1) "Ghost A La Mode" by Sue Ann Jaffarian
The creator of plus-sized paralegal Odelia Grey (Booby Trap, 2008, etc.) launches a new series featuring a California clairvoyant.
Emma Whitecastle sees dead people. Her first ghost is her recently deceased Aunt Kitty, who shows up while Emma’s still recovering from seeing her self-involved ex Grant, soon-to-be trophy wife and adorable new baby in tow, at her daughter Kelly’s graduation party. But Kitty’s just an appetizer. The main course is Emma’s several-times-great-grandmother Ish Reynolds, who really should be dessert, since she was known in her day as Granny Apples for her fabulous pies. Despite her oldster nickname, Ish died in her early 40s when she was lynched for the murder of her husband Jacob. Now the feisty phantom wants Emma to clear the family name by finding out who really killed Jacob. Since Emma has been camping at her parents’ house while she waits for Grant to offer a settlement she can live with, she’s only too willing to drive out to the Reynolds’ former homestead in Julian, now a quaint tourist destination east of San Diego. In popular room ten of the Julian Hotel, she meets resident ghost Albert Robinson, who gives her a quick tutorial in local history, and Billy Winslow, whose spirit doesn’t want to leave his burial site. But it’s the live folks, especially charming, irascible Phil Bowers, current owner of the old Reynolds property, who provide the greatest challenge and the most promise.
A half-baked franchise debut most likely to appeal to paranormal-mystery buffs.
2) "First Grave on the Right" by Darynda Jones
The intended laughs don’t materialize in this supernatural chick-lit whodunit, featuring a back-talkin’ P.I. who sees dead people.
Technically, Charley Davidson is a grim reaper, a term applied to humans (she’s not the only one) who act as a portal for those who need help passing to the other side. To the dead, Charley glows and is an irresistible incentive to leave their worldly attachments. But then there are those with unfinished business, such as the three law partners who were just murdered. Teaming up with her uncle, a detective on the Albuquerque Police force, Charley is remarkably proficient at solving murders—she simply asks the recently departed what happened. But as the three lawyers were shot in the back of the head, they and Charley need real detective work to solve the case. As Charley puts the pieces together (it all hinges on a man wrongly imprisoned for the murder of a teenage boy), she is also wrestling with her own demons—literally. Since her birth, which she vividly remembers, she has been guarded over by an entity she calls Bad. Though he’s responsible for saving her life on countless occasions, Charley is petrified in his presence. This is made all the more confusing by the highly charged sexual encounters she’s been having, first while dreaming and now awake, with a phantom-like presence. She believes her dream-lover to be Reyes Farrow, a young man she once saved, but that he’s in a coma in a penitentiary hospital and that he whispers the name Bad has always used for her, throws everything Charley knows about this dimension and the next into question. Though Jones has created a worthy conceit, her heroine is less than appealing. A little snotty—to both the living and the dead—Charley is an unlikely guide for a series with a foot in the underworld.
This first in a series ends with the son of Satan and the promise of a grand battle between good and evil, but this opening offers little more than a clever premise and a ho-hum murder mystery.
3) "Peach Pies and Alibis" by Ellery Adams
Ella Mae LeFaye is settling into the routine of owning her own pie shop, as well as her newly discovered magical powers; not the best time to investigate a string of murders, but she’ll have to, since the enemy behind them threatens everything she holds dear.
