Showing results by author "M.C. Beaton" in All Categories

It's up to the servants of No. 67 Clarges Street to hatch a scheme... and arrange a match! "Oh, to be as beautiful as Euphemia!" sighs plain Jane Hart when she joins her sister at No.67 for the Season, as then Lord Tregarthan might notice her... as she has noticed him and forever lost her heart. And while it is Euphemia's fate to flit her way through balls and into the arms of a marquis, Jane's is to stay at home... until the Downstairs staff transform the plain Miss into the Season's sensation and send her waltzing into a daring liaison with the man of her dreams!

Every Season the beaux mondes of the Regency would hire a house in the heart of London's fashionable West End at a disproportionately high rent for often inferior accommodation and yet No.67 Clarges Street, a town house complete with staff, remains vacant from year to year.

Just when Hamish most needs him - the dentist turns up dead... In Scotland, where thrift and a 'nice set of dentures' are generally admired, dental surgeon Dr Frederick Gilchrist's cheap rates and penchant for pulling teeth have gained him a clientele. However, wiser Highlanders (like Hamish Macbeth) opt to steer clear of this reputed womanizer's all-too-busy hands. Only jaw-throbbing agony drives Hamish to Gilchrist's surgery, but what he finds is the dentist's dead body - putting several angry husbands in the frame for murder...

After a romantic disappointment and an undeserved demotion, Scots village bobby Hamish Macbeth decides a week's holiday at the coastal village of Skag might be just the ticket. He's dead wrong, of course: the food is dire, and the man in the next room nags his wife so loudly and continuously that more than one person at the Friendly House bed-and-breakfast wishes him dead, though only Hamish is heard threatening him. When this chap's body is found floating in the river Skag, Hamish is the prime suspect.

When police constable Hamish Macbeth receives the news that there has been a murder at Arrat House, home of the relentless practical joker Arthur Trent, he doesn’t race to the scene of the crime. After all, last time he was called to investigate a death at the isolated Scottish manor, the "victim" turned out to be Trent’s manservant covered in fake blood.

Private Detective Agatha Raisin immerses herself in the glittering lifestyle of the fabulously wealthy when Sir Charles Fraith is accused of murder - and Agatha is named as his accomplice! A high-society wedding, a glitzy masked ball and an introduction to the world of international show-jumping, where the riders are glamorous, the horses are beautiful and intrigue runs deep, leave Agatha with a list of suspects as long as a stallion's tail.

Agatha is going through a man-hating phase and so is unmoved by news of the captivating new curate. But when she meets the golden-haired, blue-eyed Tristan Delon, she is swept off her feet . . . along with every other female in the village. She is positively ecstatic when he invites her to dine with him but the next day Agatha is left with a hangover from hell - and his cold corpse suggests that, once again, she's in the frame for murder!

Lovely, wealthy and well bred, Clarissa Vevian has been unable to find a suitable husband because of her terrible clumsiness. Her petite and fastidious mother has tried to mould Clarissa into a dainty miss to fit the fashion - but all her efforts are doomed to failure. And when Clarissa enters the Tribble sister's home, they fear that their reputation for matchmaking success may be destroyed - along with their carpets and furniture!

No sooner does Miss Pym board her next stagecoach than she finds herself embroiled in the plight of Miss Belinda Earle, a spirited heiress banished to Bath after swearing off the marriage market.

When the coach founders near Baddell Castle, and the dashing Marquis of Frenton comes to the rescue, Miss Pym decides to give Fate a hand. Although the austere bachelor disdains romance, his furtive glances towards Belinda prove to Miss Pym that her expert matchmaking will soon turn this star-crossed couple into a heavenly match.

The morning of Agatha's marriage to James Lacey dawns bright and clear. But her luck runs out in the church when Jimmy, the husband she had believed long dead, turns up large as life and twice as ugly. Agatha has a go at strangling him. James breaks off the engagement. So when Jimmy is found murdered next day, Agatha and James are both the prime suspects. And they'll have to work together in order to clear their names . . .

