Narrator

Sarah Nichols

Sarah Nichols
  • Marian Babson brings back theater actresses Trixie and Evangeline in No Cooperation from the Cat, her latest cat-suffused cozy!

    Trixie’s daughter Martha has taken up residence in the kitchen she shares with her friend Evangeline. Martha is frantically testing last-minute recipes to meet the deadline for her cookbook, helped by Jocasta, her overworked editor. When a strange man bursts into their lives, it’s revealed that Martha was not the first choice for the cookbook, and that the woman originally working on it died after eating something at a cooking demonstration. Unwanted guests descend on the already crowded and tense apartment, one of whom ends up dead. Cho-Cho-San, the lovely Japanese bobtail cat, joins in the fun as Trixie and Evangeline become entangled in another puzzling murder.

    Babson delivers a delightfully witty mystery with a cast sure to induce laughs, including one cat that will steal readers’ hearts.

  • The last thing eleven-year-old Robin wants to hear is that his mother and her new husband are extending their honeymoon indefinitely. Not that staying with his Aunt Mags is so bad, but there’s her boyfriend to contend with, and the members of the school gang are insisting that he complete a dare before they let him join the group. They want Robin to kidnap Mrs. Nordling’s prize-winning cat when no one is home.

    Getting into the Nordling’s house is easy, and Robin manages to find the cat and put him in his bag. As Robin is leaving, however, he stumbles upon a terrifying scene—Mr. Nordling leaving the master bedroom with blood all over his body. Robin is momentarily paralyzed and then flees down the stairs. He can’t be sure whether or not he has been seen, but realizes that in order to stay safe, he will have to hide the unusual-looking cat.

    Meanwhile, Mr. Nordling is getting desperate. He knows that if he can find the unmistakable cat he will also find the witness to his brutal crime. He begins a frantic search for the young boy, but his infuriating neighbor won’t leave him alone. She is beginning to understand what happened that night, and he decides that he will have to deal with her too.

    In her thirty-sixth published mystery, Marian Babson delights readers again with her usual charm and lighthearted humor. To Catch a Cat will capture the hearts of feline lovers and mystery fans alike.

  • Returning home to England from New York, Margot finds her family in chaos. Her cousin Chloe is in prison awaiting trial for murdering her twin sister Claudia, their mother has withdrawn into the imaginary world of her romance novels, Claudia’s fourteen-year-old daughter has regressed to early childhood and refuses to leave her bed, and to top it all off, the family cat has decided to live with the neighbors.

    As Chloe’s trial approaches, the atmosphere in the house becomes increasingly fraught, and Margot begins to wonder whether someone else is responsible for Claudia’s death. Is Chloe taking the blame for the family’s sake? It’s not until a second murder that the pieces begin to fall into place and the cat agrees to come home.

  • A purrfect crime!

    Dame Cecile Savoy’s “revolting floor mop” of a Pekinese has passed away at a ripe old age. Now, the aging British actress convinces her rivals on stage and screen, Trixie and Evangeline, to support her in her hour of grief … by accompanying her to a taxidermist. But it’s a cab ride straight to a cat-astrope!

    No sooner do the three elderly thespians enter “Stuff Yours” than they discover a dead body, a live kitty in a cage, and flames bursting from the back room. Fortunately for a rare Japanese bobtail called Cho-Cho-San, Trixie grabs the cat before fleeing the scene. But who’s the victim? Who set the fire? And why was a gorgeous feline going to be stuffed?

    Of course, Cho-Cho-San knows more than she’s letting on as the curtain goes up on foul play, murderous jealousies, and a killer who may be going to the dogs …

  • Raina Bretton is a rag woman in London’s east end when a handsome stranger appears in a dank alley and offers her a glittering smile and a chance for adventure. Rothburne Abbey has a unique position for her, one that will take her away from her hardscrabble life and give her a chance to be a lady. Things she could only dream of might be coming true. But some dreams turn out to be nightmares.

    Though Raina has traded squalor for silk and satin, something about the abbey is deeply unsettling. As she wrestles with her true identity, the ruin, decay, and secrets she finds at the heart of the old mansion tear at her confidence and threaten to reveal her for who she really is. Only one man stands between her and the danger that lurks within—and only if he decides to keep her biggest secret hidden.

  • May 1940. Hitler invades France, a move that threatens all of Europe, and three lives intersect at Wickwythe Hall, an opulent estate in the English countryside—a beautiful French refugee, a take-charge American heiress, and a charming champagne vendeur with ties to Roosevelt and Churchill, who isn’t what he seems. There, secrets and unexpected liaisons unfold, until a shocking tragedy in a far-off Algerian port binds them forever …

    Wickwythe Hall is inspired by actual people, places, and events, including Operation Catapult, a sea action in which Churchill launched a bloody attack on the French fleet to keep the powerful ships out of Hitler’s reach. Over one thousand French sailors, who just days before fought side by side with the British, perished. Humanizing this forgotten piece of history, Wickwythe Hall takes the reader behind the blackout curtains of upper-class England, through the bustling private quarters of Churchill’s Downing Street, and along the tense back alleys of occupied Vichy, illustrating what it took to survive in the dark, early days of World War II.

