"The villagers of Chipping Cleghorn are agog with curiousity when the Gazette advertises 'A murder is announced and will take place on Friday, October 29th, at Little Paddoks at 6.30 p.m.' A childish practical joke? Or a spiteful hoax? Unable to resiste the mysterious invitation, the locals arrive at Little Paddocks at the appointed time when, without warning, the lights go out and a gun is fired. When they come back on, a gruesome scene is revealed....

Celia stands accused of poisoning her husband, Detective Stan Shepherd. The fact her first husband died under similar circumstances only heightens the suspicion. But attorney Jill Clark thinks the pieces of the puzzle fit together a bit too neatly. Either her client's Christian faith is a sham, or she's the victim of a deadly frame-up.

The whole thing was fantastic! A dead man whom no one could identify found in a blind woman's sitting room. Four strange clocks all set to the same time -- thirteen minutes past four! Who had brought them there? What did they mean? And who was the dead man? --

"In Room 217 of the Lakes Region Traumatic Brain Injury Clinic, something has awakened. Something evil. Brady Hartsfield, perpetrator of the Mercedes Massacre, where eight people were killed and many more were badly injured, has been in the clinic for five years, in a vegetative state. According to his doctors, anything approaching a complete recovery is unlikely. But behind the drool and stare, Brady is awake, and in possession of deadly new powers...

"At a Hallowe'en party, Joyce--a hostile thirteen-year-old--boasts that she once witnessed a murder. When no one believes her, she storms off home. But within hours her body is found, still in the house, drowned in an apple-bobbing tub. That night, Hercule Poirot is called in to find the 'evil presence.' But first he must establish whether he is looking for a murderer or a doubler murderer ..."--P. [4] of cover.

Andrew Yancy, late of the Miami Police, soon-to-be-late of the Key West Police, has a human arm in his freezer. There is a logical explanation for that, but not for how and why it parted from its owner. Yancy thinks the boating-accident/shark-luncheon explanation is full of holes, and if he can prove murder, his commander might relieve him of Health Inspector duties, aka Roach Patrol. But first Yancy will negotiate an ever-surprising course of events,...

For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. She's barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark. But Kya is not what they say. Abandoned at age ten, she has survived on her own in the marsh that she calls home. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life lessons from the...

The murder of Colonel Protheroe -- shot through the head -- is a shock to everyone in St Mary Mead, though hardly an unpleasant one. Now even the vicar, who had declared that killing the detested Protheroe would be 'doing the world at large a favour, ' is a suspect -- the Colonel has been dispatched in the clergyman's study, no less. But the picturesque English village of St Mary Mead is overpopulated with suspects. There is of course the faithless...

A colorful murder mystery in which a spirited young woman plays amateur sleuth aboard a luxury cruise ship to South Africa After young Anne Beddingfeld witnesses an accidental death in a London tube station--and the bizarre behavior of a man in a brown suit who flees the scene--she becomes convinced that foul play is at work. A woman is found murdered the next day and the police show no interest in Anne's theory that the two incidents are connected....

A dark secret threatens the lives of two sisters, Kate and Hannah Connelly, when their family-owned furniture firm, famous for its fine reproductions of antiques, explodes into flames in the middle of the night, leveling the buildings to the ground, including the museum where priceless antiques have been on permanent display for years. What was Kate, a CPA for one of the biggest accounting firms in the country, and whose sister is a rising fashion...