Marian Babson Books In Order

Brimful Coffers Books In Publication Order

  1. Canapés for the Kitties (1996)
  2. Miss Petunia’s Last Case (1996)
  3. Please Do Feed the Cat (2004)

A Perkins & Tate Mystery Books In Publication Order

  1. Cover-Up Story (1988)
  2. Tourists are for Trapping (1989)
  3. Murder at the Cat Show (1989)
  4. In the Teeth of Adversity (1990)

Trixie Dolan & Evangeline Sinclair Mystery Books In Publication Order

  1. Reel Murder (1987)
  2. Encore Murder (1990)
  3. Shadows in Their Blood (1991)
  4. Break a Leg, Darlings (1995)
  5. Even Yuppies Die (1996)
  6. The Cat Who Wasn’t a Dog (2003)
  7. Not Quite a Geisha (2003)
  8. No Cooperation from the Cat (2012)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. Pretty Lady (1973)
  2. The Stalking Lamb (1974)
  3. Unfair Exchange (1974)
  4. Murder Sails at Midnight (1975)
  5. There Must Be Some Mistake (1975)
  6. Untimely Guest (1976)
  7. Lord Mayor of Death (1977)
  8. Murder, Murder, Little Star (1977)
  9. Tightrope For Three (1978)
  10. The Twelve Deaths of Christmas (1979)
  11. So Soon Done For (1979)
  12. Dangerous to Know (1980)
  13. Line Up for Murder (1980)
  14. Queue Here for Murder (1980)
  15. Bejewelled Death (1981)
  16. Death Beside The Sea (1982)
  17. Death Warmed Up (1982)
  18. Paws for Alarm (1984)
  19. Death Swap (1984)
  20. The Cruise of a Deathtime (1984)
  21. A Fool For Murder (1984)
  22. Whiskers & Smoke (1985)
  23. Trail of Ashes (1985)
  24. Death in Fashion (1987)
  25. Murder on a Mystery Tour (1987)
  26. Weekend For Murder (1987)
  27. Guilty Party (1989)
  28. Past Regret (1990)
  29. Fatal Fortune (1991)
  30. Nine Lives to Murder (1994)
  31. The Diamond Cat (1995)
  32. The Company of Cats (1999)
  33. The Multiple Cat (1999)
  34. A Tealeaf in the Mouse (2000)
  35. To Catch a Cat (2000)
  36. Deadly Deceit (2001)
  37. The Cat Next Door (2002)
  38. Retreat From Murder (2004)
  39. Only the Cat (2007)

Brimful Coffers Book Covers

A Perkins & Tate Mystery Book Covers

Trixie Dolan & Evangeline Sinclair Mystery Book Covers

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Marian Babson Books Overview

Canapés for the Kitties

The cat’s out of the bag: dead bodies are piling up in Brimful Coffers, a picturesque English village. Among the deceased is Boswell, a pet white rat. His killers were caught: Had I and But Known, two mischievous felines belonging to Lorinda Lucas, mystery writer. Unfortunately, the other victims were all too human and their killer remains at large…
The danger in Brimful Coffers was unforeseen when several authors created an informal writers’ colony in this lovely town outside of London. In act, the location was heaven until the undesirables critics and scholars began to show up. Soon Lorinda and her friends feel as if they’re living in a fishbowl. Worse, they’re getting chilling threats, supposedly from their fictional characters! But when fatal ‘accidents’ begin to claim the colony’s residents, death isn’t make believe. And unless Lorinda can sniff out the killer, even a cat’s nine lives might not be nearly enough…

