A shady book and antiques dealer is murdered at a yard sale, and when a professor friend is accused, Meg discovers she must find the killer to keep the professor's career on course. Martin's Press.

A shady book and antiques dealer is murdered at a yard sale, and when a professor friend is accused, Meg discovers she must find the killer to keep the professor's career on course. Martin's Press.

New York Times bestselling author Donna Andrews returns with another Meg Langslow mystery written "firmly in the grand tradition of Agatha Christie's Christmas books" (Toronto Globe and Mail). The 28th book and the seventh Christmas mystery in the Meg Langslow series, The Gift of the Magpie is yet another wonderfully merry and funny book from New York Times bestselling author Donna Andrews. Meg’s running Caerphilly’s Helping Hands for the Holidays project, in which neighbors help each other with things they can’t do and can’t afford to have done. Her hopes for a relatively peaceful (if busy) Christmas vanish when someone murders Harvey the Hoarder, whose house the Helping Hands were decluttering. Was there any truth to the rumor that he had something valuable hidden beneath all his junk? Was one of his friends, neighbors, or relatives greedy enough to murder him for the rumored treasure? And what about the magpie that has been bringing her family bits of tinsel and costume jewelry—does the bird’s latest gift hold a clue to solving the crime? Full of intrigue, this Christmas mystery will take readers home to Caerphilly, where the suspense falls as thick as the snow.

Looking for a new cozy series? In the new edition of Cozy Case Files, Minotaur Books compiles the beginnings of eleven charming cozy mysteries publishing in Spring/Summer 2020 for free for easy sampling. The latest edition of Cozy Case Files has something for everyone with the latest cozies by the following authors: Carolyn Haines, Hannah Dennison, Eve Calder, Donna Andrews, Ellie Alexander, Kylie Logan, Susanna Calkins, Leonard Goldberg, and Allison Montclair. The bonds of friendship are put to the test in The Devil’s Bones and Sugar and Vice. Two sisters inherit an old hotel in the remote Scilly Islands in series debut Death at High Tide. A new Meg Langslow mystery, The Falcon Always Wings Twice, finds the family at a Renaissance Faire. Past crimes are unburied in Nothing Bundt Trouble and The Secret of Bones. Go back in time with these next historical cozies. Sherlock Holmes’s daughter is back in The Art of Deception. In A Royal Affair, Princess Elizabeth has developed feelings for a Greek prince, and The Right Sort of Marriage Bureau is engaged to dig into the suitor’s past. Or visit a 1920’s Chicago speakeasy in The Fate of the Flapper.

Like other fictional characters, female sleuths may live in the past or the future. They may represent current times with some level of reality or shape their settings to suit an agenda. There are audiences for both realism and escapism in the mystery novel. It is interesting, however, to compare the fictional world of the mystery sleuth with the world in which readers live. Of course, mystery readers do not share one simplistic world. They live in urban, suburban, and rural areas, as do the female heroines in the books they read. They may choose a book because it has a familiar background or because it takes them to places they long to visit. Readers may be rich or poor; young or old; conservative or liberal. So are the heroines. What incredible choices there are today in mystery series! This three-volume encyclopedia of women characters in the mystery novel is like a gigantic menu. Like a menu, the descriptions of the items that are provided are subjective. Volume 3 of Mystery Women as currently updated adds an additional 42 sleuths to the 500 plus who were covered in the initial Volume 3. These are more recently discovered sleuths who were introduced during the period from January 1, 1990 to December 31, 1999. This more than doubles the number of sleuths introduced in the 1980s (298 of whom were covered in Volume 2) and easily exceeded the 347 series (and some outstanding individuals) described in Volume 1, which covered a 130-year period from 1860-1979. It also includes updates on those individuals covered in the first edition; changes in status, short reviews of books published since the first edition through December 31, 2008.

BRAND NEW LEAD STORY: “The Princess and the Pea!” Prince Archie can’t find someone to wed! When a wayward visitor shows up on his doorstep claiming to be a princess, she must undergo an unusual test to prove who she is!

Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Peter Lovesey presents a collection of short fiction spanning fifty years, including the first story he ever published and three brand-new stories. More than fifty years ago, Peter Lovesey published a short story in an anthology. That short story caught the eye of the great Ruth Rendell, whose praise ignited Lovesey’s lifelong passion for short form crime fiction. On the occasion of his hundredth short story, Peter Lovesey has assembled this devilishly clever collection, eighteen yarns of mystery, melancholy, and mischief, inhabiting such deadly settings as a theater, a monastery, and the book publishing industry. The collection includes the career-launching story, as well as three never-before-published works. And surprising the author himself, the irascible Bath detective, Peter Diamond, "bulldozed his way" into this volume.