Christmas Mysteries, Crime Fiction Authors A-D

This year for my Crime for the Holidays Christmas Mystery List, I decided to completely repost my list with all the additions. Be sure and add this list to your TBR!  I've divided the list alphabetically and posting on different days. As always I welcome any titles I've forgotten, and I'll update immediately. No surprise, but this list contains more titles than last year.

So today, I'm listing Christmas Crime Fiction, Authors A-D. Enjoy!

Abbot, Anthony. About the Murder on a Startled Lady, About the Murder of Geraldine Foster
Abresch, Peter. The Faltese Malcom
Adamson, Lydia. A Cat in the Manger, A Cat in the Wings, A Cat on Jingle Bell Rock, A Cat Under the Mistletoe
Albert, Susan Wittig. Mistletoe Man, Rueful Death, Holly Blues
Allen, Michael. Spence and the Holiday Murders
Andrews, Donna. Six Geese A-Slaying
Arts, David Jay. Quiet Desperation
Ash, Maureen. Murder for Christ’s Mass
Appignanesi, Agatha.The Dead of Winter
Arsenault, Emily. The Broken Teaglass
Atherton, Nancy. Aunt Dimity's Christmas
Arts, David Jay. Quiet Desperation
Ash, Maureen. Murder for Christ's Mass
Asimov, Isaac (ed) Twelve Crimes of Christmas
Atkins, Ace. Leavin' Trunk Blues
Atherton, Nancy. Aunt Dimity's Christmas
Aubert, Rosemary. The Feast of Stephen
Avocato, Lori. (ed) Sugarplums and Scandal
Babson, Marian. Twelve Deaths of Christmas
Bain, Donald. A Little Yuletide Murder (Murder She wrote/Jessica Fleming)
Baker, North. Dead to the World
Baldacci, David. The Christmas Train
Barron, Stephanie. Jane and the Wandering Eye
Battison, Brian. The Christmas Bow Murder
Baldacci, David. The Christmas Train
Ballard, Mignon F. Deadly Promise, Hark! The Herald Angel Screamed
Barnard, Robert. Death in a Cold Climate, The Habit of Widowhood
Barron, Stephanie. Jane and the Wandering Eye
Battison, Brian. The Christmas Bow Murder
Beaton, M.C. Death of A Snob, A Highland Christmas, Agatha Raisin and Kissing Christmas Goodbye, Death of a Prankster
Beaumont, Cyril. The Mysterious Toyshop
Beechy, Alan. Murdering Ministers
Benison, C.C. Death at Sandringham House
Benrey Ron & Janet. Season of Glory
Berenson, Laurien. Jingle Bell Bark
Bernhardt, William. The Midnight Before Christmas
Berry, Linda. (ed) The Last Noel
Bishop, Claudia. A Carol for a Corpse
Black, Gavin. Dragon for Christmas
Black, Sarah & John Lanyon. I’ll be Dead for Christmas
Blackstock, Charity. Foggy, Foggy Dew
Blake, Nicholas. The Corpse in the Snowman, The Smiler With the Knife, Thou Shell of Death
Blanc, Nero. A Crossworder's Delight, A Crossworder's Gift, A Crossworder's Holiday, Wrapped Up in Crosswords
Borthwick, J. S. Dude on Arrival, The Student Body
Boucher, Anthony. The Night Before Christmas
Boylan, Eleanor. Pushing Murder
Boyle, Thomas. Post-Mortem Effects
Bramble, Forbes. Dead of Winter
Braun, Lilian Jackson. The Cat Who Turned On and Off
Brett, Simon. The Christmas Crimes at Puzzle Manor, The Shooting in the Shop
Brewer, Steve (and others) The Last Noel
Brightwell, Emily. Mrs. Jeffries and the Feast of St. Stephen, Mrs. Jeffries & the Yuletide Weddings
Brockman, Suzanne. All Through the Night.
Brown, Carter. A Corpse for Christmas
Brown, Frederic. Murder Can be Fun
Brown, Rita Mae. Rest in Pieces, Santa Clawed
Browning, Abigail (ed) Murder Most Merry (stories)
Bruce, Leo. Such is Death
Buchanan, Edna. The Ice Maiden
Burton, Tony (ed). By the Chimney with Care, Carols and Crimes/Gifts and Grifters, Dying in a Winter Wonderland
Burke, James. A Present for Santa
Burley, W. J. Death in Willow Pattern, Wycliffe and the Quiet Virgin
