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Carola Dunn

In this second installment of Carola Dunn’s cozy mystery series set in 1923 England, plucky Daisy Dalrymple embarks on another assignment for Town and Country magazine and discovers that daffodil bulbs aren’t all that’s buried in a country estate’s flower bed.

The merest hint of spring has arrived in Cheshire, and so has Daisy Dalrymple. The feisty flapper is a breath of fresh air to the occupants of gloomy Occles Hall, among them her former school chum, wallflower Bobbie Parslow, and the thorny mistress of the manor, Lady Valeria.

While photographing the barren ground behind the house, Daisy suspects someone has been digging amidst the soil’s first green shoots—and promptly unearths the corpse of Grace Moss, the missing parlor maid.

So begins a harrowing romp as the dead woman’s shocking secret is revealed—leaving Daisy to catch a killer before she too is pushing up daisies.

Bernadette Dunne

Blackstone Publishing

Daisy Dalrymple Mysteries

The Winter Garden Mystery: A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery

It is the spring of 1923 and the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple is on her way to a stately home in Scotland to research her next article for Town and Country. On board the Flying Scotsman, the famous London-to-Edinburgh train, Daisy meets an old schoolfellow, Anne Bretton. Anne, along with all of her relatives, is en route to visit the deathbed of the family scion and notorious miser, Alistair McGowan. As it currently stands, Alistair's will leaves the entire family fortune to his brother Albert, and the rest of the family is rushing to his side, each hoping to convince him to change his will in their favor. Daisy, meanwhile, has her hands full taking care of Detective Inspector Alec Fletcher's young daughter Belinda, who ran away from home and stowed away aboard the train. She barely has time to take notice of the intricate family feud taking place all around her-that is, until Albert McGowan is found murdered on the train and Daisy is surrounded by an entire family of suspects.

Mia Chiaromonte

Murder on the Flying Scotsman: A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery

In spring a young man's fancy will turn to love, and the Honorable Phillip Petrie is no exception. Daisy's chum is totally smitten with Miss Gloria Arbuckle, daughter of a millionaire Yank. But before the enthusiastic suitor can pop the question, his beloved is abducted. As a distraught Mr. Arbuckle begins assembling the ransom, Phillip enlists Daisy to help him recover his missing sweetheart. Strictly forbidden to contact Scotland Yard, Daisy must resist the temptation to bring dashing Detective Inspector Alec Fletcher on to the case. But as she closes in on the abductors' rural hideaway, she begins to suspect that Gloria isn't the only fair damsel whose life hangs in the balance. The fifth whodunit in Carola Dunn's stylish cozy mystery series set in 1923 England once again features British heiress and Town and County writer Daisy Dalrymple.

Damsel in Distress: A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery

May the best man die!In July of 1923, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple travels to Henley-on-Thames to visit her aunt and uncle, as well as to work on her latest writing assignment: covering the Henley Royal Regatta for an American magazine.Daisy plans a simple trip researching her article, enjoying the races, and, come the weekend, having a pleasant time with her fiance, Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard. But the tensions between the Ambrose team's coxswain, Horace Bott-a shopkeeper's son and scholarship student at Oxford-and rower Basil DeLancey-the younger son of an earl and all-around bounder-are constantly threatening to erupt into violence.The day after losing a race thanks to Bott's overindulgence the night before, DeLancey keels over and dies mid-race. Foul play is immediately suspected, with Bott the logical suspect. But nothing is obvious in this tangled web of jealousies and secrets, and while Inspector Fletcher investigates the murder, Daisy once again must ferret out the truth.

Dead in the Water: A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery

Unflappable flapper and Town& Country scribe Daisy Dalrymple searches for a killer whose vicious pen matches a murderous heart in this delightful installment of Dunn’s cozy mystery series.

In the 1920s, in post–World War I England, the HonorableDaisy Dalrymple, newly married to Detective Inspector Alec Fletcher, is asked by her brother-in-law to discreetly investigate a series of poisoned pen letters that many of the local villagers have been receiving. When the pompous and unbearable brother of the local vicar is killed by a very large rock, dropped on his head from a great height, it seems clear to all that this campaign of gossip has escalated to murder. With the help of her husband, who'd rather she not get involved, Daisy tries to uncover who wrote the letters and who that person has driven to murder before the killer strikes again.

Styx and Stones: A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery

The eighth installment in this cozy mystery series features Daisy Dalrymple at the Museum of Natural History, a place of fascination—and murder

In the summer of 1923, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple makes what should be an uneventful research trip to the Museum of Natural History quite an eventful day—with her nephew Derek and her soon-to-be stepdaughter Belinda in tow. But as she interviews the various curators for her article on the museums of London, she soon discovers that the Museum of Natural History is a hothouse of professional rivalry and jealousy. Much resentment exists, particularly between Dr. Smith Woodward, the keeper of geology, responsible for the fossil collection, and Dr. Pettigrew, the keeper of mineralogy, responsible for the museum’s fabulous gem collection.

