Dorothy Cannell

In its 300-year history, there has never once been a scandal at Mullings, ancestral home of the decent but dull Stodmarsh family. Until, that is, Edward Stodmarsh makes an ill-advised second marriage to the scheming Regina Stapleton, who insists on bringing her family's 'ornamental hermit' to live on the estate. Suddenly everyone wants to visit Mullings to glimpse this mysterious figure. Strange but harmless, thinks Florence Norris, the family's longstanding...

The story of Tessa Fields, a young orphan determined to uncover her true origins. With the help of the Misses Tramwells, two endearing elderly ladies, and the reluctant assistance of her secret love, Harry Harkness, Tessa hits upon a scheme that finds her feigning amnesia and recovering in the Tramwells's ancestral home. But it isn't long before Tessa smells a rat. Why does the butler creep around in his socks, and what was he doing in her closet?...

The award-winning author of Femmes Fatal and The Thin Woman serves up the ubiquitous mother-in-law joke family style­—with death for the punch line. . . .
 
Nothing like a live-in mother-in-law to reduce a woman to the role of junior housemaid. That’s what Ellie Haskell discovers when her husband’s parents have a row in the midst of their anniversary dinner, and mother Magdalene seeks...

When her husband, Ben, drags her to the States for a gourmet cooking competition, the nervous and pregnant Ellie Haskell encounters mystery and murder in the American Midwest.

The Thin Woman" introduces Ellie Simons, who wishes to be thin but can't put eclairs out of her mind. Upon receiving an invitation to a family reunion, Ellie hires an escort, returns to the family home, and finds herself face-to-face with a loss of appetite, an unexpected romance, and a sudden murder.

Two charwomen are murdered in the English village of Chitterton Fells. Sleuth Ellie Haskell poses as a charwoman to gain entry to homes in the neighborhood, hoping to find clues.

Ellie Haskell returns to her old boarding school to solve a case of robbery--and finds herself tracking a murderer.

"March 1933, Dovecote Hatch, England. Florence Norris knows she has found a good man in George 'Birdie' Bird, the landlord of the local pub, The Dog & Whistle. They are set to marry in a low-key service at the parish church in their beloved village Dovecote Hatch. But when a mysterious stranger seeks out George, sharing family secrets and talks of an illegal burial years ago, an ominous dread falls over the happy couple. Soon they are pulled reluctantly...