Showing results by author "Charlotte MacLeod" in All Categories

Janet Rhys is driving through the backwoods of Canada when she sees the truck ahead of her lose control, smash into a snow bank, and flip sideways, completely blocking the road. Springing to action, she darts into a nearby barn, searching for something to use to rescue the person trapped inside. When she hears an explosion, Janet returns to find the truck is nothing but smoking wreckage, and the driver has stolen her car. 

Although he towers over his neighbors, Jim Feldster is otherwise unremarkable, except for his mastery of cow milking and his membership in every lodge, rotary club, and brotherhood that Balaclava County has to offer. And anyone who's met his wife, Mirelle, a vicious gossip with a hysterical streak, can understand why he never misses a meeting. But one night their neighbors, the sleuthing academics Peter and Helen Shandy, wake at 2:47 a.m. to the sound of Mirelle screaming. 

According to Max Bittersohn, he and Sarah Kelling have witnessed enough murder and unhappiness, so it's high time they got married. And though Sarah hasn't yet agreed to such drastic measures, she invites Max to summer with her at Ireson's Landing. But they haven't been in the house ten minutes when they stumble upon summer's first mystery - a mint-condition, antique Spanish mirror that is tremendously rare and valuable. 

Emory Emmerick comes to Balaclava Agricultural University as a scout for a television station. Although the faculty and students are hardly ready for prime time, Emmerick's interest is in environmental programming - a subject that inspires even the driest Balaclava professor to wax poetic. In his search for material, Emmerick joins Peter Shandy and a few of his colleagues on the annual owl count.  

Massachusetts horticulturalist Peter Shandy is famous for his rutabagas, but he comes to Maine with a loftier plant in mind. Specifically, he wants to size up the world-renowned lupines of Frances Rondel, a nonagenarian whose legendary flowers are even more beautiful in life than they are in myth. Shandy is bitterly jealous but finds a major distraction in the dining room of the country inn where he's staying. He may grow wretched lupines, but no gardener can solve a murder like Peter Shandy.  

It has only been a few months since Sarah Kelling's elderly husband passed away, and she is struggling to adapt to life as a penniless young widow. To make ends meet, she converts her stately Boston home into a boardinghouse, a decision that brings something even better than money: the company of art-fraud-investigator Max Bittersohn. The budding couple is standing on a balcony, recovering from a second-rate concert at a third-rate museum, when something plummets past them. The museum has been robbed, and a guard has fallen to his death. 

Although he is a decorated officer of the Mounted Police, Madoc Rhys' tin ear has long been an embarrassment to his musically fixated family. But when his father's orchestra needs a policeman, the Mountie gets a chance to make daddy proud. It began as pranks among the brass instruments, but something is rotten inside the Wagstaffe Symphony, and is about to graduate to something criminal. Called in to look into the tensions within the group, Madoc arrives just in time to see the French horn player keel over. 

After Architrave's will reveals that he bequeathed his ramshackle old house to the Grub-and-Stakers, with instructions for it to be turned into a museum, Dittany resigns herself to weeks of cleaning out the mansion and sorting through donated town "artifacts". The task turns interesting, however, the minute bodies start falling from the sky. The new curator is airing out the house's attic when he takes his tumble off the roof.

When word gets out that Dittany Monk, the sleuthing gardener of Lobelia Falls, is expecting twins, every knitter in town races to Miss Jane Fuzzywuzzy's Yarnery to begin work on a complete wardrobe of hats, booties, and tiny sweaters. One customer, however, has even more urgent business: the man with the gunshot wounds in his back.  

When Jenson Thorbisher-Freep announces an amateur theatrical contest, the women in the Grub-and-Stake gardening club race to join in. They enlist Osbert Monk as their playwright - not only is he married to their club leader Dittany Monk, but he's famous the world over as Lex Laramie, best-selling novelist of Westerns. Taking the legend of Dangerous Dan McGrew as his inspiration, Osbert delivers a rough draft faster than the Pony Express. Now all the Grub-and-Stakers have to do is cast it.  

Anyone growing up in Lobelia Falls is taught to learn the elegant, ancient, and occasionally deadly art of shooting with a bow and arrow. Practicing the craft, freelance secretary Dittany Henbit is strolling through the woods with her bow at her side when she meets a surveyor making surveys where he shouldn't. Dittany is giving him what-for when an arrow goes whizzing above her head. It is sharp enough to kill, and was not fired by accident, but Dittany wasn't the target.

Weihnachtszeit! Wie jedes Jahr findet im Landwirtschaftscollege von Balaclava, die sogenannte "Lichterwoche" statt. Damit beginnt die alljährliche Leidenszeit von Prof. Shandy. Als der Professor erneut zum Mitmachen genötigt wird, lässt er sein Häuschen übertrieben weihnachtlich schmücken, um anschließend sofort zu einer Kreuzfahrt aufzubrechen. Doch ein Maschinenschaden des Urlaubsdampfers zwingt den Professor zur vorzeitigen Rückkehr.

Das altehrwürdige Landwirtschaftscollege von Balaclava Junction steht Kopf! Belinda von Balaclava, erklärter Liebling der Universität, ist spurlos verschwunden. Merkwürdige Anrufe und finstere Botschaften in Form von Eisbein in Aspik, Schweine schnitzel etc. lassen das Schlimmste befürchten. Wo kann die hochträchtige und immerhin 853 Pfund schwere Schweinedame nur stecken? Handelt es sich um einen missglückten Studentenulk oder einen gemeinen Racheakt der "Militanten Vegetarier"?

Die junge Sarah Kelling hat die undankbare Aufgabe, das Begräbnis ihres Großonkels Frederick vorzubereiten. Auf der Suche nach einer passenden letzten Ruhestätte wird die seit 100 Jahren nicht benutzte Familiengruft der Kelling-Dynastie geöffnet und Sarah muss entdecken, dass sich das Skelett der in den 50er Jahren verschwundenen Striptease-Tänzerin Ruby Redd in der Gruft befindet.