Byerrun, Ellen. Grave Apparel
Caine, Leslie. Holly and Homicide
Cairns, Alison. New Year Resolution
Cameron, Dana (and others) Sugarplums and Scandal
Carl, Joanna. The Chocolate Bear Burglary, The Chocolate Snowman Murders
Carrier, Warren. Justice at Christmas
Carter, John Franklin. The Corpse on the White House Lawn
Carter, Nick. The Christmas Kill
Caunitz, William J. Exceptional Clearance
Challinor, C. S. Christmas is Murder
Chaput, W. J. The Man on the Train
Chastain, Thomas. 911
Chaze, Elliott. Goodbye Goliath
Chesbro, George C. Second Horseman Out of Eden
Childs, Laura. The Teaberry Strangler
Christie, Agatha. Hercule Poirot’s Christmas (Also published as Murder for Christmas and Holiday for Murder), The Sittaford Mystery
Christmas, Joyce. Dying Well
Churchill, Jill. Farewell to Yarns, The Merchant of Menace, From Here to Paternity
Clark, Carol Higgins. Iced
Clark, Mary Higgins. All Though the Night, Silent Night, Deck the Halls. With Carol Higgins Clark, He Sees You when Your Sleeping With Carol Higgins Clark, The Christmas Thief. With Carol Higgins Clark, Santa Cruise. With Carol Higgins Clark.
Dashing through the snow. With Carol Higgins Clark.
Coggin, Joan. Who Killed the Curate?
Cohen, Charles. Silver Linings
Collier, Christine. Christmas at Cliffhanger Inn, A Holiday Sampler
Collings, Rex. Clerical Crimes for Christmas
Collins, Max Allen. Blue Christmas and Other Holiday Homicides, No Cure for Death
Colt, Jennifer. The Con Artist of Catalina Island
Conant, Susan. Gone to the Dogs
Constantine, K.C. Upon Some Midnights Clear
Cousins, Caroline. Fiddle Dee Death
Cornish, Constance. Dead of Winter
Cornwell, Patricia. Scarpetta’s Winter Table
Coyle, Cleo. Holiday Grind
Coward, Mat (and others) The Last Noel
Craig, Alisa. Murder Goes Mumming
Constantine, K.C. Upon Some Midnights Clear
Craft, Michael. Body Language
Craig, Alisa. Murder Goes Mumming
Craig, Philip R. A Deadly Vineyard Holiday: A Martha’s Vineyard Mystery, Off Season
Crane, Hamilton. Starring Miss Seeton
Crawford, Isis. A Catered Christmas
Crombie, Deborah. Water Like a Stone
Cross, Amanda. No Word from Winifred
Crowleigh, Ann. Murder Under the Tree (stories)
Daheim, Mary. The Alpine Christmas, Nutty as a Fruitcake
Dalby, Richard. Crime for Christmas
D'Amato, Barbara. Hard Christmas
Dams, Jeanne M. The Body in the Transept, Indigo Christmas, Winter of Discontent
Dane, Joel. The Christmas Tree Murders
Davenport, Chari. The Christmas Party
Davidson, Diane Mott. Sweet Revenge
Davis, Frederick. Drag the Dark
Davis, Krista. The Diva Runs Out of Thyme, The Diva Cooks a Goose
Davis, Mildred B. Tell Them What's Her Name Called, Three Minutes to Midnight
Dawson, Janet. Nobody's Child
Dean, Spencer. Credit for a Murder
DeAndrea, William L. Killed on the Ice
Deeb, Mary Jane. Christmas Mystery in Provence
Delany, Vicki. Winter of Secrets
Dentinger, Jane. The Queen is Dead
Dexter, Colin. The Secret of Annexe 3
Dickson, Carter. The White Priority Murders
Dobson, Joanne. Quieter Than Sleep
Donnelly, Deborah. Died to Match, May the Best Man Die
Douglas, Carole Nelson. Cat in a Golden Garland
Douglas, Charlotte. Holidays are Murder
Downing, Todd. The Last Trumpet
Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
Drummond, John Keith. 'Tis the Season to be Dying
Douglas, Carole Nelson. Cat in a Golden Garland: A Midnight Louie Mystery
Duffy, James. The Christmas Gang
Dunbar, Sophie. Shiveree
Dunn, Carola. Mistletoe and Murder, Death at Wentwater Court
Dunnett, Kaitlyn. A Wee Christmas Homicide
Durham, Mary. Keeps Death His Court

