A five book (and counting) Cozy Mystery series by Kylie Logan. Feuding neighbors Bea Cartwright, Chandra Morrisey and Kate Wilder are forced to form a book club by the local judge, to help ease out their differences. Shortly afterwards, the owner of their favorite restaurant is murdered, and the three of them find themselves investigating that case which turns out to be just the first of many. The title of each book is a pun of whatever book the book club is currently on.
1. Mayhem at the Orient Express
2. A Tale of Two Biddies
3. The Legend of Sleepy Harlow.
4. And Then There Were Nuns
5. Gone with the Twins.
Contains examples of:
- Angrish: Kate falls into this several times in The Legend of Sleepy Harlow from having to deal with Noreen, who refuses to respect Kate's wishes and understand Kate wants nothing to do with Noreen or her paranormal investigation team after the damage they caused to Kate's winery the previous year.
- Beauty Equals Goodness: Played straight with Noreen from The Legend of Sleepy Harlow, described as having an egg-like physique and shown to have an utterly unappealing personality that gradually gets worse the more we know about her. Her first offense was accidentally destroying an expensive breed of wine grapes Kate invested a lot of money in and then basically harassing Kate when she refuses to let Noreen's ghost hunters film on her winery again. Then we find out she roped Chandra into helping her stage the haunting that got Noreen's group famous in the first place. Then we learn she heartlessly stole a man's research and drove him to suicide, causing his stepdaughter to murder Noreen in revenge.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: Chandra and the local police chief are occasional lovers who throw a lot of barbs at each other.
- Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: Among the trio of Bea's book club friends, Chandra's the Beauty (her colorful wardrobe indicating how appearance oriented she is), Kate's the Brains (a business woman and winery owner), and Luella's the Brawn (she works as a fisherwoman).
- Cain and Abel: Sister Catherine's brother Michael is the Big Bad of And Then There Were Nuns, having set up the retreat to murder her so he could inherit their grandma's money once she dies. He killed Sister Sheila by mistake, but deliberately killed Sister Helene because she could've recognized him.
- Contrived Coincidence: In And Then There Were Nuns, both of the killers booked rooms in Bea's place at the same time and both were after a different nun among the ten assembled.
- Cool Old Lady: Many of the older nuns in And Then There Were Nuns have received accolades because they're so active in their communities. Almost none of them act like stereotypical straight-laced biddies.
- Dead All Along: One of the twin sisters in "A Tale of Two Biddies" was murdered by her twin in a heat of passion, and her death was covered up by the surviving twin switching Identical Twin ID Tag's.
- Disguised in Drag: The Big Bad of the first book.
- Freudian Trio: The three women. Chandra is the Id, Kate is the superego and Kate is the Ego.
- Good Is Not Soft: Sister Grace of And Then There Were Nuns works in prisons with death row convicts, so that means she's not naive even if she's a nun. She tells Bea straight to her face ever since Sister Sheila was found dead there's been a pervasive sense of something wrong hanging around Water's Edge.
- Good Stepfather: The killer in the third book committed the murder because the victim had robbed her stepfather and drove him to suicide.
- Granola Girl: Chadra is a modern-day hippie.
- Hated by All: Noreen Turner is a pretty blatant example of this trope, as everyone who comes in contact with her during The Legend of Sleepy Harlow makes it clear they want nothing to do with her.
- Identical Twin ID Tag: People tell the DeFarge twins apart because Margaret always wears pink and her sister never does.
- It's All About Me: Noreen in The Legend of Sleepy Harlow is obsessed with making her ghost hunting team famous and will ignore every personal boundary imaginable to get her way.
- Jerkass Façade: Chandra spends a lot of time in And Then There Were Nuns seemingly trying to get a rise out of Bea, Kate and Luella. She keeps talking about a pool and street lamp she wants on her property that would mess with Bea's and Kate's, and is part of a group protesting the local fishermen (including Luella). Chandra tearfully reveals at the end she wasn't serious about any of it. She was trying to start a fight with the women so they'd be ordered to do another year of their book club since their mandated year's almost over.
- Kind Hearted Cat Lover: Chandra absolutely dotes on her pet cat, who is always peeing on Bea's flowers (which helped start their initial feud).
- The Mole: Infamous local bootlegger, and Kate's distant ancestor, "Sleepy" Harlow is eventually revealed to have been an undercover revenue agent.
- Mysterious Past: Something happened to Bea in New York, apparently involving the death of a man that she was involved with, that caused her to move to the island, and that she has a prepared (and not entirely truthful) story about for anyone who asks. It's eventually revealed Bea is in fact a famous horror writer known under her pen name "FX O'Grady."
- Oh, Crap!: Bea's internal reaction when she goes to tell Marianne Littlejohn that Chandra's cat peed on the novel draft Marianne gave Bea to proofread, only to learn from Marianne's husband that her computer crashed. But hey, it's a good thing Bea's still got the draft or Marianne's novel would be totally lost right? Bea busts her ass throughout the entirety of The Legend of Sleepy Harlow to salvage Marianne's book before she finds out. The delay turns out to work in Bea's favor when she uncovers more information about Sleepy Harlow, like the fact he was an undercover federal agent and Kate's his descendant.
- Plagiarism in Fiction: The Legend of Sleepy Harlow features Noreen Turner repeatedly doing this. She stole an article written by one of the Ghost Getters and passed it off as her own, and stole the design for the Plasmometer years back and passed it off as hers as well. The act of doing so eventually drove its creator to suicide, and much later drove his stepdaughter to infiltrate the Ghost Getters and murder Noreen in revenge.
- Scatterbrained Senior: Sister Margaret of And Then There Were Nuns is a more benign example. She's still doing a lot of work with a community garden in her home city, but she's clearly becoming a bit senile.
- "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: Its pretty evident that someone is pulling this off in The Legend of Sleepy Harlow. The previous year, Noreen got Chandra to help her stage the video footage of what Noreen claimed was the ghost of Sleepy Harlow.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Bea's none too happy when she learns Levi knew she was FX O'Grady the whole time because her agent hired Levi to watch over her.
- You Killed My Father: In the first book, Levi becomes a bigger suspect when it turns out his grandmother died from an improperly made dish of the restaurant owner victim.
