Half-Price Homicide

Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
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From Anthony and Agatha Award-winning author Elaine Viets—the thrilling mystery series about one woman trying to make a living... while other people are making a killing.

When Fort Lauderdale’s wealthiest want to discreetly trade their best barely-worn threads for cash, they bring it to Snapdragon’s Second Thoughts—which is where Helen Hawthorne finds herself selling the most chic second-hand clothing in Florida.

But the usual haggling turns homicidal when a particularly petty customer turns up dead—dangling by a darling Gucci scarf—and Helen's boss Vera is eyed as a suspect.

Helen knows Vera can drive a hard bargain but can’t believe Vera would resort to murder. And while she would like to help, a sudden tragedy forces Helen to return to St. Louis—where she has the chance to face the past she’s been running from.

Now, if Helen doesn’t quickly deal with her fugitive status—as well as her own fractious family—she won’t make it back home in time to prevent the police from making a very unfashionable arrest...

Praise for the Dead-End Job Mysteries by Anthony and Agatha Award-winning author Elaine Viets

“A stubborn and intelligent heroine, a wonderful South Florida setting, and a cast of more-or-less lethal bimbos...I loved this book.”—Charlaine Harris
“Brave Viets preps by actually working the jobs she describes in loving and hilarious detail, giving her offbeat series a healthy balance between the banal and the bizarre.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Laugh-out-loud comedy with enough twists and turns to make it to the top of the mystery bestseller charts.” —Florida Today
“Fans of Janet Evanovich and Parnell Hall will appreciate Viets’s humor.”—South Florida Sun-Sentinel
“Wit, murder, and sunshine . . . it must be Florida. I love this new series.”—Nancy Pickard
“A heroine with a sense of humor and a gift for snappy dialogue.”—Jane Heller
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About the author

Elaine Viets has written 32 mysteries in four series: the bestselling Dead-End Job series with South Florida PI Helen Hawthorne, the cozy Josie Marcus Mystery Shopper mysteries, and the dark Francesca Vierling mysteries. With the Angela Richman Death Investigator series, Elaine returns to her hardboiled roots and uses her experience as a stroke survivor and her studies at the Medicolegal Death Investigators Training Course. Elaine was a director at large for the Mystery Writers of America. She's a frequent contributor to Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and anthologies edited by Charlaine Harris and Lawrence Block. Elaine won the Anthony, Agatha and Lefty Awards.

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Additional Information

Publisher
Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
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Published on
Mar 6, 2018
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Pages
288
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ISBN
9781625673268
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Features
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Best For
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Language
English
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Genres
Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Amateur Sleuth
Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Cozy
Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Women Sleuths
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Content Protection
This content is DRM free.
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Just Murdered
Elaine Viets
From Anthony and Agatha Award-winning author Elaine Viets—the thrilling mystery series about one woman trying to make a living... while other people are making a killing.

After all she’s endured with her own marriage, divorce, and subsequent flight from alimony, Helen Hawthorne getting a job at Millicent’s Bridal Salon is ironic in the extreme. But the pay is in cash and that’s what matters for Helen to stay incognito.

But there’s no amount of cash worth having to deal with the abominable Kiki—a wealthy witch who’s lording it over her daughter’s wedding plans with the aim of making the day all about Kiki, not the bride. She also thinks her money makes her invulnerable...but she’s proven wrong when she’s found smothered to death with her daughter’s wedding dress. And worse, the cops seem to think Helen is responsible.

Now, Helen has to keep her identity secret and prove her innocence before the bride and groom read their wedding vows—and the police read Helen her rights...

Praise for the Dead-End Job Mysteries by Anthony and Agatha Award-winning author Elaine Viets

“A stubborn and intelligent heroine, a wonderful South Florida setting, and a cast of more-or-less lethal bimbos...I loved this book.”—Charlaine Harris
“Brave Viets preps by actually working the jobs she describes in loving and hilarious detail, giving her offbeat series a healthy balance between the banal and the bizarre.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Laugh-out-loud comedy with enough twists and turns to make it to the top of the mystery bestseller charts.” —Florida Today
“Fans of Janet Evanovich and Parnell Hall will appreciate Viets’s humor.”—South Florida Sun-Sentinel
“Wit, murder, and sunshine . . . it must be Florida. I love this new series.”—Nancy Pickard
“A heroine with a sense of humor and a gift for snappy dialogue.”—Jane Heller
Sharp Objects: A Novel
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AN HBO® LIMITED SERIES STARRING AMY ADAMS

FROM THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF GONE GIRL

Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family's Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Dogged by her own demons, she must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story—and survive this homecoming.
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Elaine Viets
From Anthony and Agatha Award-winning author Elaine Viets—the thrilling mystery series about one woman trying to make a living... while other people are making a killing.

