Poisoned Pen Press

Mystery crime fiction written in the Golden Age of Murder“Edwards's second winter-themed anthology in the British Library Crime Classics series is a standout. As in the most successful of such volumes, the editor's expertise results in a selection of unusual suspects, expanding readers' knowledge.” —Publishers Weekly STARRED reviewCrimson Snow brings together a dozen vintage crime stories set in winter. Welcome to a world of Father Christmases behaving oddly, a famous fictional detective in a Yuletide drama, mysterious tracks in the snow, and some very unpleasant carol singers. There's no denying that the supposed season of goodwill is a time of year that lends itself to detective fiction.On a cold night, it's tempting to curl up by the fireside with a good mystery. And more than that, claustrophobic house parties, with people cooped up with long-estranged relatives, can provide plenty of motives for murder.Including forgotten stories by major writers such as Margery Allingham, as well as classic tales by less familiar crime novelists, each story in this selection is introduced by the leading expert on classic crime, Martin Edwards. The resulting volume is an entertaining and atmospheric compendium of wintry delights.

Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, now streaming on Netflix, starring Essie Davis as the honourable Phryne Fisher“As usual, Greenwood populates the novel with an assortment of offbeat characters…and Phryne has plenty of opportunities to unleash her acid tongue and apply her razor-sharp wit.” —BooklistThe Hon. Phryne Fisher, languid and slightly bored at the start of 1929, has been engaged to find out if the antique-shop-owning son of a Pre-Raphaelite model has died by homicide or suicide. He had some strange friends—a Balkan adventuress, a dilettante with a penchant for antiquities, a Classics professor, a medium, and a mysterious supplier who arrives after dark on a motorbike. Simultaneously, she is asked to discover the fate of the lost illegitimate child of a rich old lady, to the evident dislike of the remaining relatives.With the help of her sister Beth, the cab drivers Bert and Cec, and even her two adoptive daughters, Phryne follows eerie leads that bring her face-to-face with the conquest of Jerusalem by General Allenby and the Australian Light Horse, kif smokers, spirit guides, pirate treasure maps, and ghosts.

2018 Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award nominee“With its strong sense of place, depiction of racial tension that still lingers in the new South, and appealing sleuths, de Castrique's well-plotted mystery is a winner.” —Library JournalWhen Asheville, NC, private eyes Sam Blackman and Nakayla Robertson are asked by an eighty-year-old client to investigate the suspicious death of her brother, they warn her there is little chance of success. Paul Weaver died nearly seventy years earlier. The only documentation she has is the sole surviving copy of a coroner's report stating his death was caused by an accidental fall while hiking.There's a red flag: local son Weaver knew every inch of the mountain trails. The returning World War II veteran had enrolled at Black Mountain College, a liberal local school with an international reputation for innovation, thanks to its stellar faculty and advisers like Buckminster Fuller and Albert Einstein. The college of the 1940s is currently being portrayed in a film being shot on the site of its former location. The plot is based on a book by a local author. The research behind both may provide a lead in the Weaver case.One is drawn from movie crew member Harlan Beale, an octogenarian mountaineer who knew Weaver. In a late-night voice message, Beale tells Sam he's found something to show him. Then Beale is discovered dead in the Black Mountain College Museum. His murder turns the cold case white hot. When a second killing follows, the question becomes how to separate dark doings in the present from dark days and hidden scars of the post-war past. In typical de Castrique fashion, the answers aren't what you expect.No-nonsense Nakayla and veteran Sam with his prosthetic leg love their investigations which always carry a thread from the past, and love each other. An interracial couple in the South, even the new South around Asheville, they've surrounded themselves with a terrific support team including an unorthodox lawyer and a veteran cop, and use humor both to bind them all together and to deflect insults. Plus, it helps deal with the tragedies their work uncovers.

Life in the clergy is quiet, respectful, peaceful, or so Callie Anson believes when she begins her new job as curate to the Reverend Brian Stanford at All Saints' Church in Paddington. Little does she realize how wrong she could be.After the traumatic end of her relationship with fiancé Adam, the last thing Callie needs is more emotional turmoil. But it seems she is not destined for a quiet life just yet. Knowing that women in the clergy are still disapproved of in certain quarters, Callie is prepared to face some criticism. But the deep-seated hatred shown by some of her respected male colleagues takes her by surprise, particularly the spiteful attack made by Father Jonah Adimola, a hard-line conservative Nigerian priest. Luckily, her good friend and mentor Frances Cherry is on hand to jump to her defense. But when Father Adimola is found strangled to death the next day and Frances is suspected of the crime, Callie must call upon her faith to steer her through the troubling and violent times and help prove her friend's innocence. With DI Neville Stewart heading the investigation, it's not long before the ecclesiastical facade is chipped away to reveal the ugly truth of hidden secrets.Evil Intent is a gripping crime novel that pitches the reader into a dark world of concealment, power and deception in the 21st century church.

