Elaine Viets

From Anthony and Agatha Award-winning author of the Dead-End Job mysteries-a gritty series featuring a no-nonsense female journalist who follows her stories wherever they may lead…especially if they lead to big trouble. Columnist Francesca Vierling thought she had it tough dealing with the cutthroat office politics at the St. Louis City Gazette. But stressors in the newsroom reach new heights when her dear mentor Georgia is diagnosed with cancer...

"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.

Living life on the lam and working wherever she can find a paycheck, Helen Hawthorne has a knack for keeping a low profile. Currently, she's mixing pay cuts with haircuts, working as a gofer for Miguel Angel, a flamboyant manager of a chic salon. The Fort Lauderdale hair salon is one of those where a trim can cost as much as a car payment and a blowout can wipe you out. But when one of the salon's most famous clients, gossip blogger and TV cable show...

From Anthony and Agatha Award-winning author Elaine Viets—the thrilling mystery series about one woman trying to make a living... while other people are making a killing.
Helen Hawthorne is still on the run because of her refusal to pay her worthless ex-husband alimony. But a girl's gotta eat...and pay rent, utilities, etc. So she's taken a cash-paying job at Fort Lauderdale's own Page Turners bookstore. And while the job is decent enough,...

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.

"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...

"The last thing Chouteau County death investigator Angela Richman wants to do during the holidays is her job. So it's with some trepidation that she agrees to help the desperate Mr. and Mrs. LaRouche when they show up on her doorstep. Their daughter Juliet is missing. She was last seen leaving a high school party just before midnight, and they'd like Angela's help getting their trusted local detectives involved. The officer assigned to the case--Chouteau...

When Lenore, her fiance's pistol-packing mother, is accused of murdering a crazy bridezilla, bride-to-be and mystery shopper Josie Marcus must drag the real killer down the aisle to get her own wedding back on track.