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A Christmas scrooge discovers a murdered librarian in this holiday
novel from an Edgar Award finalist known for her "witty, literate,
and charming" mysteries (Publishers Weekly). Each December, the
faculty of Balaclava Agricultural College goes wild with holiday
decorations. The entire campus glitters with Christmas lights, save
for one dark spot: the home of professor Peter Shandy. But after
years of resisting the school's Illumination festival, Shandy
suddenly snaps, installing a million-watt display of flashing
lights and blaring music perfectly calculated to drive his
neighbors mad. Then the horticulturalist flees town, planning to
spend Christmas on a tramp steamer. It's not long before he feels
guilty about his prank and returns home to find his lights
extinguished-and a dead librarian in his living room. Hoping to
avoid a scandal, the school's head asks Shandy, sometimes
detective, to investigate the matter quietly. After all, Christmas
is big business, and the town needs the cash infusion that
typically comes with the Illumination. But as Shandy will soon find
out, there's a dark side to even the whitest of white Christmases.
Christmas crimes hit close to home for Boston's favorite art
sleuths. "Charlotte MacLeod's mysteries are witty and full of
humor" (Maine Crime Writers). The angry old men of the Comrades of
the Convivial Codfish club celebrate yuletide doing what they do
best: eating, drinking, and greeting the season of giving with a
spirited "bah, humbug!" Though well past sixty, Jem Kelling is a
relative infant compared to some of the club's elder statesmen, and
he has waited decades to host their annual Christmas scowl. And
during his first evening as Exalted Chowderhead, he is thrilled to
find the wine abundant, the chowder superb, and the humbugs as
lusty as ever. But as the night winds down, Jem is horrified to
find that the ceremonial Codfish necklace has vanished--right off
of his neck! His nephew-in-law, art investigator Max Bittersohn, is
convinced his new uncle was the victim of a practical joke. But
when the old man takes a hip-snapping tumble, Max is forced to
conclude that one of the scrooges is trying to perpetrate a deadly
Christmas jeer.
A couple finds an antique mirror that isn't broken, but still
brings bad luck--"MacLeod can be counted on for a witty, literate,
and charming mystery" (Publishers Weekly). According to Max
Bittersohn, he and Sarah Kelling have witnessed enough murder and
unhappiness, so it's high time they got married. And though Sarah
hasn't yet agreed to such drastic measures, she invites Max to
summer with her at Ireson's Landing. But they haven't been in the
house ten minutes when they stumble upon summer's first mystery--a
mint-condition, antique Spanish mirror that is tremendously rare
and valuable. Sarah has never seen it before and she doesn't know
how it ended up in the summerhouse, but the sleuthing couple will
soon find this looking glass to be more troublesome than anything
Lewis Carroll ever invented. As the zany Kelling clan descends on
Ireson's Landing, Sarah and her beau try to uncover the mystery of
the Bilbao looking glass--a quest that is disrupted when a vicious
next-door neighbor is found hacked to death with a woodshed ax. By
summer's end, Sarah and Max will learn that some murders can be
solved simply by looking in the mirror.
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's only been a few months since
Sarah Kelling's elderly husband passed away, and she's 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 recovering these masterworks will mean tearing the lid off the
quiet life of the Boston upper crust. But it's a chance Sarah and
Max must take, lest they join the guard on his long trip down.
A horticulturist and amateur sleuth roots out an irritating
professor's killer in the Nero Award-winning mystery series. An
unpleasant man in every respect, university professor Herbert
Ungley is exceedingly vain. One morning, his landlady catches her
cat coming in with Ungley's hairpiece between its teeth. It's clear
something has happened to the old grouch, because he would never be
caught without his toupee. Ungley is found in the yard behind his
social club, with his head bashed in and his baldness plain for the
world to see. Although the police are content to call it an
accident, sleuthing horticulturalist Peter Shandy is unconvinced,
and finds there are too many unanswered questions: How did Ungley
come to have such a bulging bank account? Who was Ungley's
long-lost heir, and what did he have to do with the professor's
lost hair? And whose is the second body in the woods? Shandy must
answer these questions and more if he's to discover who pulled the
rug out from the balding corpse.
A professor ponders the possibility of an ancient Viking curse
while investigating a death by quicklime, in a novel by the Edgar
Award-nominated author. When 105-year-old Hilda Horsefall tells
young reporter Cronkite Swope of a stone carved with Norse runes
that once sat in the nearby woods, the writer starts salivating at
the thought of breaking the news that Vikings once marauded through
their sleepy Massachusetts countryside. But while he's jotting down
notes, a scream rings out, and Cronkite finds an even bigger story.
