Cat Christmas Mystery

Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler collects more than 50 of his all-time favorite holiday crime stories - many of which are difficult or nearly impossible to find anywhere else. From classic Victorian tales by Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Thomas Hardy, to contemporary stories by Sara Paretsky and Ed McBain, this collection touches on all aspects of the holiday season, and all types of mysteries. They are suspenseful, funny, frightening, and poignant.

Three irritable curmudgeons, each successful in their respective fields, find themselves thrown together on a comically arduous journey - all at the behest of a mysterious host. Arriving at their destination, the three men find their cantankerous hearts melting in the presence of a newborn infant.

Christmas has come to Fern Valley, and the town's decked out with enough glitter and sparkle for a month's worth of celebrations, each more over-the-top than the previous one. The idyllic setting, filled with laughter, carols, and sweet treats, is shattered, along with some of the decorations, when the current wife and the ex-wife of a big-cat showman have a knock-down, drag-out fight in the center of town. Jules Keene, owner of the Fern Valley Glamping Resort, tries to keep peace among her guests and with the town council, but it turns into a catastrophe when Tabbi Morris winds up dead.

In addition to feeding the felines Aubrey and Vincent, Jeremy Goodman has a new responsibility: filling a recently vacated trustee role at a local charity that works tirelessly to house the homeless. Jeremy is initially enthusiastic—but soon begins to suspect that all is not as it seems at the nonprofit’s headquarters.

Knitting an ugly Christmas jumper at Cardinal Woolsey's knitting shop in Oxford is supposed to be relaxing. Until a knitter keels over. It's soon clear to amateur sleuth Lucy that murder's in the air and that the culprit is one of the knitters. This is a fun take on a classic closed-room mystery. Of course, no room is every closed when vampires live downstairs. But are the undead knitters to blame? Or is there more to this Oxford knitting circle than lumpy Santas and light-up reindeer?

Charlene's parents are in town for Christmas, and her mother is driving her up a tree. Her bed-and-breakfast's resident ghost, Jack, isn't fond of her either - and he's showing it with some haunting high jinks. But when Charlene takes her mom and dad out for dinner, the less-than-seasonal spirits take a deadly turn.

The holiday season on Daybreak Island is a mixed bag for Maddie James. On the one hand, her Christmas spirit is in the doghouse after a break-up. On the other, she's busy enough that she doesn't have to pretend to be merry. Business at her cat café is booming, and Maddie's care-taking of a feral cat colony in one of the area's wealthiest communities only helps her bottom line. But tensions between the homeowners and animal activists are escalating to catastrophic levels...and before long a body is found dead in a snowbank.