|
Selected Fiction Titles at the Springfield City Library
Stories
- Murder for Halloween: Tales of Suspense, edited by Michele Slung & Roland Hartman [MYST MURDER F]
- A suspenseful collection of tales combines ghoulish tricks and supernatural treats, featuring the work of Peter Straub, Marcia Muller, Peter Lovesey, James Grady, Leo Bruce, Ray Bradbury, Gahan Wilson, Robert Bloch, and more.
- The Haunted Hour, edited by Cynthia Manson & Constance Scarborough [PBK MYST H]
- Twenty edge-of-your-seat mystery and suspense stories include Robert Bloch's "A Most Unusual Murder," Patricia Highsmith's "The Pond," Bram Stoker's "Dracula's Guest," and Ray Bradbury's "The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone."
- Reginald Hill Asking for the Moon: Four Dalziel and Pascoe Adventures
- Ghost stories permeate two adventures in this collection: "Pascoe's Ghost" and "Dalziel's Ghost." In the first, Pascoe hunts in vain for a missing woman; in the next, the duo sit out a long night in a haunted house, and Dalziel, after several good-sized hits on the whisky bottle, lets slip a few secrets from his past.
Novels
- Susan Wittig Albert Witches Bane
- Texas herb shop owner and part-time private eye China Bayles sets out to catch a Halloween night killer when one of her friends turns up dead at witching hour.
- Donald Bain and Jessica Fletcher Trick or Treachery: A Murder She Wrote Mystery
- Halloween brings some unexpected surprises to Cabot Cove, Maine, when a reclusive woman rumored to be a witch turns up dead during the town's local holiday festivities, and mystery writer Jessica Fletcher must sort through a host of suspects to find the killer.
- Carol Lea Benjamin The Long Good Boy
- Three transsexual prostitutes, working a warehouse district in lower Manhattan, enlist private detective Rachel Alexander to find the murderer of one of their coworkers, who was killed following the infamous Greenwich Village Halloween parade. As Rachel investigates, with the help of her pit bull, Dash, she finds the death tied to the murder of an undercover cop.
- Lillian Jackson Braun The Cat Who Talked to Ghosts
- Determined to discover what frightened his ex-housekeeper to death, detective Qwilleran and his two feline assistants move into the house to search for the offending spirits.
- Rita Mae Brown The Hunt Ball
- When a faculty member from the local prep school turns up dead at the annual Halloween dance, "Sister" Jane Arnold discovers that the case is complicated by a controversy over local historical artifacts in the school collection that were made by slaves.
- Leo Bruce Death on Allhallowe'en [available through CWMARS]
- Carolus Deene, an historian and amateur detective, investigates the connection between a series of deaths and a local coven of witches.
- W J Burley Wycliffe and the Scapegoat
- Every year, at Halloween, high on the Cornish cliffs, a life-sized effigy of a man is strapped to a blazing wheel and run into the sea -- a re-enactment of a hideous old legend where the figure had been a living sacrifice. And now Jonathan Riddle, well-known and respected local builder and undertaker, has disappeared -- and it seems all too likely that his corpse has gone the way of the historic 'scapegoat'. As Chief Superintendent Wycliffe begins to investigate, more and more unpleasant facts emerge until he is left with an incredible, and seemingly impossible, solution.
- Ann Campbell Wolf in Sheep's Clothing
- When one of her tenants turns up dead on Halloween night and her brother Tom, the woman's business partner, becomes the prime suspect in the crime, Annie O'Hara sets out to clear her brother's name and find the real killer, with the help of her canine sleuthing partner, Claudius.
- R. Wright Campbell The Wizard of La-La Land
- In a new La-La Land mystery, a male prostitute's death leaves some mysterious clues to another murder -- satanic books, a mummified finger, a phone with numbers on automatic dial -- leading Whistler on a grim search into a seething netherworld.
- Agatha Christie Hallowe'en Party
- Mystery writer Ariadne Oliver joins a Hallowe'en party where a girl falls victim to a game of apple-bobbing gone mysteriously wrong. Now she's joined forces with Hercule Poirot to unmask the killer.
- Susan Rogers Cooper Not in My Backyard
- The neighborhood harassment campaign against an ex-con who has moved to town gets out of hand when a dead body turns up on the newcomer's front lawn on Halloween night, and local romance writer E. J. Pugh is on the case.
- Denise Dietz Throw Darts at a Cheesecake
- Ellie Bernstein joins forces with homicide detective Peter Miller to investigate the murder of Jeannie Dobson and the "accidents" that are befalling her fellow members of Weight Winners.
