Showing results by author "Lee Hollis" in All Categories

When Poppy goes from complacent retiree to penniless widow in a matter of weeks, the idea of spending her golden years as the biggest charity case in Palm Springs renders her speechless. With no real skills and nothing left to lose, Poppy uses her obsession with true crime shows to start a career as a private eye....

Single mom Hayley Powell is barely keeping her leaking roof over her head in Bar Harbor, Maine, when her boss at the Island Times gives her a new assignment - taking over the paper's food column. Hayley's not sure she has the chops - she's an office manager, not a writer, even if her friends clamor for her mouth-watering potluck dishes. But the extra income is tempting, and Hayley's chatty first column is suddenly on everyone's menu - with one exception.

Desperate Housewives meets Murder, She Wrote, in Lee Hollis's new mystery series, where a housewife and a female private eye solve murders together in their small Maine town! Someone is trying to turn Portland High into a school for scandal with a gossipy website called Dirty Laundry. The latest...

Maya and Sandra are friends, fellow moms, and private-detective partners in the picturesque waterfront city of Portland—where sometimes their cases can get as rocky as the Maine coast . . . While private investigator Maya Kendrick is still mentoring her new partner, PTA president Sandra...

Private investigator Poppy Harmon likes the anonymity of working behind the scenes for the hottest names in Palm Springs. But when solving a case demands dragging her old acting career out of retirement, it's lights...camera...murder! 

Ever since Halibut Cove's popular eatery, The Chowder House, started serving matriarch Maggie Holbrook's famous clam chowder it's been in high demand. Cooked up at the restaurant by Maggie's ambitious nineteen-year-old granddaughter, Audrey, the dish even has a regular nightly customer, retiree...

In the new installment from veteran Hollywood screenwriter Lee Hollis, friends, moms, and P.I. partners Maya and Sandra have left their hometown of Portland, Maine, on a school trip to Washington, D.C.—where a killer has just added murder to the itinerary . . . Drafted as chaperones, Maya...

Who better than food and cocktails columnist Hayley Powell to book a caterer for the Island Times holiday party? But Hayley's quest for a cook turns into the pursuit of a killer who caters to no one.... 

As a single mom, Hayley Powell already has a full plate - she's got deadlines to make and a teenage daughter with eyes for an aspiring singer-songwriter. But when country music superstar Wade Springer rolls into town, Hayley spies an irresistible side gig: personal chef to her all-American idol. After he tries her home cooking, Wade's so impressed that he hires her on the spot - and invites her to dine with him alone.

If Poppy didn't believe she was in too deep as the only female juror in a high-profile assault case involving an infamously hot-tempered crooner, she's sure of it upon meeting blast-from-her-past Rod Harper. A former TV costar from her short-lived acting days, Rod is as dashing as ever, and now he wants to partner again - this time to locate his missing daughter. Returning a pampered songstress with a penchant for running away back home unscathed shouldn't be too challenging. But dodging Rod's charms while on the job is another story - and so is finding a dead body!  

On the eve of her high school reunion, Hayley Powell dreads seeing the trio of mean girls who used to torment her: Sabrina Merryweather, Nykki Temple, and former prom queen Ivy Foster. These days Ivy wears a different crown as the cupcake queen - and flaunting her success is just the icing on the cake.

Poppy never planned on speaking to her old acting rival Serena Saunders again, let alone accepting her as a client. But familiar drama barges back into her life when Serena requests an urgent background check on Ned Boyce, her fiance, before tying the knot. And the flighty film star is behaving out of character by wishing to start over with Poppy—this time as friends. Poppy no sooner thinks she's nailed down her latest assignment than Serena is caught holding a smoking gun over a stranger's dead body.

It may not be front page news, but Island Times food and cocktails columnist Hayley Powell is now happily married. Before she can set sail on her honeymoon cruise, however, Hayley's mom, Sheila, pays an impromptu visit - and promptly becomes the prime suspect in a murder. The victim is Sheila's old high school rival, Caskie Lemon-Hogg, known for her homemade blueberry pies and her home-wrecking flirtations. As Hayley teams up with her BFFs Liddy and Mona to clear her mother's name, Sheila reunites with Liddy's mom Celeste and Mona's mom Jane for their own amateur sleuthing. 

Newcomers to Tinker's Cove, Ty and Heather Moon have moved into a dilapidated house reputed to be a haven for ghosts. Now strange noises and flickering lights erupt from the house at all hours and neighborly relations are on edge. And when a local boy goes missing near the house, it's up to Lucy Stone to unravel the mystery of the eccentric couple and their increasingly frightful behavior.

While sidekick Matt Flowers shoots a film abroad, Poppy dusts off her own acting chops to break up a Gen Z crime ring targeting seniors in Palm Springs. Tanya Cook and her gal pals have been swindling susceptible residents for all they're worth—until the gang meets Poppy undercover. Yet with the case cracked, the desert heat is on full blast as new terrors take the lead. Poppy's already sweating over a menacing mystery stalker when a shocking death proves she's in serious danger. 

In Provence to visit her daughter, part-time reporter Lucy Stone is soaking up the atmosphere, even if it includes one Carole Capobianco, the empty-nester she encountered on the flight over. They're both amused by the tale of a neighbor's chickens refusing to lay eggs. The decoy eggs he's set out are not only gorgeously Faberge-style, they're being stolen!

Food and cocktails columnist Hayley Powell doesn't know what to believe when Lydia Partridge, the put-together owner of gourmet Bar Harbor Ice Cream, suddenly reveals fears that her husband may be having an affair. There's no other way to explain why Jamie, a respected professor, was spotted in a remote part of town with a much younger woman. But instead of learning the truth about the secret meeting, Lydia opens her freezer truck to find another surprise—the dead body of a summer employee . . . 

The murder of a moderator for a school competition spells trouble for Portland P. I. partners and moms Maya Kendrick and Sandra Wallage . . . Twelve-year-old Rocco Fanelli is a spelling bee champ in the making. He's the odds-on favorite to win the local middle-school bee and go on to the...

You never forget your first corpse. For former child star Jarrod Jarvis, that discovery was twenty-plus years ago, and a lot has happened since he solved a string of real-life Hollywood murders. Now Jarrod lives in Palm Springs where he writes and directs local theatre while quietly grieving the loss of his partner, police detective Charlie.

Hayley Powell, food and cocktails columnist for Bar Harbor's Island Times, is...well, kind of broke. So when she's selected for that extreme coupon-clipping reality game show coming to town...she's thrilled, especially when her competition is nasty nurse Candace Culpepper. But when Haley stumbles across a face-down-in-the-snow Candace - scissors gleaming between her shoulders - she knows the next thing she'll be selected for will probably be a police line-up.