Miss Petunia’s Last Case

The cat’s out of the bag: dead bodies are piling up in Brimful Coffers, a picturesque English village. Among the deceased is Boswell, a pet white rat. His killers were caught: Had I and But Known, two mischievous felines belonging to Lorinda Lucas, mystery writer. Unfortunately, the other victims were all too human and their killer remains at large…
The danger in Brimful Coffers was unforeseen when several authors created an informal writers’ colony in this lovely town outside of London. In act, the location was heaven until the undesirables critics and scholars began to show up. Soon Lorinda and her friends feel as if they’re living in a fishbowl. Worse, they’re getting chilling threats, supposedly from their fictional characters! But when fatal ‘accidents’ begin to claim the colony’s residents, death isn’t make believe. And unless Lorinda can sniff out the killer, even a cat’s nine lives might not be nearly enough…

Please Do Feed the Cat

A decomposing body…
a severed head in a closet…
a macabre meeting with Mother
mystery writer Lorinda Lucas tosses yet another paperback in the trash, appalled at the gruesome direction of today’s crime fiction. She s even more disturbed at the half starved state of Roscoe, the cat next door. Before Lorinda left for her latest book tour, Roscoe was as plump and pampered as her own two felines, Had I and But Known. It only takes a modicum of sleuthing to find out that in Lorinda s absence Roscoe s owner, Macho Magee, has acquired a new girlfriend a harridan who has put the gentle Macho and his pet on a strict diet. And that s only the first disturbing news in Brimful Coffers, the once quiet village that now includes a writer s colony. Lorinda soon discovers that a hit and run has ended a child s life, professional jealousy has taken a deadly twist, and murder is just around the catty corner…

Cover-Up Story

Nashville’s Bart and The Cousins, in England on a road trip, have a chart topping song. Unfortunately Bart also has an indictment back in the USA over an underage groupie. Keeping that hot news out of the London papers is a job for Doug Perkins, of the PR firm of Perkins and Tate. Doug soon finds that you can take the boy out of the country…
but he’s still going to run after jailbait. And when Doug thinks that things can’t get worse, secrets about love and money start emerging faster than sad notes from the band’s toothless harmonica player. What’s really going on among Bart and the Cousins is a shocker…
and even a spin doctor can’t cover up its deadly consequences. Instead Doug may have to turn from PR to PI…
and figure out who committed murder.

Murder at the Cat Show

Catty Murder

Doug Perkins doesn’t dislike cats-he just isn’t especially interested in them. But the struggling young London public relations firm of Perkins and Tate can’t afford to be choosy about the jobs they take. So when Doug is asked to do the PR for a glorified feline extravaganza called ‘Cats Through the Ages,’ he doesn’t hesitate. But it isn’t long before he wishes he had hesitated…

There are some very valuable cats on exhibit-even a few feline celebrities. Then the robbery of a gold statue of Dick Whittington’s cat sets nerves on edge. The theft is not exactly a PR man’s dream, but this disaster pales in comparison to the gruesome murder that follows. Someone has knocked unconscious the show’s organizer, the universally despised Rose Chesne-Malverne, and pushed her into the cage with a pair of feral tigers fancifully named Pyramus and Thisbe-with predictably fatal results. Now, it’s up to Doug to find an elusive killer who appears to have nine lives of his own…

In the Teeth of Adversity

Paws for Murder…
The man who threw his cat at his dentist…
Doug Perkins, his partner Gerry and their cat, Pandora, have one job to do: spin gaffes into gold. But this cozy little London PR agency a better environment for Pandora than profits is about to get involved in a disastous affaire dentaire.. Endicott Zayle, dentist to the rich and famous as well as to Doug and Gerry has a problem with royal proportions. He just killed a beautiful women with an experimental anesthetic. Or did he?By the time Doug arrives on the scene, the corpse is up and walking around and someone else is dead instead. With Endicott losing his grip, and a line of women all claiming personal interest in the deceased, scandal is afoot. And so is a second dose of murder. For Doug, Perry and Pandora, making this mess look good will mean sorting through an old man’s madness, a young man’s foolishness, and a tooth and nail case of cat fighting no holds barred…

Shadows in Their Blood

Written by Marian Babson. Evangeline Sinclair and Trixie Dolan are actresses staying in a defunct hotel called Overlook Castle and working on their latest film. Job the director is hard to please and there are fantastical rumours spreading around the set which are causing tensions Evangeline and Trixie are actually being considered to be genuine vampires! The two actresses must turn sleuth again and fight to keep reality into perspective, and to keep themselves safe in their nightmare where a killer could be at work. Marian Babson was born in Salem, Massachusetts, and has lived in London for the greater part of her life. She worked in many different kinds of business before becoming a full time writer.