On a later trip, as closing time nears, Daisy hears two voices followed by a tremendous crash and rushes into the next hall to discover Dr. Pettigrew dead—murdered amidst a pile of dinosaur bones.

Daisy’s fiancé, Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard, is assigned to investigate and together they must unravel a most baffling case of missing gems, dispossessed European royalty, professional rivalry, and a murder most foul.

Lucy Rayner

Rattle His Bones: A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery

In late 1926, the newly married Daisy Dalrymple and Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard take an ocean voyage to America for their honeymoon. Daisy and Alec are accompanied by Daisy’s childhood friend Phillip Petrie, his wife, Gloria, and Gloria’s father, American millionaire industrialist Caleb P. Arbuckle, and all are looking forward to a pleasant, uneventful trip. But at the last minute they are joined by Arbuckle’s new friend, Yorkshire millionaire Jethro Gotobed, and his new wife, Wanda, a showgirl whom all but Gotobed are convinced is a gold digger of the worst sort.

Then, having barely lifted anchor, the ocean liner is beset by a series of suspicious accidents and deaths. With harsh weather and rough seas putting many out of commission due to seasickness—including Alec—it soon falls to Daisy to figure out what connection there might be between the seemingly unrelated incidents. Convinced that there’s a murderer aboard ship, Daisy must unmask the culprit or culprits before she or anyone else falls victim.

To Davy Jones Below: A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery

In late 1923 the newly married Daisy Dalrymple and her husband, Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard, come to America for a honeymoon visit. In the midst of a pleasure trip, however, both work in a bit of business—Alec travels to Washington, DC, to consult with the US government, Daisy to New York to meet with her American magazine editor. While in New York, Daisy stays at the famed Hotel Chelsea, which is not only close to the Flatiron Building offices of Abroad magazine, where she’ll be meeting with her editor, but home to many of New York’s artists and writers.

After her late morning meeting, Daisy agrees to accompany her editor, Mr. Thorwald, to lunch. But as they are leaving the offices, they hear a gunshot and see a man plummeting down an elevator shaft. The man killed was one of her fellow residents at the Hotel Chelsea, Otis Carmody, who was a journalist with no end of enemies—personal and professional—who would delight in his death. Again in the midst of a murder investigation, Daisy’s search for the killer takes her to all levels of society, and even a mad dash across the country itself, as she attempts to solve a puzzle that would baffle even Philo Vance himself.

The Case of the Murdered Muckraker: A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery

Seething resentments, well-kept family secrets, and a savage murder set the stage for Christmas in Cornwall in this cozy holiday installment of the Daisy Dalrymple mysteries.

In December 1923, the formidable Dowager Viscountess Dalrymple has decided that for Christmas the family will all gather at Brockdene in Cornwall at the invitation of Lord Westmoor. Her daughter—Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher—is somewhat less than pleased but yields to the demands of her mother, especially as she’ll be there just before the holidays working on another article for Town and Country about the estate itself.

But the family gathering quickly goes awry. Brockdene, it seems, is only occupied by the Norvilles—poor relations of Lord Westmoor—and Westmoor himself won’t be joining them. So Daisy, her husband Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard, and their family must spend their Christmas holiday trapped in an ancestral estate with a rich history of lore, ghost stories, and rumors of hidden treasure and secret passageways with a family seething with resentments, grudges, and a faintly scandalous history.

The veneer of civility that pervades the halls of Brockdene, however, begins to wear thin when long-held family secrets threaten to bubble over and one of the Christmas guests is found savagely murdered.

With few clues as to who committed the murder, and with too many motives as to why, it is once again up to Daisy to sort out the truth that lies beneath a generation of poisonous secrets.

Mistletoe and Murder: A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery

One morning in April 1924, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher finds herself in a most unenviable position. Despite her best attempts to elude the inevitable, she must face her darkest fears and with all strength and courage she can muster, must confront the one person she has tried hardest to avoid—the dentist. But upon arriving for her appointment, she finds the waiting room deserted and adjoining examination room locked with no hint of either Dr. Talmadge or his nurse. 

Thinking to leave quietly, Daisy's retreat is halted by the return of the nurse and, with the help of Mrs. Talmadge, the two begin searching for the inexplicably absent doctor. Exhausting all other possibilities, they resort to looking once again in the surgery where they find him stilling in his dentist's chair with the nitrous mask strapped to his face, the tank of nitrous turned on full, a smile on his face and stone-cold dead. 

