DonateAre you participating in the 2023 Adult Summer Reading Challenge but need help with this specific bingo square? We’ve got some suggestions for you! Browse through the titles and click to access the catalog record. Happy reading!
The following mysteries have amateur sleuths.
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Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder / Joanne Fluke (Hannah Swensen #1) Hannah Swenson already has her hands full trying to dodge her mother’s attempts to marry her off while running The Cookie Jar, Lake Eden, Minnesota’s most popular bakery. But once Ron LaSalle, the beloved delivery man from the Cozy Cow Dairy, is found murdered behind her bakery with Hannah’s famous Chocolate Chip Crunchies scattered around him, her life just can’t get any worse. Determined not to let her cookies get a bad reputation, she sets out to track down a killer.
Crocodile on the Sandbank / Elizabeth Peters (Amelia Peabody #1) Victorian heiress Amelia Peabody travels to Egypt to indulge her interest in Egyptology. She travels with her friend Evelyn Barton-Forbes. In Cairo, the pair meet archaeologists Radcliffe and Walter Emerson, and sparks fly between Radcliffe and Amelia. The groups meet again at Emerson’s excavation where Amelia saves Radcliffe’s life and takes charge of his precious archaeological site. The four then band together to discover why the locals will no longer report to work and to try to find a missing mummy who walks the night.
A Curious Beginning / Deanna Raybourn (Veronica Speedwell #1) London, 1887. After burying her spinster aunt, the orphaned Veronica Speedwell is free to resume her world travels in pursuit of scientific inquiry–and the occasional romantic dalliance. But fate has other plans, as Veronica discovers when she thwarts her own abduction with the help of an enigmatic German baron with ties to her mysterious past. Promising to reveal in time what he knows of the plot against her, the baron offers her temporary sanctuary in the care of his friend Stoker–a reclusive natural historian as intriguing as he is bad-tempered. But before the baron can deliver on his tantalizing vow to reveal the secrets he has concealed for decades, he is found murdered. Suddenly Veronica and Stoker are forced to go on the run from an elusive assailant, wary partners in search of the villainous truth.
Death By Dumpling / Vivien Chien (Noodle Shop Mystery #1) The last place Lana Lee thought she would ever end up is back at her family’s restaurant. But after a brutal break-up and a dramatic workplace walk-out, she figures that helping wait tables is her best option for putting her life back together. Then the restaurant’s property manager, Mr. Feng, turns up dead–after a delivery of shrimp dumplings from Ho-Lee. But how could this have happened when everyone on staff knew about Mr. Feng’s severe, life-threatening shellfish allergy? Now, with the whole restaurant under suspicion for murder and the local media in a feeding frenzy–to say nothing of the gorgeous police detective who keeps turning up for take-out–it’s up to Lana to find out who is behind Feng’s killer order. . . before her own number is up.
Everywhere That Mary Went / Lisa Scottoline (Rosato & Associates #1) Mary DiNunzio has been slaving away for the past eight years trying to make partner in her cutthroat Philadelphia law firm. She’s too busy to worry about the crank phone calls she’s been getting–until they fall into a sinister pattern. The phone rings as soon as she gets to work, then as soon as she gets home. Mary can’t shake the sensation that someone is watching her, following her every move. The shadowboxing turns deadly when her worst fears are realized, and she has to fight for something a lot more important than partnership–her life.
The Girl on the Train / Paula Hawkins Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning, flashing past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stopping at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. Their life, as she sees it, is perfect … until she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but now everything is changed. Rachel goes to the police, and becomes inextricably entwined in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good?
Her Royal Spyness / Rhys Bowen (Royal Spyness #1) Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie is the least important member of the royal family. Thirty-fourth in the line of succession, Georgie may have the title but none of the money. What’s a girl to do? Well, in Georgie’s case, she tries opening her own domestic agency, with herself as the only domestic. Even her brother, Binky, the duke, is barely holding on to the family castle in Scotland, and that hold becomes tenuous when a French rogue claims to have proof that Binky and Georgie’s father gambled the homestead away before his suicide. So, when the Frenchie winds up drowned in the bathroom of Binky’s Belgrave house, there’s reason to worry. After Binky’s arrest, Georgie feels it’s up to her to find the real murderer, but soon she finds her own life threatened, repeatedly.
