Barbara Ross

"When Julia spots police cars in front of Lupine Design, she races over. Her sister Livvie works there as a potter. Livvie is unharmed but surrounded by smashed up pottery. The police find the owner Zoey Butterfield digging clay by a nearby bay, but she has no idea who would target her store. Zoey is a vocal advocate for turning four blocks of Main Street into a pedestrian mall on summer weekends. Other shop owners, including her next-door neighbor,...

It's summertime in Busman's Harbor, Maine, and the clamming is easy--or it was until a mysterious new neighbor blocks access to the beach, cutting off the Snowden Family Clambake's supply. Julia Snowden is just one of many townspeople angered by Bartholomew Frick's decision. But which one of them was angry enough to kill? Beachcombers, lighthouse buffs, and clammers are outraged after Frick puts up a gate in front of his newly inherited mansion. When...

"When the Russian demo team clearing out the mansion discovers a room that's been sealed off for decades, Julia's baffled as to its purpose and what secrets it might have held. Tensions are already simmering with the crew, but when one of the workers is found murdered, things come to a boil. With the discovery of another body--and a mysterious diary with Cyrillic text in the hidden room--the pressure's on Julia to dig up a real killer fast. But she'll...

"For Julia Snowden, the Founder's Day summer celebration in Busman's Harbor, Maine, means helping her family's clambake company to prepare an authentic taste of New England seafood. Any Mainer will tell you that a real clambake needs wood for the fire . . . so why is there a foot sticking out of the oven? The townspeople want to pin the murder of the RV park owner on Cabe Stone, a new employee of the Snowden Family Clambake Company who bolted from...

"Jane Darrowfield is a year into her retirement, and she's already traveled and planted a garden. She's organized her photos, her recipes, and her spices. The statistics suggest she has at least a few more decades ahead of her, so she better find something to do . After Jane helps a friend with a sticky personal problem, word starts to spread around her bridge club-and then around all of West Cambridge, Massachusetts-that she's the go-to girl for...

Inside the mystery package is an enormous black diamond necklace that once belonged to Julia's great-grandmother and disappeared in the 1920s. Who could have sent it-and why? Julia's search for clues takes her on a perilous journey through her mother's troubled family history, from a squabble over the family fortune in "frozen water" to the recent unexplained death of Jacqueline's long-lost cousin Hugh-who'd been missing and presumed drowned for more...

"Jane Darrowfield is using her retirement years to work as a professional busybody in her West Cambridge, Massachusetts community--but this time her client is a woman next door who thinks someone is following her... Megan, who's purchased the house next to Jane's, needs some help from her snooping neighbor. Megan's been having blackouts, hearing voices--and feeling like someone's following her. Are these symptoms of an illness--or signs that she's...

In this collection, three murder mysteries occur in coastal Maine during the holidays. A festive period film set becomes a murder scene; a man is found dead with traces of a signature Yule log cake on his body; and a woman must stop the disappearances and deaths of her eccentric neighbor's friends. Lucy Stone is thrilled to be cast as an extra in a festive period film--until the set becomes a murder scene decorated in blood and buttercream icing....

"In Irish Coffee Murder by Leslie Meier, reporter Lucy Stone is writing about four Irish-step-dancing students. But the story becomes headline news when one girl's mother is found dead in her bathtub. In Death of an Irish Coffee Drinker by Lee Hollis, Hayley Powell caters the after-party for comedian Jefferson O'Keefe. But Jefferson keels over after gulping down his Irish coffee, leaving Hayley to figure out who decided this joker had gone too far....

An omnibus of novels by Lee Hollis, Leslie Meier and Barbara Ross. With the fireplace crackling, the tree twinkling, and the carols humming, few things in life are as picture perfect as Christmas in Maine - until murder dampens the holiday spirit. It must be something in the eggnog ...