While the circumstances of his death are out of the ordinary, there's no reason to suspect that it was anything other than a tragic, if inevitable, accident of a careless dope fiend. Certain that there is something more than happenstance and an accident involved in the dentist's untimely death, Daisy is determined to uncover the truth behind a case of what she is certain is murder most foul.

Die Laughing: A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery

The inimitable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher and her husband Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher seem to get a reprieve from their sleuthing duties when they are invited to the wedding of their friend, Lucy Fotheringay.

Lucy’s grandfather is hosting the ceremony at his beautiful estate and so it promises to be a typical affair with hordes of gossipy aunts and other colorful but not necessarily pleasant relatives. Daisy meets all these characters and observes the ensuing familial fraternization with a certain kind of amusing nonchalance. That is, until Lucy’s great aunt is found strangled to death in her bed. Lucy, in the meantime, has arranged to meet her betrothed in the conservatory, but when she arrives she finds him trying to revive her uncle, who has died—or has he been murdered? And just like that a normally celebratory occasion turns suspicious. Now Daisy must sift through a throng of relatives—aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents—once wedding guests and now murder suspects. And she must find the killer quickly before another family member becomes a corpse.

A Mourning Wedding: A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery

In the winter of 1924, Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher travels to a school friend’s house to witness the estate’s famous Guy Fawkes celebration. But she gets more than the quiet weekend at the quaint family manse that she was originally hoping for.

The home is the site of some severe family tension. The Viscount and head of the family is a strict and unyielding sort, insisting that everyone—especially his children—meet his own unreasonable expectations. On the evening of the Guy Fawkes celebration, the Viscount is found dead on the floor of his study, killed by his own hand. What’s more, he apparently first killed a guest—a married woman visiting England from Australia—before turning the gun on himself.

Now it’s up to Alec Fletcher, Daisy’s husband and a DCI of Scotland Yard, to unravel the mystery and the long-held family secrets that led to this state of affairs. But a solution will require, perhaps, more than a little help from Daisy herself.

Gunpowder Plot: A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery

In early 1925, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher—recent mother of twins—resumes her journalistic career by agreeing to write a piece about the Tower of London—the Bloody Tower—for an American magazine. 

Invited to observe the centuries-old ritual Ceremony of the Keys, she’s spending the night (her first time away from her babies) since the complex is locked and guarded, and the high walls are surrounded by a disused moat. Having been given a tour of the Crown Jewels, interviewed and observed the Yeoman Warders, and met the Raven Master, Daisy has more than enough material for her article and decides to leave as early as possible the next morning to return to her family. 

But when walking down the stairs, she almost trips over the dead body of one of the Yeoman Warders. That there’s something seriously amiss cannot be denied, due to the pike sticking out of his back. With her husband, Scotland Yard DCI Alec Fletcher assigned to resolve the case, Daisy once again finds herself in the middle of a case of murder most foul.

The Bloody Tower: A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery

In September 1925, Scotland Yard DCI Alec Fletcher inherits a large house on the outskirts of London from a recently deceased great-uncle. Fortunately so, as he and his wife, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher, are the recent proud parents of twins, and their house is practically bursting at the seams. Though in need of a bit of work, this new, larger house seems a godsend—set in a small circle of houses, with a communal garden and Hampstead Heath nearby, the setting is idyllic.

Idyllic, that is until a dead body shows up half-hidden under the bushes of the communal garden. Now rumors of bootleggers, American gangsters, and an international liquor smuggling operation via black ships have turned everything in their new neighborhood upside down. Alec is assigned by Scotland Yard to ferret out the truth behind the dastardly dead—but it’s up to Daisy to find out who the dead man is, what his relationship to her new neighbors is, why he was murdered, and who did him in!

Black Ship: A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery

In March of 1926, Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher and her friend and collaborator, Lady Lucy Gerald, head off for several days to a stately home reputed to have the best grotto in the country. Working on a book of architectural follies, they plan to research and photograph it. Leaving her husband and young twins behind, Daisy is expecting a productive weekend at Appsworth Hall, with the only potential difficulty being keeping Lucy from offending the current owner, a manufacturer of plumbing products. Alas, it’s not to be quite so simple.

At the home, they find themselves faced with a curious assortment of people, including the abominable, tactless Lord Rydal, who is rumored to be having an affair with one of the guests while in ardent and artless pursuit of the hand in marriage of another. When the grotto explodes with Lord Rydal in it, it’s not a question of who would do it―as most who’ve met him would be sorely tempted―but who actually did do it.

Sheer Folly: A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery

In the Spring of 1926, the corpses of three men are found in shallow graves off the beaten path in Epping Forest outside of London—each shot through the heart and bearing no identification. DCI Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard, the lead detective, is immediately given two urgent orders by his supervisor at the Yard: solve the murders quickly and keep his wife, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher, away from the case! Thankfully, Daisy’s off visiting their daughter at school. But when a teacher is found dead, Daisy is once again in the thick of it. As Daisy tries to solve one murder, Alec discovers that the three victims in his case were in the same Army company during World War I, that their murders are likely related to specific events that unfolded during that tragic conflict, and that, unless the killer is revealed and stopped, those three might only be the beginning.