Book Christmas Tree

This great Book Christmas Tree was  at the  Richard A. Gleeson Library last year (University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA). After the holiday, the books were reshelved.  This is the same creative library that won the Book Cart Contest this year! I'd say they have some great library workers!

Photo: Recyclart
Hat Tip: Cheryl Delano

Cartoon of the Day

Crime for the Holidays: Evelyn David

Today I welcome Evelyn David. This is a new entry in the Crime for the Holidays series and did  not appear in the Crime for the Holidays issue of Mystery Readers Journal. Be sure and go back and have a look at the first three Crime for the Holidays posts by Carolyn Hart, Kathy Lynn Emerson, and Kerry Greenwood.

Evelyn David is the author of Murder Off the Books, Murder Takes the Cake, and The Brianna Sullivan Mysteries e-book series. Evelyn David is the pseudonym for Marian Edelman Borden and Rhonda Dossett. Marian and Rhonda write their mystery series via the internet. While many fans who attend mystery conventions have now chatted with both halves of Evelyn David, Marian and Rhonda have yet to meet in person.

How to Commit Murder during the Holidays by Evelyn David

We, the collective Evelyn David, are apparently deadly to holiday guests. There are two of us: Marian Edelman Borden, who lives in New York and Rhonda Dossett, who calls Muskogee, Oklahoma her home. We've been writing together for six years and are happily able to transform the most joyous of holidays into an opportunity for murder and mayhem, both east and west of the Mississippi.

Of course, despite the holiday song proclaiming this is "the most wonderful time of the year," for many people, it's actually the most difficult. The impulse to act on negative feelings may be magnified. While the media makes it appear that everyone else is having the time of their life, enjoying each other's company, buying a mound of expensive presents, with no credit card bills to fear, most find real life very different. It's enough to make you homicidal, if you were so inclined.

And as mystery writers, we clearly are so inclined – or at least in print, we are.

It's no coincidence that our book, Murder Takes the Cake, combines the stresses of a holiday, Thanksgiving, with the pressures of planning a wedding. Rachel Brenner, our protagonist, considers going to a hotel and ordering room service, rather than face a turkey dinner without her son or brother. She's hard-pressed to remember that for which she is thankful. Solving a murder that is more than 30 years old, while also preventing one from happening, only increases the pressures of this "most wonderful time of the year."

We offer the reader two holiday stories in our e-book, The Holiday Spirit(s) of Lottawata. In the first story, "Giving Thanks in Lottawatah", psychic Brianna Sullivan spends Thanksgiving day with her boyfriend's family – the living and the dead. She solves a mystery while participating in all the traditional Thanksgiving festivities of a family living in rural Oklahoma. The second story is set at Christmas time. In "Bah, Humbug in Lottawatah", Brianna not only has to deal with the ghost of a murder victim who can only offer cryptic clues to his killer, but must also help a young boy discover anew the magic of Christmas while his father spends his days in prison, falsely accused of murder. The holiday spirits, pun intended, won't be very joyous unless Brianna can solve the mystery, which is also the only way the ghost can finally go to the light.

