Larkin Day Mysteries Series

"A smart, snarky series... Cozy mystery readers will adore Larkin Day." - BookLife, Editor's Pick   Join Larkin Day on her first mystery!   Larkin Day just moved back home—at 35 years old. With no money, no job prospects, and nowhere to live except her mother's guest bedroom, Larkin is pretty sure this is the worst thing that's ever happened to her.   Then her mother signs her up for community choir.   Then the accompanist asks her out—and stands her up.   Then he turns up dead.   Larkin didn't kill him, of course—but she quickly learns that there are plenty of other women who might have wanted him gone. Although Larkin never planned on becoming an amateur detective, she finds herself getting more and more involved with the death of Harrison Tucker—while making new friends, setting her mother up with a local police officer, tackling six figures of student loan debt, discovering the benefits of protected bike lanes, and learning what ingredients are (and aren't) in a scotcheroo.   A fast-paced, cleverly-plotted mystery that includes both Beethoven and baking, Ode to Murder is for cozy fans who have been hoping to find a Millennial-aged amateur detective who practices old-fashioned sleuthing in a world of smartphones and social media.   "...an entertaining whodunit with a captivating amateur sleuth." - Kirkus Reviews   "Ode to Murder is refreshing, and definitely recommended for fans of a good mystery. But it's also a great read for anyone who, like Larkin, is searching for a new story that can reach them in surprising, unexpected ways." - IndieReader

"A smart, snarky series... Cozy mystery readers will adore Larkin Day." - BookLife, Editor's Pick   Join Larkin, Ed, and Anni as they solve a social-media murder!   Larkin Day is doing great. She's gainfully employed, she has a kinda-sorta boyfriend, and she let her best friend Anni convince her to sign up for group exercise classes at the Pratincola Fitness Complex. New year, new Larkin, right?   She's also looking for a new case—even though Anni keeps telling Larkin that she has to figure out how to solve something else besides murder. Otherwise, a lot of people in Pratincola, Iowa will have to die before Larkin can turn her detective business into a full-time job.   So Larkin decides to solve everything. Why are a group of college students trying to get Larkin's mother to resign as Dean? Who is the mysterious stranger who keeps hanging around Anni's apartment building? When is the right time to ask someone whether he's really your boyfriend?   Then Bonnie Cooper, a fitness instructor and social-media influencer who just landed her first major sponsorship, asks Larkin for help.   "I've been murdered," Bonnie says—even though she is very much alive.

It's a summer of doublets and couplets, Capulets and corpses!   Larkin may think she's switched from detecting to directing, but there are surprises in store as she and Ed find themselves spending four hot weeks camping with the cast.   When Larkin Day gets hired as the Interim Artistic Director of the Summer Shakespeare Festival, she expects to spend her summer working with actors and designers as they put together an outdoor production of Romeo and Juliet.   She doesn't expect to spend her summer solving yet another murder—but when the actor playing Romeo is poisoned, Larkin agrees to play detective one more time.   Not because she thinks the show must go on.   Not even because she wants to save her job.   Larkin takes the case—bringing along her boyfriend Ed, her best friend Anni, and the mysterious Jay Malhotra—because she knows the poison wasn't meant for Romeo.   Somebody is out to kill Juliet—and they don't care who else gets murdered along the way.

"Dieker is a master of obfuscation." —Kirkus Reviews Join Larkin, Ed, Anni, and Elliott as they solve a cruise-ship mystery! After spending her summer solving murders and staging Shakespeare, Larkin Day is ready for a vacation. When her best friend Anni invites Larkin to join her on a themed cruise for tabletop gamers and sci-fi and fantasy fans—as well as mathematicians, magicians, musicians, and anyone who wants to spend a week relaxing in the Caribbean—Larkin says "Bon voyage!" Although Larkin considers herself more of a theater geek than a nerd, she quickly finds herself bonding with the other passengers. So does Larkin's boyfriend Ed, who finds a community of Black nerds who are more than eager to have him on board. Anni and her boyfriend Elliott, who have taken this cruise before, assure Larkin that it is statistically unlikely for there to be any murders aboard ship. "Most cruise ships have a morgue, of course," Anni explains, "just in case there's an accidental death." That's why, when popular fantasy author Adamantine Darcy stops making appearances on deck—and then stops making appearances altogether—people assume the death is accidental. Adamantine was 80 years old, after all. She was also 80 pages away from finishing the final book in her best-selling series, The Time Tangent Gentleman. "It's a tragedy," Anni says, "but not a murder." Until Larkin discovers that Adamantine's body is missing its head.