Download or read book Caught Dead in Philadelphia written by Gillian Roberts and published by Untreed Reads. This book was released on 2011-12-03 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amanda is suspected of murder when an acquaintance is found dead in front of her fireplace. She joins forces with Officer Mackenzie to solve the case.

Download or read book The Amanda Pepper Mysteries Bundle 1 written by Gillian Roberts and published by Untreed Reads, LLC. This book was released on 2015-05-21 with total page 692 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philadelphia spells danger for an English teacher turned amateur sleuth in the first three novels of this Anthony Award–winning mystery series. Caught Dead in Philadelphia When Philly Prep English teacher Amanda Pepper finds a murdered colleague in her living room, she needs to clear her name—while trying not to become the next victim. But the only clue to the real killer’s identity is a Winnie-the-Pooh locket. Good thing handsome homicide detective C.K. Mackenzie is on her side. Philly Stakes When Amanda tries to get her students in the Christmas spirit by serving a meal for the homeless, the plan fatally backfires. Alexander “Sandy” Clausen, a politically ambitious parent, turns the event into a lavishly catered photo-op. But when Sandy is killed and his troubled daughter confesses, Amanda gets wrapped up in the investigation with her sometime boyfriend, Det. C.K. Mackenzie. I’d Rather Be in Philadelphia Amanda is sorting through donated books when she comes across a note that reads like an anonymous cry for help. Desperately searching for the troubled woman, Amanda locates her just in time to find the woman’s husband murdered. With the woman wrongly suspected, it’s up to Amanda and Det. C.K. MacKenzie to see the real killer get booked. “[Roberts is] the Dorothy Parker of mystery writers . . . giving more wit per page than most writers give per book.” —Nancy Pickard, award-winning author of the Jenny Cain series

Download or read book A Hole in Juan written by Gillian Roberts and published by Untreed Reads. This book was released on 2013-08-20 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No matter the season, the Philadelphia private school where Amanda Pepper teaches English is never a center of tranquility. But with Halloween and the annual Mischief Night party only days away, the hope is that nothing more than old-fashioned vandalism and pranks will take place. No such luck. Trouble erupts long before the witching hour, as the school is plagued by a series of mishaps ranging from the trivial to the potentially deadly–and most of which seem to center on a group of popular seniors. A fire alarm rings during a test; all the orange and black paint is stolen from the art room; the mustard packets are taken from the cafeteria. Perhaps more serious: chemicals and equipment disappear from the science lab, as does one of Amanda's exams and her attendance book. And the dapper new science instructor, Juan Reyes, receives a threatening message recalling that a teacher was once flayed to death by his students. As Amanda juggles teaching, moonlighting as a private investigator with her husband, C.K. Mackenzie, and coping with C.K.'s visiting sixteen-year-old high school-dropout nephew, she tries to find out what, or who, is behind the ominous events. Before she can unmask the tricksters, the turmoil in the school increases when students rise up against the administration's censuring (and censoring) of a campus poet. Then unrest escalates into a lethally explosive menace, and Amanda receives a warning that there is more–and far worse–to come.

Download or read book With Friends Like These written by Gillian Roberts and published by Untreed Reads. This book was released on 2012-03-29 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Well-known Broadway playwright and TV producer Lyle Zacharias is throwing himself a lavish birthday party in his hometown of Philadelphia. Guests include his current wife, ex-wives, friends, former partners-not to mention Amanda Pepper and her own irrepressible mother, Bea. Yet when Lyle drops dead in the middle of a speech, it appears the likely perpetrator is none other than Bea, whose gift was fifty delicious, but apparently poisoned, tarts! It's up to Amanda to clear her mother's name and find the real murderer...before he or she strikes again! But Amanda herself may be the next target! Who says teaching isn't exciting? With any more excitement, Amanda will have to retire before she hits thirty-one...if she lives that long!

Download or read book Claire and Present Danger written by Gillian Roberts and published by Untreed Reads. This book was released on 2013-05-13 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the City of Brotherly Love, nobody knows a thing about Emmie Cade, a young widow who "appeared from nowhere," and in the blink of an eye was engaged to Leo Fairchild, a middle-aged bachelor with a fortune. However, as her marriage date approaches, Emmie's mother-in-law to be, the ailing, autocratic Claire Fairchild, receives anonymous letters. They suggest, none too subtly, that there's a great deal to learn about the mysterious young woman, none of it good, and much of it involving the violent deaths of the men in her life. Enter Amanda Pepper who, after completing her day of teaching English at Philly Prep, now moonlights as a P.I. along with C.K. Mackenzie, former homicide detective, current graduate student at Penn. The two of them are hired by Mrs. Fairchild to find out who the charming but evasive Emmie Cade really is. At thirty-two, the young woman has changed her address and name more often than some women change nail polish-and deliberately or not, she's provided no clues or access to her past. For Amanda, becoming C.K. Mackenzie's investigative partner is an exhilarating change from the politics and problems of the new school term, and a welcome distraction from the ordeal of meeting her own prospective in-laws. She's determined to prove herself an able investigator by ferreting out Emmie Cade's secrets, but almost immediately, instead of looking at events of the past, she's forced to deal with the here and now-including murder.

