Amateur Sleuths

In the first book of The Backyard Model mysteries by TK Sheffield, a frugal fashion model hangs up her second-hand stilettos and returns to her small town to open a business—but then is forced to become an amateur sleuth after becoming a suspect in a murder.

Melanie Tower is done...

Model Ghost, Book 3 of The Backyard Model Mysteries:

A fashion show at a senior resort results in a dead body on the runway. 

Former fashion model Mel Tower confronts the unfashionable parts of her past in this October mystery at a senior resort in her Wisconsin...

Model Wave, book two of the Backyard Model Mysteries, is a beach read, a vacation mystery that's like taking a vacation in a book. Former fashion model Mel Tower travels to Northern Wisconsin for a date with a handsome sheriff. But, when a businessman is found murdered in a pontoon...

Lenore Valentine Kirby’s cryptic gravestone in a derelict cemetery beckons across centuries.

The four Botanic Hill Detectives—Lanny, Lexi, Moki, and Rani—stumble upon a mystery revealed by the deceased woman’s descendant, Mr. Nigel Kirby. Can the teens decipher Lenore Kirby's gravestone image and messages? Their unusual, present-day case, incorporating the life...

Botanic Hill series book #6.

A fearless quartet of teen sleuths, the Botanic Hill detectives, travel to Llanfair, a fictitious Welsh village in present-day California, to solve the mystery of the Shocking Specter. The green-glowing apparition reportedly roams the countryside, setting fire to buildings and meadows during the new moon....

A Tahitian black pearl necklace, missing for over eighty years, takes the thirteen-year-old Botanic Hill detectives—Lanny, Lexi, Moki, and Rani—from California to Oʿahu in one of the squad’s most baffling cases yet!

The teens’ famous elderly neighbor Mr. Itsuki Yamada hires them to find his family’s valuable heirloom necklace. Soon,...

The Wild West Californio days have returned with a vengeance in this confounding, present-day mystery!

Our teen detectives return home to Las Palmitas, California, from solving a mystery abroad. Their neighbor, Señor Antonio Del Castillo, owner of one of the original Spanish land grant

Book #3 of The Botanic Hill Detectives Mystery Series:

Objects of value have been disappearing from the Mayfield family’s rural California horse ranch. The Botanic Hill Detectives—Moki Kalani, Rani Kumar, and twins Lanny and Lexi Wyatt—are hired to come for a week to investigate.

Legend has it somewhere on the...

Book #2 of The Botanic Hill Detectives Mystery Series:

In 1945, Isabela de Cordoba’s great-grandfather, silent movie actor Lorenzo de Cordoba, mysteriously hid a legendary, multimillion-dollar emerald somewhere on the family’s sprawling estate. Nicknamed the “Green Curse,” the emerald is blamed for the family’s numerous, untimely deaths. Enter, the Botanic...

Book #1 in The Botanic Hill Detectives Mystery Series:

World-famous Egyptologist Dr. Winston Thornsley died suddenly two months ago in disgrace. His widow, Ida Thornsley, knows her husband was falsely accused of stealing an ancient burial urn he discovered in Egypt last summer, but local and federal law enforcement officers...

The Malice Domestic anthology series returns with a new take on mysteries in the Agatha Christie tradition—original tales focusing on older sleuths! Included are works by:

Jacqueline Winspear
Christina Hoag
Ellen Byron
Melissa Westemeier
D.R. Ransdell
KM Rockwood
Patricia Gouthro
Eleanor Ingbretson
...

The Malice Domestic anthology series returns with a new take on mysteries in the Agatha Christie tradition–original tales with a theatrical bent!

Murder for Dinner. Death for Dessert. Recipes To Kill For offers treasured recipes from the mystery writers of the Sisters in Crime Desert Sleuths Chapter plus celebrity guest authors—a collection you’ll not find anywhere else. From delicious meat and vegetarian main dishes, to Southwestern specialties, rich soups and stews,...

The Malice Domestic anthology series returns with a new take on mysteries in the Agatha Christie tradition—original tales with a devilish bent!

The Malice Domestic anthology series returns with a new take on mysteries in the Agatha Christie tradition — 36 original tales with a culinary bent!

A Desert Sleuths Anthology:

The sun descends over the mountains and valleys of the Arizona desert. Under cover of darkness, evil flourishes. Not afraid of the dark? You will be. Desert Sleuths offer 20 tales in the latest edition of their award-winning anthology series. Grab a flashlight. Pull the...

Bar owner Una has no idea that breaking up a late-night brawl will lead to murder. Anxious to save her critically wounded mentor, she rushes headlong into a terrifying night of chases through the inky blackness of Arizona’s mountains. Her situation goes from unbelievable to horrific as she learns secrets...

When American intern Maddie McGuire receives an invitation to go sightseeing in Glastonbury, she expects a lot of things. An Arthurian knight floating in a pool at the Chalice Well, a broadsword through his chest, isn't one of them. Maddie realizes that turning to the police only sets in motion...