  • Returning us to the extraordinary territory of Jon McGregor’s Man Booker Prize long-listed novel Reservoir 13, The Reservoir Tapes take us deep into the heart of an English village that is trying to come to terms with what has happened on its watch.

    A teenage girl has gone missing. The whole community has been called upon to join the search. And now an interviewer arrives, intent on capturing the community’s unstable stories about life in the weeks and months before Becky Shaw vanished.

    Each villager has a memory to share or a secret to conceal, a connection to Becky that they are trying to make or break. A young wife pushes against the boundaries of her marriage, and another seeks a means of surviving within hers. A group of teenagers dare one another to jump into a flooded quarry, the one weak swimmer still awaiting his turn. A laborer lies trapped under rocks and dry limestone dust as his fellow workers attempt a risky rescue. And meanwhile a fractured portrait of Becky emerges at the edges of our vision―a girl swimming, climbing, and smearing dirt onto a scared boy’s face, images to be cherished and challenged as the search for her goes on.

  • A lonely young heiress becomes the poorest wealthy woman in Victorian England when her father dies without telling anyone where he hid his fortune. Can Tressa and the no-nonsense estate manager find the fortune before the greedy relatives get to it first?

    Tressa Harlowe’s father did not trust banks, but neither did he trust his greedy extended family. He kept his vast fortune hidden somewhere on his estate in the south of England and died suddenly, without telling anyone where he had concealed it. Tressa and her ailing mother are left with a mansion and an immense vineyard and no money to run it. It doesn’t take long for a bevy of opportunists to flock to the estate under the guise of offering condolences. Tressa knows what they’re really up to. She’ll have to work with the rough and rusticated vineyard manager to keep the laborers content without pay and discover the key to finding her father’s fortune—before someone else finds it first.

    Award-winning author Joanna Davidson Politano welcomes readers to Trevelyan Castle, home of the poorest heiress in Victorian England, for a treasure hunt they’ll not soon forget.

  • England’s first Queen Elizabeth gave her name to an age.

    Inheriting a bankrupt, famished, and powerless country, she healed its religious rifts, replenished its treasury, redefined diplomatic guile, defeated the Spanish Armada, and inspired a new flowering of English culture.

    Her father, Henry VIII, beheaded her mother, Anne Boleyn, and Elizabeth was declared a bastard. As Henry kept marrying and discarding wives, she had to be adroit and canny to avoid being snared in the schemes of courtiers plotting to win the crown. And when at last she ascended the throne, her councilors told her she could survive only by marrying.

    But she reigned for forty-four years as Glorianna, the “Virgin Queen,” whose wit, evasions, and towering intellect frustrated enemies both within and outside her island kingdom. The more we know about Elizabeth’s endless complexity, the more remains to be learned. Here’s a beginning.

  • Henry VIII ruled England from 1509 to 1547. As a young man, he was fond of sports and hunting, and was said to be uncommonly handsome. Standing more than six feet tall, he loomed large in the lives and minds of his subjects as he navigated his country through the tricky diplomatic and military hazards of the sixteenth century.

    A man of enormous appetites, Henry conducted affairs with many women, married six, and executed two. His infatuation with Anne Boleyn set in motion a chain of events that reshaped the church in England and eroded the dominance of Rome. But the popular image of Henry as a crude tyrant, dispatching courtiers, enemies, and wives with gusto, obscures a more nuanced and fascinating character. He was a true Renaissance king who presided over one of Europe’s greatest courts and nudged Western civilization onto a new course.

    Here, from Abigail Archer, author of the New York Times bestseller Elizabeth I, is the story of Henry VIII.

  • Looking into the past, the Crusades seem incomprehensible. What combination of religious fervor, hatred of people of different faiths, and gall led Europeans of 1100 AD to make their way thousands of miles to conquer the Holy Land? Why did they continue for 200 years? How did the Crusades change the world?

    The intriguing story is peppered with colorful characters. Over the centuries, this well-researched and written book argues, crusaders saw—and participated in—the evolution of warfare and the transformation of society from feudal fiefdoms to nations and empires. The story of the Crusades is a reminder, too, of the horrors wrought in the name of religion. The Crusades are seen by many Christians today as an exercise in fanaticism, an episode in which the teachings of Christ were used to justify the horrors perpetrated on innocents. That judgment is accurate, but not the whole story. The whole story is in these pages.

