Allison Montclair

"A delightful immersion in the period and personalities, with that touch of depth that transforms a good series to a great one." —Laurie R. King In London, 1946, the two women who recently started The Right Sort Marriage Bureau find their new livelihood endangered when one client is arrested for the murder of another. In a London slowly recovering from the ravages of World War II, two very different women join forces to launch a business venture in the heart of Mayfair—The Right Sort Marriage Bureau. Miss Iris Sparks, avuncular and unmarried, and Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge, practical and widowed with a young son, are determined to achieve some independence and do some good in a rapidly changing world. But the promising start to their marriage bureau is threatened when their newest client, Tillie La Salle, is found murdered and the man arrested for the crime is one Dickie Trower, the prospective husband they matched her with. While the police are convinced they have their man, Miss Sparks and Mrs. Bainbridge are not. To clear Trower’s name—and to rescue their fledging operation’s reputation—Sparks and Bainbridge decide to investigate on their own, using the skills and contacts they’ve each acquired through life and their individual adventures during the recent war. In this charming, compelling mystery, Allison Montclair blends meticulous research with two brilliantly imagined main characters into the first in a wonderful new series.

The Right Sort of Man

A Sparks and Bainbridge Mystery

Lady from Burma

Untitled Sparks and Bainbridge #4

In Allison Monclair's A Rogue's Company, business becomes personal for the Right Sort Marriage Bureau when a new client, a brutal murder, two kidnappings, and the recently returned from Africa Lord Bainbridge threatens everything that one of the principals holds dear. In London, 1946, the Right Sort Marriage Bureau is getting on its feet and expanding. Miss Iris Sparks and Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge are making a go of it. That is until Lord Bainbridge—the widowed Gwen's father-in-law and legal guardian—returns from a business trip to Africa and threatens to undo everything important to her, even sending her six-year-old son away to a boarding school. But there's more going on than that. A new client shows up at the agency, one whom Sparks and Bainbridge begin to suspect really has a secret agenda, somehow involving the Bainbridge family. A murder and a subsequent kidnapping sends Sparks to seek help from a dangerous quarter—and now their very survival is at stake.

A Sparks & Bainbridge Mystery

A Rogue's Company

More goes wrong than could be imagined when Iris Sparks and Gwendolyn Bainbridge of The Right Sort Marriage Bureau are unexpectedly engaged to dig into the past of a suitor of a royal princess in Allison Montclair’s delightful second novel, A Royal Affair. In London 1946, The Right Sort Marriage Bureau is just beginning to take off and the proprietors, Miss Iris Sparks and Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge, are in need of a bigger office and a secretary to handle the growing demand. Unfortunately, they don't yet have the necessary means. So when a woman arrives—a cousin of Gwen's—with an interesting and quite remunerative proposition, they two of them are all ears. The cousin, one Lady Matheson, works for the Queen in "some capacity" and is in need of some discreet investigation. It seems that the Princess Elizabeth has developed feelings for a dashing Greek prince and a blackmail note has arrived, alluding to some potentially damaging information about said prince. Wanting to keep this out of the palace gossip circles, but also needing to find out what skeletons might lurk in the prince's closet, the palace has quietly turned to Gwen and Iris. Without causing a stir, the two of them must now find out what secrets lurk in the prince's past, before his engagement to the future Queen of England is announced. And there's more at stake than the future of the Empire —there is their potential new office that lies in the balance.