Magpie Murders / Anthony Horowitz (Susan Ryeland #1) After working with bestselling crime writer Alan Conway for years, editor Susan Ryeland is intimately familiar with his detective, Atticus Pünd, who solves mysteries in sleepy English villages. His traditional formula has proved hugely successful, so successful that Susan must continue to put up with his troubling behavior if she wants to keep her job. Conway’s latest tale involves a murder at Pye Hall, with dead bodies and a host of intriguing suspects. But the more Susan reads, the more she’s convinced that there is another story hidden in the pages of the manuscript: one of real-life jealousy, greed, ruthless ambition, and murder.
Murder at Melrose Court / Karen Baugh Menuhin (Heathcliff Lenox #1) In 1920 at an English country house, the Jeevesian butler announces to the house’s owner, Maj. Heathcliff Lennox, “I must inform you, sir, that a body has been discovered on the front doorstep.” Though the unidentified corpse has no marks of violence on it, the police suspect foul play—and that Lennox may have been responsible. On a slip of paper Lennox finds on the dead man and turns over to the police is the name of Countess Sophia Androvich Zerevki Polyakov. The plot thickens after the countess, a White Russian, who has become engaged to Lennox’s uncle Charles, is shot dead in Charles’s home. Lennox is caught holding the murder weapon, and he must turn investigator to exonerate himself and get to the bottom of both murders.
Murder at the Vicarage / Agatha Christie (Miss Marple #1) The debut of Agatha Christie’s unflappable and much beloved female detective, Miss Jane Marple. With her gift for sniffing out the malevolent side of human nature, Miss Marple is led on her first case to a crime scene at the local vicarage. Colonel Protheroe, the magistrate whom everyone in town hates, has been shot through the head. No one heard the shot. There are no leads. Yet, everyone surrounding the vicarage seems to have a reason to want the Colonel dead. It is a race against the clock as Miss Marple sets out on the twisted trail of the mysterious killer without so much as a bit of help from the local police.
One For the Money / Janet Evanovich (Stephanie Plum #1) Out of work and out of money, Stephanie Plum lands a job as bounty hunter and her first prey is, guess who? None other than Joe Morelli, the macho pig who deflowered her in high school and bragged on the lavatory wall of Mario’s Sub Shop. Now a cop, he is wanted for murder. The intriguing thing is, she still rather fancies him, and even more intriguing is that he will save her life.
Real Murders / Charlaine Harris (Aurora Teagarden #1) Twenty-eight-year-old Aurora (Roe) Teagarden, professional librarian, belongs to the Real Murders club, a group of 12 enthusiasts who gather monthly to study famous baffling or unsolved crimes. As a meeting is to begin, Roe discovers the massacred body of a club member. She recognizes the method of slaughter as imitating the very crime she was to address that night–suddenly her life as armchair sleuth assumes an eerie reality.
Symphony of Secrets / Brendan Slocumb A gripping page-turner about a professor who uncovers a shocking secret about the most famous American composer of all time — that his music was stolen from a young Black composer named Josephine Reed. Determined to uncover the truth and right history’s wrongs, Bern Hendricks will stop at nothing to finally give Josephine the recognition she deserves.
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie / Alan Bradley (Flavia de Luce #1) It is the summer of 1950, and at the once-grand mansion of Buckshaw, young Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, is intrigued by a series of inexplicable events. A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Then, hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath. For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw.
The Thursday Murder Club / Richard Osman (Thursday Murder Club #1) In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together they call themselves The Thursday Murder Club. There’s Red Ron, the infamous former socialist firebrand, still causing trouble; gentle Joyce, widowed, pining for another resident, but surely not as innocent as she seems; Ibrahim, a former therapist who understands the darker side of human nature; and Elizabeth? Well, no one is quite sure who she really is, but she’s definitely not a woman to underestimate. When a local developer is found dead, the Thursday Murder Club suddenly find themselves in the middle of their first live case. The friends might be septuagenarians, but they are cleverer than most. Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer before its too late?