At the Pampered Pet Boutique in Fort Lauderdale, the dogs are treated better than the people—a fact not lost on Helen Hawthorne, who is working at the fabulous and furry canine salon where the wealthy dog owners need a muzzle more than their beloved pets.

And while some things shouldn’t happen to a dog, they do happen to humans—as Helen discovers when she drives out to the lavish home of Tammie Grimsby to deliver a freshly fluffed Yorkie, only to find Tammie stabbed to death with a pair of grooming scissors. In a panic, Helen speeds out of there—but she doesn’t report the murder, lest her own criminal past come to light.

But that doesn’t mean she can’t look into the stabbing on the sly. As Helen sniffs around both the boutique and a growing list of pure breed suspects, she knows that her bark will have to be worse than her bite if she’s going to put the collar on a killer...

Praise for the Dead-End Job Mysteries by Anthony and Agatha Award-winning author Elaine Viets

“A stubborn and intelligent heroine, a wonderful South Florida setting, and a cast of more-or-less lethal bimbos...I loved this book.”—Charlaine Harris
“Brave Viets preps by actually working the jobs she describes in loving and hilarious detail, giving her offbeat series a healthy balance between the banal and the bizarre.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Laugh-out-loud comedy with enough twists and turns to make it to the top of the mystery bestseller charts.” —Florida Today
“Fans of Janet Evanovich and Parnell Hall will appreciate Viets’s humor.”—South Florida Sun-Sentinel
“Wit, murder, and sunshine . . . it must be Florida. I love this new series.”—Nancy Pickard
“A heroine with a sense of humor and a gift for snappy dialogue.”—Jane Heller
Reel of Fortune
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Nothing says Welcome Home like a murder.

 

It’s official. Fortune Redding is out of the CIA and a newly minted resident of Sinful, Louisiana. She never expected her homecoming to be all apple pie and hugs, but a murder wasn’t on her list of things to deal with before she’d even gotten her name stenciled on her mailbox. 

 

Boone Carre—Hooch, to the locals—was a drunk and a louse and had shafted pretty much everyone he’d ever done business with. So when someone kills him, there is no shortage of suspects. Unfortunately, Ally is at the top of the list. 

 

Fortune, Ida Belle, and Gertie know that Ally isn’t capable of murdering anyone, but with an ambitious ADA looking to make a name for himself, and the local gossip train intent on finding someone to blame, they know they have to find the killer and clear Ally’s name.

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From Anthony and Agatha Award-winning author Elaine Viets—the thrilling mystery series about one woman trying to make a living... while other people are making a killing.

As one half of Coronado Investigations in sunny Fort Lauderdale, Helen Hawthorne is working full time alongside her handsome hubby Phil. And after the surprising number of murders Helen helped solve while earning low pay on off the books jobs, anything else should be smooth sailing, right?

Unfortunately, Helen’s unique work history also makes her a natural for undercover work—and in this case that means she’s going right back to scrubbing and cleaning while acting as a “yacht stewardess” to catch some smugglers. And even more annoying is the fact that Phil must stay on shore to figure out if a wealthy man has fallen victim to his gold-digging trophy wife.

But after a member of the yacht crew disappears, Helen’s case quickly goes from simple smuggling to maritime murder. And if she doesn’t find out who pitched the man overboard, she might end up lost at sea herself...

Praise for the Dead-End Job Mysteries by Anthony and Agatha Award-winning author Elaine Viets

“A stubborn and intelligent heroine, a wonderful South Florida setting, and a cast of more-or-less lethal bimbos...I loved this book.”—Charlaine Harris
“Brave Viets preps by actually working the jobs she describes in loving and hilarious detail, giving her offbeat series a healthy balance between the banal and the bizarre.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Laugh-out-loud comedy with enough twists and turns to make it to the top of the mystery bestseller charts.” —Florida Today
“Fans of Janet Evanovich and Parnell Hall will appreciate Viets’s humor.”—South Florida Sun-Sentinel
“Wit, murder, and sunshine . . . it must be Florida. I love this new series.”—Nancy Pickard
“A heroine with a sense of humor and a gift for snappy dialogue.”—Jane Heller

More by Elaine Viets

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Checked Out
Book 13
Shhh...in the newest hardcover in the national bestselling Dead-End Job Mystery series, Helen Hawthorne quietly goes undercover at a local library to search for a missing masterpiece.

Wealthy socialite Elizabeth Cateman Kingsley has hired Helen to find a missing John Singer Sargent painting, owned by her late father. After his death, many of Davis Cateman’s books were donated to the Flora Park library, and his daughter suspects the small watercolor—worth millions—was tucked away inside one of those dusty tomes.