A Royal Affair

Ellie Alexander

Eve Calder

Susanna Calkins

Leonard Goldberg

Donna Andrews

Kylie Logan

Hannah Dennison

Carolyn Haines

Looking for a new cozy series? In the new edition of Cozy Case Files, Minotaur Books compiles the beginnings of eleven charming cozy mysteries publishing in Spring/Summer 2020 for free for easy sampling. The latest edition of Cozy Case Files has something for everyone with the latest cozies by the following authors: Carolyn Haines, Hannah Dennison, Eve Calder, Donna Andrews, Ellie Alexander, Kylie Logan, Susanna Calkins, Leonard Goldberg, and Allison Montclair. The bonds of friendship are put to the test in The Devil’s Bones and Sugar and Vice. Two sisters inherit an old hotel in the remote Scilly Islands in series debut Death at High Tide. A new Meg Langslow mystery, The Falcon Always Wings Twice, finds the family at a Renaissance Faire. Past crimes are unburied in Nothing Bundt Trouble and The Secret of Bones. Go back in time with these next historical cozies. Sherlock Holmes’s daughter is back in The Art of Deception. In A Royal Affair, Princess Elizabeth has developed feelings for a Greek prince, and The Right Sort of Marriage Bureau is engaged to dig into the suitor’s past. Or visit a 1920’s Chicago speakeasy in The Fate of the Flapper.

Cozy Case Files, A Cozy Mystery Sampler, Volume 9

Une enquête de Sparks & Bainbridge

Le Bureau du mariage idéal

Vivien Chien

Olivia Matthews

Olivia Blacke

Katharine Schellman

Meri Allen

Mindy Quigley

Korina Moss

Looking for a new cozy series? In the new edition of Cozy Case Files, Minotaur Books compiles the beginnings of eleven charming cozy mysteries publishing in Spring/Summer 2023 for free for easy sampling. The eighteenth edition of Cozy Case Files features cozies from the following authors: Meri Allen, Donna Andrews, Olivia Blacke, Vivien Chien, Leonard Goldberg, Carolyn Haines, Olivia Matthews, Allison Montclair, Korina Moss, Mindy Quigley, and Katharine Schellman. Bring your appetite as you catch up on what's happening in your favorite eateries in Fatal Fudge Swirl, Curds of Prey, Misfortune Cookie, Hard Dough Homicide, and Ashes to Ashes, Crust to Crust. Take up birding in Birder, She Wrote. Travel west in A Fatal Groove and Tell-Tale Bones. Want to escape the present? Head to the past in The Wayward Prince, The Lady from Burma, and The Last Drop of Hemlock.

A Cozy Mystery Sampler

Cozy Case Files, Volume 18

Right Sort of Man

*A Publishers Weekly Pick of the Week!* In Allison Montclair's A Rogue's Company, business becomes personal for the Right Sort Marriage Bureau when a new client, a brutal murder, two kidnappings, and the recently returned from Africa Lord Bainbridge threatens everything that one of the principals holds dear. In London, 1946, the Right Sort Marriage Bureau is getting on its feet and expanding. Miss Iris Sparks and Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge are making a go of it. That is until Lord Bainbridge—the widowed Gwen's father-in-law and legal guardian—returns from a business trip to Africa and threatens to undo everything important to her, even sending her six-year-old son away to a boarding school. But there's more going on than that. A new client shows up at the agency, one whom Sparks and Bainbridge begin to suspect really has a secret agenda, somehow involving the Bainbridge family. A murder and a subsequent kidnapping sends Sparks to seek help from a dangerous quarter—and now their very survival is at stake.

Sparks and Bainbridge of The Right Sort Marriage Bureau return in this short story from Allison Montclair as their expansion into a new office - and acquisition of a new desk - results in unexplainable phenomena that can only mean that their new digs are haunted! In London, 1946, The Right Sort Marriage Agency is off to a good start and their early success means that Miss Iris Sparks and Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge can now afford to expand into the long-empty office across the hall. And with that long closed office comes some more professional furniture - including a partner's desk from Harrod's. But something is afoot in that office - strange noises at unusual hours, some of the furniture seeming moved around and cleaned, all behind a locked door. The building's janitor is convinced that this is proof that the office is haunted. But Sparks and Bainbridge are not so sure that's the only, or even the correct, conclusion. Instead, they suspect there's something going on related to the locked partner's desk and the long closed office. With their detective hats on, Sparks and Bainbridge are determined to uncover the truth about the mystery of the haunted partner's desk...or die trying?

