The latest installment in the Chesapeake Crimes mystery series focuses on working stiffs--literally! Included in this collection are new tales by: Shari Randall, C. Ellett Logan, Karen Cantwell, E. B. Davis, Jill Breslau, David Autry, Harriette Sackler, Barb Goffman, Ellen Herbert, Smita Harish Jain, Leone Ciporin, Cathy Wiley, Donna Andrews, Art Taylor. Foreword by Elaine Viets.

Ellen Herbert’s writing has won over ten awards including a PEN Fiction Prize. Her inspiration comes from those she loves. Her novel, The Last Government Girl, winner of a Best Novel Award from the Maryland Writers’ Association, borrows from her mother’s life as a young government worker during WWII. With a fiction grant from the state of Virginia, Ellen spent a glorious summer in London, where she began this novel inspired by her son as he struggled to come of age. Ultimately, she learned...

In the summer of 1944, Edwina, known as Eddie, a young high school teacher of English and German travels to Washington to work for the war effort unaware a killer is there, targeting government girls. And he's closer than she could ever imagine. Eddie finds Washington crowded and exciting, a city at war, where folks act as if each day is their last. She rushes at life, longing to live her own version of Casablanca, believing the only enemies are Over There, the Nazis, Hitler, Hirohito. And...

A dastardly murder and the kidnapping of a prize chicken threaten to ruin Caerphilly's state fair—fortunately, Meg Langslow is on the case of The Hen of the BaskervillesThe newest mystery in Donna Andrews's gut-bustingly funny, award-winning, New York Times bestselling series is anything but elementary. Meg Langslow is helping Mayor Randall Shiffley organize the Virginia Un-Fair, Caerphilly's entry in the race to replace the old state fair (which ...

Meg's expecting twins---any minute!---in this next hilarious entry in the award-winning, New York Times bestselling series!Meg is eight and a half months pregnant with twins when Michael asks if she wouldn't mind another houseguest. One of his doctoral students is directing his new translation of a play by a minor Spanish playwright, and the playwright has agreed to come to town for the production.Senor Mendoza turns out to be a drinker, a smoker, and an inveterate...

Readers will flock to New York Times bestselling author Donna Andrews's next installment in the award-winning Meg Langslow series.Meg's neighbors, the Smetkamps', have won a makeover for their old home from Marvelous Mansions, a flashy, yet dubious company, focused on making historic homes more "modern." The company already several days into its makeover of the Smetkamps' house, and tensions are running high--not only between the officious, demanding Mrs. ...

'Tis the season for sleuthing in Donna Andrews' cheery new addition to the New York Times bestselling Meg Langslow series.Meg has been roped into participating in a weaponsmithing competition, a Forged in Fire wannabe organized by a blacksmith friend. Meg originally turned down an invitation to participate, but the night before the filming starts, someone attacks Faulk, her blacksmithing mentor, breaking his arm and eliminating him from the contest before ...

Meg is relaxing in the hammock, taste-testing Michael’s latest batch of Arnold Palmers and watching the hummingbirds at their feeders when her hopes for a relaxing early summer morning are dashed.First her father recruits her to help him install a new batch of bees in the hive in her backyard. Then Mayor Shiffley recruits her to placate the NIMBYs (Not in my backyard), as she calls them – a group of newcomers to Caerphilly who have built McMansions next door to working farms and th...

The cast of Donna Andrews’ New York Times bestselling Meg Langslow mystery series is back for an unforgettable holiday story in The Twelve Jays of Christmas.Meg and Michael’s annual holiday celebration is well underway, with a throng of out-of-town relatives staying at their house. Hosting these festivities is a little harder than usual—they have to relocate all the events normally held in their library, currently occupied by Roderick Castlemayne,...

Readers will flock to NYT bestselling author Donna Andrews' latest installment in the award-winning Meg Langslow series.Two of Meg’s cousins, members of Mother’s vast Hollingsworth clan, are getting married, and both have chosen Caerphilly for their Christmas destination wedding . . on the same day, in the same venues. But while they’re cousins they’re also lifelong enemies. Mother’s efforts to keep the peace are wearing her down, and the battling brides (and their...

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 Helpin...

The sixth volume in the Agatha, Anthony, Derringer, and Macavity award-winning "Chesapeake Crimes" series includes stories by: Barb Goffman, Rosemary and Larry Mild, E. B. Davis, Shaun Taylor Bevins, Cathy Wiley, Art Taylor, Shari Randall, Meg Opperman, Carla Coupe, Timothy Bentler-Jungr, Linda Lombardi, Debbi Mack, Clyde Linsley, and Donna Andrews."One thing I’ve learned during a long career as a writer is that a good short story is one of the hardest things to write. To capture m...