Sarah Deane Mystery

Sarah Deane takes a break from graduate school-and dreary mid-March Boston-and heads for sunny Southern Texas to join her boyfriend, Philip Lentz, on a birdwatching expedition. Philip's rare sighting of a pair of hook-billed kites gets things off to a great start. But when he ends up strangled by his binocular straps, the rest of the birders are both suspects and sitting ducks. Is the killer a member of the Hamburg Bird Club? Major "Big" Foster, who claims he also saw the kites?

Working on the Godding Museum's annual local artist show is the perfect way for English teacher Sarah Deane to earn a few dollars, relax in the sun and sea air of coastal Maine, and spend the summer with her boyfriend, Dr. Alex McKenzie. But when Sarah and Alex discover the body of Nate Harwood, a cranky local artist, caught in an offshore fish trap, they know they'll have no vacation from amateur detecting until they catch his killer.

The campus of Maine's Bowmouth College looks like a picture postcard of New England-snow-covered lawns, students in colorful ski parkas, icicles dangling on the ivied halls. Sarah Deane-English Fellow with an honorary degree in sleuthing-expects to spend a quiet term here taking some graduate courses and doing a little teaching. But then Sarah finds that someone's organized an advanced course in murder. The first lesson comes when a woman student is found frozen into a prize-winning snow sculpture during Carnival weekend. The second is served up with a cozy cup of poisoned cocoa. And when the clues point straight to an English department already rife with rivalries, Sarah realizes that a little learning can be a very dangerous thing...

Sarah Dean, self-described "accident crime-prone English teacher", and her boyfriend, Dr. Alex McKenzie, are longing for a vacation. No classes, students or conferences for her-no patients, beepers or night calls for Alex. The two-week cruise aboard the Pilgrim, a luxury yacht owned by millionaire evangelist David Mallory, seems the perfect gateway...until one of the passengers turns up murdered...and those left on board are now both suspects and potential victims.

Planning their wedding at High Hope horse farm is trouble enough for teaching fellow Sarah Deane and her fiancé Dr. Alex McKenzie. But now Sarah's widowed Aunt Julia, the farm's crusty, independent owner, is receiving threatening nursery rhymes with her morning paper; a stableman's been mysteriously injured; and someone's taking pot shots at the barn. Could the disturbing events have to do with a mining company that's out to lasso local land? Or with Tilly, a loopy neighbor who thinks it's in her stars to swap farms with Julia?

Sarah, nosy-but-nice English teaching fellow, and her husband, Alex, are at it again. Due to an unfortunate accident that incapacitates a friend, Sarah's abrasive aunt Julia is offered two free tickets with Whirlaway Tours. After much arguing and little listening, Sarah finds herself serving as Julia's companion for the trip. Eyebrows are raised, however, when the group meets in Boston's Logan Airport and Ellen Trevino, the tour's garden expert, doesn't show. Sarah begins to worry that Ellen's problem may be worse than a delayed connecting flight. As strange clues begin to pile up, Sarah calls home to ask Alex to follow up on Ellen's disappearance.

Freshly-minted Ph.D. Sarah Deane is hired to teach English at Miss Merritt’s, only to land in the epicenter of legendary French professor Grace ('Mme. Guillotine') Carpentier’s reign of terror. Mme.’s peckish passion for excellence has inspired universal fear and loathing. A student discovers Mme.’s cloaked hanging effigy. Then Sarah finds a bludgeoned body wearing Mme’s trademark cape. But the victim is not Mme. Is it a case of mistaken identity? It’s up to Sarah, aided by her husband Alex, to find the killer before he strikes again.

After weeks of relentless rain and fog, summer graces the Maine coast. Sarah Deane wants only to help her in-laws adjust to living in Ocean Tide, an "architect-designed home-town community", and enjoy the warm weather before she returns to teaching in the fall. She absolutely does not want to become embroiled in another murder investigation. Even when police find the body of an 18 year old on Ocean Tide's golf course, Sarah vows not to let it sidetrack her from an agenda of rest and relaxation.

Crotchety, 70-something Julia Clancy of High Hope Farm feels a little wobbly one August morning. With stables to clean and riding lessons to give, the stoic New Englander ignores her symptoms - and ends up in the ER with a heart attack. Even then, she's insisting it's indigestion; even then, her sharp eyes don't miss a thing. And a glimpse of something highly unusual will entangle Julia Clancy in the baffling murder of a hospital VIP.

The Drama School at Bowmouth College is staging its annual Halloween masquerade, known for being a little unusual. Drama students are known for being mischievous and high-strung, but this year things are a little more serious: Sarah stumbles upon a badly injured student hidden away in a stockroom on Halloween night, and then events take a turn for the worse. By the time the production is finally staged, a member of the faculty has been badly injured and a student has been killed.