Break a Leg, Darlings

Trixie and Evangeline fearlessly face incompetence, irritation, and boredom as they scour the pub theatres and eccentric venues of the London fringe in their search for a new play to star in. They never suspect that while they are stalking a likely playwright, a merciless killer is stalking them.

Even Yuppies Die

Former film stars Trixie Dolan and Evangeline Sinclair rent a penthouse suite in a rundown warehouse full of strange and somewhat dangerous tenants, where their habit of eavesdropping and snooping gets them into some hot water.

The Cat Who Wasn’t a Dog

Dame Cecile Savoy was chewing the scenery. In her carefully programmed grief, she demanding that her co Thespian friends actually more ‘rivals’ accompany her to the taxidermist, where she is perpetuating the body of her ancient Pekinese, ‘that revolting little floor mop she was so attached to,’ according to Trixie. Finding the shop owner dead on the floor of his office was the first shock; finding the shop suddenly enveloped in flames was the next, but the final blow to Dame Cecile was discovering that instead of rescuing the remains of the expired Fleur de Lys, Trixie had snatched up a very much alive Japanese bobtail cat named Cho Cho San. Triple shock is only the beginning for our harried friends Trixie and Evangeline. In their own lives, as opposed to those of the troublesome people who keep popping up, they are about to open in a play written specially for them. But they are thrust into a whirlpool of trials and catastrophes involving other people, all of which seriously cut into their time. A woman whose house guests they are battles with her much younger stepmother over their father/husband’s legacy, Their hostess’s housekeeper goes missing, and is found dead in the cellar. Evangeline inadvertently plies the guest who discovered the body with much more brandy than she can handle just prior to her interview with a detective. And Martha, Trixie’s daughter, is in a state of panic about turning in the cookbook she is writing on time. And then there’s Cho Cho San. Somebody has to feed the poor beast standing in for the deceased Peke, and there’s hardly any food in the house for the human guests. Somebody has to reassure her when she is frightened, find her when she is hiding, and give her the attention a nice cat deserves. Babson’s troops of fans will be delighted with this latest offering that typically combines a light touch and some wildly funny situations.

Not Quite a Geisha

Dame Cecile Savoy was chewing the scenery. In her carefully programmed grief, she demanding that her co Thespian friends actually more ‘rivals’ accompany her to the taxidermist, where she is perpetuating the body of her ancient Pekinese, ‘that revolting little floor mop she was so attached to,’ according to Trixie. Finding the shop owner dead on the floor of his office was the first shock; finding the shop suddenly enveloped in flames was the next, but the final blow to Dame Cecile was discovering that instead of rescuing the remains of the expired Fleur de Lys, Trixie had snatched up a very much alive Japanese bobtail cat named Cho Cho San. Triple shock is only the beginning for our harried friends Trixie and Evangeline. In their own lives, as opposed to those of the troublesome people who keep popping up, they are about to open in a play written specially for them. But they are thrust into a whirlpool of trials and catastrophes involving other people, all of which seriously cut into their time. A woman whose house guests they are battles with her much younger stepmother over their father/husband’s legacy, Their hostess’s housekeeper goes missing, and is found dead in the cellar. Evangeline inadvertently plies the guest who discovered the body with much more brandy than she can handle just prior to her interview with a detective. And Martha, Trixie’s daughter, is in a state of panic about turning in the cookbook she is writing on time. And then there’s Cho Cho San. Somebody has to feed the poor beast standing in for the deceased Peke, and there’s hardly any food in the house for the human guests. Somebody has to reassure her when she is frightened, find her when she is hiding, and give her the attention a nice cat deserves. Babson’s troops of fans will be delighted with this latest offering that typically combines a light touch and some wildly funny situations.