Anthem for Doomed Youth: A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery

In September 1926, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher visits Sybil Sutherby, a school friend now living in Derbyshire as the confidential secretary to a novelist. Suspecting that something is seriously amiss, Sybil has asked Daisy to discretely investigate.

Upon arrival, Daisy finds a household of relatives and would-be suitors living off the hospitality of Humphrey Birtwhistle, who had been supporting them through his thrice-yearly, pseudonymous Westerns. When he took ill, though, Sybil took over writing them while he recovered, only to see the sales increase. Now, she fears that someone in the household is poisoning Birtwhistle to keep him ill and Sybil writing the better-paying versions. But before Daisy can even get decently underway, Humphrey Birtwhistle dies under suspicious circumstances and Daisy now faces a death to untangle, a house full of suspects, and a Scotland Yard detective husband who is less than pleased at this turn of events.

Gone West: A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery

When one of four potential claimants to the title of Lord Dalrymple dies a sudden, nasty death, the question on everyone’s mind is, “was it murder?”

In the late 1920s in England, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher is recruited to help her cousin Edgar―i.e. the Lord Dalrymple. About to turn fifty, Lord Dalrymple decides it is time to find out who would be the heir to the viscountcy. With the help of the family lawyer, who advertises Empire-wide, they have come up with four potential claimants. For his fiftieth birthday, Edgar invites those would-be heirs―along with Daisy and the rest of the family―to Fairacres, the family estate.

In the meantime, Daisy is asked to be the family’s representative at the lawyer’s interviews with the claimants. Those four are a hotelier from Scarborough, a diamond merchant from South Africa, a young mixed-raced boy from Trinidad, and a sailor from Jamaica. However, according to his very pregnant wife, the sailor has gone missing.

Daisy and Alec must uncover a conspiracy if they are going to stop the killing in the latest from the accomplished master of the genre, Carola Dunn.

Heirs of the Body: A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery

In England in the late 1920s, the Honourable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher, on a convalescent trip to the countryside, goes to visit three old school friends in the area. The three, all unmarried, have recently bought a house together. They are a part of the generation of “superfluous women”―brought up expecting marriage and a family, but left without any prospects after more than 700,000 British men were killed in the Great War.

Daisy and her husband Alec―Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher, of Scotland Yard ―go for a Sunday lunch with Daisy’s friends, where one of the women mentions a wine cellar below their house, which remains curiously locked, no key to be found. Alec offers to pick the lock, but when he opens the door, what greets them is not a cache of wine but the stench of a long-dead body.

And with that, what was a pleasant Sunday lunch has taken an unexpected turn. Now Daisy’s three friends are the most obvious suspects in a murder and her husband Alec is a witness, so he can’t officially take over the investigation. So before the local detective, Inspector Underwood, can officially bring charges against her friends, Daisy is determined to use all her resources (Alec) and skills to solve the mystery behind this perplexing locked-room crime.

Superfluous Women: A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery

Daisy Dalrymple is back—when a casual outing to the Crystal Palace in London takes a mysterious and murderous turn. 

April 1928: Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher is visited in London by her young cousins. On the list of must-see sites is the Crystal Palace. Discovering that her children’s nanny, Nanny Gilpin, has never seen the Palace, Daisy decides to make a day of it—bringing her cousins, her three-year-old twins, her step-daughter Belinda, the nurserymaid, and Nanny Gilpin. Yet this ordinary outing goes wrong when Mrs. Gilpin goes off to the ladies room and fails to return. When Daisy goes to look for her, she doesn’t find her nanny but instead the body of another woman dressed in a nanny’s uniform.

Meanwhile, Belinda and the cousins spot Mrs. Gilpin chasing after yet another nanny. Intrigued, they trail the two through the vast Crystal Palace and into the park. After briefly losing sight of their quarry, they stumble across Mrs. Gilpin lying unconscious in a small lake inhabited by huge concrete dinosaurs.

When she comes to, Mrs. Gilpin can’t remember what happened after leaving the twins in the nurserymaid’s care. Daisy’s husband, Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard, finds himself embroiled in the investigation of the murdered nanny. Worried about her children’s own injured nanny, Daisy is determined to help. First she has to discover the identity of the third nanny, the presumed murderer, and to do so, Daisy must uncover why the amnesic Mrs. Gilpin deserted her charges to follow the missing third nanny.

Daisy Dalrymple Mysteries - The book series

Daisy Dalrymple Mysteries - The book series

Daisy Dalrymple Mysteries books in order

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