Explore our Cosy Murder Mystery Series
Cosy mysteries set in unforgettable landscapes and crafted by a small independent press
The Lighthouse Inn Series
Author: Julia Martin
Ms Martin’s series is set in Thorn Point on the rugged Cornish coast, long the habitat of Celts with their strange language and even stranger customs. The Lighthouse Inn, set at the end of Thorn Point, is left to Maris Thorn by her late grandmother and she ends an 18-year-academic career as a doctor of marine biology to return home and busy herself with the day-to-day cares of running a six-room lodge.
Here we meet seventy-year-old chef Hettie Nancarrow, with her plain-speaking attitude and her Cornish proverbs, Wreck, Maris’s three-legged greyhound and Detective-Sergeant Callum Pryce, recently transferred from Cardiff to Truro, and placed in charge of the investigation in the first book in the series, “Dead in the Water”.
He is still an active participant in the second book, “The Tide Has No Mercy”, although unable to reach Thorn Point when the weather turns foul. And also making a second appearance is Fenella Imogen Grace (“Fig”for short), the precocious teenager who lives around the corner and has amazing abilities in the world of computing, coding and hacking.
Will they all be there in the third book? Not even the publisher knows (although I, for one, fervently hope so).
Book 2
The Tide Brings No Mercy
E-book: Coming soon
Paperback: Coming soon
The Haunted Highway Mysteries Series
Author: Jonathan Hartley
This series is set in the hills and valleys of the KwaZulu-Natal area of South Africa known locally as “The Midlands”. Mr Hartley was born there, went to school there and knows the area like the back of his proverbial hand.
The old main road from Durban to Johannesburg runs through the area, and it is the stretch from Trekkersburg (Pietermaritzburg) to Zand River (Mooi River) that forms the backdrop for the Haunted Highway series.
Once a bustling route filled with cars and trucks on their way from what was Africa’s busiest port to its wealthiest city, the R103 is now an almost abandoned stretch of twisty bends and varied gradients, linking a strange collection of places. There are small towns like Aloe Falls and Zand River, villages like Hilltop and Hampton Road, posh single-sex boarding schools like St Agnes and All Saints and an old country hotel called Dawson’s.
It is an area where the ghosts of past inhabitants – whether they were rough-neck traders or god-fearing missionaries, Zulu chiefs or gentleman farmers – mingle with their present-day equivalents, especially in the misty summer months around the end of the year.
The series is centred on artisanal baker Annie Lomax, who drives the road in her van, The Rolling Scone, and her adorable Jack Russell terrier, Crumpet. She is aided in her amateur sleuthing by an odd collection of friends – Priya Naidoo, who owns the local bookstore “Books & Brews”, former hospital administrator Lindiwe Khumalo and garage owner Jacques “Jakes”van der Merwe.
As you can see from the map on this page, the R103 plots a winding path through the Midlands, an area that lies between the mountains and the sea – between the warmth of the Indian Ocean and the cold of the Drakensberg, between sea level and 11 424ft (3 482m) above it. Not surprising, then, that this is an area of contrasts.
And fertile ground for what the Zulus call izindiki, restless spirits who cannot settle because of the violent or otherwise unnatural manner of their deaths.
Book 1
Murder at Misty Ridge
E-book: Coming soon
Paperback: Coming soon
Book 2
Murder at Marberg Dam
E-book: Coming soon
Paperback: Coming soon