Jane Darrowfield is using her retirement years to work as a professional busybody, with most of her business coming from her West Cambridge, Massachusetts, community. This time her client is right next door . . .
Megan, who's purchased the house next to Jane's, needs some help from her snooping neighbor. Megan's been having blackouts, hearing voices-and feeling like someone's following her. Are these symptoms of an illness-or signs that she's in danger?
Considering the extensive security system in Megan's house, it seems like she should be safe-yet she soon vanishes into thin air. Some think she's run away, but would this ambitious young lawyer on the partner track really miss a meeting with an important client? And where's Megan's cat?
The mystery is about to deepen when the cat is finally located in a hidden panic room-and as Jane and the police look into Megan's friends, family, and past, it may be time to sound the alarm . . .
For Julia Snowden, the Founder's Day summer celebration in Busman's Harbor, Maine, means helping her family's clambake company to prepare an authentic taste of New England seafood. Any Mainer will tell you that a real clambake needs wood for the fire . . . so why is there a foot sticking out of the oven?
The townspeople want to pin the murder of the RV park owner on Cabe Stone, a new employee of the Snowden Family Clambake Company-who bolted from the crime scene and disappeared. Julia knows having another murder associated with her family's business is a recipe for disaster . . . but who is the killer? Cooking up a proper investigation doesn't leave much time for the rest of Julia's life, and this is one killer who'll do anything to stop her from digging up clues . . .
In the ninth installment of the award-winning Maine Clambake Mystery series, Julia Snowden and the Snowden Family Clambake Company return for another case of mystery and murder in Maine-this time, Julia must uncover the murderer of an oyster farmer.
When oyster farmer Andie Greatorex is robbed of a bucket of oyster seed worth $35,000, she comes to Julia Snowden for help. Who wants to sink Andie's successful business? Is it a rival oyster farmer, an ex-employee, a neighbor who objects to the oyster cages floating on the beautiful Damariscotta River, a lobsterman who feels pushed out by the farm leases, or someone from Andie's personal life?
Then Andie turns up dead, floating by her dock in the SCUBA gear she wears when harvesting her oysters. Julia's head start puts her in a perfect position to help her friends in the Maine State police major crimes unit with the investigation. But can Julia make sure the right suspect gets sent up the river before she ends up in a watery grave?
Jane Darrowfield is a year into her retirement, and she's already traveled and planted a garden. She's organized her photos, her recipes, and her spices. The statistics suggest she has at least a few more decades ahead of her, so she better find something to do . . .
After Jane helps a friend with a sticky personal problem, word starts to spread around her bridge club-and then around all of West Cambridge, Massachusetts-that she's the go-to girl for situations that need discreet fixing. Soon she has her first paid assignment-the director of a fifty-five-and-over condo community needs her to de-escalate hostilities among the residents. As Jane discovers after moving in for her undercover assignment, the mature set can be as immature as any high schoolers, and war is breaking out between cliques.
It seems she might make some progress-until one of the aging 'popular kids' is bludgeoned to death with a golf club. And though the automatic sprinklers have washed away much of the evidence, Jane's on course to find out whodunit . . .
Early October is 'winding down' time in Busman's Harbor, Maine, but there's nothing relaxing about it for Julia Snowden. Between busloads of weekend leaf peepers at the Snowden Family Clambake and a gut renovation of the old mansion on Morrow Island, she's keeping it all together with a potentially volatile skeleton crew-until one of them turns up dead under the firewood.
When the Russian demo team clearing out the mansion discovers a room that's been sealed off for decades, Julia's baffled as to its purpose and what secrets it might have held. Tensions are already simmering with the crew, but when one of the workers is found murdered, things come to a boil. With the discovery of another body-and a mysterious diary with Cyrillic text in the hidden room-the pressure's on Julia to dig up a real killer fast. But she'll have to sort through a pile of suspects, including ex-spouses, a spurned lover, and a recently released prisoner, to fish out one clammed-up killer.
Tricks and treats keep the Halloween spirit alive in coastal Maine. But this year the haunted house theme is getting carried a little too far . . . HAUNTED HOUSE MURDER by LESLIE MEIER Newcomers to Tinker's Cove, Ty and Heather Moon have moved into a dilapidated house reputed to be a haven for ghosts. Now strange noises and flickering lights erupt from the house at all hours and neighborly relations are on edge. And when a local boy goes missing near the house, it's up to Lucy Stone to unravel the mystery of the eccentric couple and their increasingly frightful behavior. DEATH BY HAUNTED HOUSE by LEE HOLLIS For the past two years, the house next door to Hayley Powell has sat abandoned after the owner died under mysterious circumstances. The Salinger family has recently taken possession of the property, but the realtor behind the deal has vanished-after a very public and angry argument with Damien Salinger. If Bar Harbor's newest neighbors are murderers, Hayley will haunt them until they confess. HALLOWED OUT by BARBARA ROSS With its history of hauntings and ghost sightings, Busman's Harbor is the perfect setting for Halloween festivities. But when a reenactment of a Prohibition-era gangster's murder ends with a literal bang and a dead actor from New Jersey, Julia Snowden must identify a killer before she ends up sleeping with the fishes. There's nothing like home sweet home in this trio of Halloween tales . . .
