Death on Demand Mystery
26 primary works • 27 total works
Book 1
At Annie Laurance's Death On Demand bookstore on Broward's Rock Island, South Carolina, murder most foul suddenly isn't confined to the well-stocked shelves. Author Elliot Morgan's abrupt demise during a weekly gathering of famous mystery writers called the Sunday Night Regulars is proof positive that a bloody sword is sometimes mightier than a brilliant pen. Who could plot a murder better than a mystery writer?With Annie in the unenviable position of primary police suspect, the pretty young mystery maven and her wealthy paramour, Max Darling, embark on an investigation into a classic locked-room mystery with high stakes. For failing to unmask a brutal and ingenious killer could mean prison for Ms. Laurance. While success could mean her death.
Book 2
When mystery bookstore owner Annie Laurance is invited to stage a Mystery Night for the annual antebellum house tour of the Historical Preservation Society of Chastain, South Carolina, she instead finds herself the leading lady in a flesh-and-blood drama. The play's the thing wherein the curtain falls on mean-spirited grande dame Corinne Webster. While jeweled fingers point, accusing Annie of murder, the perpetrator lurks within the genteel cast of Murder-Most-Make-Believe . . . and the murder weapon is one of the props.
In the tight-laced society of Chastain, Annie is guilty until proven innocent. With her fiance, Max Darling, Annie pieces together evidence to clear her name—until her chief witness is murdered. Now it will take all her sleuthing skills to discover the evil in the heart of Chastain's Beautiful People.
Book 3
Book 4
In sickness and in health . . .
Mystery bookstore owner Annie Laurance and detective Max Darling are finally tying the knot, but a bizarre sequence of events might unravel this blissful marriage before it begins. With the ceremony completed and the champagne goblets emptied, Max sweeps Annie into his arms for an amorous moment . . . when the phone rings and a woman on the other end of the line screams bloody murder!
The newlyweds rush to the scene of the crime, only to discover that Ingrid Jones, Annie's bookstore assistant, has vanished, leaving the body of a neighborhood Peeping Tom on her living room rug. As the community of Broward's Rock, including a dotty New Age psychic and Annie's meddling new mother-in-law, mobilizes to find the missing woman, the cold corpse puts the honeymoon plans on the shelf . . . and Annie's love of investigation threatens to bring the big chill to Max's hungry heart.
Book 5
When mystery bookstore owner Annie Laurance is invited to teach "The Three Great Ladies of the Mystery" class at Chastain Community College, the sometime sleuth discovers that all is not strictly academic in Chastain's hallowed halls of learning. And when a shocking scandal in the school newspaper erupts in a suicide and two violent deaths, Professor Laurance enlists the talents of her new hubby, private eye Max Darling, and dons her thinking cap to probe intrigue and vengeance among Chastain's faculty.
Max and Annie, with dubious help from three of their own great ladies of the mystery -- Annie's pixilated mother-in-law, a batty local dowager, and a Christie crime fanatic -- learn that just about everyone at the school had means, motive, and access to the murder weapons. From the secretly boozing professor of advertising to the muscle-bound campus cad who barters passing grades for a little extracurricular activity, anyone on the faculty is a possible killer -- waiting to strike again!
Book 6
Book 7
Book 8
Annie and Max find that the dignified façade of Tarrant House hides a hotbed of deadly passions as the family turns on itself in a mayhem of murderous motives and angry accusations. But in the end Annie must summon all her sleuthing skills to stop a desperate killer who is ready to strike again to keep the secrets that haunt the Tarrants from the light of day. . . .
Praise for Southern Ghost
“Tantalizing . . . keep[s] the reader guessing all the way.”—The Denver Post
“Pleasing . . . chillingly effective…remarkably satisfying.”—Publishers Weekly
“[Annie and Max] make one of the most attractive pairs of sleuths since Dashiell Hammett’s Nick and Nora Charles.”—Chicago Sun-Times
Book 9
Normally, Annie Laurance Darling, owner of the Death on Demand bookstore, would be eagerly looking forward to the Dixie Book Festival, where more than seventy Southern authors are to be fabulously showcased.
But this year, against her better judgement, Annie has agreed to serve as author liaison to the five authors who will be honored with the much-coveted Dixie Book Festival Medallions. Yet Annie hasn't counted on the likes of publisher Kenneth Hazlitt, who has arrived on Hilton Head Island to peddle a proposal for a daring novel of his own. The steamy tell-all roman a clef supposedly details the indiscretions of some famous Southern authors at a writers' conference. Despite Annie's pleas that he cease coupling his name with those of her authors, Hazlitt plans to push his scurrilous Song of the South at a party thrown by Mint Julep Press.