Having returned to her hometown after a disastrous marriage, Ella Mae loves the new life she’s building, even if it means juggling her business, her newfound talent for enchantment, a fledgling romance with her oldest crush, and her beloved but bustling magical family and friends. Business is booming, and when she goes to check out a used Jeep to buy as a delivery truck, it turns into a serendipitous trip: She meets a local cheese producer, some potential catering clients and a possible new helper for the Charmed Pie Shoppe. Life seems wonderful, but she barely has time to take a breath from her productive excursion when she and her Aunt Dee discover a friend dead in her home, and only days later, when Ella Mae is catering an event, another friendly acquaintance winds up dead, too. While seemingly unconnected, and even accidental, Ella Mae’s mother and aunts are convinced the deaths are murder and that they are attempts to block a critical magical ritual set to take place during the upcoming harvest. The more Ella Mae is swept into the investigation, the more she realizes how little she knows about her magical history or the deep mystical heritage she's a part of. But the murders are designed to shut down the enchanted community of Havenwood for good, and Ella Mae can’t let that happen. As her powers blossom, it becomes clear that there’s something peculiar and special about her experience, and as the menacing figure gets closer to Ella Mae, some long-held secrets and magical mysteries will unfold, changing life as she—and all of Havenwood—knows it.
An original, intriguing storyline that celebrates women, family, friendship and loyalty within an enchanted world, with a hint of romance, an engaging cast of characters and the promise of a continued saga of magical good confronting evil.
4) "Ghost at Work" by Carolyn Hart
A heaven-sent sleuth rescues a pastor’s wife from a possible murder charge.
Late, inquisitive redhead Bailey Ruth Raeburn may be in heaven, but she jumps at the chance to revisit earth as a helper in the Department of Good Intentions. Although she thinks Paris would be a nice place to go, she’s sent to her old hometown of Adelaide, Okla., where Kathleen Abbott, the overworked pastor’s harried wife, has just made an unwelcome discovery on her back porch: the body of the much disliked Daryl Murdoch, a man not above a little judicious blackmail. Bailey Ruth and Kathleen temporize by hiding the body in the nearby cemetery, but it will take a good deal of snooping and breaking departmental rules before Bailey Ruth can solve the crime. Being invisible, of course, is a big help for a sleuth who can sit in on private conversations and move from place to place in a twinkling. Because Kathleen’s daughter Bayroo, who was named for Bailey Ruth, is the only one who can see her, a lot of people end up unbelievingly watching objects float in the air or disappear. The list of suspects is long—even the pastor is not above suspicion—but Bailey Ruth’s special gifts give her the edge over the hardworking police chief, who’s in for a big surprise.
The newest sleuth from veteran Hart (Death Walked In, 2008, etc.) is a charming addition to the swelling ranks of ghostly detectives.
5) "The Clairvoyant Countess" by Dorothy Gilman
6) "Murder in Scorpio" by Martha C. Lawrence
7) "Mind Over Monsters" by Jennifer Harlow
How would you like your job if your co-workers included a vampire and a werewolf?
Bea Alexander, an elementary schoolteacher, has one trait so alarming most people avoid her. Even her family calls her a monster. So when George Black drops by and invites her to join F.R.E.A.K.S. (Federal Response to Extra-Sensory and Kindred Supernaturals), his unit at the FBI, she’s so lonely that she agrees and is whisked off to a secret compound in Kansas. There she meets a dishy vampire, a handsome werewolf, a woman who can make her spontaneously combust, a teen who used to rob banks and specializes in teleportation, a blind man who chats with ghosts and a psychic who can read her mind. Their mission is to fight “UNCRETS,” that is, unidentified creatures. But first Bea has to learn how to harness her awesome power to blast people, places and things to smithereens. She’s barely through training when she and the other Freaks head to Colorado to solve two murders the local sheriff attributes to wild animals but the FBI doesn’t. The adventure entails several near-death experiences when they are twice attacked by zombies, assaulted by ghouls, practically incinerated in a cemetery mausoleum, sucked empty of liters of blood, shot at and, in Bea’s case, both propositioned and almost devoured by the vampire and the werewolf. Babysitting a little dead girl puts Bea in harm’s way, but her training and her special skill save the day, give or take a few missing chunks of flesh.
If Donald Westlake had ever gotten around to writing a paranormal mystery, it would have sounded like this. Harlow’s genre debut is funny, creepy and refreshingly brash.
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