  • It’s the most important night of the year for the Catskills Shakespeare Theater Company: the annual fund-raising performance at the country estate of the wealthy widow Paula Van Dusen. And this year promises to be even more special as the company will give a moonlight performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as part of the wedding celebrations for Paula’s daughter, Belinda, and her fiancé Adrian. But “the course of true love never did run smooth,” and in the wake of a disastrous after-party, the stage is set for murder.

    Hugh Hedley, son of a prominent upstate New York family and Adrian’s rival in the cutthroat world of high-end Manhattan real estate, is found murdered with a prop stolen from the play. Mrs. Van Dusen is desperate to keep her daughter’s name out of the paper, and so Charlotte Fairfax is drawn into a murder case amid her costume-design responsibilities and finding a home for the company’s new theater school.

    Charlotte nevertheless throws herself into an investigation of shady business deals, a missing dog, and long-buried family secrets because “though she be but little, she is fierce!”

  • A brand-new anthology of stories inspired by the Arthur Conan Doyle canon

    In this follow-up to the acclaimed In the Company of Sherlock Holmes, expert Sherlockians Laurie King and Leslie Klinger put forth the question: What happens when great writers/creators who are not known as Sherlock Holmes devotees admit to being inspired by Conan Doyle stories? While some are highly regarded mystery writers, others are best known for their work in the fields of fantasy or science fiction. All of these talented authors, however, share a great admiration for Arthur Conan Doyle and his greatest creations, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.

    To the editors’ great delight, these stories go in many directions. Some explore the spirit of Holmes himself; others tell of detectives inspired by Holmes’ adventures or methods. A young boy becomes a detective; a young woman sharpens her investigative skills; an aging actress and a housemaid each find that they have unexpected talents. Other characters from the Holmes stories are explored, and even non-Holmesian tales by Conan Doyle are echoed. The variations are endless!

    Although not a formal collection of new Sherlock Holmes stories, some entries do fit that mold while others were inspired by the Conan Doyle canon. The results are breathtaking, for fans of Holmes and Watson as well as listeners new to Doyle’s writing.

  • A millionaire’s pet tabby is the only witness to his catty murder.

    When millionaire Arthur Arbuthnot mistakes gossip maven Annabel Hinchby-Smythe for a decorator—and hires her to redecorate his apartment—the fiscally challenged Annabel can’t refuse. When she sees Arbuthnot’s tatty London flat, she knows anything will be an improvement. And any gossip she can dig up will be pure gold for the tabloids. But when Arthur is found dead, his frisky relatives begin to lick their chops.

    Arbuthnot’s beloved tabby, Sally, was the only witness to the homicide—and the sole heir to his estate. Suddenly, cat-hating family members are eager to claim her and control the family fortune. Annabel’s only hope to save the cat and catch a killer is to kidnap Sally—and see who comes sniffing around. Once the cat’s out of the bag, murder is sure to follow.

  • The cat who swallowed more than a canary …

    A lifetime of craving cuddlier companionship than her hectoring mother has led fortyish Bettina Bilby to board her neighbors’ felines—an expectant tabby, a pampered blue-eyed Balinese, a depressed ginger Persian with a cod-liver-oil addiction, and Adolf, an imperious mouser with a patchwork face—for a long holiday weekend.

    But a freak storm sets the pigeon among the cats: a carrier bird downed on the doorstep with a tiny load of large, flawless diamonds. And Bettina’s dilemma escalates as Adolf gobbles up one of the gems and a succession of elegant but shifty strangers prowl the gardens, offending the cats and bringing in their wake backdoor bloodshed and murder.

  • A sophisticated mystery involving a series of baffling, random killings, all committed by very bizarre methods, stumps a police investigation unit during the hectic Christmas holidays.

    At Maude Daneson’s rooming house, the holiday season has everyone bustling about in anticipation, and Maude herself is planning a glorious Christmas dinner.

    But neither the landlady nor her lodgers realize that a killer walks among them. The police have so far been unable to track the culprit—and when murder strikes close to home, it threatens to chill the festive mood.

  • This witty and wise work is the first in Elizabeth J. Duncan’s charming new mystery series.

    A Catskills resort’s production of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet takes a wickedly ironic turn when the leading lady, Lauren Richmond, is first poisoned and then stabbed. Who would extinguish the life of such a beautiful young thespian? It seems like just about everyone had a motive to pull the ropes on her final curtain call. At the center of this Shakespearean tragedy is Charlotte Fairfax, formerly the costume mistress of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Upstate New York is a long way from the royal stage, but Charlotte is always the queen of her domain. As this small production’s costume designer, she has stitched her way into everyone’s lives, learning more than anyone could possibly imagine about the rise and fall of Lauren Richmond.