No Cooperation from the Cat

Marian Babson brings back theater actresses Trixie and Evangeline in No Cooperation from the Cat, her latest cat suffused cozy!Trixie’s daughter Martha has taken up residence in the kitchen she shares with her friend Evangeline. Martha is frantically testing last minute recipes to meet the deadline for her cookbook, helped by Jocasta, her overworked editor. When a strange man bursts into their lives, it s revealed that Martha was not the first choice for the cookbook, and that the woman originally working on it died after eating something at a cooking demonstration. Unwanted guests descend on the already crowded and tense apartment, one of whom ends up dead. Cho Cho San, the lovely Japanese bobtail cat, joins in the fun as Trixie and Evangeline become entangled in another puzzling murder. Babson delivers a delightfully witty mystery with a cast sure to induce laughs, including one cat that will steal readers hearts.

Pretty Lady

Driven by unhappiness over her failing marriage and her fading beauty, Merelda seduces slow witted Denny in an attempt to entice him into killing her husband. K. AB.

Murder Sails at Midnight

Four wealthy women, sailing from New York to Genoa aboard the luxury liner Beatrice Cenci: as the passengers frolic in the elegance of her staterooms and cabarets, a killer stalks the decks under a full moon.

Murder, Murder, Little Star

From the moment Frances Armitage saw the American film star, she knew she was in for trouble. Ten year old Twinkle was a box office attraction and Frances was her new chaperone whilst filming in England. Suspicious and insecure, Twinkle made enemies the way other children make mud pies. Frances believes she must try and protect Twinkle after a series of attempts on the girl’s life. But Twinkle is probably capable enough to look after herself!

Whiskers & Smoke

While the cat’s away, a fire starter plays…
After the tragic death of her husband, British housewife Rosemary Blake accepts a summer house and cat exchange across the Atlantic in her sister’s adopted town of Edgemarsh Lake, New Hampshire. Lulled by promises of of beautiful scenery and a perfect day camp for her two children, she bids adieu to her gentle cat Esmond, and heads off to parts unknown. But from the moment they arrive, Rosemary senses something amiss. Her sister Celia is skittish and secretive. Their temporary cat Errol, a oversized Maine coon, is out every night and clearly up to no good. Worst of all, a rash of deadly fires has the entire town sniffing for smoke. Who is responsible for these lethal blazes? The fur flies as suspicions mount, and Rosemary realizes she must act quickly, before a fiery killer strikes again.

Trail of Ashes

While the cat’s away, a fire starter plays…
After the tragic death of her husband, British housewife Rosemary Blake accepts a summer house and cat exchange across the Atlantic in her sister’s adopted town of Edgemarsh Lake, New Hampshire. Lulled by promises of of beautiful scenery and a perfect day camp for her two children, she bids adieu to her gentle cat Esmond, and heads off to parts unknown. But from the moment they arrive, Rosemary senses something amiss. Her sister Celia is skittish and secretive. Their temporary cat Errol, a oversized Maine coon, is out every night and clearly up to no good. Worst of all, a rash of deadly fires has the entire town sniffing for smoke. Who is responsible for these lethal blazes? The fur flies as suspicions mount, and Rosemary realizes she must act quickly, before a fiery killer strikes again.

Past Regret

Delia Sawyer rushes to London to find her missing daughter, a college girl studying abroad who has been traumatized by an event she cannot remember, and who turns out to be one of a number of victims.

Nine Lives to Murder

When Winstanley Fortescue, titan of the English stage and with the morals of an alley cat, falls off a ladder onto the backstage cat Montmorency D. Mousa, man and feline are catapulted into each other’s body. Winstanley prowls the theatre with ears pricked outraged by the litter box while Monmorency, in Intensive Care, lies in Win’s noble thespian frame. Soon, Winstanley Fortescue, cat, hears enough to know that the fall was no accident. But who pushed him? His long suffering ex? Or the critic who chewed up his last play?

