Mystery Reads

Veterinary technician Carrie Kennersly has become known for offering healthy dog treats at the clinic where she works. So when the owner of the local bakery moves away, Carrie jumps at the chance to buy the business and convert half of it into the Barkery, a shop where she can make and sell her canine delights. But Myra Ethman, co-owner of another pet product store, hates the new competition. At the Barkery's opening party, she badmouths Carrie's homemade dog biscuits, insisting she'll find a way to shut the place down. When Myra is found dead with a Barkery biscuit beside her, Carrie must prove she didn't do it before she's collared for murder.

After an injury forced her to leave the police department, Abigail Mackenzie started a second career as a farmer. Raising chickens, harvesting honey from her bee colony, and growing heirloom vegetables on her farmette in the beautiful Bay Area town of Las Flores, Abby has embraced all the benefits of a peaceful life. But when she attempts to deliver her trademark honey to local pastry chef Jean-Louis Bonheur and finds him dead in his shop, her old investigative instincts kick in. After the coroner rules the death a suicide, the chef s handsome French-Canadian brother insists on hiring Abby to find out who really killed Jean-Louis. With the patience of a farmer and the industriousness of a bee, Abby sorts through a swarm of suspects, including the chef s landlord, his protege, an eccentric homeless woman, loan sharks, and a brawny biker. But as she closes in on the truth, she ll need more than her beekeeper suit to protect her from a killer s sting Includes farming tips and delicious recipes!

Darla Pettistone left Texas for New York after unexpectedly inheriting her Great-Aunt Dee's Brooklyn bookstore. She didn't know that the store's mascot--Hamlet, an oversize black cat with a personality to match--was also part of the deal. And he may be more trouble than Darla bargained for...   As the new owner of Pettistone's Fine Books, Darla Pettistone is determined to prove herself a worthy successor to her late great-aunt Dee...and equally determined to outwit Hamlet, the smarter-than-thou cat she inherited along with the shop.   Darla's first store event is a real coup--the hottest bestselling author of the moment is holding a signing there, which brings hordes of fans and some protestors. But when the author meets an untimely end during the event, it's hardly good for business, even though it's  ruled an accident...until Hamlet digs up a clue that seems to indicate otherwise. Now Darla fears a killer might be lurking about... Can the interfering Hamlet point the paw at the culprit without losing one of his own nine lives?

Meet Chet, the wise and lovable canine narrator ofDog on It, who works alongside Bernie, a down-on-his-luck private investigator. Chet might have flunked out of police school ("I'd been the best leaper in K-9 class, which had led to all the trouble in a way I couldn't remember exactly, although blood was involved"), but he's a detective through and through.In this, their first adventure, Chet and Bernie investigate the disappearance of Madison, a teenage girl who may or may not have been kidnapped, but who has definitely gotten mixed up with some very unsavory characters. A well-behaved, gifted student, she didn't arrive home after school and her divorced mother is frantic. Bernie is quick to take the case -- something about a cash flow problem that Chet's not all that clear about -- and he's relieved, if vaguely suspicious, when Madison turns up unharmed with a story that doesn't add up. But when she disappears for a second time in a week, Bernie and Chet aren't taking any chances; they launch a full-blown investigation. Without a ransom demand, they're not convinced it's a kidnapping, but they are sure of one thing: something smells funny.Their search for clues takes them into the desert to biker bars and other exotic locals, with Chet's highly trained nose leading the way. Both Chet and Bernie bring their own special skills to the hunt, one that puts each of them in peril. But even as the bad guys try to turn the tables, this duo is nothing if not resourceful, and the result is an uncommonly satisfying adventure.With his doggy ways and his endearingly hardboiled voice, Chet is full of heart and occasionally prone to mischief. He is intensely loyal to Bernie, who, though distracted by issues that Chet has difficulty understanding -- like divorce, child custody, and other peculiar human concerns -- is enormously likable himself, in his flawed, all-too-human way.

