Carolyn Hart is a celebrated master of mystery, known for her playful approach to dark themes and a keen sense of humor that infuses her narratives. She crafts characters who are both witty and relatable, often setting her suspenseful tales within cozy, inviting environments. Her distinctive style features intricate plots designed to keep readers guessing until the final page, and insightful observations that lend depth and charm to her detective stories.
Annie Darling, the upbeat owner of a mystery bookstore on Broward's Rock, has a knack for solving puzzles. She receives support from her husband, Max, who operates a unique business assisting those in distress. Together, they navigate the challenges of their island community while unraveling mysteries that come their way.
An Augusta Goodnight Mystery
Things in the town of Stone's Throw, South Carolina, rarely get much spicier than the extra red pepper Lucy Nan Pilgrim sprinkles into her homemade cheese straws. So when an elderly but surprisingly childlike woman calling herself Shirley shows up on Lucy's doorstep looking for her mama, Lucy thinks it must be another of her friend Ellis's pranks. But Ellis doesn't know a thing about it, and what's more, the two suspect the woman might be Ellis's cousin, Florence, who disappeared as a child more than fifty years earlier.When the mysterious woman vanishes from Lucy's house, she and Ellis don't know what to think. And considering that Calpernia Hemphill, the town's theater and music aficionado, has just been found dead of an apparent fall from the tower at Bertram's Folly, life in Stone's Throw suddenly seems less safe than sinister.Luckily, guardian angel Augusta Goodnight shows up to calm Lucy's nerves (with a basket of strawberry muffins, of course). And not a moment too soon, because Shirley/Florence is found dead at the bottom of a steep flight of steps in the parking lot behind the Methodist church.She is not the last victim, and Ellis, whose inheritance could be threatened by the reappearance of her long-lost cousin, remains the number-one suspect. Augusta, Lucy, and the Thursday Morning Literary Society (which now meets on Monday afternoons) must use their heads---and a little bit of home cooking---to solve the mystery.
The show must go on . . . When mystery bookstore owner Annie Laurance is invited to stage a Mystery Night for the annual antebellum house tour of the Historical Preservation Society of Chastain, South Carolina, she instead finds herself the leading lady in a flesh-and-blood drama. The play's the thing wherein the curtain falls on mean-spirited grande dame Corinne Webster. While jeweled fingers point, accusing Annie of murder, the perpetrator lurks within the genteel cast of Murder-Most-Make-Believe . . . and the murder weapon is one of the props. In the tight-laced society of Chastain, Annie is guilty until proven innocent. With her fiance, Max Darling, Annie pieces together evidence to clear her name—until her chief witness is murdered. Now it will take all her sleuthing skills to discover the evil in the heart of Chastain's Beautiful People.