Winner of the Best Mysteries of 2009 of Library Journal.While running surveillance in an industrial section of Scottsdale, P.I. Lena Jones discovers the body of a woman connected to Second Zion, an infamous polygamy cult based in northern Arizona. With the help of a former “sister wife,” Lena discovers a shocking secret: in a society where one man can have ten wives, nine men will have none. Second Zion makes certain these possible rivals don't stick around by turning these teens into Arizona's “lost boys.”While searching for the dead woman's lost son, Lena is surprised by a visit from Madeline, the beloved foster mother from whom she'd been forcibly parted at the age of nine. Madeline's presence renews Lena's memories of her own damaged childhood and brings new clues to the identity of her biological parents, who seemingly abandoned her when she was four years old.But their joyful reunion is interrupted when Lena learns that her close friend, television star Angel Grey, is being stalked by an increasingly violent mental patient. When Lena flies to Angel's aid, she finds that danger has followed her to Hollywood.Arizona polygamy and its discarded sons, the deceptively insulated world of Beverly Hills, and Lena's lost past converge in a case fraught with danger.

There's one corpse too many in a Pittsburgh museum's life-size diorama of the Battle of Lexington, 1775. The extra body is that of philanthropist and art connoisseur T. Colfax Bradshaw. But why? Maybe he knew too much about the biggest art heist in history.When their daughter Caitlin seeks legal advice, newly minted lawyer Cynthia Jakubek finds herself representing the teen. Jakubek aches to jump from Main Street to Wall Street but is stuck interning for ace Pittsburgh attorney Luis Mendoza while she waits for her future New York employer to recover from the Great Recession. Or for her fiancé to finish his post-modern novel….Protecting Caitlin will take Jakubek from a ghetto church in Pittsburgh to a confessional at St. Patrick's Cathedral to the opulent Manhattan office. Along the way she'll meet people who carry guns on the job and she'll pick up a broken nose and a broken heart for her trouble….

After solving her first big murder case in the small town of Celosia, North Carolina, Madeline Maclin hopes at last to be taken seriously as a private investigator. She's opened an office in the home of her best friend Jerry Fairweather, a man haunted by his past who enjoys running harmless scams. Jerry doesn't feel worthy of anyone's love—bad news for Madeline—although she thinks Jerry's sister Harriet knows more about the accident that killed their parents than she'll say.Madeline is hired to find Kirby Willet, an eccentric inventor who left boxes of his belongings, including one filled with money, at Frannie Thomas' house. Meanwhile Voltage Films director, Josh Gaskins, is in town and thinks Jerry's old house will be perfect for his horror film, “Curse of the Mantis Man,” about Celosia's mythical beast. Is this monster actually real?Celosia is also hopping with the Pageantoids, rabid fans from Madeline's days as a beauty queen, who have come to Celosia to produce more pageants. And then there's Rick Rialto, one of Jerry's shady con artist friends. When Gaskins is murdered, Madeline uncovers several suspects and is forced to make—and investigate—some hard bargains. At least one of which is with Jerry.

It's World War I. Britain has ruled Egypt since 1881 under a shadow government headed by its Agent and Consul General under the nominal authority of Egypt's hereditary ruler the Khedive. The head of the Secret Police is the Mamur Zapt, an office currently held by a Welshman, Captain Gareth Cadwallader Owen. And as the clouds of the war further darken Egypt's sun-lit skies, he has his hands full. On the professional front, there's all that commotion that started in Cairo's Camel Market. On the personal side, Owen has married his longtime lover, the lovely Pasha's daughter, Zeinab, a move with serious consequences for both of them and riddled with political and social pitfalls. Neither can be fully accepted by the other's culture and community. Against this, the perils of the Great War pale….

