"1996 was the year that changed everything for Maggie Dawes. Sent away at sixteen to live with an aunt she barely knew in Ocracoke, a remote village on North Carolina's Outer Banks, she could think only of the friends and family she left behind . . . until she meets Bryce Trickett, one of the few teenagers on the island. Handsome, genuine, and newly admitted to West Point, Bryce gradually shows her how much there is to love about the wind-swept beach...

A mystery without a murder featuring the series hero, Scottish constable Hamish MacBeth. The Christmas season brings him two cases, in one a woman reports her cat stolen, in another someone has stolen the village Christmas tree.

Goldy Schulz is thrilled to be catering a holiday breakfast feast for the staff of the Aspen Meadow Library. But little does she know that on the menu, alongside the Great Expectations Grapefruit, Chuzzlewit Cheese Pie, and Bleak House Bars, is a large helping of murder. While setting up at the library, Goldy spots a woman lurking in the stacks who bears a striking resemblance to Sandee Brisbane-the Sandee Brisbane who killed Goldy's ex-husband,...

Dominic and Clarice Corde, who met and fell in love in Brunswick Gardens, journey to a quaint hamlet to replace the local vicar who is away on holiday. The holiday takes a nasty turn when the vicar is discovered not to be away at all, but brutally murdered and stashed in the cellar. So instead of fulfilling the vicar's duties, the Cordes are charged with solving his murder. All the while, the picturesque village is becoming increasingly and dangerously...

Unlike quite a number of people, Agatha has not given up on Christmas. To have the perfect Christmas had been a childhood dream while surviving a rough upbringing in a Birmingham slum. Holly berries glistened, snow fell gently outside, and inside, all was Dickensian jollity. And in her dreams, James Lacey kissed her under the mistletoe, and like a middle-aged sleeping beauty, she would awake to passion once more...Agatha Raisin is bored. Her detective...

"The people of Cedar Cove know how to celebrate Christmas. Like Grace and Olivia and everyone else, Beth Morehouse expects this Christmas to be one of her best. Her small Christmas tree farm is prospering, her daughters and her dogs are happy and well, and her new relationship with local vet Ted Reynolds is showing plenty of romantic promise. But-- someone recently left a basket filled with puppies on her doorstep, puppies she's determined to place...

Collected in this book are four murder mystery short stories by P.D. James, all centered around Christmas and two of which feature the young poet-detective Adam Dalgliesh. In the title story, a bestselling crime novelist describes the crime she herself was involved in fifty years earlier. In "A Very Commonplace Murder," a "pedantic, respectable, censorious" clerk's secret taste for pornography is only the first reason he finds for not coming forward...

A boy from Finnmark and his ice bear help scare away some hungry trolls so that Kyri and her father can enjoy their Christmas Eve meal.

Hannah Swensen of the Cookie Jar in Lake Eden, Minn., discovers her neighbor's head bashed in; Jaine Austen's holiday stay at her parents' home in the Tampa Vistas retirement community is enlivened by the murder of elderly lothario; and, Maine reporter Lucy Stone investigates a four-year-old boy's disappearance. Includes recipes.

With Christmas just around the corner, Thomas Pitt's sister-in-law, Emily Radley, is suddenly called from London to be with her dying aunt. Leaving her husband and two children behind, Emily makes the long journey to an all-but-forgotten town in the county of Connemara, on the western coast of Ireland. She soon discovers that a tragic legacy haunts the once close-knit community.