Recommendations based on "The Book of Candlelight"

Lady Georgiana Rannoch is just back from her honeymoon with dashing Darcy O’Mara when a friend in need pulls her into a twisted Gothic tale of betrayal, deception and, most definitely, murder. . . .I am a bit at loose ends at the moment. My cook, Queenie, is making my new role as mistress of Eynsleigh something akin to constant torture as Darcy is off on another one of his top secret jaunts. And Grandad is busy helping wayward youths avoid lives of crime. So when my dearest friend, Belinda, inherits an old cottage in Cornwall and begs me to go with her to inspect the property, I jump at the chance.After a heart-stopping journey in Belinda’s beast of a motorcar, we arrive at the creaky old cottage called White Sails and quickly realize that it is completely uninhabitable. Just when I’m starting to wonder if I would have been better off trying to get Queenie to cook a roast that hasn’t been burnt beyond all recognition, we meet Rose Summers, a woman Belinda knew as a child when she spent time in Cornwall. Rose invites us to stay at Trewoma Hall, the lovely estate now owned by her husband, Tony.Belinda confesses that she never liked Rose and had a fling with Tony years ago, so staying with them is far from ideal but beggars can’t be choosers as they say. Trewoma is not the idyllic house Belinda remembers. There’s something claustrophobic and foreboding about the place. Matters aren’t helped by the oppressively efficient housekeeper Mrs. Mannering or by the fact that Tony seems to want to rekindle whatever he and Belinda once had right under his wife’s nose.Our increasingly awkward visit soon turns deadly when a member of the household is found murdered and all clues point to Belinda as the prime suspect. I soon learn that some long buried secrets have come back to haunt those in residence at Trewoma Hall and I’ll need to sift through the ruins of their past so Belinda doesn’t lose her chance at freedom in the present. . . .

Folks in Moraine, Wisconsin, are buzzing about the latest swarm of trouble humming around Story Fischer… It’s a real buzz-kill when beekeeper Story Fischer gets a visit from her frantic sister. Now she has to help host a combative trio of professional food flavorists. Good thing the well-stocked shelves of Story’s grocery store, the Wild Clover, can provide the morning meal. During a pre-lunch tour of Story’s hives, however, one of the guests is found dead. Just what Story needs only days after hunky boyfriend, Hunter Wallace, finally decided to move in. As if a dead body isn’t enough to put a damper on romance, Story becomes a prime suspect when the carrot juice she brought with the breakfast fixings is found to contain poison. Now it’s up to Story to comb through the evidence and find the real perpetrator before she ends up getting stung herself...

"If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun." --Katharine Hepburn In her bewitching novels of female friendship, fun, and delicious mischief, Dolores Stewart Riccio has charmed readers who want to know more about marvelous Cass, sweet Heather, wickedly witty Phillipa, eccentric mom Deidre, and whip-smart Fiona--five deeply committed sisters-in-arms with a little something extra on their side. Now, in Ladies Courting Trouble, the most fascinating women in Plymouth, Massachusetts, are back in the thick of the action, which suits them just fine. . . October in New England is a grand time--great for carving pumpkins, throwing Halloween parties, baking and eating brownies, and. . .dropping dead? When a helmlock-laced brownie at the church hospitality hour spells the end for an elderly townswoman, Cass Shipton and her circle of fabulous friends get to work using their very special brand of detective skills to ferret out the culprit. After all, their unorthodox recipe of magic, clairvoyance, and good old-fashioned common sense hasn't let them down yet. . . Praise for Dolores Stewart Riccio and Circle of Five "A bewitching tale."--Midwest Book Review "This story has everything from suspense to laughter. Delicious. . .with a magic all its own." --Rendezvous "Humorous moments are deftly intertwined with truly creepy ones." --Booklist "Delicious. . .filled with magic. . .and delight."--Phyllis Curott "Witty and fast-paced. . .charming. . .a fun read and food for thought." --Joe Haldeman Dolores Stewart Riccio is the author of three previous Cass Shipton novels, The Divine Circle of Ladies Making Mischief, Circle of Five, and Charmed Circle, as well as numerous highly acclaimed nonfiction books on the subjects of health and cooking. She lives in Rhode Island and is currently at work on her next novel.