Download or read book You Can Write a Mystery written by Gillian Roberts and published by Untreed Reads. This book was released on 2014-01-06 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Have you ever thought about writing a mystery, and gave up the idea because you didn’t know where to begin? Now is your chance to write the mystery of your dreams. You Can Write a Mystery, written by Gillian Roberts, author of the Anthony Award-winning Amanda Pepper series, will help you start your mystery, and guide you through to the end. With this book you'll learn how to build your story from the ground up, based on what Roberts calls the "Seven Cs." Examples and exercises will help you complete your story—filled with cliffhangers, intriguing characters and hooks. This book offers practical suggestions for handling problems likely to arise during the writing process. You will learn: ·The Seven Cs your book can't do without—characters, conflict, causality, complications, change, crisis and closure ·The Fifteen Commandments for mystery ·How to design your sleuth ·How to hide clues and exploit red herrings ·Research techniques ·How to develop a style, find a tone and construct a killer plot In addition to practical writing advice, Roberts offers expert guidance for editing, revising and submitting a top-notch manuscript, whether for traditional or independent publishing. With its easy-to-understand format, You Can Write a Mystery will help take you from writer…to accomplished mystery writer.

Download or read book All s Well That Ends written by Gillian Roberts and published by Untreed Reads. This book was released on 2013-12-04 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amanda's friend Sasha's stepmother has just committed suicide—although, according to Sasha, Phoebe Ennis would never have killed herself, especially not while having a drink and wearing a red silk blouse and red sandals with four-inch heels. Amanda isn't persuaded, but reluctantly agrees to help investigate the woman's demise, though the evidence for foul play is slim. True, the middle-aged compulsive collector of knickknacks wasn't universally loved. Phoebe's own son hated her, and she bored her friends to death with hints of her "royal" lineage. And with four marriages behind her, she was already preparing to announce her renewed availability on the Net. But when another woman is found dead in Phoebe's house, it becomes clear that something is indeed murderously amiss, and much closer to home than Amanda or anyone else could have imagined.

Download or read book How I Spent My Summer Vacation written by Gillian Roberts and published by Untreed Reads. This book was released on 2012-05-07 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While holidaying in Atlantic City, Amanda Pepper is offered a bed by a woman friend staying in a hotel. She accepts, only to spend the rest of her holiday chasing a killer who put a body in her friend's bed. But at least she has good company, her detective boyfriend.

Download or read book The Mystery Fancier written by William F. Deeck and published by Wildside Press LLC. This book was released on 2008-08-01 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bibliography of various mystery novels published between November 1976 and Fall 1992.

Download or read book The Mystery Readers Advisory written by John Charles and published by American Library Association. This book was released on 2002 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Three librarians from Scottsdale, Arizona provide library staff with an introduction to the mystery genre and offer tips and techniques for providing advice to mystery readers in the library. They include some of their own bibliographies, but refer readers elsewhere for fuller ones. They also include a brief history of the genre to pass on to readers new to it.

Download or read book Verdant The Preterhumans Book 2 written by Katherine Bell and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2011-01-28 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "It's been six months since Amaranth and the Dark Lander attack. Life in Washington, D.C., is starting to move on. There's even a bill floating around Congress to give Preterhumans rights equal to humans. It's a good time to be a Preterhuman in the city if you ignore the attacks that are going on. Lizzy Drake, the half-vampire part of Murdock Investigations, the only private investigative agency in the Greater D.C. area run by Preterhumans for Preterhumans, is looking into who would dare attack a goddess"--Publisher.

Download or read book American Mystery and Detective Novels written by Larry Landrum and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 1999-05-30 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mystery and detective novels are popular fictional genres within Western literature. As such, they provide a wealth of information about popular art and culture. When the genre develops within various cultures, it adopts, and proceeds to dominate, native expressions and imagery. American mystery and detective novels appeared in the late nineteenth century. This reference provides a selective guide to the important criticism of American mystery and detective novels and presents general features of the genre and its historical development over the past two centuries. Critical approaches covered in the volume include story as game, images, myth criticism, formalism and structuralism, psychonalysis, Marxism and more. Comparisons with related genres, such as gothic, suspense, gangster, and postmodern novels, illustrate similarities and differences important to the understanding of the unique components of mystery and detective fiction. The guide is divided into five major sections: a brief history, related genres, criticism, authors, and reference. This organization accounts for the literary history and types of novels stemming from the mystery and detective genre. A chronology provides a helpful overview of the development and transformation of the genre.