It's an invitation Annie can't refuse, to a bash that promises to be a party to die for. It is. And Hazlitt does, after a hit of bourbon, his private stock, liberally laced with poison. Unfortunately, the fatal glass is plastered with Annie's prints. And as more and more evidence points her way, Annie and husband Max have no choice but to find the missing proposal - and the skeletons in the closets of her prize charges. For it seems the gang of five have motives galore - from adultery and an X-rated past to vengeance, greed, and a brush with "accidental" death - and that any one of them could have written the cold-blooded scenario for Hazlitt's demise.
Book 10
The most delectable sleuthing couple since Nick met Nora, Annie and Max Darling manage to find quite a bit of murder in their allegedly safe and serene South Carolina island resort. After all, murder is Annie's business--well sort of. She's the proprietor of the popular Death on Demand mystery bookstore and cafe, and her establishment seems to attract trouble like Annie's pesky felines, Dorothy L. and Agatha, attract furballs. And just when Annie and Max settle down for some quality, and much needed, time together, some corpse always rears its ugly head. Now as they anticipate a festive summer, the irresistible duo watch their Fourth of July holiday explode not only with fun and fireworks, but with murder as well.
Book 11
The Women's Club of Broward's Rock prides itself on the success of its annual White Elephant Sale. But this year's sale is marred by a bizarre turn. A sly black mailer coerces five of the town's most prominent citizens into donating valuable artifacts--or some very unflattering information about the individuals might be revealed.
When a volunteer fails to return the pick-up van, Henny Brwaley, Annie's best customer and chood chum, drives off to find the missing woman, just as a powerful squall hits the island. Hours later, a worried Annie goes off in search of Henny, only to find the corpse of the missing volunteer. The victim turns out to be the blackmailer, and despite Annie's protests, the new police chief suspects Henny of the murder.
Convinced of their friend's innocence, Annie and Max hobnob with the island's smart set to determine who among them has a secret they would go to any length to protect.
Book 12
It's getting to look a lot like Christmas on the sea island of Broward's Rock, South Carolina. At the Death on Demand mystery bookstore, owner Annie Darling's Yuletide preparations have to be put on hold thanks to several rather inconvenient distractions -- including murder. Across the windswept isle, in the spacious, spooky mansion of Marguerite Dumaney Ladson, a motley crew is gathering for the onetime movie star's gala Xmas/birthday bash. And when it turns deadly, it's Annie who has to prove the innocence of the most disturbing suspect: her own deadbeat dad.
Book 13
Death is no joke on Browards Rock, though reading about deadly doings remains as popular a pastime as ever for citizens of the stormy South Carolina sea island. Now, with spring newly sprung, Annie Darling has conceived of an ingenious promotional scheme to draw customers into her Death on Demand bookshop for the upcoming in-store appearance by world-class mystery author Emma Clyde. Offering a free book to anyone who can solve a series of clues about popular whodunits, Annie and hubby Max pass out their flyers all over town. But an April Fool prankster is distributing a counterfeit flyer, supposedly devised by the Darlings, offering clues to several lethal local "accidents" that have occurred lately -- including the drowning of Ms. Clydes own husband -- complete with not-so-vague accusations of murder.
Suddenly the Darling name is mud, thanks to the vicious slanders of an unknown counterfeiter. And Annie knows that she herself is going to have to do the bulk of the sleuthing -- with the only intermittently effective aid of Max--if she doesnt want this particular April Fools to last well past Memorial Day.
Then, just as things couldnt seem to get any worse, they do. In the wink of a bloodshot eye, Annies hunt for a malicious trickster has become a desperate search for a killer. Because now more than her reputation is at stake. If she cant rid her idyllic isle of a secret slayer, the malefactors next murderous "joke" may be on her.
Book 14
Nothing warms the heart like romance - even as the raw, cold winds of January chill the residents of Broward's Rock to the bone. But it's more than amore that intrigues mystery bookstore owner Annie Darling and her husband, Max, when wealthy, widowed art patron Virginia Neville announces engagement to Jake O'Neill, her handsome, charming, and much younger fiance, at a gala opening at the Neville gallery. Virginia's joyful announcement leaves many of the gathered - especially certain members of her resentful extended stepfamily - quite peeved. And one of the guests takes the news harder than the rest: before the last champagne bubble pops, murder disrupts the grand celebration.
Quickly deputized by Acting Police Chief Billy Cameron, troubleshooter Max Darling dives headfirst into the icy investigative waters, leaving wife Annie somewhat out in the cold. But since her young assistant, Chloe, is a prime suspect - and one of Jake O'Neill's most recent broken hearts - Annie is determined to untangle the unholy marriage of jealousy, blackmail, gunplay, and malicious mischief...even if it means crossing swords with hubby Max and placing herself in the perilous path of a cleverly sadistic stalker.
