Fiction.
Literature.
Mystery.
Short Stories.
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When the weather outside is frightful, curl up with New York Timesâ??bestselling masters of holiday mystery Elizabeth Peters, Margaret Maron, and more! A New England college hosts a counterfeiting scrooge, an angelic chorister falls to earth, a tight-fisted patriarch realizes his days are numbered, and a politician presents his wife with an explosive gift. In Christmas Stalkings, bestselling mystery author Charlotte MacLeod gathers fellow partners in crime for a collection of capers that will keep you readingâ??and guessingâ??all through the night. Spend the twelve days of Christmas enjoying tales of holiday mayhem. From secrets in a snowy graveyard to schemes in the Deep South to mischief in Manhattan, this stocking full of cozy stories is to die for. This festive anthology includes thirteen stories by Charlotte MacLeod, Reginald Hill, Elizabeth Peters, Medora Sale, John Malcolm, Dorothy Cannell, Bill Crider, Patricia Moyes, Evelyn E. Smith, Eric Wright, Mickey Friedman, Robert Barnard, and Margaret Maron.… (más)
Some of your favorite mystery writers are likely to be found in this collection of short stories. The villains may be the next door neighbor, or even someone living much closer, like a spouse. Horrors! And sometimes, turnabout is fair play. Whatever the season, these tales are perfect for a fast read in the evening, and may even elicit a chuckle when the evil person gets his or maybe even hers. ( )
Warning: Biased opinion here. I don't like crime novels and I really don't like reading British-type novels that are supposed to be scary or suspenseful because they turn out to be neither for me. Way to much propriety and beating around the bush for me. This book was in my TBR pile as a gift & I thought I'd give it a whirl. I did not like it at all but I feel that others who enjoy detective/crime novels might. ( )
This is a collection of short stories by a variety of authors. Some of them are fairly good, but others are not so great. I have not read the author’s other collection of stories, so I cannot compare them. I also have not read other works by the authors, so I was very unfamiliar with their styles and any characters they may have included in other books or short stories. For me, the stories were okay, just not great. They lacked the suspense and excitement I have found in other similar short stories and novels. In addition, in a couple, the jargon used was very unfamiliar to me, so I had to continually stop and try to figure out what the author meant or look the term up. These cases, in particular, were very British, and I figured I just was not familiar enough to know British slang terms. However, this did not lend to my enjoyment of the story. I looked forward to this collection, as I love mysteries and enjoy themed stories, but, after reading the book, came away disappointed and unsatisfied. There were few times I was eager to read on to see what was going to happen, but, in some cases, I was more than ready to have the story end before it did (a first for me when reading this genre). I was not quite sure about the short author (I assume it was the author) introductions before each story, as I did not find that they added much to the tales. They were in italics, so at least I knew they were not part of the story and when they began and ended. Finally, I figure this is a good book to read if you are looking for something short that relates to the holiday, or if you are familiar with any of the authors or their other works. In addition, since each story is separate, you can pick up and put down the book easily, which helps during this busy season. I received this from NetGalley to read and review. ( )
Continuing in the tradition of her 1989 collection, Mistletoe Mysteries, MacLeod and 12 others offer 13 Christmas-themed stories of, mostly, the ``Bah, humbug!'' variety.
