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| Scroll down for a complete list and description of each Jane Jeffry Novel
Click on the titles or covers to get captions and link to Amazon.Com. |
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| Titles are listed in order from most recently published to the first book in the series, Grime and Punishment. | |
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Accidental Florist Jane Jeffry and longtime beau Detective Mel VanDyne finally decide to marry, but Mel's overbearing mother wants to take charge of not only the rehearsal dinner but the actual wedding. Since Jane half expected Mel's mother to steamroll the entire event, she agrees—but with rules of her own. No bridesmaids, no groomsmen. And she can't tell Jane what to wear. But during what should have been a blissful interval between the engagement and the bouquet toss, several other occurrences take place. Mel convinces Jane and her best friend, Shelley Nowack, to take a women's safety class. They learn a lot, but the class is cut short when a dead body is discovered. So between Jane's wedding planning, her new writing project, and a battle between both mother-in-laws, a murderer must be found before this bride can walk happily down the aisle. |
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A Midsummer Night's Scream Housewife Jane Jeffry has a new interest. The theater. Even though it only involves tasting food that will fed to the actors and staff. Her friend Shelley is tired of the same old caterers she hires for her husband's business meetings, and she's trying out new ones at the local college theater. There are off-stage feuds, ego trips, and power plays adding to the really awful play written by the Director. Then things turn dark, when an actor exits stage left - permanently - courtesy of a killer. Murder is cue for Jane's long time leading man, Detective Mel Vandyne. But it's an off-hand remark Jane makes to Mell that allows him to bring down the curtain on the villian of the piece. |
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Bell, Book, and Scandal Jane receives a notice of a mystery conference to be held near her home some months ahead and it spurs her to finally finish the novel she’s been working on for years. She tells Shelley any novel should be a bit of mystery. Who will inherit? Is the love of her life really what he appears to be? Jane and Shelley both sign up to attend and are spellbound by what they learn about publishing. At the opening ceremony, however, legendary editor Sophie Smith falls off the podium in a faint as she starts her remarks. Soon a notorious reviewer is attacked in the parking lot of the hotel. Suspects include a big brash e-pubbed yokel, a disguised internet reviewer who is disliked by the published authors for dishing the dirt about them; an avid reader who knows too much about lot of the writers attending, and a well-known local bookseller. By gossiping, eavesdropping, and snooping, Jane and Shelley reveal a lot of secrets that interweave and solve the poisoning of Sophie and the attack on the reviewer. They even manage to reveal the real identity of the Internet reviewer to the delight of the published authors. |
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The House of the Seven Mabels Bitsy Burnside, former PTA crepe-paper and cupcake tyrant, is now profitably divorced. Since she was always able to drag Jane and Shelley into her projects, she now wants them for a big one. The restoration of an old Victorian mansion where nobody but squatters and drug dealers have lived for the last few years.Since Jane and Shelley could always be counted on for making dozens of decorated cupcakes and acres of crepe-paper swags in the old days, she offers them the job of being decorators for the restoration. Shelley thinks it's a great idea to be paid for shopping. They soon find out that Bitsy's fallen in the hands of fanatic feminists, and most of the construction workers are women. Bitsy and her contractor call them by men's names, whether the workers like it or not. Less than halfway through the project, nasty tricks are being played. The mansion has to be cleared when the furnace produces an overwhelming noxious smell. There are a series of other pranks that slow the progress. It goes beyond pranks when one of the workers is found dead.The more Jane and Shelley find out, the more complicated the criminal blueprint becomes. |
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MULCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING Jane and Shelley are taking a gardening class, but the teacher is injured before the first class and there's a substitute who digs in and bores the class senseless with own muddy interests. Jane is incapacitated with a broken foot, cast and crutches that have their own minds about where Jane's heading. So she's not thrilled with the class decides to relieve the tedium by visiting each other's gardens. Dirty deeds and soiled secrets follow by the shovelful. And the clue to the attack on the teacher and a subsequent murder lie fallow for a while until Jane realizes that the solution is in the styles of the gardens. |
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A Groom with a View Jane Jeffry is planning a wedding–but not her own. She's being paid handsomely to create the fabulous event that the bride's rich daddy has always dreamed of. The ceremony is to take place at a remote, old monastery-turned-hunt club. But before the wedding day arrives, a dark shadow falls over the hallowed halls. A violent storm has knocked the lights out and someone takes a slippery slide to sudden death. It looks like the victim had help falling down the stairs, and no one is above suspicion. Surrounded by eerie noises and a perfect cast of characters for a mystery on a dark and stormy night, Jane quickly steps into the role of investigator. |