When Maddie McGuire finds herself tumbling over a cliff while hiking The Cotswold Way, she uncovers much more than ancient woods. Terrified by her shocking discovery, she returns to the safety of her international internship at the Roman Baths only to find competition in the form of...

Quinn McFarland has grown up around dead bodies…
Quinn’s always joked about death, but this summer, death stops being funny. For one thing, her brother finally undergoes transplant surgery. For another, Quinn’s estranged BFF—her “blood sister”—is brought into the family mortuary, bludgeoned to death.
Quinn is haunted...

Book #3 in the Deep Lakes Cozy Mystery Series:

Summer in Deep Lakes sprouts a homegrown murder on the O’Connor farm. Frankie’s hunt for clues lands her deep in sheep doo-doo, especially after rare stones surface in unexpected places. Crime-solving is no picnic for the baker/vintner as she hops from...

When Bay Browning helps direct the Flourish College summer theater production, "Shakespeare's Couch," she doesn't plan for murder at the first practice. Someone wants revenge against the elite cast members, as more terror unfolds on stage and backstage with each rehearsal. What should be a lighthearted parody on The Bard...

Frankie’s plans for her daughter Sophie’s wedding are anything but spring breezes and blossoms. An unexpected hot spell ushers in a wave of mysterious deaths, at a time when Whitman County is missing its coroner. Garrett, who is also Frankie’s beau, is called away to Duluth to assist his former...

The promise of Spring in Deep Lakes, Wisconsin brings the community out of hibernation to plan the annual Roots Festival. Bubble and Bake owner Frankie Champagne just wants to help the Granite Mansion quarry heiress plan the keynote presentation. So, why does she find herself in the middle of the...

Before Frankie Champagne encountered Deep Dark Secrets, her main concerns were baking tasty pastries and producing flavorful wines—along with charming her mother, of course. But with the town Christmas season in jeopardy, Frankie steps up to save the day, as only someone who doesn’t believe in the word impossible can...

Cozy up to a winter mystery set in snowy Wisconsin. Who killed the local pastor with an ice auger on Lake Loki? Join Frankie Champagne, baker, wine-maker and amateur investigative reporter, as she tracks suspects armed with delicious baked goods and old-fashioned intuition. Book One of the Deep Lakes...

The Browning sisters flex their mystery-solving muscles as they muddle through a maze of twisted secrets and dark deeds in Poetry Slammed. Bay’s department colleague, Vivian Rossi, vanishes after hosting a poetry slam night at the college coffee shop. All that remains of the eccentric professor are the totes she...

Grapes wait for nobody. The tourist season is running full swing when Frankie’s vineyard is ripe for picking, leaving her frazzled, as she divides her time between the Bubble & Bake shop and Bountiful Fruits winery. When a dead body surfaces in nearby Blackbird Pond, it quickly becomes an albatross...

Alene Baron is 38 years old and over seven years divorced from her philandering husband. She lives in a Chicago lakefront high-rise with her three children and her 72-year-old father. She owns the nearby Whipped and Sipped Café, which serves decadent but healthful pastries and drinks. Alene’s pastry chef and...

When the owner of the business next door is found dead in his office, Alene Baron’s first feeling is relief. She’s been suspicious of the food supplements her neighbor has been selling, not to mention the smoothies he’s been...

Book #3 in the Whipped and Sipped Series.

Murder is on the menu—served warm with muffins and lattes.

At the Whipped and Sipped Café, Alene Baron knows how to handle a kitchen fire—but this blaze may burn far beyond her control.

When a suspicious fire draws Alene,...

They only thought they knew what they were getting into.

It was September, 1982. Broke and desperate, Lisa Wycherly thought she was signing on as simply a secretary for wealthy freelance writer Sid Hackbirn. Okay, it was a live-in position, which was weird. But even though Lisa believed sex belonged...

Finally, it's real love... Now what?

Lisa Wycherly's surprise birthday party ends in a terrifying disaster when she's kidnapped off the street. Her partner, Sid Hackbirn, is so devastated that he loses his interest in sleeping around - the one thing keeping the two of them apart. The kidnapping gets...

A deadly amateur, a top-secret formula, and full mating plumage.

In the sixth Operation Quickline story,  operatives Lisa Wycherly and Sid Hackbirn are sent undercover at a small arts college in Wisconsin with Lisa as an English professor and Sid as a student.. The job is to find out who...

It doesn't mean they're not out to get you

Lisa Wycherly and Sid Hackbirn find themselves up against a relentless enemy and about to get the shock of their lives in book nine of the Operation Quickline series. First, there's the wedding. Not Sid and Lisa's, but her cousin Maggie's,...

One inoffensive drunkard. So many reasons to kill him.

A bold shooting ends the life of Mr. Hewitt, the buggy manufacturer on a cold night in December, 1872. Physician and winemaker Maddie Wilcox is particularly puzzled, since it was clear that Mr. Hewitt was soon to die of his own...

The job was a nuisance. The target was a disaster

Sid Hackbirn never knew his mother Sheila. When startling new evidence in Sheila’s murder shows up, Sid isn’t terribly interested until Stella, the aunt who raised him, becomes hellbent on finding out who killed her sister over thirty years...