The problem with being a bounty hunter is it's all on-the-job training. And Stephanie Plum is still learning the ways to get yourself killed. Take the case of Maxine Norwicki.... When Maxine failed to turn up for her day in court, Stephanie was given the task of bringing her in. Simple. Except Maxine's boyfriend has now begun receiving mysterious, coded notes from the runaway that hint at buried treasure. In fact the notes are so indecipherable that Stephanie has to call on the help of Sally Sweet, giant drag queen and code-breaker extraordinaire. And Steph's knight errant, cop Joe Morelli. is also proving useful - although he can't decide what he wants most: Maxine's bounty or Stephanie's body. Meanwhile a friend loses a finger, a mother is scalped, an apartment is firebombed and a store clerk is murdered. And out in the street, the crazy treasure hunt game goes on.... 'Stephanie Plum is ass-kicking form..... utterly delightful.' Cosmopolitan 'As smart and sassy as high-gloss wet paint.' Time Out ' Among the great joys of contemporary crime fiction.' GQ 'All the easy class and wit that you expect to find in the best American TV Comedy, but too rarely find in modern fiction.' GQ

People are dying to get their hands on a rare, valuable book in the newest Library Lover’s Mystery from the New York Times bestselling author of The Plot and the Pendulum. Briar Creek Library director Lindsey Norris and her husband, Sully, are at a popular library conference in Chicago to hear book restoration specialist Brooklyn Wainwright give a keynote address. After the lecture, Lindsey looks under her seat and finds a tote bag containing a first edition of Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train, inscribed to Alfred Hitchcock. Brooklyn determines the novel is one of a kind and quite valuable, so Lindsey and Sully return the book to the conference director, not wanting to stir up any trouble. But just hours after the pair boards the train back to Connecticut, rumors that the Highsmith novel has gone missing buzz amongst the passengers, and they soon find the conference director murdered in his private compartment. And worse—the murderer planted the book in Lindsey and Sully’s room next door, making them prime suspects. Now, they must uncover the murderer and bring them to the end of their line, before they find themselves booked for a crime they didn’t commit. Featuring a cameo by a beloved character from the New York Times bestselling author Kate Carlisle's Bibliophile series!

Kathleen Paulson is snowed under running her library and caring for her extraordinary felines, Owen and Hercules. But when a holiday fund-raiser turns deadly, she’ll have to add sleuthing to her already full schedule...Winter in Mayville Heights is busy and not just because of the holidays. Kathleen is hard at work organizing a benefit to raise money for the library’s popular Reading Buddies program. She has her hands full hosting the event. And when a guest at the gala drops dead, her magical cats, Owen and Hercules, will have their paws full helping her solve a murder.The victim is the ex of town rascal Burtis Chapman, but she hasn’t lived in the area in years. And though everybody is denying knowledge of why she was back in town, as Kathleen and her detective boyfriend, Marcus, begin nosing around, they discover more people are connected to the deceased than claimed to be. Now Marcus, Kathleen, and her uncanny cats have to unravel this midwinter tale before the case gets cold.

Don't miss Concrete Evidence, a Hallmark Movies & Mystery Original starring Jewel, based on Crowned and Moldering—the third novel in the New York Times bestselling Fixer-Upper Mystery series!When Mac Sullivan—famous thriller writer and Shannon’s new beau—first moved to Lighthouse Cove, California, he bought the historic lighthouse mansion that the town is named after. Mac needs help cleaning up the place, and Shannon is more than happy to get her handywoman hands on the run-down Victorian.But during demolition, a grisly discovery is made among the debris—the bones of a teenage girl who went missing fifteen years ago. Locals had always assumed Lily Brogan ran away from her difficult life, but it seems her troubles followed her to the grave. If Shannon has any chance of getting her renovation back on track, she’ll need to tackle the cold case. But with new suspects coming out of the woodwork every day, she’ll have to be careful to pry the right secrets and clues from the poor girl’s problematic past...