Deck the halls with boughs of holly, Fa, la la la la, la la, la la. (Counterfeit Christmas)
Nettleton was a tall, tweedy man in late middle age with a face like one of those snooty dogs that rich folk crap up poor folk's parks with. (The Running of the Deer)
I did not have a hangover. (Liz Peters, PI)
Annabel Cousins looked at her watch. (Angels)
Submit to fate without unseemly wrangle Such complications frequently occur Life is one complicated tangle Death is the only true unraveller The Grand Inquisitor The Gondoliers by Gilbert and Sullivan (The Only True Unraveller)
Who would have guessed that Cousin Hilda had a dark secret? (The January Sale Stowaway)
Pum-pum-pum-pum-puuum-pum--pum-pum-pum-pum-pum. [imitating the theme to the old TV show, Hawaii Five-O ] (The Santa Claus Caper)
Good King Wenceslas looked out On the feast of Stephen... (Family Christmas)
Darkness had fallen and a light snow was beginning to come down as a dim figure swathed in a voluminous raincoat crept furtively down the short flight of steps that led into the sunken yard of a white limestone-fronted building on a quiet, expensive street on New York City's quiet, expensive East Side. (Miss Melville Rejoices)
From the day The Boozer became my cell mate and first told me about Clyde Parker, it took us nearly a year to set him up. (Two in the Bush)
Nick gets a lot of mail, most of it predictable variations of 'Gimme'. (The Fabulous Nick)
It must be rare for the first thought of a newly appointed government minister to be: Now is the time to kill my wife. (A Political Necessity)
Marnolla's first question when I bailed her out of jail was, What's a revisichist? (Fruitcake, Mercy, and Black-Eyed Peas)
Jane was not on the stoop, nor yet on the walk. She, the dedicated house cat, was over on the green. She, the snob who shunned all lesser felines, the timid soul who wouldn't even go back across the Crescent to visit her own mother at the Enderbles', was leading a squad of racous felines in a concerted attack on the third gingerbread house. (Counterfeit Christmas)
My desk squatted there like an archaeological mound, layers-deep in the accumulated garbage of living. I had to step over a couple of bodies to get to it. There was another limp carcass on my chair. When I moved it, it bit me. (Liz Peters, PI)
Fighting my way out, I saw once respectable women coshing each other with handbags, or throttling people as they tried to hitchhike piggyback rides. (The January Sale Stowaway)
She swung her purse and hit him on the side of the head. The purse was so heavy Burns thought it might have a compact car inside it. (The Santa Claus Caper)
That effectively stopped her, as he had known it would. He was an anthropologist; he knew the customs of her tribe. If she had been married to him, she could have put her foot down, but he was her lover -- had been her lover for more years than most marriages endured in her circle -- and so she had an obligation to him that would not have devolved upon a wife. (Miss Melville Rejoices)
Nick is a connoisseur of cookies, and Gaston Duvivier's chocolate cookie is the best cookie he has ever had. (The Fabulous Nick)
[about Aunt Zell's fruitcake] For starters, she uses Colleton County nuts. Not those puny dried-up English walnuts you can get in the grocery store, but thick, meaty pecans and rich black walnuts. She goes easy on the citron and heavy on her home-dried apples and figs. When the dark, dense loaves come out of the oven in late October, the first thing Aunt Zell does, before they're even cool, is wrap them up in cheesecloth and slosh on a generous splash of what she euphemistically calls 'Kezzie's special apple juice." They get basted like that every week till Christmas. (Fruitcake, Mercy, and Black-Eyed Peas)
Fiction.
Literature.
Mystery.
Short Stories.
HTML:
When the weather outside is frightful, curl up with New York Timesâ??bestselling masters of holiday mystery Elizabeth Peters, Margaret Maron, and more! A New England college hosts a counterfeiting scrooge, an angelic chorister falls to earth, a tight-fisted patriarch realizes his days are numbered, and a politician presents his wife with an explosive gift. In Christmas Stalkings, bestselling mystery author Charlotte MacLeod gathers fellow partners in crime for a collection of capers that will keep you readingâ??and guessingâ??all through the night. Spend the twelve days of Christmas enjoying tales of holiday mayhem. From secrets in a snowy graveyard to schemes in the Deep South to mischief in Manhattan, this stocking full of cozy stories is to die for. This festive anthology includes thirteen stories by Charlotte MacLeod, Reginald Hill, Elizabeth Peters, Medora Sale, John Malcolm, Dorothy Cannell, Bill Crider, Patricia Moyes, Evelyn E. Smith, Eric Wright, Mickey Friedman, Robert Barnard, and Margaret Maron.
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