Everyone in Athena, Mississippi, knows Charlie Harris, the good-natured librarian with a rescued Maine coon cat named Diesel that he walks on a leash.  He's returned to his hometown to immerse himself in books, but soon enough he's entangled in a real-life thriller...   A famous author of gory bestsellers and a former classmate of Charlie's, Godfrey Priest may be the pride of Athena, but Charlie remembers him as an arrogant, manipulative jerk--and he's not the only one. Godfrey's homecoming as a distinguished alumnus couldn't possibly go worse: by lunch, he's put a man in the hospital. By dinner, Godfrey's dead.   Now it's up to Charlie, with some help from Diesel, to paw through the town's grudges and find the killer before an impatient deputy throws the book at the wrong person. But every last one of Charlie's friends and co-workers had a score to settle with the nasty novelist. As if the murder wasn't already purr-plexing enough...

Rich and flamboyant Honeybelle Hensley, the most colorful character in Mule Stop, Texas, dies a suspicious death and enrages the whole town by leaving her worldly fortune to the most undeserving recipient-her dog. The incorrigible Miss Ruffles is a Texas Cattle Cur, not a cuddly lapdog, and when Honeybelle was alive, Miss Ruffles liked nothing better than digging up Honeybelle's famous rose garden after breakfast, chasing off the UPS man before lunch and terrorizing the many gentleman callerswho came knocking at cocktail hour. But now Miss Ruffles is in danger, and it's up to Sunny McKillip, the unwilling dogsitter, to keep her safe. Sunny is new to Texas, and sometimes she feels as if she's fallen into an alien world. If it isn't the pistol-packing football fans and the sweet-talking, yet ruthless ladies of the garden club who confound her, it's the rowdy rodeo hounds and the tobacco-spitting curmudgeon at Critter Control who have her buffaloed. With a killer on the loose and a cowboy lawyer keeping a suspicious eye on her every move, Sunny needs all the help she can get understanding how Texans think. There's more to Honeybelle's death than meets this Yankee's eye, and Sunny has Miss Ruffles to protect, too. It's a bucking bull ride of an adventure for Sunny, and if she's not careful she might just get killed . . . or her heart lassoed...

On Jeep Reed's Wings Ranch near Reno, Jeep, her great-niece, former Wall Street banker Magdalene "Mags" Rogers, and their two dogs King and Baxter investigate a pump company employee's disappearance, along with an environmentalist's shooting "suicide" and the identity of a really cold corpse.

While uncovering a link between two murders located more than five hundred miles apart, Joe Grey, feline P.I., and his pals Dulcie and Kit, must stop a hate-filled crime spree on Valentine's Day.

The prolific and delightful Marian Babson has penned another stupendous cozy for cat lovers. Vanessa has been rushed to hospital, having been found unconscious at the foot of the stairs. Was it an accident or something else? Now, smiling weakly, suffering from a head injury that has left her with complete amnesia about the fall, the events leading up to it, and even the people closest to her, here she is, back in their midst. Or is she?

Chaperoning Temple Barr's visit to Chicago to meet fiancé Matt Devine's family, hard-boiled feline sleuth Midnight Louie is unexpectedly catnapped by an abductor with ties to an unsolved string of murders in Vegas and Temple's ex, the amnesiac magician Max Kinsella.

Holly Winters has a contract to write the text for a book of photographs recalling pre-war dog shows, but the assignment leads her into a deadly mystery.

While Moose County is in an uproar over a string of lucrative inheritances, Polly departs for Paris, Koko the irrepressible Siamese meets a piano tuner, Qwill writes a play, and a mysterious bee sting-related death occurs.

Pine Ridge Canine Care Center is a place where pampered pooches go to kick back, get primped, and watch a little TV in luxurious individual accommodations. To Melanie Travis, it all seems a bit much-and a most unlikely setting for a murder. But when the day care center's co-owner turns up dead in his office, that's just what she finds.