検索キーワード： 制作 "HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books" ミステリー

As far as Carol Spencer is concerned, the war has spoiled everything. She and Don had been engaged for years and were on the verge of marriage when he was shot down in the South Pacific, leaving Carol on the verge of spinsterhood at 24. She wants to take some kind of job in the war effort, but her invalid mother demands that Carol accompany her to the family's summer home in Maine. But when they arrive at the faded mansion, they find it completely locked up. The servants are gone, the lights are dark - and there is a body in the closet.

Crescent Place was once a peaceful country green surrounded by five tasteful suburban houses and populated by polite, responsible citizens. But as the city enveloped it, the residents built a gate to keep the world out. With each passing year, the subdivision grew stranger and stranger - until it began to look like a time capsule of the 1890s.

The Birches was one of the grand mansions of the 1920s, with a ballroom, tennis courts, and, of course, a swimming pool. But after the crash of '29, when Lois and Judith's father killed himself to escape his debts, the family turned the summer home into a fulltime retreat from the world. Decades later, Judith is the queen of New York society, a fast-living beauty whose nerves are beginning to fray, while Lois still lives in the dilapidated old mansion, writing mystery novels to pay the bills. She is about to encounter a mystery of her own.

In an elaborate house known as the Cloisters, Maud Wainwright rules supreme. The queen of society in the small town of Beverly, she has a table long enough to seat 100, and she keeps an iron grip on the guest list. Her right-hand woman is Pat Abbott, a local girl who is beautiful, innocent, and kind. Pat has no idea how cutthroat high society can be, but she's about to get a deadly first lesson.

Elizabeth Bell runs a quiet household, with no family and no more than the usual number of servants. She passes her time thinking about crime and working on her biography of a relative. When a young cousin comes to stay, life in the house becomes uncharacteristically lively. First, cousin Judy burns a hole in Miss Bell's desk. Next, they spy a burglar on the staircase - a shadowy figure who vanishes without a trace. And finally, Sarah, the nurse, takes the dogs for a walk and never returns.

The house called Sunset has been Marcia's summer home for her entire life. Both of her parents died there, and she and her brother spent their youth exploring its rambling hallways and seaside grounds. They love the old house, but Marcia's sister-in-law has never taken to it. Juliette loathes the sea, and soon comes to loathe her husband as well. After they divorce, Juliette pays a final visit to Sunset, demanding alimony. She is there for a few tense days before she disappears. It takes them a week to find her body.

The Danube Express was once the most famous train on the continent. Linking east and west, it was the fastest route from the Alps to the Black Sea, until airplanes and automobiles made it obsolete. When a group of savvy investors revived it in the 1970s, it became an express only in name. But when a Hungarian actress disappears from the train, it turns out to be more than a publicity stunt. Soon it is clear that a killer lurks on the Danube Express, and plans on taking it all the way to the end of the line.

For five generations, the Belvedere family restaurant has been a Louisiana landmark. Unfortunately, the Belvedere clan inherits more than a talent for cooking from each other - they also have an unfortunate tendency of becoming insane. When the latest Belvedere patriarch loses his mind, his son attempts to take over the business, only to find that the ancient family cookbook has vanished - and with it, the priceless recipe for the world famous Oysters Belvedere. The Crescent City will never be the same.

At Sir Gerald's medieval festival, the castle is authentic, the jousting is rousing, and the wenches are the sauciest in the land. The only thing missing is decent food. And so Sir Gerald calls in London's gourmet detective, an expert food finder, whose specialties include locating rare ingredients, designing historically accurate menus, and solving the occasional murder. And all three skills will be tested if he is to escape the age of chivalry alive. After the day's first joust, the winning knight falls to the ground, poisoned.

The gourmet detective realizes that the Alpine Springs health resort is not a typical spa somewhere in the middle of his first cocktail. For this epicure, it is paradise - and it may also be his doom. He has come from London to speak about fine dining, but while here, he fully intends on enjoying himself. One night, he arranges a tryst with a fellow expert. When he comes to, Kathleen has vanished, and the detective begins to suspect that life in the Alps is not as healthful as it appears.

