Just back from an extended stay in London, Agatha Raisin finds herself greeted by torrential rains and an old, familiar feeling of boredom. When her handsome new neighbor, Paul Chatterton, shows up on her doorstep, she tries her best to ignore his obvious charms, but his sparkling black eyes and the promise of adventure soon lure her into another investigation.

Paul has heard rumors about Agatha's reputation as the Cotswold village sleuth and wastes no time offering their services to the crotchety owner of a haunted house. Whispers, footsteps, and a cold white mist are plaguing Mrs. Witherspoon, but the police have failed to come up with any leads, supernatural or otherwise. The neighbors think it's all a desperate ploy for attention, but Paul and Agatha are sure something more devious is going on. Someone's playing tricks on Mrs. Witherspoon, and when she turns up dead under suspicious circumstances, Agatha finds herself caught up in another baffling murder mystery.

Amazing news has spread across the Scottish countryside. The most famous of highland bachelors, police sergeant Hamish Macbeth, may actually marry at last. The entire village of Lochdubh adores Macbeth's bride-to-be. Josie McSween is Hamish's new constable, and she is a pretty little thing, with glossy brown hair and big brown eyes. The local folk think that Josie is quite a catch, but Hamish couldn't be more miserable.

The wedding wouldn't be happening if it weren't for the murder of a beautiful woman in a nearby village. After the gorgeous woman receives a deadly Valentine's Day gift, Hamish and Josie take on the case. However, they soon discover that the list of the victim's admirers is endless. The case confirms Hamish's belief that love is extremely dangerous, but he still can't avoid the events that lead up to his celebrated engagement.

Agatha's former husband James is engaged to be married to a beautiful, young woman and Agatha has been kindly invited to the wedding. To take her mind off this, Agatha decides she has fallen for Sylvan, a Frenchman she met at James' engagement party. To distract her still further she decides upon a holiday and flies to Istanbul, where unfortunately she bumps into James and his fiance not once but twice – convincing him she is stalking them.

So when the bride is murdered on her wedding day, naturally Agatha is Suspect Number One – but then matters are turned on their head when the dead bride's mother engages Agatha to take on the case of her murdered daughter! And very soon Agatha's own life is in danger while she tries to solve the mystery of the corpse bride while fighting off (halfheartedly) the advances of a very attractive and determined Frenchman!

A sterling collection of the year's most shocking, compelling, and gripping writing about real-life crime, the 2006 edition of The Best American Crime Writing offers fascinating vicarious journeys into a world of felons and their felonious acts. This thrilling compendium includes:

· Jeffrey Toobin's eye-opening exposé in The New Yorker about a famous prosecutor who may have put the wrong man on death row

· Skip Hollandsworth's amazing but true tale of an old cowboy bank robber who turned out to be a "classic good-hearted Texas woman"

· Jimmy Breslin's stellar piece about the end of the Mob as we know it

Beautician-turned-country singer Maggie Reid is getting too famous for her own good. Since her endearing if good-for-nothing former husband. "Satellite Dish and Mobile Home King" Vernell Spivey, vanished along with millions, seems to be interested in the ex-wife he left in the lurch...including some very bad people called "The Redneck Mafia." Drop-dead gorgeous Detective Marshall Weathers and his police cronies want to know what Maggie knows as well, since they have a murder on their hands that has Vernell's name all over it.

Maggie knows this much: there are many negative appellations you could pin on old liquor-loving, skirt-chasing Vernell, but "killer" isn't one of them.

And though it means courting a mob hit and the extreme attentions of a sturdy bike p.i., the determined d-i-v-o-r-c-e-e is going to find her missing ex and prove him innocent...or die trying!

Once upon a time Maggie Reid had a nice home, a rich husaband, and an adoring daughter. But that fairy-tale life hit the skids when her no-good man left her for a busty bottle blonde, and her rebellious teenage daughter went with him. Maggie's mama didn't raise no fool, though. Wide-awake and smelling the Starbucks, Maggie decides to follow her heart and becomes a country-western singer at the Golden Stallion Club.

There, she glimpses her destiny--a lanky cowboy in steel-tipped boots and tight jeans. Though she's determined to meet Marshall Weathers, she sure isn't desperate enough to kill her pesky ex-brother-in-law, Jimmy, to do it. As fate would have it, Weathers is the detective investigating Jimmy's murder, and Maggie is his leading suspect. Unless she wants to sing the prison blues, Maggie's got to do some fancy two-stepping to expose Jimmy's true killer--and find her true love.