A farmhand has been burned to death by quicklime, and Cronkite gets
an exclusive scoop. In this neck of New England, strange deaths are
invariably referred to Prof. Peter Shandy, the only local with the
know-how to connect fearsome quicklime to the Vikings of old. But
as he digs into the ancient mystery, the professor finds the
forgotten Norse gods aren't above demanding a modern sacrifice.
At Balaclava Agricultural College, a kidnapping and pig-napping are
followed by murder Newlyweds Peter and Helen Shandy are picking out
flatware when a pair of gun-toting hooligans bursts into the
silversmith's shop, emptying the safe and leaving with Helen as
their hostage. Although the police recover Helen quickly, her
professor husband is badly shaken by the ordeal. Early the next
morning, the college's head of animal husbandry frantically reports
another hostage situation in progress. Belinda, the school's
beloved sow, has been kidnapped, and only Peter can bring home the
bacon. There's a possible witness to the pig-napping in Miss
Flackley, the farrier, but before she can point Peter toward the
vanished porker, she's found dead in the barn's mash feeder. By the
time Peter discovers the link between the two heists, pigs may
really fly.
Death pays a visit to Sarah Kelling's Boston boardinghouse in this
cozy mystery from the bestselling author of the Peter Shandy
series. Though the inheritance from her dearly departed Alexander
was meant to set Sarah Kelling up for life, it vanishes quickly in
the face of hounding from charitable organizations and the IRS.
Facing the loss of her stately Back Bay brownstone, Sarah opens her
home to lodgers--deciding she prefers a boardinghouse to the
poorhouse. Soon she's cooking meals and serving tea for a cast of
quirky residents, a cozy little family that would be quite happy
were it not for the unpleasant presence of a certain Barnwell
Augustus Quiffen--a man so rude that no one really minds when he's
squashed beneath a subway car. Sarah replaces her lost boarder
quickly, and the family dynamic is restored. But when another
lodger dies suddenly, the boardinghouse appears to be cursed. Now
it'll take more than a glass of sherry to soothe Sarah's panicked
residents, and she must turn to detective Max Bittersohn for help
before her boarders bolt. "The epitome of the 'cozy' mystery"
(Mostly Murder), award-winning author Charlotte MacLeod's Sarah
Kelling and Max Bittersohn Mysteries have charmed readers the world
over.
A young art student catches a thief--and finds her soul mate--in
this charming, early YA novel from the million-selling "mistress of
the 'cozy' mystery" (Los Angeles Times). Possessed of cool common
sense and burning ambition, nineteen-year-old Corin Johansen leaves
home to attend a prestigious art school in Boston. But Corin never
met anyone back in Proctor's Crossing, Pennsylvania, like the
larger-than-life landlady at her new boardinghouse. A former circus
star known as Daring Dina who trained lions and leopards under the
big top, Madame Despau-Davy now contents herself with teaching her
four beloved pet ocelots tricks in the kitchen. Corin soon learns
the boardinghouse kitchen is supposedly haunted by the ghost of the
Fat Lady from the circus, Dina's old friend Rosie Garside. Corin is
skeptical, but when she cooks, she can't shake the feeling she's
being watched. The tall redhead has also caught the eye of some of
the young male boarders: playboy Jack Banks and standoffish but
gifted art student Alex Bodmin. When Corin discovers jewelry hidden
in the haunted kitchen and hears the real story of how Rosie met
her demise, she begins to suspect one of them may be a jewel
thief--and possibly a murderer.
A copycat crime on Groundhog Day brings out Professor Peter
Shandy's inner sleuth in this Edgar Award finalist from the
international bestselling author. The rural town of Balaclava
greets Groundhog Day as an excuse for one last cold-weather fling.
The students and faculty of the local agricultural college drink
cocoa, throw snowballs, and when the temperature allows, ice skate.
But Oozak's Pond is not quite frozen this year, and as the
celebrations reach their peak, the students see someone bobbing
through the ice. Long past help, the drowning victim is badly
decomposed and dressed in an old-fashioned frock coat with a heavy
rock in each pocket. First on the scene is Peter Shandy,
horticulturalist and-when the college requires it-detective. But
solving this nineteenth-century murder mystery will take more than
Shandy's knack for growing rutabagas. Relying on his wife's
expertise in local history, the professor dives headfirst into a
gilded-age whodunit that cloaks secrets potent enough to kill.
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.
The Mystery Fancier, Volume Seven Number One, January-February
1983, contains: "Captain Joseph T. Shaw's Black Mask Scrapbook," by
E. R. Hagemann, "Detection by Other Means," by Bob Sampson, "Joe
Orton's and Tom Stoppard's Burlesques of the Detective Genre," by
Earl F. Bargainnier, "Bloody Balaclava: Charlotte MacLeod's Campus
Comedy Mysteries," by Jane S. Bakerman and "Spy Series Characters
in Hardback, Part XIII," by Barry Van Tilburg.
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