The Ellie Haskell Mysteries

Ellie Simons stands to inherit her Uncle Merlin's huge English country house. But on three utterly bizarre conditions. One: she must lose sixty-three pounds (rude!). Two: she must marry the fake fiance she's been passing off as her true love all weekend. And three: she must catch whoever killed Uncle Merlin in the first place.

The men of Chitterton Fells are dropping like flies. And the membership of the Widows Club is growing bigger every day. Newlywed Ellie Haskell (nee Simons, thank you very much) is settling nicely into married bliss in the charming village of Chitterton Fells.

Married to the man of her dreams and expecting a darling little bundle of joy, Ellie Haskell is excited to put her feet up and play the part of pampered wife for the next nine months. But handsome hubby Ben has other ideas. He whisks her off to America for an exclusive gourmet cooking competition in Mud Creek, Illinois. And worse, they're staying in crumbling old gothic mansion that's straight out of a horror movie!

Before her beautiful bouncing babies came along, Ellie Haskell's life was a fairy tale. Marriage to the gorgeous super-chef Ben was going swimmingly before every day was filled with nappies, bottles, and laundry. Determined to revive her love life, Ellie joins a new local ladies' group, Fully Female, which promises to restore some oomph back to her relationship by way of a Peach Melba Love Rub. But before long, things start going fatally wrong in the charming village of Chitterton Fells.

Ellie Simons's delightful mother-in-law comes to visit for a simply lovely weekend of crocheted doilies, thinly-veiled insults, and passive-aggressive "suggestions." It's enough to make anyone wish their mother-in-law was dead. But it turns out the ladies of Chitterton Fells should be more careful what they wish for. Only last night Ellie and her friends raised their gin and tonics to toast an end to mothers-in-law the world over. The next day, Pamela Pomeroy's own MIL is found dead.

Chitterton Fells is all of a flutter. Along with every female member of the village Library League, Ellie Haskell has developed a veritable obsession with novels of the romance variety. The steamier, the better. But tragedy strikes when Miss Bunch the librarian is found dead between the non-fiction stacks. Then the local milkman collapses in broad daylight.