The Diamond Cat

The cat who swallowed more than a canary…
A lifetime of craving more cuddly companionship than her hectoring mother has led fortyish Bettina Bilby to board her neighbors’ felines for a long holiday weekend: an expectant tabby, a pampered blue eyed Balinese, a depressed ginger Persian with a cod liver oil addiction, and Adolf, an imperious mouser with a patchwork face. But a freak storm sets the pigeon among the cats a carrier bird downed on the doorstep with a tiny load of large flawless diamonds. And Bettina’s dilemma escalates, as Adolf gobbles up one of the gems and a succession of elegant but shifty strangers prowl the gardens, offending the cats, and bringing in their wake back door bloodshed and murder.

The Company of Cats

A millionaire’s pet tabby is the only witness to his catty murder…
When millionaire Arthur Arbuthnot mistakes gossip maven Annabel Hinchby Smythe for a decorator and hires her to redecorate his apartment the fiscally challenged Annabel can’t refuse. When she sees Arbuthnot’s tatty London flat, she knows anything will be an improvement. And any gossip she can dig up will be pure gold for the tabloids. But when Arthur is found dead, his frisky relatives begin to lick their chops. Arbuthnot’s beloved tabby Sally was the only witness to the homicide and the sole heir to his estate. Suddenly, cat hating family members are eager to claim her and control the family fortune. Annabel’s only hope to save the cat and catch a killer is to kidnap Sally and see who comes sniffing around. Once the cat’s out of the bag, murder is sure to follow…

The Multiple Cat

A millionaire’s pet tabby is the only witness to his catty murder…
When millionaire Arthur Arbuthnot mistakes gossip maven Annabel Hinchby Smythe for a decorator and hires her to redecorate his apartment the fiscally challenged Annabel can’t refuse. When she sees Arbuthnot’s tatty London flat, she knows anything will be an improvement. And any gossip she can dig up will be pure gold for the tabloids. But when Arthur is found dead, his frisky relatives begin to lick their chops. Arbuthnot’s beloved tabby Sally was the only witness to the homicide and the sole heir to his estate. Suddenly, cat hating family members are eager to claim her and control the family fortune. Annabel’s only hope to save the cat and catch a killer is to kidnap Sally and see who comes sniffing around. Once the cat’s out of the bag, murder is sure to follow…

A Tealeaf in the Mouse

The last thing eleven-year-old Robin wants to hear is that his mother and her new husband are extending their honeymoon indefinitely. Not that staying with his Aunt Mags is so bad, but there’s her boyfriend to contend with, and the members of the school gang are insisting that he complete a dare before they let him join the group. They want Robin to kidnap Mrs. Nordling’s prize-winning cat when no one is home.

Getting into the Nordling’s house is easy and Robin manages to find the cat and put him in his bag. As Robin is leaving, however, he stumbles upon a terrifying scene-Mr. Nordling leaving the master bedroom with blood all over his body. Robin is momentarily paralyzed and then flees down the stairs. He can’t be sure whether or not he has been seen, but realizes that in order to stay safe he will have to hide the unusual-looking cat.

Meanwhile, Mr. Nordling is getting desperate. He knows that if he can find the unmistakable cat he will also find the witness to his brutal crime. He begins a frantic search for the young boy, but his infuriating neighbor won’t leave him alone. She is beginning to understand what happened that night and he decides that he will have to deal with her too.

In her 36th published mystery, Marian Babson delights readers again with her usual charm and lighthearted humor. To Catch a Cat will capture the hearts of feline lovers and mystery fans alike.

