Showing results by author "Charlotte MacLeod" in All Categories

In a quiet small town in New Brunswick, old Agatha Treadway makes one last cranky complaint to her niece before dying on her kitchen floor. The cause seems to be a jar of contaminated string beans, which sat on Agatha's basement shelf for years before becoming her final meal. The town doctor calls it a tragic accident - and a warning to all who can their own vegetables - but Agatha's neighbor, the intrepid Janet Wadman, knows better. Agatha was an expert canner, which means the beans must have been placed there by someone else. This was murder.

Though he may not look the part, Madoc Rhys is a Mountie - and his keen sense of detection tells him it's time to ask Janet Wadman to marry him. They have just gotten engaged when Christmas rolls around, and Janet's boss invites them to his family estate for a last holiday fling before Janet leaves her job. After a long helicopter ride, they are at Graylings, ancestral home of the Condryckes, a family so strange that Canada's shortest Mountie fits right in. There is a psychic old woman, an erudite butler, and a family patriarch.

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).

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.

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 lodgers - deciding she prefers a boardinghouse to the poorhouse. Soon she is 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 Quiffen.

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 shouldn't. 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 wasn't the target.

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.

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 word gets out that Dittany Monk, the sleuthing gardener of Lobelia Falls, is expecting twins, every knitter in town races to Miss Jane Fuzzywuzzy's 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.

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.

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.