Book 15
It's "Corpse ahoy!" when death takes a pleasure cruise -- as we set sail once more with that incomparable, crime-solving duo, the Darlings. Annie Darling, popular proprietress of the Death on Demand bookstore, has done it again! Her murder-mystery cruise in the waters off her not-always-idyllic isle of Broward's Rock is sure to be a roaring success, with every participant dressing up as a favorite fictional sleuth. And sure enough, everything goes swimmingly -- until one of the revelers plunges overboard. And despite hubby Max Darling's courageous rescue attempt, faux murder turns all too quickly into real-life death.
Over the next few days, the body count rises and Annie strongly suspects that all the victims were murdered most foully and that they are all connected in some unknown way. The trick now will be to prove it, with the able assistance of investigator-spouse Max, best friend and best customer Henny Brawley, local bestselling superstar Emma Lloyd, and even (surprise!) Annie's normally ditsy mother-in-law, Laurel. But what the intrepid crime solvers do not realize is that the killer they seek is more ingeniously efficient than most -- and the puzzle they wish to solve is, in reality, a time bomb packed with an explosive mix of arson, assault, kidnapping, robbery . . . and homicide, of course. One false step and Annie and her canny cohorts will be blown off Broward's Rock for good . . . and they'll sink like stones into the cold, briny deep.
Book 16
Britt Barlow is certain her media mogul brother-in-law Jeremiah Addison's fatal tumble a year ago was no accident -- especially since she herself discovered, and disposed of, the trip wire someone had strung across the stairs. Now she's bringing all who were in attendance that weekend back to Golden Silk -- Addison's luxurious secluded island estate -- and inviting two extra guests, Annie and Max Darling, to help uncover a killer.
Annie Darling wouldn't miss this party for the world! And there certainly is no lack of suspects among the guests, each of whom had a substantial motive for doing in the insufferable tycoon. But the party turns deadly when a houseman mysteriously vanishes, along with the boats which are the only escape off Addison's island -- leaving the Darlings stranded on a floating rock in the middle of nowhere, too close to a solution for comfort, and stalked by a crafty murderer.
Book 17
Annie Darling, owner of the Death on Demand mystery bookstore, is understandably upset. It isn't like her p.i. husband Max to abruptly disappear—and homicide is definitely not his style. But when his car is found abandoned on a remote road with a brutally slain, once-beautiful young woman nearby and the murder weapon stashed in the trunk, Annie's worst fears seem justified. The police have Max all but tried and convicted—except for Chief Billy Cameron, whose unshakable belief in his friend's innocence prompts his removal from the case. And as a media circus descends on tiny Broward's Rock, Annie will have to place her own life in jeopardy to clear her husband's name. But time is running out—and she has only one slim chance to unmask a killer who just may have committed the perfect crime.
Book 18
Annie Darling discovers the secret of the Franklin house, but Death Walked In . . .
Max Darling hasn't been interested in crime since his brush with a seductive young woman put him in danger of losing his freedom. He even refuses to talk to a woman who calls for help and says she is afraid.
The caller leaves word she's hidden something in the antebellum house Max and his wife, Annie, are restoring. When Annie finds out, she hurries to the woman's home, only to discover her shot. Annie hears her final whisper as she holds the dying woman's hand.
Evidence links the dead woman to a nearby home, where a fortune in gold coins has gone missing. The gold coins, rare Double Eagles, were stolen from a house filled with visiting family members, twentysomethings hungry for money and several with secrets they must keep. Is one of them willing to kill for a fortune in coins? Or is it the dead woman's high school dropout son?
Max is there when the police arrest the son, but the boy's shock upon learning of his mother's death convinces Max of his innocence. Max and Annie plunge wholeheartedly into the investigation. But are the coins hidden in Annie and Max's Franklin house? The intruder who shoots at Max seems to think so. And who walks in when Annie discovers the secret of that house?
Book 19
She came in the rain. Alone. On a bicycle.
Annie and Max Darling are completely unprepared when the arrival of a mysterious young woman shocks their sea island and stirs up more than just gossip.
It turns out that Iris, the beautiful stranger, is a former resident of Broward's Rock. Her arrival throws the normally happy town into a downward spiral that pits neighbor against neighbor.
Things take a turn for the worse when Annie befriends Iris and invites her to attend the Darlings' party at the pavilion where Death is the uninvited guest. Suddenly, Max and Annie find themselves in the middle of a fight they don't understand and at the mercy of an unknown assailant who's trying to kill them—and all they know is that it is one of their friends.
Book 20
Intrigue and foul play are no strangers to the idyllic South Carolina sea island of Broward's Rock.
Mystery bookstore owner Annie Darling and her husband, Max, who specialize in solving problems, plunge into a startling web of danger and deceit when a trio of deaths is linked to the island's youth recreation center. — With the evidence mounting against her, the center's director seeks out Max to clear her name.
When it comes to intrigue, where Max goes, Annie isn't far behind. To save an innocent woman, the pair scrambles to unravel three complex interlinked puzzles: the mystery of three guns, the pulled-out pant pockets of one victim, and the disappearance of a teenager whose stepfather always had the last laugh—until he died.