Frank Carlson Library

The owner of the Crewel World needlework shop, Betsy Devonshire must put her sleuthing talents to work when one of her regular customers unwittingly becomes embroiled in a deadly delivery of exotic antiquities.

"As the bustle of the winter holidays in the Little Shop of Found Things gives way to spring, Xanthe is left to reflect on the strange events of the past year. While she's tried to keep her time-traveling talents a secret from those close to her, she is forced to take responsibility for having inadvertently transported the dangerous Benedict Fairfax to her own time. Xanthe comes to see that she must use her skills as a spinner if she and Flora are...

When a waterfowl decoy collection goes missing after her appraisal, fine art and antiques expert Edie Brown is accused of the crime and must race against time to expose the real culprits before the FBI's Art Crime Team or the ruthless thieves catch up with her.

A debut novelist interweaves a trio of voices-haunting, dangerous, full of longing-mysteriously linked by a shocking crime and the search to heal the past. Many long years have passed since the winter of blinding white when Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate drove across the hushed Midwestern landscape and left a trail of blood and pain. So why does Lowell, a Manhattan collector of antiquities, still dream of what happened, despite his wife's...

"San Francisco antiques dealer Jim Brodie recently inherited a stake in his father's Tokyo-based private investigation firm, which means the single father of six-year-old Jenny is living a busy intercontinental life, traveling to Japan to acquire art and artifacts for his store and consulting on Brodie Security's caseload at home and abroad. One night, an entire family is gunned down in San Francisco's bustling Japantown neighborhood, and Brodie is...

"Blackmail in the Big Easy turns to cold-blooded murder in this debut cozy mystery ... When the mysterious letter arrives by courier, Valerie Cooper doesn't know what to make of it. She's become the beneficiary of her late husband's estranged uncle's will--a man she never knew--and inherited a majority partnership in the family's company, New Orleans Fine Antiques. Valerie knows nothing about antiques, but she decides to learn the business and become...

"If there's one thing Bath detective Peter Diamond has no patience for, it's a dumb git trying to get involved in one of his investigations--for example, a Philip Marlowe-wannabe private investigator like the self-styled Johnny Getz (his card claims he Getz results). But fate has saddled Diamond with this trial. A Bath antiques dealer, Septimus "Seppy" Hubbard, has disappeared without a trace, and his daughter, Ruby, has hired Johnny Getz to find...

"Paula Brackston's City of Time and Magic is the next installment in the time-traveling Found Things Series. City of Time and Magic sees Xanthe face her greatest challenges yet. She must choose from three treasures that sing to her; a beautiful writing slope, a mourning brooch of heartbreaking detail, and a gorgeous gem-set hat pin. All call her, but the wrong one could take her on a mission other than that which she must address first, and the stakes...

All antiques dealer Abigail Timberlake Washburn wanted was to find a perfect gift for her darling (if not altogether together) mama Mozella's birthday. She never expected her online purchase of an exquisite, seventeenth-century rosewood linen chest to place her in federal custody, accused of trafficking in illegal ivory! Then insult is heaped on her injury when she's forced to turn to her lawyer-snake ex, Buford, to spring her -- since ex-cop/current...

When Miriam Maxwell returns to her Chesapeake-area hometown to take over her late sister Ruthie's antiques store, she reconnects with Bess Watkins, an old friend who, along with her granddaughter Phoebe, begins helping Miriam with the shop. As Miriam struggles to organize her sister's jumbled store, her very first customer turns out to be Samuel Bentley whom she dated in high school. He buys an heirloom desk and later discovers, hidden in a drawer,...