In the midst of a cook-off at a posh spa, southern PI Sarah Booth Delaney gets embroiled in a juicy murder in the latest mystery from Carolyn Haines For many years Jitty, Dahlia House’s resident ghost, has dreamed that Sarah Booth Delaney would have a child to inherit the family’s ancestral home. Sarah Booth has always had reservations about being a parent. There was her work as an actress and PI, taking care of the house, not to mention finding the right man. But when Jitty’s dream finally looks like it’s going to come true, Sarah Booth is crushed when it doesn’t. Depressed, unable to act or investigate, Sarah Booth finally allows her best friend to whisk her away for a luxurious weekend vacation at a special spa and cooking school. The pampering and food go a long way toward making her feel like her old self, but there’s another welcome distraction—there’s a beauty contest/cook-off going on to find the spa’s next spokesperson, and watching the drama really takes her mind off of her woes. Sarah finds the backbiting to be great fun—until the heated competition boils over, the top contender is poisoned, and the prime suspect hires Sarah Booth to clear her name. Between swimsuit competitions and soufflés, Sarah Booth Delaney and her best friend and partner, Tinkie, must find out which of the ambitious young ladies is to blame in Bone Appetit, the latest in Carolyn Haines’s delightfully Southern cozy mystery series.

When a dinner party guest is found dead, it’s up to Sarah Booth Delaney to bring the murderer to justice—before she’s the next one on the chopping block.“An entertaining mix of mystery and mirth.”—The Orlando Sentinel It’s so true about the best parties—the morning after is always murder. . . .Private investigation isn’t on the list of a southern belle’s most desirable accomplishments—but it’s saved Sarah Booth Delaney’s Delta homestead. Now all she has to cope with is its bossy antebellum ghost who is determined to save Sarah Booth—from spinsterhood. Then comes the perfect social occasion: Lawrence Ambrose’s dinner party. . . . Ambrose, once a famous man of southern letters, is planning a comeback: a delicious tell-all with a bitchy ex-model as his “biographer.” As he taunts his dinner guests with the news that his book will blow the lid off Zinnia’s darkest secrets, it becomes plain that each and every guest has a secret—and wants Ambrose to keep it. When the morning-after mess includes a bloody corpse, and the manuscript of the biography disappears, Sarah Booth goes digging for answers. But many who hold them are six feet under—or soon will be—and if she doesn’t tread carefully, she could join them any day now. . . .

WHEN THE VILLAGE OF FARTHERING ST. JOHN IS Stunned BY A SERIES OF MURDERS, DREW FARTHERING IS DRAWN again INTO THE SLEUTHING GAME.Drew Farthering wanted nothing more than to end the summer of 1932 with the announcement of his engagement. Instead, he finds himself caught up in another mysterious case when the family solicitor is found murdered, an antique hatpin with a cryptic message, Advice to Jack, piercing his chest.Evidence of secret meetings and a young girl's tearful confession point to the victim's double life, but what does the solicitor's murder have to do with the murder of a physician on the local golf course? Nothing, it would seem--except for another puzzling note, affixed with a similar-looking bloodied hatpin.Soon the police make an arrest in connection with the murders, but Drew isn't at all certain they have the right suspect in custody. And why does his investigation seem to be drawing him closer and closer to home?PRAISE for RULES OF MURDER"Readers will want to carve out uninterrupted time to read this mystery in one sitting. Red herrings at every turn will have them guessing and flipping pages until the shocking end."--Chandra McNeil, RT Book Reviews