After Plum Lockhart's job as a travel magazine editor is eliminated in corporate cuts, she decides she's sick of cold winters in NYC and fruitless swiping on dating apps?what she needs is a dramatic change of scenery. On a whim, she accepts a job as a villa broker and moves to a beautiful Caribbean island. However, paradise isn't as perfect as it seems: the slow pace of island life, the language barrier, and a cutthroat office rival make Plum question leaving her old life behind. But when a client is found dead in the jacuzzi of Casa Mango?a property Plum manages?she knows she's really in a jam. With a killer loose on the island, Plum will have to deal with a stonewalling police chief, a string of baffling clues, and a handsome Director of Security to solve this deadly case!
After the untimely death of her husband, Rain Wilmot has returned to her family's waterfront log cabin in Lofty Pines, Wisconsin. The cabin is peaceful compared to Rain's corporate job and comes with an informal library that Rain's mother, Willow, used to run. But as Rain prepares for the re-opening of the library, all hopes for a peaceful life are shattered: she discovers the body of Thornton Hughes, a real-estate buyer, on the premises. The community of Lofty Pines starts pointing fingers at Willow since she has been unusually absent from the library this summer. A fishy rumor surfaces when Rain learns that Willow had been spending a lot of time with Thornton. The town even thought they were having an affair. While theories swirl about Thornton's death, Rain takes it upon herself to solve the case to exonerate her mother. As more clues surface, she will have to piece together the mystery. But if she isn't careful, she may be the next to end up dead in the water.
A museum robbery leaves a guard dead, and two Boston sleuths investigate: 'If this is your first meeting with Sarah Kelling, oh how I envy you' (Margaret Maron).
It has only been a few months since Sarah Kelling's elderly husband passed away, and she is struggling to adapt to life as a penniless young widow. To make ends meet, she converts her stately Boston home into a boardinghouse, a decision that brings something even better than money: the company of art-fraud investigator Max Bittersohn. The budding couple is standing on a balcony, recovering from a second-rate concert at a third-rate museum, when something plummets past them. The museum has been robbed, and a guard has fallen to his death. Dozens of priceless paintings have been stolen and replaced with forgeries, and to recover these masterworks will mean tearing the lid off the quiet life of the Boston upper crust. But it is a chance Sarah and Max must take, lest they join the guard on his long trip down.
Murder upstages a Kelling family theatrical production-and Boston's art sleuths are on the case. 'The screwball mystery is Charlotte MacLeod's cup of tea' (Chicago Tribune).
Producing a Gilbert & Sullivan opera requires a special kind of madness, and the Kelling family is large enough and peculiar enough to undertake an entire company by themselves. For years now, Sarah Kelling's Aunt Emma has supervised these annual productions-from The Pirates of Penzance to The Mikado-and this year she has invited her cast of relatives to rehearse The Sorcerer in her stately mansion. The show is nearly ready when a team of burglars drugs the cast and crew to make off with a priceless portrait. Theft or no theft, Aunt Emma insists the show must go on. Even when one of the cast dies suddenly, she finds a replacement and continues rehearsal. But when Sarah begins to suspect the actor was murdered, it becomes clear that dear Aunt Emma may be in danger of taking her final bow.
Long-lost relatives and priceless jewels turn a wedding upside down
For all the Kellings' quirks, no other family in Boston is more adept at throwing a wedding. So when Max Bittersohn's wife, Sarah Kelling, offers to organize his nephew's nuptials, Max is smart enough to stay out of her way. But when the art-fraud investigator stumbles onto a family mystery, he is drawn into something far more serious than the question of who will catch the bouquet. Stolen years earlier, the priceless Kelling jewels were last seen in Amsterdam, so how did they end up among the wedding gifts?
Max is trying to answer that question when a talkative burglar wallops him with a shovel in a failed attempt to rip off the rubies. Then, as the reception winds down, a hot-air balloon lands on the wedding tent, spilling out the Zickerys, a branch of the Kelling clan who prove even odder than the original strain. Family weddings are never easy, but for Max Bittersohn, this one could be murder.
A 'funny and exciting' mystery in the series featuring a husband-and-wife sleuthing team in Boston (Publishers Weekly).
Boston and its suburbs are stuffed with Kellings, and the city is about to get one more. Sarah Kelling and her husband Max Bittersohn-a pair of amateur sleuths equally at home in back alleys as they are at black-tie balls-are about to have a baby. And if the child takes after his parents, he will be one of the cleverest infants in New England. But while Sarah is a month away from giving birth, she cannot let pregnancy slow her down-she has a murder to solve. A resident at one of Sarah's Uncle Dolph's homeless centers is found mugged and murdered on one of Boston's seedier side streets. Someone at the shelter has been dealing drugs, and plans to frame Uncle Dolph for the murder. Now Sarah and Max must race to clear Dolph's name, lest the newest Kelling arrive before his family honor can be restored.
Missing Rolls Royces, Renaissance fair revelry-and murder: 'A witty, literate and charming mystery' featuring Boston's married art sleuths (Publishers Weekly).