Polly was a bewitching young girl, that pretty Polly Marsh, and she knew it. She also knew that beauty could be her passport into the castles where she had always known she belonged. So she set her sights for a duke and joined the firm of Westerman's as a stenographer. Surely one of that noble family would notice her and then all of her dreams would come true!

In dark, wintry Lochdubh, Christmas Cheer is about as welcome as a flat tyre on a deserted road. The Calvinist element in town has always resisted what they view as secular frivolity, so for most of the townsfolk there'll be no carols, feasting, gifts - or even whisky on Christmas Day! And for PC Hamish Macbeth there's no holiday from crime - he finds himself hunting for a missing cat belonging to a lonely spinster.

Lady Jane Lovelace has conceived the idea of approaching the most notorious man about town, Lord Charles Welbourne, with a most unique proposition. But when he counters her offer with a condition that he thinks will halt her impudence, much to the surprise of both, she accepts. A novel of passion and intrigue, The Westerby Inheritance is the first volume of this new and emotionally charged romantic saga all played out against a backdrop of elegant 18th-century society.

Agatha's former husband James is engaged to be married to a beautiful, young woman and Agatha has been kindly invited to the wedding. When the bride is murdered on her wedding day, naturally Agatha is Suspect Number One - but then matters are turned on their head when the dead bride's mother engages Agatha to take on the case of her murdered daughter! And very soon Agatha's own life is in danger while she tries to solve the mystery of the corpse bride while fighting off (halfheartedly) the advances of a very attractive and determined Frenchman!

Amazing news is spreading like wildfire across the Scottish countryside: the most famous of all Highland bachelors, police sergeant Hamish Macbeth, is planning to marry at last! Everyone in the village of Lochdubh adores Josie McSween, Hamish's newest constable and blushing bride-to-be. While locals think she is quite a catch, Hamish has a severe case of pre-nuptial jitters... after all, if it wasn't for the recent murder of a beautiful woman in a neighbouring village there wouldn't be a wedding in the first place.

Mrs Gentle has fooled everyone into thinking she is as sweet as she sounds - Gentle by name and gentle by nature. But local constable Hamish Macbeth isn't fooled. He believes this little old lady is actually quite sly and vicious, but he's in a minority of one. Or is he? When Mrs Gentle dies under unusual circumstances, the villagers of Lochdubh are shocked and outraged. Chief Detective Inspector Blair suspects that members of her family may be involved but Hamish thinks there's much more to the story - and is willing to get rough to solve the riddle of Mrs Gentle's mysterious demise.

When Fergus Macleod, Lochdubh's abusive, drunk dustman is put in charge of the local recycling centre and is dubbed the 'Environment Officer', Hamish Macbeth smells trouble. Sure enough, Fergus, imbued with his new powers, becomes a bullying tyrant and when his body is found stuffed in a recycling bin, no one is sorry - including his long-suffering family.

Agatha has fallen in love - again. This time it's the local gardener, George Marston, she has her eye on. But competition for his attention abounds. With her shameless determination Agatha will do anything to get her man - including footing the bill for a charity ball in town just for the chance to dance with him. But when George is a no-show Agatha goes looking for him - and finds he has been murdered, having been bitten by a poisonous snake and buried in a compost heap.

What do you do if you are of noble stock, but impoverished, and living in London with a certain style to maintain? One has to work... but One's relatives will be appalled when One turns One's hand to trade - and opens a hotel, The Poor Relation, offering employment to others of the same social standing and in the same awkward situation. This is precisely what Mrs Fortescue decides upon and, together with friend Colonel Sandhurst, transforms her decrepit Bond Street home into a posh hotel, offering guests the pleasure of being waited upon by the nobility.

Can the feisty Agatha cut it as a private investigator? She soon learns that running her own detective agency in the Cotswolds is not quite like starring in a Raymond Chandler movie. But then walks in wealthy divorcee Catherine Laggat-Brown, and Agatha is given her first real case. Death threats, blackmail and physical attack soon follow, and once again Agatha is off scouring the countryside for clues and showing friends and enemies alike what Raisin Investigations can do!