So as you heft that last turkey from the grocery store freezer, struggle to wrap that awkwardly shaped gift, or circle the shopping center lot for the tenth time searching for a parking space, understand those are the golden moments for authors. The time when genius is born and a murder plot is hatched.

Murder Takes the Cake is published by Wolfmont Press and is available in print and all e-book formats.

The Holiday Spirit(s) of Lottawatah is the third volume of an e-book only mystery series featuring psychic Brianna Sullivan's adventures in a small Oklahoma town. It is available in all e-book formats.

Crime for the Holidays: Carolyn Hart

Crime for the Holidays: Day III. This article by Carolyn Hart first appeared in the Mystery Readers Journal: Crime for the Holidays (Volume 25:1, Spring 2009). Mystery Readers Journal: Crime for the Holidays is available as hardcopy and as a .pdf download. Table of contents and ordering info.

Carolyn Hart is the author of 42 mysteries with the publication March 31, 2009 of DARE TO DIE, the 19th in her Death on Demand series. MERRY, MERRY GHOST, her 43rd mystery, was published in 2009 and is now available in paperback. She is a past president of Sisters in Crime.

Holidays, Holy Days, and Happy Days by Carolyn Hart

Until I saw Janet’s call for pieces on holiday mysteries, I’ve never paused to realize how many books I’ve written with holiday themes: Deadly Valentine (Valentine’s Day), Yankee Doodle Dead (Fourth of July), Sugarplum Dead (Christmas), Ghost at Work (Halloween), and, coming out in Fall 2009, Merry, Merry Ghost (Christmas).

I have particular memories about each book.

In Deadly Valentine, I created a character whom I first envisioned as a slut. By the end of the manuscript, I realized she was vulnerable and appealing. Her desperate hunger for love reflected the theme of the book: How love or its lack damages lives, including those of cats. Yankee Doodle Dead explored the impact of vengeance against a patriotic backdrop. Family stresses and strains formed the bedrock of Sugarplum Dead. Families gather at Christmas and the emotional trauma is often intense. Old hurts and disappointments and failures haunt the holiday table. The reappearance of Annie Darling’s long lost father brings to the surface all of her anguish at his disappearance form her life when she was small. Ghost at Work, the first in a new series with an impetuous red-headed ghost as the protagonist, seemed a natural to launch during the spooky time of Halloween. Bailey Ruth Raeburn returns to earth to help someone in trouble. Sometimes you see her and sometimes you don’t. Bailey Ruth’s first helpful act is to remove an unwanted body from a back porch to a nearby cemetery, surely sheer Halloween entertainment.

Of all my holiday themed books, the forthcoming Merry, Merry Ghost is my favorite. In the other books, the holidays form a backdrop. In Merry, Merry Ghost, the story is as much about the beauty and grace of Christmas as the family described.

I have a wonderful time picturing the bustle and eagerness of Christmas, the pleasure of shopping for loved ones and friends, the technicolor glories of yard displays, Christmas music from the majestic “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear” to the lively and beloved “Rudolph, the Red-nosed Reindeer,” holiday treats from Aunt Bill’s candy to Pfferneuse cookies, the delight of decorating a huge outdoor tree, indoor pine swags and mistletoe clumps, the ring of the Salvation Army kettle, and the ineffable grace of God’s love realized on earth.

Bailey Ruth (the late Bailey Ruth Raeburn) is dispatched from Heaven to her old hometown of Adelaide, OK. She arrives on a frosty evening shortly before Christmas at Pritchard house, the home of one of the town’s first families. On the front porch is a four-year-old boy with a battered suitcase. A woman gives him an envelope and tells him to hand the note to whomever answers the door. The woman rings the bell and disappears into the night. Gathered inside the house are the heirs of Susan Pritchard Flynn. Susan is unaware that she has an orphaned grandson, Keith. When Susan realizes Keith is her dead son’s child, she plans to change her will. A previous heir plans the perfect murder but Bailey Ruth is on the case. Despite car chases, a fatal encounter for a blackmailer at an open mining pit, and a handwritten will that disappear, Bailey Ruth brings a clever killer to justice and assures Keith’s inheritance.

