A dilly of a death

Sample

Susan Wittig Albert

Between the herb shop, the catering business, and a weekend paper- making class, China Bayles has her work cut out for her. And now China's half- brother is opening up old wounds, trying to investigate their father's supposedly accidental death, and her husband is taking on the case-meaning she's just bound to get involved.To put the unsavory business out of her mind, she's gathering supplies for making paper. But in a patch of yucca plants, she finds a body-cause of death unknown. Many residents of Pecan Springs live seemingly simple lives that hide complex and dangerous pasts, and it appears the victim was one of them. Now, while unraveling secrets that hit close to home, China must set the record straight-and find a killer.

Sample

Susan Wittig Albert

When her accountant, Rosemary, is killed, ex-lawyer and herb-shop proprietor China Bayles finds a host of suspects that includes an abusive ex-husband and several former clients. Reprint.

Sample

edited and with an introduction by Otto Penzler

"Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler's new anthology brings together the most cunning, resourceful, and brilliant female sleuths in mystery fiction ... For the first time ever, Otto Penzler gathers the most iconic women of the detective canon over the past 150 years, captivating and surprising readers in equal measure. The 74 handpicked stories in this collection introduce us to the most determined of gumshoe gals, from debutant detectives like Anna Katharine Green's Violet Strange to spinster sleuths like Mary Roberts Rinehart's Hilda Adams, from groundbreaking female cops like Baroness Orczy's Lady Molly to contemporary crime-fighting P.I.s like Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone, and include indelible tales from Agatha Christie, Carolyn Wells, Edgar Wallace, L.T. Meade and Robert Eustace, Sara Paretsky, Nevada Barr, Linda Barnes, Laura Lippman, and many more. Meet determined law-enforcing ladies and captivating criminal masterminds of all kinds, including a brilliant scientist who solves a murder using a single tea leaf ; a master thief who leaves a calling card at the scene of the crime lest the servants be wrongly accused ; a powerful woman who oversees a rogue band of vigilantes ; a nosy detective best known for her outrageous hats who solves a murder using tropical fish ; an X-rated sleuth who gets shanghaied by an unsavory character ; a puritanical villainess hell-bent on avenging a perceived wrong ; and, last but not least, a crime-solving nun who unravels a complicated poisoning plot" --

Sample

Peter Høeg

Miss Smilla Jasperson isn't prepared to accept the Copenhagen police's verdict of accidental death when a neighbour's six-year-old boy falls from the roof of a block of flats. She's a Greenlander, and her feeling for snow tells her that the footprints in the snow are a clue to what happened.