It's summertime in Busman's Harbor, Maine, and the clamming is easy-or it was until a mysterious new neighbor blocks access to the beach, cutting off the Snowden Family Clambake's supply. Julia Snowden is just one of many townspeople angered by Bartholomew Frick's decision. But which one of them was angry enough to kill?
Beachcombers, lighthouse buffs, and clammers are outraged after Frick puts up a gate in front of his newly inherited mansion. When Julia urges him to reconsider, she's the last to see him alive-except the person who stabs him in the neck with a clam rake. As she pores through a long list of suspects, Julia meets disgruntled employees, rival heirs, and a pair of tourists determined to visit every lighthouse in America. They all have secrets, and Julia will have to work fast to expose the guilty party-or see this season's clam harvest dry up for good.
YULE LOG MURDER by LESLIE MEIER Lucy Stone is thrilled to be cast as an extra in a festive period film...until the set becomes a murder scene decorated in blood and buttercream icing. Returning to her role as sleuth, Lucy dashes to restore peace to TinkerÄôs Cove, unwrap a cold-hearted criminalÄôs MO, and reveal how one ornate yule-log cake could possibly cause so much drama. DEATH BY YULE LOG by LEE HOLLIS Hayley PowellÄôs holidays arenÄôt off to a very merry startÄînot only has her daughter brought Connor, an infuriatingly perfect new beau, home to Bar Harbor but a local troublemaker has been found dead with traces of her signature yule-log cake on his body. LOGGED ON by BARBARA ROSS Realizing she canÄôt make a decent B?ªche de No?´l to save her life, Julia Snowden enlists the help of her eccentric neighbor, Mrs. St. Onge, in hopes of mastering the dessert for Christmas, but soon she must save her neighbor from becoming the next BusmanÄôs Harbor resident to meet a not-so-jolly fate.
It's June in Busman's Harbor, Maine, and Julia Snowden and her family are working hard to get their authentic Maine clambake business ready for summer. Preparations must be put on hold, however, when a mysterious yacht drops anchor in the harbor-and delivers an unexpected dose of murder . . . When Julia's old prep school rival Wyatt Jayne invites her to dinner on board her billionaire fiance's decked-out yacht, Julia arrives to find a sumptuous table set for two-and the yachtsman dead in his chair. Suspicion quickly falls on Wyatt, and Julia's quest to dredge up the truth leads her into the murky private world of a mega-rich recluse who may not have been all that he seemed . . .
The snow is deep in Maine's Busman's Harbor and the mighty rivers are covered in ice. Snowden Family Clambake Company proprietor Julia Snowden and her mother, Jacqueline, are hunkered down for the winter when a mysterious package arrives-heating up February with an unexpected case of murder. Inside the mystery package is an enormous black diamond necklace that once belonged to Julia's great-grandmother and disappeared in the 1920s. Who could have sent it-and why? Julia's search for clues takes her on a perilous journey through her mother's troubled family history, from a squabble over the family fortune in "frozen water" to the recent unexplained death of Jacqueline's long-lost cousin Hugh-who'd been missing and presumed drowned for more than forty years. To protect her mother's inheritance, Julia must fend off a small army of feuding relatives, solve the mystery surrounding Hugh's demise, and get back home before the next blizzard buries them all . . .
Eggnog Murder: When a gift-wrapped bottle of eggnog proves to be a killer concoction for a Tinker's Cove local, all Lucy Stone wants for Christmas is to find the murdering mixologist who's stirring up trouble. Death By Eggnog: Food and cocktails columnist Hayley Powell has never cared much for Bar Harbor's grouchy town librarian, Agatha Farnsworth. But after the Scroogy senior has a fatal-and suspicious-allergic reaction to supposedly non-dairy eggnog, it's up to Hayley to ladle out some justice.
Nogged Off: Julia Snowden's tenant Imogen Geinkes seems to be jinxed. Her poorly named Killer Eggnog gives all her co-workers food poisoning at the holiday party. Now Julia has to get moving to catch the cold-hearted culprit.