I hope readers will enjoy reading Merry, Merry Ghost as much as I enjoyed writing it. And as Tiny Tim said, “God Bless us, every one!”

Crime for the Holidays: Kathy Lynn Emerson aka Kaitlyn Dunnett

Crime for the Holidays: Day II. This article by Kathy Lynn Emerson first appeared in the Mystery Readers Journal: Crime for the Holidays (Volume 25:1, Spring 2009). Mystery Readers Journal: Crime for the Holidays is available as hardcopy and as a .pdf download. Table of contents and ordering info.

Kathy Lynn Emerson is the author of ten Face Down Mysteries featuring Susanna, Lady Appleton, sixteenth-century gentlewoman, herbalist, and sleuth, and of the Diana Spaulding Mystery Quartet, set in the U.S. in 1888. As Kaitlyn Dunnett, she writes the Liss MacCrimmon Mysteries. Her most recent Face Down Mystery is Face Down O'er the Border. Her most recent Liss MacCrimmon Mystery is The Corpse Wore Tartan.

The Twelve Shopping Days of Christmas by Kathy Lynn Emerson (aka Kaitlyn Dunnett)


I live in rural Maine, only a couple of hours away from the Canadian border. Many years ago, back when the only mysteries I'd had published were for young readers, I had an idea for a story that would involve smuggling toys into the U.S. This was inspired by incidents during the Beanie Babies craze in the late 1990s. Trucks full of these adorable little dolls were stopped at the border and the contents destroyed as illegal contraband.

Then I sold mysteries to the adult market, but what I was writing didn't lend itself to using the Beanie Babies. Sixteenth-century England and 1888 U.S. settings just wouldn't work. It wasn't until I started to write the Scottish-American-heritage-themed Liss MacCrimmon Mysteries, under the pseudonym Kaitlyn Dunnett, novels set in the present day in the mountains of western Maine, that I was finally able to use the clippings I'd kept on smuggling Beanie Babies. I turned them into "Tiny Teddies" and started plotting. It didn't take me long to realize that Christmas was the perfect holiday to use in connection with these toys.

In A WEE CHRISTMAS HOMICIDE, Liss MacCrimmon, former professional Scottish dancer and now the proprietor of Moosetookalook Scottish Emporium in Moosetookalook, Maine, discovers that she and two other businesses in town have the only remaining supply of Tiny Teddies in the Northeast. Since that's the toy every child wants for Christmas and is also an object highly prized by collectors (the tiny teddy bears come in a variety of costumes, including Scottish attire), Liss decides to make the most of the situation. She talks the local small business association into sponsoring the "twelve shopping days of Christmas," celebrating one line of the song for each of twelve days and culminating in a parade, a festival, and an auction of some of the Tiny Teddies on the twelfth day. The idea is that shoppers will flock to Moosetookalook in droves, stay at the newly renovated historic hotel, The Spruces, and buy! buy! buy! from all the merchants in town.

Because the previous novels in this series, KILT DEAD and SCONE COLD DEAD, are in the cozy subgenre and are written with a dash of humor, the partridge, turtle doves, French hens, calling birds, and other gifts in "The Twelve Days of Christmas" provided me with ample opportunity to use comic relief. At one point Liss's storeroom is quite overrun with poultry! There are also more traditional Christmas activities taking place throughout the novel and these are coupled with Liss's growing concern that one or both of the men she's been dating during the past year may be planning to propose to her on Christmas morning.

As this is a mystery, murder soon interferes with Liss's carefully laid plans to bring prosperity to Moosetookalook. Because the series features an amateur sleuth, the State Police detective on the case-one of those two men she's been dating-is missing a key piece of evidence. When it falls into Liss's hands, she investigates on her own-constantly reminding herself that she mustn't do anything that will place her in the TSTL (too stupid to live) category. Did I mention that Liss is a big fan of mystery novels? When she starts to put it all together, however, she's happy to bring her detective in on the chase. In this case that chase involves snowmobiles and leads to a few last minute surprises.