Download or read book The Readers Advisory Guide to Mystery written by John Charles and published by American Library Association. This book was released on 2012-01-09 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With several well-chosen booklists, practical programming ideas, and a brand new compendium of print and web-based resources, your only crime would be not adding this guide to your collection!

Download or read book Third and Indiana written by Steve Lopez and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1995-10-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Philadelphia neighborhood known as the Badlands, drug gangs rule absolutely. Each time a life is lost in the carnage of the local drug wars, a boldly drawn chalk outline of a body appears on the street leading up to City hall: a teenaged dealer, a priest, a little girl with a jump rope. Ofelia Santoro rides her bicycle through the dark, decaying streets, looking for her fourteen-year-old-son, Gabriel. She’s afraid of what she might find. Gabriel has fallen in with the most savage of the drug dealers, but now wants to get out—if he can. In this gritty, fast-moving novel, acclaimed Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Steve Lopez brings home the violence that is scarring America’s vast urban wastelands, and the humanity that might save them. “An unfancy prose is streaked by strong, cinematic images . . . Lopez aims to prick consciences, in the tradition of the documentary novelist, and he does so with considerable style.”—The Daily Telegraph “Lopez has done what Balzac, Dickens . . . and Dostoevsky did so masterfully: he has taken a torch to the back of the cave and returned to tell us what he has seen.” –Pete Hamill, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Download or read book New York Times Book of New York written by The New York Times and published by Black Dog & Leventhal. This book was released on 2009-05-20 with total page 1277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique volume uncovers the most fascinating and compelling stories from The New York Times about the city the paper calls home. More than 200 articles and an abundance of photographs, illustrations, maps, and graphs from the preeminent newspaper in the world take a look at the history and personality of the world's most influential city. Read firsthand accounts of the subway opening in 1904 and the day the Metrocard was introduced; the fall of Tammany Hall and recurring corruption in city politics; the Son of Sam murders; jazz clubs in the 1920s and legendary performances at the Fillmore East; baseball's Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier at Brooklyn's storied Ebbets Field in 1947; the 1977 and 2004 blackouts; the openings and closings of the city's most beloved restaurants; and much more. Not just a historical account, this is a fascinating, sometimes funny, and often moving look at how people in New York live, eat, travel, mourn, fight, love, and celebrate. Organized by theme, the book includes original writings on all topics related to city life, including art, architecture, transportation, politics, neighborhoods, people, sports, business, food, and more. Includes articles from such well-known Times writers as Meyer Berger, Gay Talese, Anna Quindlen, Israel Shenker, Brooks Atkinson, Frank Rich, Ada Louise Huxtable, John Kieran, Russell Baker, and more. Special contributors who have written about New York for the Times include Paul Auster, Woody Allen, and E.B. White, among others.

Download or read book Time and Trouble written by Gillian Roberts and published by Untreed Reads. This book was released on 2014-12-14 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marin County is famous for its affluent pleasures and the beauty of its beaches, mountains and redwood forests. In Time and Trouble, a teen-aged runaway, a yellow hearse, an insurance scam, a heart-shaped talisman, a baby’s skeleton in a meadow, and something ugly and odd going on in a Sausalito houseboat all converge there to provide the first—and nearly last—case for Billie August, the new hire of seasoned P.I. Emma Howe. Billie, a single parent with no practical job skills, desperately needs the job, and Emma, whose personality has caused most of her employees to head for the hills, hires the sure-to-fail inexperienced young woman out of her own desperation. An unlikely, antagonistic pair, both find out that things are seldom as they seem, and appearances—in and out of crime and investigation—can be dangerously deceiving.

Download or read book Creating Characters written by Dwight V. Swain and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2012-11-28 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A jargon-free manual on the basics of developing interesting fictional characters Vibrant, believable characters help drive a fictional story. Along with a clever plot, well-drawn characters make us want to continue reading a novel or finish watching a movie. In Creating Characters, Dwight V. Swain shows how writers can invent interesting characters and improve them so that they move a story along. “The core of character,” he says in chapter 1, “lies in each individual story person’s ability to care about something; to feel implicitly or explicitly, that something is important.” Building on that foundation—the capacity to care—Swain takes the would-be writer step-by-step through the fundamentals of finding and developing “characters who turn you on.” This basic but thought-provoking how-to is a valuable tool for both the novice and the seasoned writer.