A Sparks & Bainbridge Short Story

The Haunting of the Desks

Allison Montclair returns with the fourth Sparks & Bainbridge mystery, The Unkept Woman: London, 1946, Miss Iris Sparks--currently co-proprietor of the Right Sort Marriage Bureau--has to deal with aspects of her past exploits during the recent war that have come back around to haunt her. The Right Sort Marriage Bureau was founded in 1946 by two disparate individuals - Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge (whose husband was killed in the recent World War) and Miss Iris Sparks who worked as an intelligence agent during the recent conflict, though this is not discussed. While the agency flourishes in the post-war climate, both founders have to deal with some of the fallout that conflict created in their personal lives. Miss Sparks finds herself followed, then approached, by a young woman who has a very personal connection to a former paramour of Sparks. But something is amiss and it seems that Iris's past may well cause something far more deadly than mere disruption in her personal life. Meanwhile, Gwendolyn is struggling to regain full legal control of her life, her finances, and her son - a legal path strewn with traps and pitfalls. Together these indomitable two are determined and capable and not just of making the perfect marriage match.

The Unkept Woman

Cate Conte

Sheila Connolly

Ellen Hart

Looking for a new cozy series? In this new edition of Cozy Case Files, Minotaur Books compiles the beginnings of eight charming cozy mysteries coming in Spring 2019 for free for easy sampling. Jump into the latest cozies by the following authors: Donna Andrews, Shelia Connolly, Cate Conte, Leonard Goldberg, Carolyn Haines, Ellen Hart, Kylie Logan, and Allison Montclair. With the charm of a southern belle and none of the rules, private investigator Sarah Booth Delaney is back in Games of Bones. In Terns of Endearment, Meg Langslow races to solve a mystery while aboard a broken down cruise ship. Or follow PI Jane Lawless in Twisted at the Root as she works to attain justice for a widower wrongfully convicted of his husband’s murder. If you’re an animal lover, return to cat café JJ’s House of Purrs in The Tell Tail Heart or check out The Scent of Murder, starring cadaver dog trainer Jazz Ramsey. For history fans, there's The Right Sort of Man, and the proprietresses of the Right Sort of Marriage Bureau, in 1946 London, who find their livelihood in danger when a client is arrested for the murder of another. In The Disappearance of Alistair Ainsworth, the daughter of Sherlock Holmes confronts a threat to the crown. Or revisit the modern-day town that’s about to be turned into a working Victorian village in Killer in the Carriage House.

Cozy Case Files: A Cozy Mystery Sampler

S. C. Perkins

Ashley Weaver

Jess Dylan

Looking for a new cozy series? In the free edition of Cozy Case Files, Minotaur Books compiles the beginnings of fourteen charming cozy mysteries publishing in Spring/Summer 2021 for easy sampling. The twelfth edition of Cozy Case Files features the latest cozies by the following authors: Ellie Alexander, Meri Allen, Donna Andrews, Eve Calder, Sheila Connolly, Cate Conte, Hannah Dennison, Jess Dylan, Leonard Goldberg, Carolyn Haines, Kylie Logan, Allison Montclair, S. C. Perkins, and Ashley Weaver. Have a sweet tooth? Get your fix in A Tale of Two Cookies, The Rocky Road to Ruin, and Mocha, She Wrote. Pick up some flowers and read Death in Bloom, then travel to your favorite cat café in Claws for Alarm. You can join in for preparations for a production of Macbeth in Murder Most Fowl, and stay the night at a hotel in Danger at the Cove. And in the morning, train cadaver dogs in A Trail of Lies, then help clear a professor’s name in Independent Bones. Perhaps you prefer to travel in time. A Sherlockian mystery awaits you in The Abduction of Pretty Penny. Visit England in WWII with a safe cracker in A Peculiar Combination. In post-WWII England, play matchmaker in A Rogue’s Company. Or you can stay in the present, with crimes tied to the past, in Fatal Family Ties and The Secret Staircase.

Cozy Case Files, A Cozy Mystery Sampler, Volume 12

Allison Montclair

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