Murder Lost And Found

Seventh in the popular Sophie Sayers Village Mystery series, a warm, witty cross between MC Beaton and Agatha Christie, with plenty of laughs and heart.

"A cracking example of cozy crime!" Bestselling author Katie Fforde Sophie Sayers is ready for a glorious summer, but when a dead body is found in the village school's lost property cupboard the summer holidays take an unexpected turn. Even more shocking is when the body suddenly goes missing! The police think the villagers are mistaken and without a body, refuse to investigate.... But with the village school facing the threat of closure, Sophie is determined to get to the bottom of the mystery. But first she needs to find out who the dead person is, before she can start to find the killer! Perfect for fans of M C Beaton's Agatha Raisin and Hamish Macbeth series. Readers LOVE Debbie Young! "I have just finished Best Murder in Show, and I just could not put it down. A totally enthralling read from cover to cover. Very well written.” – Bryan Stace, South Africa. “Sophie Sayers is the perfect antidote to these difficult times. A Cotswold version of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.” – Sue Myers “What a great series of books, funny, interesting characters and good stories. Perfect for a winter’s evening, curled up by the fire.” Mrs Glenda T Barnett via Amazon. “I just read your Sophie Sayers novels. I loved them. The characters were very likeable and I enjoyed getting to know them. I can’t wait for the next installment.” – Caroline Burston via Facebook “Thank you for the gift that is Sophie Sayers. These books have been my lifeline to home over the last year especially.” – Laura Bonnici, expat living in Malta

Young photographer Kate is reeling from the recent death of her mother, an orphan who became a celebrated ballerina. Grieving and lonely, Kate's only close companion is her ailing adoptive grandmother, Evie. Then Evie reveals a terrible secret, one that prompts Kate to rediscover a family history she had thought lost forever. The story Kate discovers is one tightly interwoven with 20th-century history; from the heady days of the Roaring Twenties, through the economic crash and political tension of the '30s, to the grim reality of the war. But it is also the story of a couple deeply in love, separated by the events that supersede them and the rigid expectations of family. Moving between London, New York, Paris, Venice and Corsica, this is a story of love across borders and generations, and of what might have been.

Many changes have happened to the Murder Squad. Rash actions have cost Sergeant Nevil Hammersmith his job, and in response he has set up his own private detective agency. Inspector Walter Day has been missing for a year, and no one knows where he is—though there is a strong suspicion that Saucy Jack has him. Hammersmith has made finding Day his primary case, and he has company—a pair of bounty hunters, a man and a woman. It is only gradually that he has come to realize that they are not what they seem . . .

A Pulitzer Prize-winning New Yorker writer tells the story of losing her father and finding the love of her life in this profound meditation on grief and joy. Eighteen months before her beloved father died, Kathryn met Casey, the woman who would become her wife. Lost & Found weaves together their love story with Kathryn's story of losing her father in a brilliant exploration of the way families are lost and found and the ways life dispenses wretchedness and suffering, beauty and grandeur all at once. So much has been written about loss--and Schulz writes with painful clarity about the vicissitudes of grieving her father--but here she writes about the vital phenomenon of finding. The book is organized into three parts: "Lost," which explores the sometimes comic, sometimes frustrating, sometimes heartbreaking experience of losing things, grounded in Kathryn's account of her father's death; "Found," which examines the experience of discovery, from new ideas to new planets, grounded in her story of falling in love; and finally, "And," which contends with the way these events happen in conjunction and imply the inevitable: life keeps going on, not only around us but beyond us and after us. Kathryn Schulz has the ability to measure the depth and breadth of human experience with unusual exactness--she articulates the things all of us feel but have been unable to put into language. Lost & Found is a work of philosophical interrogation as well as a story about life, death and the discovery of one great love just as another is being lost.

A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice • Rex Stout meets Agatha Christie with a fresh twist in the new Pentecost and Parker Mystery, a delightfully hardboiled high-wire act starring two daring women sleuths dead set on justice as they set out to solve a murder at a traveling circus “A delight.... It’s a pleasure to watch [Pentecost and Parker] sifting through red herrings and peeling secrets back like layers of an onion.” The New York Times Book Review Someone’s put a blade in the back of the Amazing Tattooed Woman, and Willowjean “Will” Parker’s former knife-throwing mentor has been stitched up for the crime. To uncover the truth, Will and her boss, world-famous detective Lillian Pentecost, travel to the circus, where they find a snake pit of old grudges, small-town crime, and secrets worth killing for. Will called Hart & Halloway’s Traveling Circus and Sideshow home for five years, and Ruby Donner, the circus’s tattooed ingenue, was her friend. To make matters worse, the prime suspect is Valentin Kalishenko, the man who taught Will everything she knows about putting a knife where it needs to go. To uncover the real killer and keep Kalishenko from a date with the electric chair, Will and Ms. Pentecost join the circus in sleepy Stoppard, Virginia, where the locals like their cocktails mild, the past buried, and big-city detectives not at all. The two swiftly find themselves lost in a funhouse of lies as Will begins to realize that her former circus compatriots aren’t playing it straight, and that her murdered friend might have been hiding a lot of secrets beneath all that ink.

From the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Paris Apartment and The Guest List, an evocative love story set along the Italian Riviera about a group of charismatic stars who all have secrets and pasts they try desperately — and dangerously — to hide. Rome, 1953: Hal, an itinerant journalist flailing in the post-war darkness, has come to the Eternal City to lose himself and to seek absolution for the thing that haunts him. One evening he finds himself on the steps of a palazzo, walking into a world of privilege and light. Here, on a rooftop above the city, he meets the mysterious Stella. Hal and Stella are from different worlds, but their connection is magnetic. Together, they escape the crowded party and imagine a different life, even if it's just for a night. Yet Stella vanishes all too quickly, and Hal is certain their paths won't cross again. But a year later they are unexpectedly thrown together, after Hal receives an invitation he cannot resist. An Italian Contessa asks him to assist on a trip of a lifetime -- acting as a reporter on a tremendous yacht, skimming its way along the Italian coast toward Cannes film festival, the most famous artists and movie stars of the day gathered to promote a new film. Of all the luminaries aboard — an Italian ingénue, an American star, a reclusive director — only one holds Hal in thrall: Stella. And while each has a past that belies the gilded surface, Stella has the most to hide. As Hal's obsession with Stella grows, he becomes determined to bring back the girl she once was, the girl who's been confined to history. An irresistibly entertaining and atmospheric novel set in some of the world's most glamorous locales, The Invitation is a sultry love story about the ways in which the secrets of the past stay with us — no matter how much we try to escape them.