Susan Breen

Susan Breen introduces a delightful new series heroine in this poignant and absorbing cozy mystery with a bite. Maggie Dove thinks everyone in her small Westchester County community knows everyone else's secrets. Then murder comes to town. When Sunday School teacher Maggie Dove finds her hateful next-door neighbor Marcus Bender lying dead under her beloved oak tree-the one he demanded she cut down-she figures the man dropped dead of a mean heart. But Marcus was murdered, and the prime suspect is a young man Maggie loves like a son. Peter Nelson was the worst of Maggie's Sunday School students; he was also her late daughter's fiancé, and he's been a devoted friend to Maggie in the years since her daughter's death. Maggie can't lose Peter, too. So she sets out to find the real murderer. To do that, she must move past the grief that has immobilized her all these years. She must probe the hidden corners of her little village on the Hudson River. And, when another death strikes even closer to home, Maggie must find the courage to defend the people and the town she loves-even if it kills her.

A Novel

Maggie Dove

Maggie Dove's Detective Agency

The Fiction Class

In the third installment of Susan Breen's best-selling cozy mystery series, Maggie Dove is hired to track down a bride who stormed out of her own wedding ceremony. Seems an easy enough task. Bethany Coleman was wearing a wedding gown, driving a vintage Rolls Royce and navigating through a treacherous Hudson Valley snow storm. How far could she go? But in spite of her best efforts, Maggie can't find her and she has to report back to the disappointed groom, her former Sunday School student Graham Lockwood, that Bethany has vanished. Meanwhile, a different unhappy bride shows up on Maggie's doorstep. This is her 23-year-old niece from Indiana, Livy Dove, whom she hasn't seen in more than a decade. Livy's been jilted by her fiancé, and her parents think the best way for her to recover would be for her to spend some time with her favorite Aunt Dove in the beautiful little village of Darby-on-Hudson. Livy's a genius, a Ph.D at 19, elegant, proud. Vulnerable. And on the day Livy arrives, Bethany's murdered body is discovered. The obvious suspect is Graham Lockwood, who has motive enough. And opportunity. He comes to Maggie's house and begs her to prove he's innocent. She knows he's not that sort of person! While there, he meets Livy, and the two of them fall in love at first sight. Maggie can almost see Cupid's darts soar by. A murderer stalks her village, Maggie must protect her niece. But how do you protect someone from the most dangerous emotion of all? Love.

Maggie Dove and the Lost Brides

On paper, Arabella Hicks is more than qualified to teach a weekly fiction class on New York's Upper West Side: She's an author; she's passionate about books; she's even named after the heroine in a Georgette Heyer novel. So why do her students seem so difficult? And why can't she find an ending to the novel she's been working on for seven years? Arabella's beginning to suspect that it's because her mother, who's in a nursing home, is driving her insane.

Read Susan Breen's posts on the Penguin Blog. A witty, honest, and hugely entertaining story for anyone who loves books, or has a difficult mother. And, let’s face it, that’s practically everybody . . . On paper, Arabella Hicks seems more than qualified to teach her fiction class on the Upper West Side: she’s a writer herself; she’s passionate about books; she’s even named after the heroine in a Georgette Heyer novel. On the other hand, she’s thirty-eight, single, and has been writing the same book for the last seven years. And she has been distracted recently: on the same day that Arabella teaches her class she also visits her mother in a nursing home outside the city. And every time they argue. Arabella wants the fighting to stop, but, as her mother puts it, “Just because we’re family, doesn’t mean we have to like each other.” When her class takes a surprising turn and her lessons start to spill over into her weekly visits, she suddenly finds she might be holding the key to her mother’s love and, dare she say it, her own inspiration. After all, as a lifelong lover of books, she knows the power of a good story.

Susan Breen

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