London's gourmet detective is contemplating an empty bank account and, worse, an empty stomach, when a phone call solves both problems at once. Over lunch, Desmond Lansdown, world-renowned actor and burgeoning restaurateur, hires the detective for a chef-hunt, sending him to Italy to eat until he can decide which cook Lansdown should hire. It's a demanding gig, but this detective is never one to shy away from hard work. However, it doesn't take long for this plush assignment to turn prickly.

The vineyards of the Willesford Wine Group occupy a particularly choice section of French wine country. From the grapes of Provence, the owners of this impeccably managed syndicate have squeezed international fame and fortune. Next to their spectacular estate lies the petite Peregrine Winery, whose shadowy owners suddenly make repeated requests to buy Willesford's property - raising their offer each time. Unable to discern Peregrine's motive for these attempts, the Willesford group sends for London's gourmet detective, a sleuth with impeccable reasoning and an even finer palate.

In the days of Marco Polo, men risked their lives for spices. And in an age when black pepper was so valuable that it was sold one peppercorn at a time, there was no spice more valuable than the legendary Ko Feng. Known as the Celestial Spice, it supposedly vanished five centuries ago, and its name lives on only as culinary myth. But now a sack of it has turned up in New York City, and the leading experts of world cuisine will kill for a taste.

Janet Rhys is driving through the backwoods of Canada when she sees the truck ahead of her lose control, smash into a snow bank, and flip sideways, completely blocking the road. Springing to action, she darts into a nearby barn, searching for something to use to rescue the person trapped inside. When she hears an explosion, Janet returns to find the truck is nothing but smoking wreckage, and the driver has stolen her car.

Though he may not look the part, Madoc Rhys is a Mountie - and his keen sense of detection tells him it's time to ask Janet Wadman to marry him. They have just gotten engaged when Christmas rolls around, and Janet's boss invites them to his family estate for a last holiday fling before Janet leaves her job. After a long helicopter ride, they are at Graylings, ancestral home of the Condryckes, a family so strange that Canada's shortest Mountie fits right in. There is a psychic old woman, an erudite butler, and a family patriarch.

In a quiet small town in New Brunswick, old Agatha Treadway makes one last cranky complaint to her niece before dying on her kitchen floor. The cause seems to be a jar of contaminated string beans, which sat on Agatha's basement shelf for years before becoming her final meal. The town doctor calls it a tragic accident - and a warning to all who can their own vegetables - but Agatha's neighbor, the intrepid Janet Wadman, knows better. Agatha was an expert canner, which means the beans must have been placed there by someone else. This was murder.

Summer 1989: Gunther Fahnstiel, once a tough cop who wasn't averse to taking a little side money from a certain madam, has just escaped the dementia ward of his Wichita nursing home. He's not exactly sure where he wants to go, but wherever it is, it has to do with the bag full of cash belonging to the man he accidentally backed over with his RV in 1979. During his search, Gunther begins to relive the violent fallout of that madam's sex lottery 40 years ago. As Gunther's memories unravel, his past and present will collide in a devastating reckoning.

Zilla Trott is pouring her cat some chamomile tea when the drifter appears in her kitchen. He is grubby and crude - not at all the kind of person you'd usually find in the pleasant town of Lobelia Falls - but something about him intrigues the aging widow. Perhaps it's his rugged good looks, or the way he seems to come from another time and place. Or perhaps it's the fact that he's been dead for nearly a century.

When word gets out that Dittany Monk, the sleuthing gardener of Lobelia Falls, is expecting twins, every knitter in town races to Miss Jane Fuzzywuzzy's Yarnery to begin work on a complete wardrobe of hats, booties, and tiny sweaters. One customer, however, has even more urgent business: the man with the gunshot wounds in his back.

When Jenson Thorbisher-Freep announces an amateur theatrical contest, the women in the Grub-and-Stake gardening club race to join in. They enlist Osbert Monk as their playwright - not only is he married to their club leader Dittany Monk, but he's famous the world over as Lex Laramie, best-selling novelist of Westerns. Taking the legend of Dangerous Dan McGrew as his inspiration, Osbert delivers a rough draft faster than the Pony Express. Now all the Grub-and-Stakers have to do is cast it.