“This story has great richness of voice and will take you on a fascinating journey. It is both an adventure and a colourful experience.” —Calvert Markham, Treasurer of the Sherlock Holmes Society of LondonIt's 1893. King Kamehameha III of Hawaii declares Sovereignty Restoration Day… Tension grows between China and Japan over Korea… The Bengal Famine worsens… A brilliant scientist in Calcutta challenges the system… The senior priest at Kyoto's Kinkaku-ji temple is found dead in mysterious circumstances.Dr. John H. Watson receives a strange letter from Yokohama. Then the quiet, distinguished Mr. Hashimoto is murdered inside a closed room on a voyage from Liverpool to Bombay. In the opium dens of Shanghai and in the back alleys of Tokyo, sinister men hatch evil plots. Professor Moriarty stalks the world, drawing up a map for worldwide dominion.Only one man can outwit the diabolical Professor Moriarty. Only one man can save the world. Has Sherlock Holmes survived the Reichenbach Falls?

The summer of 1919 is over, and on the high prairie, a small army of men, women, and machines moves across the land, bringing in the wheat harvest. Custom threshers, steam engineers, bindlestiffs, cooks, camp followers, and hobos join the tide. Big Wheat is king as people gleefully embrace the gospels of progress and greed.But with Big Wheat comes a serial killer who calls himself the Windmill Man. He believes he has a holy calling to water the newly plucked earth with blood. The mobile harvest provides an endless supply of ready victims. He has been killing for years now and intends to kill for many more.A young man named Charlie Krueger also follows the harvest. Jilted by his childhood sweetheart and estranged from his drunkard father, he hopes to find a new life as a steam engineer. But in a newly harvested field in the nearly black Dakota night, he has come upon a strange man digging a grave. And in that moment, Charlie becomes the only person who has seen the face of a killer….

“An intriguing crime drama…”—MBR BookwatchFour years ago Emily Locke's life was shattered when her infant daughter and husband were lost in an inexplicable accident. She has nearly rebuilt her fragile mental health when Richard Cole, a disgraced former police detective now working as a PI, resurfaces. He says he needs help only she can provide—reconnaissance at a Texas skydiving establishment over a thousand miles away. Emily knows better than to work with him again, but she can't refuse when she learns it's a missing child case.At Gulf Coast Skydiving, similarities between this new case and Emily's troubled past make it increasingly difficult for her to stay objective. Soon she's convinced that she is somehow connected to whoever took little Casey Lyons. Someone at the quiet, rural airstrip knows what happened to the boy and to Emily's own daughter.To find Casey before it's too late, Emily will have to make sense of the menacing parallels between this case and her daughter's….

Random Road introduced Geneva Chase—"a reporter with a compelling voice, a damaged woman who recounts her own bittersweet story as she hunts down clues," says Library Journal—to murders straight out of a nightmare—six bodies found naked and cut to ribbons in a posh Connecticut home.Having survived this and a personal tragedy, Geneva's story still includes alcoholism and career challenges compounded by the rocky finances of her newspaper employer. But she's working. She's fighting the urge to reconnect with a magnetic yet married lover. And she's raising a rebellious young lady who is not her daughter but a cherished legacy.Nevertheless the newshound in Geneva spurs her to bad if not downright dangerous choices as two unrelated crimes unexpectedly collide. A fifteen-year-old-girl at her ward's high school has vanished along with her English teacher. Is this same-old, same-old, or something more? And then there's the abused woman who torched her sadistic husband, and how to keep her out of the clutches of powerful mobsters—and thus, out of the news.Out on the crime beat, Geneva works to unravel the connection, if any, between these two disparate stories while her newspaper is put up for sale, a high-flying Hollywood production lights up the town, and her personal battles accelerate. Jarring twists and turns include charming movie stars, treacherous diamond merchants, adultery, sex traffickers, and murder. While the clock ticks and Geneva works desperately to find the missing student, she comes to the horrible realization that she's in over her head.Darkness Lane, the second novel in the Geneva Chase Mystery Series, hurtles along at a breakneck speed where nothing is what it seems, and where art and reality collide in a terrifying climax.

Spiraling off the tip of Cape Cod, Provincetown has long been a place of escape, new beginnings, and diverse communities. Famous as an art colony, known for the Cape Cod School, its gallery scene is vibrant. Gay life is everywhere. Boston comic Mark Winslow has arrived this summer with a group of fellow improv actors ready to break into Provincetown's club circuit. It should be a carefree summer, but currents swirl beneath the sunny surface. Does the tall ship out in the harbor herald an unusually large crowd of Scandinavian tourists? If not, who are the blond and ragged visitors seen everywhere? Then, at a philanthropist's dinner opening the season, Mark gets into a very public fight with the son of local bluebloods—an old school friend. It makes him the prime suspect when the lawyer is later savagely murdered out on the beach. Though he stumbles from the scene, Mark thinks his choice is simple: find the killer or be charged with the crime. The Fisher Boy is Stephen Anable's debut novel.