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The Merchant of Menace ‘Tis the season to be jolly and suburban mom Jane Jeffry's in a scramble to finish her cookie baking and chores before her teenage kids arrive. Guests are expected – Jane's late husband's mother and Mel VanDyne's as well. The kitchen is a disaster zone and the earsplitting racket coming from the neighbor's music-making Christmas display is driving Jane crazy. She needs to get the icing out of her hair and host a post-caroling dinner party. She's not ready for the appearance of a muckraking TV reporter disguised as Santa. The nasty St. Nick intends to wrap the holiday into a package called ‘scandal.' But before he can, his red-suited body slides off a neighbor's roof to land, silenced forever, on the horns of a plastic reindeer. |
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Fear of Frying When Jane agreed to accompany her best friend Shelley into the wilds of Wisconsin to check out a summer camp for suburban kids, she wasn't warned just how wild the little adventure might be. A lack of electricity, ranting from a local loony, and the natural wonder of a cookout in the cold rain were bad enough. Nobody guessed that murder would be on the menu too. |
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War and Peas Wealthy old Auguste Caspar Snellen, the legendary "Pea king," is long gone, but his greatest legacy lives on: the Snellen Museum, an institution dedicated the glorification of local lore and legumes. But at this year's annual Pea Festival, the museum sustains a terrible loss when its able innovative director Regina Price Palmer, is shot to death during a noisy reenactment of a Civil War battle. Suburban single mom Jane Jeffry was a costumed participant in the deadly pageant. Now her part-time work at the museum has put Jane and best friend Shelley Nowack in the midst of a veritable podful of murder suspects. And it's up to Jane and Shelley to determine who fatally beaned poor Regina–before another victim is planted six feet under. |
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Silence of the Hams Pompous, pig-headed attorney Robert Stonecipher is a major pain in the ham hocks. So no one is terribly upset when he's fatally mashed by a falling rack of hams at the new deli where suburban single mom Jane Jeffry's son works part-time. But when Stonecipher's most obnoxious employee meets an equally appropriate end, Jane knows the fat's really in the fire. And though her homicide detective honey Mel VanDyne disapproves, Jane is determined to dive headfirst into this deadly daze of swine and neuroses–and hunt a hog-wild murderer despite her own killer agenda as homemaker/ PTA/ church/ community busyperson. |
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From Here to Paternity Jane Jeffry, suburban sleuth extraordinare, and her friend Detective Mel VanDyne, have braved a blizzard to join her friend Shelley at a Colorado ski resort. In spite of having all their kids along, Jane and Shelley imagine a few mindless days of relaxation. But their hopes are dashed on their first attempt to ski when Jane careens into a snowman that hides a very real–and very dead–body. |
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A Knife to Remember Suburban single mom Jane Jeffry is thrilled when an on-location movie sets up in her own backyard. But in no time she's regretting the intrusion with all its clamorous ego-clashing. There's trouble brewing with the film's fading sex goddess star, her shady leading man and her pseudo-continental director–both of whom have shared more than billing with the demanding diva in the past. But when a blackmailing prop man turns up dead, it appears that someone has miscast Jane as the killer–a scenario she's determined to rewrite by conducting her own private auditions to recast the culprit in the role of real-life murderer. |
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The Class Menagerie Despite a full schedule, frazzled suburban single mom Jane Jeffry has agreed to lend a hand during a two-day gathering of her friend Shelley's former high school girls' club. So while the reunited ladies are dishing dirt, Jane is sweeping it up–and she inadvertently becomes privy to all sorts of interesting post-graduate gossip and long-smoldering resentments. But then a corpse turns up among the one-time student body, the unfortunate victim of some rather nasty after-school activities. And unless Jane gets to the bottom of a sordid senior-year scandal, more alumnae are sure to die at the hands of a calculating classmate who's majoring in murder. |
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A Quiche Before Dying With the kids packed off on their summer road trips, it's an ideal time for Jane Jeffry to pursue other interests, so the harried suburban mom enrolls in a writing course at the community college. But when an obnoxious aged classmate keels over dead after sampling a tasty treat from a pot luck student buffet, Jane realizes there's a culinary killer among the local would-be literati. |
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A Farewell to Yarns Life is hectic enough for suburban single mom Jane Jeffry this Christmas season–what with her having to survive cutthroat church bazaar politics and finish knitting the "afghan from Hell" at the same time. The last thing the harried homemaker needs is an unwelcome visit from old acquaintance Phyllis Wagner and her ill-mannered brat of a teenage son. And the Wagner picture becomes even more complicated when a dead body is woven into the design. |
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Grime and Punishment With three kids to raise on her own, Jane Jeffry sometimes needs a hand with the housework. But many of her complaining neighbors believe that the "Happy Helper" cleaning lady they all share wouldn't know a dustball if she was choking on it. That hardly seems reason enough, however, to do the disreputable domestic in. |
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