Sarah Kelling and her husband, Max Bittersohn, have made names for themselves tracking down stolen paintings, sculptures, and, when necessary, the occasional murderer. But this is the first time they have been asked to find a missing Rolls Royce. When Bill Billingsgate's prize 1927 New Phantom disappears, they head for his estate on the Massachusetts coast, arriving-to their horror-just in time for Billingsgate's annual Renaissance fair. Donning period dress, they grab pints of mead and start searching the crowd for the thief. Instead they find a corpse. When the local police bungle the investigation, Max and Sarah take it upon themselves to find the killer. In the course of their search, they confront a car thief, corruption at a radio station, and a horde of murderous bees. If this is the Renaissance, Max and Sarah can't wait to return to the present.
An aging stripper's fresh corpse turns up in an old family tomb at Boston Common in this 'first-rate suspense whodunit' (The Cincinnati Post).
Like many old New England families, the Kellings live to die. Although their family vault is spacious and comfortable, it will not do for Sarah Kelling's Great-Uncle Frederick. In his will, he demands to be buried inside the ancient family tomb at Boston Common, which hasn't admitted a new member in over a century. But when the Kellings crack the old vault's door, they find a recently built brick wall-and behind it lays a surprisingly fresh corpse, a skeleton with rubies in its teeth.
Her name was Ruby Redd, and many years ago she was the toast of Boston's burlesque scene. Her murder case is ice cold, but when Sarah begins investigating it, she finds that the fiery passions behind Ruby's death still burn white hot. With the help of art-fraud investigator Max Bittersohn, Sarah will solve the mystery of the stripper's murder-or take her own place in the family vault.
Boston's married art sleuths are about to discover that you can't fake a murder: 'Entertaining . . . good humored . . . Sarah and Max are a winning team' (Baltimore Sun).
If she weren't so fabulous, the Countess Lydia Ouspenska might be considered a gangster's moll. The last time she met Max Bittersohn, Boston's famed art-fraud investigator, she was forging minute Byzantine masterpieces to make ends meet. But when Max bumps into her on the Common, the Countess is back on her feet. She has taken up with Bartolo Arbalest, a master forger currently masquerading as an art restorer. And as Bittersohn knows all too well, even the most genteel fraudster cannot be trusted. With the help of his wife, Sarah, Max looks for the secret lair of Bartolo's supposed restoration guild. But when the guild's clients begin to die, it becomes clear there is more at stake than a few fabricated icons. The art may be fake, but for Max and Sarah the danger is very real.
Family ties draw Boston's art sleuths into an island murder mystery in this 'unalloyed pleasure' from the internationally bestselling author (Publishers Weekly).
Though a few years past sixty, Sarah Kelling's Aunt Emma is as vigorous as a girl of twenty-two. She sings, she dances, and when the local fire department needs a fundraising boost, she's happy to jump out a window for charity. This summer, she decamps to Maine, to beat the heat at an island retreat for artists and great thinkers. There are writers, painters, a psychic, and a historian, and their company promises to be great fun-until a few of them go treasure-crazy. Sensible people have long dismissed rumors of the Pocapuk Island treasure as myth, but artists are seldom sensible. When their rampant digging stirs up buried trouble, it leads to theft, drugging, and a murder. And although Sarah and her husband Max give investigative advice by phone, it's up to Aunt Emma to save the islanders from themselves.
A museum murder puts Boston's married art sleuths to work: 'The screwball mystery is Charlotte MacLeod's cup of tea' (Chicago Tribune).
When the doddering patrons of the Wilkins Museum learned that dozens of their priceless masterworks had been stolen and replaced by forgeries, there was no one to turn to but Sarah Kelling and Max Bittersohn-the savviest art detectives of the Boston upper crust. Nabbing the crooks was easy, but finding the missing paintings has proven trickier. Years later, the collection's prized Titian is still lost, and the new director, loudmouthed cattle baron Elwyn Fleesom Turbot, is getting impatient. And things get even more troublesome when members of his staff begin to die. It starts when Dolores Tawne, the elderly, bossy museum administrator, is stabbed through the base of her skull with an antique hatpin. Inside the dead woman's safe deposit box Sarah finds clues to a conspiracy that stretches back decades and a way to stop the murders that are still to come.
Two ghosts troubled Dr. Benjamin Bones. One he feared would never release him. Another he worried might slip away, however much he tightened his grip...
So begins the long-awaited second book in Emma Jameson's wartime cozy mystery series. Return to Birdswing, a tiny Cornish village, in the bitter winter of 1939 and revisit old friends as they embark on more amateur sleuthing. Lady Juliet is vexed by the return of her ne'er-do-well husband, Ethan Bolivar, while Ben's obsession with the Fenton House ghost deepens. When a bloodless, naked corpse is discovered in a great house in the nearby village of Barking, Ben and Juliet uncover lies, theft, illicit affairs--not to mention a butler who might just be the one 'whodunnit.'
Brimming with historical details and warm humor, Divorce Can Be Deadly has been called 'consistently entertaining' and 'worth the wait!'