2018 ALA Book Club October Pick, Things that Go Bump: Paranormal MysteriesDavid Randall's perfect family life came derailed when his little daughter Lindsey died in a car crash. Thrown out by his second wife and wanting to leave a dead-end detective agency to start his own, he reluctantly accepts his psychic friend Camden's invitation to stay in Camden's boarding house in Parkland, North Carolina.Meanwhile, working the case of the murder of Albert Bennett, Randall's only clue is a notebook filled with odd musical notation. When another client, Melanie Gentry, hires him to prove her great-grandmother was murdered by her lover, composer John Burrows Ashford, over authorship of “Patchwork Melodies,” Randall sets out to find a connection to Bennett's murder, as well as to the murder of a Smithsonian director, who was preparing a new PBS documentary on early American music.Randall's investigations lead him to another notebook, where he finds not only “Two Hearts Singing,” Ashford's most famous song, but a valuable early copy of Stephen Foster's “Oh! Susanna,” hidden in the cover. But things become more complicated when Ashford's spirit parks itself in Cam…and refuses to leave until Randall proves Ashford's innocence.

Dr. Daniel Rinaldi is a psychologist who consults with the Pittsburgh Police. His specialty is treating victims of violent crime. Kevin Merrick, a college student and victim of an armed assault, is one of these people.A fragile, troubled kid desperate for a role model and a sense of identity, Kevin has begun dressing like Rinaldi, acting like him, even mirroring his appearance. Before Daniel can work this through with his patient, he finds Kevin brutally murdered. Stunned, he and the police suspect that he, not Kevin, had been the intended target. And now the killer is threatening Rinaldi.Feeling responsible, Rinaldi is determined to solve the crime. His journey takes him through a labyrinth of friends and colleagues, any one of whom may be the killer. It also includes an affair with a beautiful, free-spirited Assistant DA with secrets of her own. When Kevin's identity as the estranged son of a Bill-Gates-like biotech giant is revealed, his murder turns into a national story, and another person turns up dead.

The first mystery book in a rollicking new historical cozy series! When Lady Adelaide's dinner party is visited by lady death, she'll have to partner with the irksome spirit of her dead husband to crack the case…“A lively debut filled with local color, red herrings, both sprightly and spritely characters, a smidgen of social commentary, and a climactic surprise.”—Kirkus ReviewsA delightful English cozy series begins in August 1924. Lady Adelaide Compton has recently (and satisfactorily) interred her husband, Major Rupert Charles Cressleigh Compton, hero of the Somme, in the family vault in the village churchyard.Rupert died by smashing his Hispano-Suiza on a Cotswold country road while carrying a French mademoiselle in the passenger seat. With the house now Addie's, needed improvements in hand, and a weekend house party underway, how inconvenient of Rupert to turn up! Not in the flesh, but in—actually, as a—spirit. Rupert has to perform a few good deeds before becoming welcomed to heaven—or, more likely, thinks Addie, to hell.Before Addie can convince herself she's not completely lost her mind, a murder disrupts her careful seating arrangement. Which of her twelve houseguests is a killer? Her mother, the formidable Dowager Marchioness of Broughton? Her sister Cecilia, the born-again vegetarian? Her childhood friend and potential lover, Lord Lucas Waring? Rupert has a solid alibi as a ghost and an urge to detect. A debaucher in life and an annoyance in death, Addie knows she can't leave Rupert to solve the murders of her sweet old gardener and a naked neighbor by himself.Enter Inspector Devenand Hunter from the Yard, an Anglo-Indian who is not going to let some barmy society beauty witnessed talking to herself derail his investigation. Something very peculiar is afoot at Compton Court and he's going to get to the bottom of it—or go as mad as its mistress trying.The Lady Adelaide Mysteries:Nobody's Sweetheart Now (Book 1)Who's Sorry Now? (Book 2)Just Make Believe (Book 3)

“Irascible, fearless and unapologetic, Maddy is a heroine cozy fans will embrace.”—Publishers WeeklyNewspaper librarian Maddy Sprowls never gives story ideas to the editors at The Hannawa Herald-Union. She prefers to stay in the newspaper “morgue” and do her job. Then one Saturday she sees four elderly women get out of a taxicab at a garage sale. She figures that those women must hire the cabby every week to drive them from garage sale to garage sale. And wouldn't that make a great feature story for the paper? Monday morning she runs straight to the newsroom with her idea. Shortly after the story runs, one of the four women is murdered: retired antique dealer Violeta Bell. Maddy wants no part of the investigation, but before she knows it, she's on another of her infamous snoopathons. And, good gravy, enjoying every minute.Violeta Bell is an enigma. She even claimed to be the Queen of Romania. Could it be true?

