Yankee Doodle Dead

Unless you find the idea of a woman who runs a mystery book store as an amateur crime solver just too cute for comfort, you'll have some fun with Carolyn G. Hart's latest cozy yarn about Annie and Max Darling, the Nick and Nora Charles of the South Carolina island resort town called Broward's Rock. Annie, of course, still keeps her Death on Demand book shop, matching wits with customers about unlikely murder methods from classic mysteries while serving them iced café lattes to ward off the summer heat.

Mint Julep Murder

While ensconced on Broward's Rock Island, South Carolina, mystery bookstore owner and amateur sleuth Annie Darling serves as author liaison for the Dixie Book Festival on Hilton Head. Problems arise when a self-serving, small-time publisher promises to write a scandalous roman a clef featuring Annie's five charges, all quite famous. After the would-be writer dies of poisoning, all evidence points to Annie. When the beautiful, well-married, sexy, and witty Annie begins her quest for the truth, how can she lose?

A Little Class on Murder

The fifth in a series featuring bookstore owner and amateur sleuth Annie Laurence Darling ( Death on Demand ), this tale is long on literary allusions but short on momentum. Invited to teach a class on mystery novels, offered for some strange reason in the journalism, rather than the English department of a local college, Annie finds that university politics become grist for the school's paper. Student editor Brad Kelly's expose of a professor's embezzlement, and of the journalism department's apparent cover-up, lead to that instructor's suicide.

Honeymoon with Murder

The murder of sleazy/disreputable Jesse Penrick interrupts Annie and Max Darling's honeymoon when Annie's friend, desperate for assistance, phones her. The friend's subsequent disappearance galvanizes the island of Broward's Rock (off the Carolinas), precipitates the involvement of a gaggle of sleuths, and provides for the author's frequent allusions to various mysteries (Annie runs the Death on Demand mystery bookstore). The literary references fall a bit thick, as do appendant crimes, batty characters, cliches, and extended "important" messages. True mystery devotees should love this.

Design for Murder

Annie is asked to stage a murder for the annual spring house tour sponsored by the Historical Society of Chastain, South Carolina. Her only problem is deciding which fictional murder to stage--until a corpse turns up in the town pond. The second Annie Laurance/Max Darling novel. Original.