Great Suspense Doesn’t Have To Be “Hard Boiled”

If you prefer your mysteries without explicit gore, sex, or violence, try these authors – all Agatha Award winners and nominees:

 

The Wrong Girl
by Hank Phillippi Ryan

What if you didn’t know the truth about your own family? Boston newspaper reporter Jane Ryland begins to suspect that the agency is engaging in the ultimate betrayal – reuniting birth parents with the wrong children. When the threatening phone calls start, Jane knows she is on the right track… but with both a killer at large and an infant missing, time is running out.

 

 

 

Naughty in Nice
by Rhys Bowen

It’s 1933, and Lady Georgiana Rannoch (now 34th in line to the British throne) is destitute and helping out in a soup kitchen. So she jumps at the chance to escape to the French Riviera when the queen offers to finance her trip there to recover a stolen snuff box. En route, Rannoch meets legendary designer Coco Chanel, who asks her to model a new line of clothing.

 

 

 

Learning to Swim
by Sara J. Henry

Troy Chance witnesses a boy fall from a ferry into Lake Champlain. Diving in to rescue him, she discovers his arms bound with an adult sweatshirt. He’s incredibly frightened, speaks only French, and won’t tell her what happened, so Troy determines that she will keep him safe rather than turn him over to the police. When he finally begins to confide in her, he tells a bizarre tale of being kidnapped, hearing his mother murdered by gunshot, and then being held for months.

 

 

 

An Unmarked Grave
by Charles Todd

While contending with wounded soldiers and influenza patients, WWI battlefield nurse Bess Crawford stumbles upon the body of an officer and family friend who has been murdered, and uses her father’s connections in the military to search for an elusive killer.

 

 

 

Lowcountry Boil
by Carl T. Smith

Covington SC’s premier attorney, local bank president, and superintendent of schools – along with a few local lowlifes – have been smuggling drugs into the country for several years and are planning the ultimate run before retiring forever from the drug scene. Sam Larkin has moved to Covington to escape his past, but gets caught up in a DEA investigation when he sparks the interest of the agent investigating the drug ring.

 

 

 

Code Name Verity
by Elizabeth Wein

In 1943, a British fighter plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France and the survivor tells a tale of friendship, war, espionage, and great courage as she relates what she must to survive while keeping secret all that she can.

 

 

 

Beautiful Mystery
by Louise Penny

No outsiders are ever admitted to the monastery of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups, where two dozen monks live in peace, prayer, and song. The sound of their glorious voices, raised in ancient chants, is so profound it is known as “the beautiful mystery.” But when the renowned choir director is murdered, the monastery must admit Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir of the Surete du Quebec.

 
Dandy Gilver and the Proper Treatment of Bloodstains
by Catriona McPherson

Dandy Gilver, a witty, wealthy, aristocrat, puts her status to good use by solving crimes. When Dandy gets a letter from a woman who thinks her husband is going to kill her, she must go undercover as a maid to get the complete story.

 

 

 

A Fatal Winter
by G. M. Malliet

Max Tudor – Anglican priest, former MI5 agent, and village heartthrob – investigates two deaths at Chedrow Castle. But his growing attraction to Awena Owen complicates his case, as does the recent arrival at Chedrow Castle of a raucous group of long-lost, greedy relatives, any one of whom has a motive for murder.