made a decade previously that he hasn't fulfilled, their lives soon take a sinister turn. Yet even with a young baby to consider, Simmy cannot ignore her instinct to investigate.

Two days before an auction of the contents of High Gates House in Borrowdale, Christopher Henderson bumps into Jennifer Reade, the heir to the entire estate, and the expected recipient of the proceeds of the house clearance sale. She discovers a dead man in the cellar of the house but threatens and cajoles Christopher into remaining silent about it until after the auction to avoid complications and delays. The auction begins but is soon halted by the police with the news that a murder has been committed.

Set in the picturesque town of Askham, near Ullswater, the story opens with the funeral of Humphrey Craig, the builder who converted Simmy's new house in Hartsop. The following day, when Simmy goes back to look at the grave and the flowers on it, she meets two women, Lindsay Wilson, an academic in her late twenties who is writing a thesis on Charles Dickens' Dombey and Son, and Pauline Parsons, a local matriarch aged 90. Just 24 hours later, Mrs Parsons is found dead on Askham Fell and Simmy is summoned to Penrith police station.

Ellie Quicke is shocked when her daughter, Diana, turns up at her door with a suitcase in tow. Bunny Brewster has died of an overdose, and Diana's husband, Evan, is convinced that she is responsible for his friend's death. It seems that Diana and four other neglected wives of Evan's friends recently joked about ways to kill their husbands. Diana's suggested method of murder involved muddling up pills - could this be how Bunny died?

Simmy Brown has a lot on her mind. Not just keeping her florist business afloat, her father’s failing health and the challenge of developing a long-term relationship with Christopher but also the approach of Mother’s Day, a busy and painful day for her. But in taking an order for a retirement party in Staveley, she is pulled into her most challenging investigation. When a daughter starts accusing her own mother of murder, Simmy, Ben and Bonnie find themselves taking different sides of the investigation. With her relationships under strain, Simmy is tried on all fronts....

There is something not quite right about the death of her aunt...and psychic investigator Fran Castle is sure of it. The will is missing, and long-lost relatives are obstructing the case, both of which are suspicious on their own, even before the bodies start piling up.... Luckily, nothing is likely to stop Fran's sleuthing partner, Libby, from getting involved to help hunt down the murderer. As the murders multiply and the police take over, can the amateur sleuths keep on the trail?