To Catch a Cat

The last thing eleven-year-old Robin wants to hear is that his mother and her new husband are extending their honeymoon indefinitely. Not that staying with his Aunt Mags is so bad, but there’s her boyfriend to contend with, and the members of the school gang are insisting that he complete a dare before they let him join the group. They want Robin to kidnap Mrs. Nordling’s prize-winning cat when no one is home.

Getting into the Nordling’s house is easy and Robin manages to find the cat and put him in his bag. As Robin is leaving, however, he stumbles upon a terrifying scene-Mr. Nordling leaving the master bedroom with blood all over his body. Robin is momentarily paralyzed and then flees down the stairs. He can’t be sure whether or not he has been seen, but realizes that in order to stay safe he will have to hide the unusual-looking cat.

Meanwhile, Mr. Nordling is getting desperate. He knows that if he can find the unmistakable cat he will also find the witness to his brutal crime. He begins a frantic search for the young boy, but his infuriating neighbor won’t leave him alone. She is beginning to understand what happened that night and he decides that he will have to deal with her too.

In her 36th published mystery, Marian Babson delights readers again with her usual charm and lighthearted humor. To Catch a Cat will capture the hearts of feline lovers and mystery fans alike.

The Cat Next Door

Margot returns to her well to do family in England on the eve of her Aunt Chloe’s murder trial she is accused of fatally stabbing her twin sister with a kitchen knife in the garden. Nothing has been the same since Claudia’s body was found: her 14 year old daughter Lynette refuses to leave her bedroom, the paparazzi are relentless, and Tikki, the family’s beloved Abyssinian, goes to stay with the neighbors. When another body, whom no one recognizes, shows up facedown in the pond while the family is in the midst of Chloe’s trial, doubt and suspicion intensify and no one can be trusted. These scandalous deaths can’t be related, can they? If Chloe is locked up, another murderer must be lurking about. Since no one is trying to solve the puzzle in the garden, Margot decides it’s up to her to investigate. She soon finds herself getting in too deep and running from a killer who’s bent on staying one step ahead of her at all costs…

Retreat From Murder

A decomposing body…
a severed head in a closet…
a macabre meeting with Mother
mystery writer Lorinda Lucas tosses yet another paperback in the trash, appalled at the gruesome direction of today’s crime fiction. She s even more disturbed at the half starved state of Roscoe, the cat next door. Before Lorinda left for her latest book tour, Roscoe was as plump and pampered as her own two felines, Had I and But Known. It only takes a modicum of sleuthing to find out that in Lorinda s absence Roscoe s owner, Macho Magee, has acquired a new girlfriend a harridan who has put the gentle Macho and his pet on a strict diet. And that s only the first disturbing news in Brimful Coffers, the once quiet village that now includes a writer s colony. Lorinda soon discovers that a hit and run has ended a child s life, professional jealousy has taken a deadly twist, and murder is just around the catty corner…

Only the Cat

The prolific and delightful Marian Babson has penned another stupendous cozy for cat lovers. Vanessa has been rushed to hospital, having been found unconscious at the foot of the stairs. Was it an accident or something else? Now, smiling weakly, suffering from a head injury that has left her with complete amnesia about the fall, the events leading up to it, and even the people closest to her, here she is, back in their midst. Or is she? In fact, the real Vanessa is still in a coma and her devoted twin brother Vance, superbly disguised as a woman, has taken her place! At the home of the reclusive millionaire who maintained Vanessa, Vance joins the self absorbed retinue, determined to discover whether one of them had attempted to kill his sister. There is an unsavory rou who claims to be Vanessa’s lover and assorted women who declare themselves her best friends. Others keep silent but seem to be waiting for Vance to put a foot wrong. Actually, Vance can handle all those. Only one thing really worries him: Gloriana, Vanessa s beautiful Angora cat who regards her mistress with a dark suspicion. If the cat can t be won over, then the whole deadly charade will fall apart. Only the Cat Knows is Babson s latest in a long line of wonderful mysteries offering her special mix of mayhem, murder, and cats!

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