Elaine Viets

Once on the fast track to success, Helen Hawthorne is now going nowhere fast. She traded in her chic life for a shabby one. And now she's on the run, jumping from city to city and dead-end job to dead-end job, trying to stay one step ahead of her past. After two weeks as the new salesclerk at Juliana's, Fort Lauderdale's ultra-exclusive clothing boutique, Helen still feels out of fashion. And since the only crime likely to be committed around here...

"There's a dark cloud over Sunny Jim's Safety First Parasailing and Stand-Up Paddleboarding business on Florida's Riggs Beach--especially after one of his clients is killed in a tragic paddleboarding mishap. Sunny Jim is sure it was no accident, and he hires Helen and Phil to find the murderer. Between cutthroat competitors poaching his territory, the city threatening to revoke his license, a restaurant owner wanting his beach spot for a parking lot,...

Helen Hawthorne and her new husband, Phil, have just opened a private investigation business. Their first client asks them to watch her husband, who she believes is body building at a gym to impress another woman. This leads Helen to another dead-end job, working as a receptionist at Fantastic Fitness, which requires her to workout as well. Meanwhile, Coronado Investigations takes on a decades-old murder case, keeping Helen busy and exhausted.

Helen has a new job "off the books" at Page Turners bookstore in Fort Lauderdale...until the owner is murdered. But since the arrogant Page Turner III had so many enemies, Helen will have to read between the lines to uncover the truth about a clever killer.

Helen Hawthorne's ex-husband arrives back in her life aboard the yacht of his new lady, Marcella, known as the Black Widow for her string of dead spouses, and when he goes missing and Helen is blamed, she and Marcella investigate

Helen Hawthorne finds her job at Sybil's Full Moon Hotel in Fort Lauderdale threatened when the body of a maid turns up in a dumpster, a discovery that could bring the local cops down on her head and lead to a confrontation with her ex-husband.

"Everyone in Chouteau Forest knows the legend of the Cursed Crypt. It's claimed that the restless spirit of a professor nicknamed Mean Gene Cortini, buried in Chouteau Forest University's crypt, has been causing death and destruction in the Forest for almost two centuries. Local residents are used to disease and natural disasters striking every seven years. But not murder. When Trey Lawson outbids the wealthy Du Pres family at the university's annual...

Josie has been asked to investigate Uncle Bob's Doggy Day Camp, known for its commercials featuring Uncle Bob liking dogs so much that he acts like one. But Josie soon learns how Uncle Bob acts when the cameras are off. Her mother's new tenant, Franklin, who works for Uncle Bob, plans to quit after seeing the man's true nature. But before he gets the chance, Bob is murdered, and Franklin goes from the doghouse to the big house. Now it's up to Josie...

When a disgraced resident of Chouteau Forest-home of the one percenters-survives one car crash only to be killed in another, Death Investigator Angela Richman must confirm he is really dead this time and if whether both crashes were really accidents or ifsomeone was doubly determined to kill him.

"Shhh...in the newest hardcover in the national bestselling Dead-End Job Mystery series, Helen Hawthorne quietly goes undercover at a local library to search for a missing masterpiece. Wealthy socialite Elizabeth Cateman Kingsley has hired Helen to find a missing John Singer Sargent painting, owned by her late father. After his death, many of Davis Cateman's books were donated to the Flora Park library, and his daughter suspects the small watercolor-worth...