- P.C. Doherty Ghostly Murders : the priest's tale of mystery and murder as he goes on pilgrimage from London to Canterbury
- Pilgrim Poor Parson narrates the story of Brothers Philip and Edmund, the newly appointed priests of the small Kent village of Scawsby, who, when they decide to build a new church, encounter a series of mysterious events, disappearances, and murders that put their own lives in jeopardy.
- Carole Nelson Douglas Cat with an Emerald Eye
- Rough-and-tumble tomcat Midnight Louie, and his redheaded human companion, Temple Barr, are up to their ears in trouble when a Halloween seance to resurrect the spirit of Harry Houdini results in supernatural murder, and it is up to them to find out who -- or what -- was responsible.
- Susan Dunlap Not Exactly a Brahmin
- When the car accident that kills wealthy Ralph Palmerson proves to be foul play, Berkeley cop Jill Smith uncovers a variety of suspects, including Palmerson's much younger wife, a secretive Vietnamese mechanic, and the mysterious Shareholders-5. Before finally bringing the killer to justice, she must deal with a cop-hating private detective and a strange Halloween party.
- Rosemary Edghill The Bowl of Night
- When a local resident is killed at an outdoor pagan festival in upstate New York, Bast -- a.k.a. Karen Hightower -- discovers that her suspects include modern-day witches, a ceremonial magician, a survivalist, a dominatrix, an ex-boyfriend, and a few would-be Klingons.
- Loren D. Estleman The Witchfinder
- Fresh from the pages of Never Street , Detroit's private investigator Amos Walker comes between a wealthy, famous, and ailing architect and his young, adulterous wife, on whom he seeks to wreak a terrible vengeance.
- Jerrilyn Farmer Sympathy For The Devil [available through CWMARS]
- Madeline Bean, caterer to the stars, is in the middle of the biggest job of her career. She and her partner Wesley have pulled off Hollywood's most outrageous A-list Halloween party for notorious producer Bruno Huntley, complete with an eerie fortuneteller who is astonishingly accurate, and exotic food that's to die for. Before long, Bruno is thrashing and writhing out on the dance floor. Just one problem: he's not standing up, And soon, he's not even breathing.
- Joanne Fluke The Fudge Cupcake Murder
- When bakery owner and sleuth Hannah Swensen discovers the body of Sheriff Grant behind the high school where she is teaching her cooking class, she must prove the innocence of the prime suspect, her brother-in-law Bill.
- Leslie Glaister Trick or Treat
- An unsettling sense of menace and violence link the eccentric lives of an obese yet still sensual senior citizen; a lonely eight-year-old boy; and an obsessive widow, living in adjoining houses in a seemingly placid English city.
- Paula Gosling A Few Dying Words
- Resigning himself to the annual mayhem of the Blackwater Bay Halloween Festival, sheriff Matt Gabriel is disturbed by the dying words of an old friend after a car crash and begins investigating an old town secret involving several prominent citizens.
- Jane Haddam Skeleton Key
- The death of a glamorous and fabulously wealthy debutante finds Gregor Demarkian investivating a quiet Connecticut town to find troubling passions lurking just under the surface.
- Carolyn Haines Hallowed Bones
- Sarah Booth Delaney is both a Southern lady and a skilled detective, but her latest case takes her into the murky world of New Orleans where motives for murder, and a list of suspects, are as numerous as the stories of spiritual malfeasance that permeate the air.
- Carolyn Hart Southern Ghost
- Bookstore owner Annie Darling must set aside her shame and do some serious sleuthing when her husband Max becomes the prime suspect in an unspecified crime involving a beautiful blonde.
- Tony Hillerman The Fallen Man
- Investigating the discovery of a skeleton on Halloween at one of the holiest places in Navajo religion, Jim Chee and the newly retired Joe Leaphorn realize that the body is that of a missing person from one of Joe's long-unsolved past cases.
- Tony Hillerman The Wailing Wind
- The mishandling of a murder scene places Navajo Tribal Police sergeant Jim Chee on the bad side of the FBI and brings ex-lieutenant Joe Leaphorn out of retirement into an old crime he hoped to forget involving an obsessive love and memories of a missing woman.
- Susan Isaacs Long Time No See
- Recently widowed, Judith Singer cannot get her former lover, Nelson Sharpe of the Nassau County Police Department, out of her mind, as she investigates the disappearance on Halloween night of Courtney Logan, the wife of a man with ties to the Long Island mob.
