Love Can Be Killer

Not all broken hearts come from love triangles, shattered promises, or deep secrets from the past. In some books, the broken heart comes from it being stabbed. With a knife. Watch your back (and your front), ladies and gentlemen.

If you love a little bit of murder with a little bit of romance, then the titles below might just be for you.

Everyone says Lord Ian Mackenzie is crazy-and possibly a murderer-but a young widow longing for passion is determined to bare the truth about the dashing and darkly charming Scotsman.

Also available in: e-book | e-audiobook

Korede is bitter. How could she not be? Her sister, Ayoola, is many things: the favorite child, the beautiful one, possibly sociopathic. And now Ayoola's third boyfriend in a row is dead.

Korede's practicality is the sisters' saving grace. She knows the best solutions for cleaning blood, the trunk of her car is big enough for a body, and she keeps Ayoola from posting pictures of her dinner to Instagram when she should be mourning her "missing" boyfriend. Not that she gets any credit.

Korede has long been in love with a kind, handsome doctor at the hospital where she works. She dreams of the day when he will realize that she's exactly what he needs. But when he asks Korede for Ayoola's phone number, she must reckon with what her sister has become and how far she's willing to go to protect her.

One for the money by Janet Evanovich
Also available in: audiobook | e-audiobook | video

Welcome to Trenton, New Jersey, home to wiseguys, average Joes, and Stephanie Plum, who sports a big attitude and even bigger money problems (since losing her job as a lingerie buyer for a department store). Stephanie needs cash--fast--but times are tough, and soon she's forced to turn to the last resort of the truly desperate: family.
Stephanie lands a gig at her sleazy cousin Vinnie's bail bonding company. She's got no experience. But that doesn't matter. Neither does the fact that the bail jumper in question is local vice cop Joe Morelli. From the time he first looked up her dress to the time he first got into her pants, to the time Steph hit him with her father's Buick, M-o-r-e-l-l-i has spelled t-r-o-u-b-l-e. And now the hot guy is in hot water--wanted for murder...
Abject poverty is a great motivator for learning new skills, but being trained in the school of hard knocks by people like psycho prizefighter Benito Ramirez isn't. Still, if Stephanie can nab Morelli in a week, she'll make a cool ten grand. All she has to do is become an expert bounty hunter overnight--and keep herself from getting killed before she gets her man...

Also available in: e-book

San Francisco settings enliven this high-spirited first mystery. Sophie Katz, a biracial, half-Jewish mystery writer, has just finished a book and is ready for some relaxation--until she discovers a few things amiss in her apartment, suggesting an intruder who is leaving signs that he or she was there. Then, when someone Sophie knows is murdered, she realizes that the violence is escalating, and the villain appears to be acting out scenes from one of her books. Davis' strength definitely lies in character development: were they 30 years older and living in Miami, sarcastic Sophie and her two best girlfriends, ditzy Mary Ann and nymphomaniac Dena, could be the Golden Girls. Sophie's gay friend Marcus adds some fun (and a lot of hairspray) to the mix, and her current flame, enigmatic Russian Anatoly Darinsky, is strong, sexy--and possibly the murderer. 

Also available in: e-book | audiobook | e-audiobook

Arthur Prescott is happiest when surrounded by the ancient books and manuscripts of the Barchester Cathedral library. Increasingly, he feels like a fish out of water among the concrete buildings of the University of Barchester, where he works as an English professor. His one respite is his time spent nestled in the library, nurturing his secret obsession with the Holy Grail and researching his perennially unfinished guidebook to the medieval cathedral.

But when a beautiful young American named Bethany Davis arrives in Barchester charged with the task of digitizing the library's manuscripts, Arthur's tranquility is broken. Appalled by the threat modern technology poses to the library he loves, he sets out to thwart Bethany, only to find in her a kindred spirit with a similar love for knowledge and books--and a fellow Grail fanatic.
 
Bethany soon joins Arthur in a quest to find the lost Book of Ewolda, the ancient manuscript telling the story of the cathedral's founder. And when the future of the cathedral itself is threatened, Arthur and Bethany's search takes on grave importance, leading the pair to discover secrets about the cathedral, about the Grail, and about themselves.

The wife upstairs by 1979- Rachel Hawkins
Also available in: audiobook | e-audiobook | large print

Meet Jane. Newly arrived to Birmingham, Alabama, Jane is a broke dog-walker in Thornfield Estates--a gated community full of McMansions, shiny SUVs, and bored housewives. The kind of place where no one will notice if Jane lifts the discarded tchotchkes and jewelry off the side tables of her well-heeled clients. Where no one will think to ask if Jane is her real name.

But her luck changes when she meets Eddie Rochester. Recently widowed, Eddie is Thornfield Estates' most mysterious resident. His wife, Bea, drowned in a boating accident with her best friend, their bodies lost to the deep. Jane can't help but see an opportunity in Eddie--not only is he rich, brooding, and handsome, he could also offer her the kind of protection she's always yearned for.

Yet as Jane and Eddie fall for each other, Jane is increasingly haunted by the legend of Bea, an ambitious beauty with a rags-to-riches origin story, who launched a wildly successful southern lifestyle brand. How can she, plain Jane, ever measure up? And can she win Eddie's heart before her past--or his--catches up to her?

In the first part of the Dorothy L Sayers famed mystery series, Lord Peter Wimsey becomes enthralled with a Harriet Vale, a mystery writer on trial for the murder of her fiance. Can he prove her innocence and win her hand?