To search the stacks, Helen applies for a position as a library volunteer and discovers the library director has a catalog of complaints—from a mischievous calico cat named Paris to the mysterious disappearance of various items that some of the more imaginative staff are attributing to a ghost haunting the building.

While her husband Phil sticks his neck out to find a missing necklace, Helen is on her own with no one to lend her a hand. When a dead body turns up in a parking lot, it appears someone is willing to go to any lengths to keep the treasure in the library quiet. Now Helen is bound and determined to find the killer as well as the painting—before she’s taken out of circulation herself.
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From the national bestselling author of Checked Out, Helen Hawthorne must pose as a painter at Fort Lauderdale’s famous Bonnet House Museum to catch an artful killer . . .

The art world is a happening place—but a brush with death shouldn’t be in the picture. Unfortunately that’s just what happens to Helen Hawthorne and her friend Margery. While touring gorgeous Bonnet House, a mansion-turned-museum, they observe a painting class and note an up-and-coming artist. When they later see her deadly end, Helen is hired to canvas the crime scene—undercover, of course.
 
Sketchy suspects lurk in the victim’s bohemian past. Was the promising painter killed by her jealous husband? Her best friend? A rival using her artful wiles? With her husband Phil busy setting a trap for a gold thief, it’s up to Helen to paint this killer into a corner . . .
 
 


From the Hardcover edition.
Killer Blonde: A Dead-End Job Mystery
Elaine Viets
South Florida sleuth Helen Hawthorne gets a history lesson from her landlady Margery Flax. In the 1970s, while pushing papers in a dead-end job, Margery witnessed a battle of the blondes between vivacious Vicki and meticulous Minnie for a promotion that would take one of them to the top of the corporate ladder. But when their office politics turned dirty, the blondes got dangerous—leaving one of them dead and one of them a killer whose identity Margery has kept secret for more than forty years…
 
Killer Blonde previously appeared in Drop-Dead Blonde
 
Includes a preview of the Dead-End Job Novel, Catnapped!
 
Praise for the Dead-End Job Mysteries by Elaine Viets
Winner of the Anthony Award and the Agatha Award

“A stubborn and intelligent heroine, a wonderful South Florida setting, and a cast of more or less lethal bimbos.”—#1 New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris

“Clever.…The real draw, though, is Viets’s snappy critique of South Florida.”—Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review

“Wickedly funny.”—The Miami Herald


Elaine Viets has actually worked many of those dead-end jobs in her mystery novels, just like her character Helen Hawthorne. She is also the author of the Josie Marcus, Mystery Shopper series and numerous short stories. Elaine has won an Anthony Award and an Agatha Award. She lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with her husband, reporter Don Crinklaw.
Doc in the Box
Book 4
Did the doctor's callous bedside manner give a patient the urge to kill?

It takes a truly sneaky person to keep a secret in a newsroom. St. Louis City Gazette columnist Francesca Vierling is just the woman to do it-especially to help hide her editor's bout with breast cancer. Now she's surreptitiously shuttling the editor to chemotherapy while finishing a column on gorgeous male stripper Leo D. Nardo. And it's all going without a hitch. . . .

Until Leo disappears and somebody starts shooting the worst doctors in St. Louis. The first M.D. to go has a callous bedside manner that gives all his patients the urge to kill.

The next victim is a master of misdiagnosis. As long as bad doctors are targets, the public isn't shedding a tear. But when Francesca herself is nearly gunned down, is it because she's hunting for Leo's hot body or a cold-blooded killer? Either way she has an adverse reaction to dying. The antidote?  Discover the truth . . .


From the Paperback edition.
Ice Blonde
Elaine Viets
Angela Richman prays she doesn’t have another death investigation on her hands in this chilling novella from Anthony and Agatha Award-winning author Elaine Viets.

The last thing Chouteau County death investigator Angela Richman wants to do during the holidays is her job. So it’s with some trepidation that she agrees to help the desperate Mr. and Mrs. LaRouche when they show up on her doorstep.

Their daughter Juliet is missing. She was last seen leaving a high school party just before midnight, and they’d like Angela’s help getting their trusted local detectives involved. The officer assigned to the case—Chouteau newcomer Det. Jace Budewitz—is far too blunt and impolite for their liking. And with the weather murderously cold, they can’t bear the thought that their little princess is in the harsh winter wilderness.

Discreetly investigating Juliet’s disappearance, Angela finds herself struggling to break through the silence from the rich teenagers who knew Juliet and their infuriatingly detached parents. She also discovers that their vicious bias against the local working class has cast a shadow over the case.

The more she digs, the less Angela can comprehend the lengths the one percent will go to protect their own. Angela must work quickly as she searches for answers with the acute awareness that Juliet LaRouche edges closer to becoming just a memory...
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