- Jonnie Jacobs Murder Among Us
- Schoolteacher, single mother, and detective extraordinaire, Kate Austen thinks her life cannot get much worse, until Julie Harmon, one of her students, is murdered, and as Kate unearths some startling secrets about Julie's past, she must race against time to unmask a killer.
- Andrew Klavan The Animal Hour
- When Nancy Kincaid arrives at her downtown office, she is chased from her building by her colleagues, who claim that they have never seen her before, while photographer Zach Perkins turns up missing after the headless corpse of a woman is found in his bed.
- Alex Matthews Satan's Silence
- Oak Park therapist Cassidy McCabe violates client privilege when she confides a wild tale of child abuse and murder to her reporter boyfriend. At her boyfriend's instigation, however, the pair attempts to verify the story and embarks on a chilling adventure involving a satanic cult.
- Ed McBain Tricks: an 87th Precinct mystery
- On Halloween night in the 87th Precinct, a liquor store owner is shot by costumed children, a headless torso is discovered, and Detective First Class Eileen Burke, disguised as a hooker, hopes to trap a serial killer.
- Leslie Meier Trick or Treat Murder
- While preparing for the annual Halloween festival in Tinker's Cove, Maine, Lucy Stone investigates a series of arson fires that are destroying local architectural treasures, crimes that claim the life of the owner of the town's oldest home and turn an arsonist into a killer.
- Barbara Michaels Dancing Floor
- Grieving over her father's untimely death, Heather Tradescent embarks on a tour of England's historic gardens, an odyssey that leads to Troytan House, its intriguing lord of the manor, chilling tales of local witchcraft, and murder.
- Helen R. Myers Dead End
- The discovery of a bloody handprint on a Dead End sign and the disappearance of a troubled teenager, Hank Pugh, spell trouble for a small Texas town, but the mystery is complicated by Hank's return, the discovery that his sister Tracie is missing, and the realization that newcomer Sam Knight was the last person to see her alive.
- Tamar Myers Nightmare in Shining Armor
- After a fire ruins her costume party, Den of Antiquity proprietress Abigail Timberlake is shocked to discover the body of her ex-husband's new wife, Tweetie Timberlake, stuffed into a suit of armor, and she must race against time to catch a killer before she becomes the next victim.
- Katherine Hall Page The Body in the Moonlight
- Minister's wife, professional caterer, and amateur sleuth Faith Fairchild does not know if she can stand the heat in the kitchen when a woman drops dead, ostensibly from Faith's yummy but poisoned dessert.
- Ellis Peters Flight of a Witch
- When a young woman, missing for five days, suddenly reappears insisting she was gone only two hours, Inspector Felse must investigate the bizarre claim.
- Nancy Pickard Twilight
- Agreeing to help when a grieving widow enlightens her about a dangerous intersections where multiple tragedies have occurred, Jenny Cain is drawn into a long-running controversy that threatens to destroy everything dear to her.
- Gillian Roberts A Hole in Juan
- Philadelphia English teacher Amanda Pepper joins forces with her private eye husband, C. K. Mackenzie, to investigate when a yearly tradition in which children play harmless pranks throughout the city on the night before Halloween turns deadly, leaving a new teacher near death.
- Corinne Holt Sawyer Murder OlÉ!
- Angela Benbow and Caledonia Wingate, two savvy senior-citizen sleuths, find themselves embroiled in a south-of-the-border mystery when the residents of their California retirement home take a group trip for Halloween to Tijuana, Mexico, and two people fail to return.
- Michael Siverling The Sterling Inheritance
- Working for his P.I. mother while trying to pursue a career as a musician, detective Jason Wilder keeps busy searching for a man who pulled a knife on him, dealing with an exploding office, looking for a mysterious woman, and investigating a brutal murder.
- Kathleen Taylor Mourning Shift
- Sassy waitress and amateur sleuth takes on greedy relatives, old secrets, and a killer when a mysterious old man, the long-estranged husband of the cook at the Delphi Cafe, turns up dead in the diner's restroom on Halloween.
- Kathy Hogan Trochek Strange Brew
- When a local business is forced to close in order to accommodate a microbrewery and the head of the brewery is found murdered, Callahan uncovers some disturbing secrets that are better left hidden.
Unless otherwise noted, all titles are in the Fiction section, shelved alphabetically by author.
Looking for more holiday reading? Check out the MyShelf website for Halloween Reading Ideas: with mystery, romance, other fiction and non-fiction, and stories for young people.
Call the Reference Desk at 413-263-6828 ext. 213, your branch library, or use our Askalibrarian service to reserve a book today! |
Home | Catalog | Databases | Branches | Kids | Teens | Calendar | Site Index