In his first case in private practice, Oregon lawyer Cal Claxton came to the aid of a tagger calling himself Picasso, a Banksy-like figure in Portland. Dividing his time between a wine-country town and the city, the ex-L.A. prosecutor now encounters another urban teen at risk, Kelly Spence, also a tagger. Using climbing skills learned from her much-loved deceased father, a mountaineer, Kelly places angry tags in visible, hard- to-reach places. A runaway from an abusive foster home and alternative high school student, she lives with her father’s former girl friend.

Kelly is four stories up at 3:00 one morning when she looks down and witnesses the brutal murder of a woman in the parking lot below. Unluckily the killer spies her but Kelly escapes. The police soon seek her as a witness. Desperate to stay anonymous, she seeks help from someone on the street she trusts. Too soon she finds his mutilated body and becomes even more afraid.

Cal is drawn into the case by his volatile Cuban friend and landlord who is devastated by the murder: the dead woman had just become his fiancée. Her ex is the obvious suspect, but Cal’s instincts lead him in a different direction where he will run into Kelly. Can he get her to talk, or will the killer find her first?

“A perfect setting and first-rate storytelling.”—Ragnar Jónasson, bestselling author of The Dark Iceland seriesNext book in the Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis Mystery SeriesFrom international bestselling author Jeffrey Siger comes another heart-stopping story of corruption and intrigue. The idyllic Greek island of Mykonos may be heaven on earth, but it's also the perfect cover for an international organized crime ring… and Chief Inspector Kaldis soon finds himself taking it on.The case begins for Athens' Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis with a literal bang when a corrupt former police colonel who runs a protection racket on Mykonos is gunned down. Suddenly, Kaldis is face-to-face with Greece's top crime bosses on Mykonos, an island whose natural beauty and reputation as an international playground belies the corruption lurking just beneath the surface.While Kaldis and his Special Crimes unit wrestle for answers, his wife, Lila, meets an American expat named Toni, a finder of stolen goods and a piano player in a gender-bending bar who has a zest for life and no apparent regard for rules. As Lila and Toni bond over a common desire to mentor young island girls trapped in an exploitative and patriarchal culture, they soon find that their efforts intersect with Kaldis' investigation in ways that prove to be dangerous for all involved…Rife with intrigue and thrilling action, once again Jeffrey Siger proves himself a master of capturing Greece in fiction. In this newest addition to the acclaimed international mystery series, Chief Inspector Kaldis is forced to dive into an investigation that just might swallow him whole. Because when corruption lies deep beneath the surface, how can the truth come to light?The perfect blend of action and culture, this series is:Perfect for fans of Martin Walker and Timothy HallinanFor readers who enjoy international mysteries and political thrillers(Previously published as The Mykonos Mob)

Gifted fifteen-year-old Francisco Guzman has become an internationally renowned concert pianist, touring the world under the auspices of his music conservatory. That gives his mother, Posadas County Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman, plenty of reason to worry--and that's magnified when she learns that he's in Mexico’s crime-ridden Mazatlan for a concert series where he may be the target for scam artists and kidnappers.

Estelle’s worries go from bad to worse when her uncle—a man she didn't know existed—surfaces in an attempt to mend family ties and leaves a trail of corpses in his wake. Estelle’s attempts to glean family history—the story of her childhood in Tres Santos over the border—from her adopted mother, a woman now in her nineties, go nowhere. Meanwhile, escalating events put Sheriff Bobby Torrez in jeopardy, as they do newly wealthy rancher Miles Waddell and his pet project, the multi-million dollar theme park, NightZone, set high on a county mesa.

Just when his sage advice might be most useful, former sheriff and family friend Bill Gastner takes a dive—in the shadows of his own garage. Now his far-flung family is added to the mix of people and events astir in the boot heel of New Mexico.