Donna Andrews

Murder, With Peacocks: A Meg Langslow Mystery

Donna Andrews

• 2000 Anthony-1st Novel winner
• 2000 Barry-1st Novel winner
• 1999 Agatha–1st Novel winner
• 2000 Macavity-1st Novel nominee
• Score: 36.5

Donna Andrews introduces a cast of quirky characters who will pull her heroine in different directions as she plans three successive summer weddings.

When Meg Langslow is roped into being a bridesmaid for the nuptials of her mother, her brother’s fiancee, and her own best friend, she is apprehensive. Getting the brides to chose their outfits and those of their bridesmaids (and not change their minds three days later), trying to capture the principals long enough to work out details, and even finding peacocks to strut around the garden during the ceremony—these are things Meg can handle. She can brush off the unfortunate oaf who is smitten with her, and take philosophically her disappointment when she learns that the only eligible man in her small Virginia town (and a delightful hunk he is) is of questionable sexual preference. But even Meg is taken aback when the unpleasant former sister-in-law of Meg’s soon-to-be stepfather disappears and is later found dead.

Well, that’s one way to zip up a wedding, and Andrews does a fine job of making the three celebrations more fun and more unusual than anything you’ve ever read in Ann Landers.

You've Got Murder

Donna Andrews

• 2002 Agatha–Novel winner
• Score: 10.52

When a workaholic techie misses work for several days, his friend, Turing, does the only neighborly thing and checks in on Zack. She checks to see if he’s logged in from home. No luck. Then she skims the databases of local banks. Nothing. Next she searches hospital records throughout the state. No Zack.

Turing is no crazed stalker: she is an artificial intelligence personality of Zack’s creation. But, unlike other AIPs, Turing is sentient-and she senses foul play. She finds clues, but Zack’s enemies may well lie in the real world-outside the planet of the AIPS-where Turing has no ability to move.

Six Geese A-Slaying: A Meg Langslow Mystery

Donna Andrews

• 2008 Agatha–Novel nominee
• Score: 6.58

Meg and Michael’s house is serving as the marshaling point for the annual Caerphilly Christmas parade. The theme is “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” and it features twelve drummers from the school marching band, eleven bagpipers, ten leaping lords costumed in medieval finery from the college drama department, etc. There are also assorted Christmas-themed floats, a live nativity scene on a flatbed truck, the Three Wise Men on Caerphilly zoo camels, and Santa Claus in a bright red horse-drawn sleigh (eight reindeer were beyond the zoo’s scope).

Meg has been volunteered to organize the parade, which is to proceed from her house to the local campus, where Santa will take up residence to hear the Christmas wishes of the town’s children. Of course, getting all the camels, pipers, leapers, and drummers in order is proving every bit as difficult as Meg feared it would be. Then her nephew Eric, wide-eyed and ashen-faced, whispers, “Meg, something’s wrong with Santa.”

The local curmudgeon, whose beard and belly made him a natural for the role, has been murdered. Now Meg and…

The Penguin Who Knew Too Much: A Meg Langslow Mystery

Donna Andrews

• 2007 Agatha–Novel nominee
• Score: 6.57

Hold on to your hats, everybody! Donna Andrews is taking us on another ride into the wonderful world of Meg Langslow, a world filled with laughter as well as the knotty problems Meg always seems to encounter and—somehow—solve.

Okay, maybe there are people in Antarctica with penguins in their basements, but in Virginia? Only Meg’’s dad could manage that one. A body down there—well, that’s somewhat more likely.

It turns out that explaining the penguins’ presence is easy—Meg’s dad volunteered to take care of the birds until the future of the bankrupt local zoo could be determined. But identifying the body in the basement proves a harder task—could it be, as Meg fears, that of the vanished zoo owner?

In the small southern town of Caerphilly, rumors fly quickly, and all the other well-meaning citizens who have agreed to take in zoo animals are now worried that they might be stuck with their guests indefinitely. So when Meg’’s dad generously offers to help out anyone who can no longer care for their four-legged charges, a parade of wild creatures begins to make Meg…

Owls Well That Ends Well: A Meg Langslow Mystery

Donna Andrews

• 2005 Agatha–Novel nominee
• Score: 6.55

In Owls Well That Ends Well, Meg and Michael have bought a very elderly house from the estate of the uncrowned Queen of the Packrats. She bought everything and kept it all. When the house became overcrowded, she moved the overflow into the barn. When the barn was crammed, she began filling the property’s sheds. When she died, her “holdings” left the various grandnieces and grandnephews with decades of junk. They avoid the job of cleaning it up by selling the place “as is” to Meg and Michael, sticking them with the lot. Their solution: a yard sale.

As always, Meg’s large family flocks in to offer their dubious help. Many even come with junk of their own to add to the sale. Meg’s mother, sure that Meg has taken care of all the “treasures,” turns to drawing up elaborate redecorating plans. Meg’s dad, newly elected president of SPOOR (Stop Poisoning Our Owls and Raptors) shoulders the cause of the endangered baby owls and their mother that live in the barn. His further contribution is the announcement that anyone who arrives in costume earns a ten percent discount.

Meg…

We'll Always Have Parrots: A Meg Lanslow Mystery

Donna Andrews

• 2004 Agatha–Novel nominee
• Score: 6.54

Meg Langslow knew the fan convention for her actor-boyfriend’s hit television series was going to be the ultimate in weird. But she came along because she figured Michael could use an occasional dose of sanity-and because it was an inspired place to sell her hand-crafted weapons. And so far, she was dealing pretty well with the costumed fans camped outside, the batch of escaped parrots and monkeys frolicking throughout the hotel…and the minefield of egos lurking behind the show’s success.

But soon after Meg goes head-to-head with egomaniacal series star Tamerlaine Wynncliffe-Jones, the “Queen B” turns up brutally murdered. Now, with Michael in the running as prime suspect, Meg will go up against an all-star cast of not-even-innocent parties, hidden identities, and buried motives. And she’ll cross swords with a deviously obsessed murderer determined to write her out of this picture for good.

Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon

Donna Andrews

• 2003 Agatha–Novel nominee
• Score: 6.53

Poor Meg Langslow. She’s blessed in so many ways. Michael, her boyfriend, is a handsome, delightful heartthrob who adores her. She’s a successful blacksmith, known for her artistic wrought-iron creations. But somehow Meg’s road to contentment is more rutted and filled with potholes than seems fair.

There are Michael’s and Meg’s doting but demanding mothers, for a start. And then there’s the fruitless hunt for a place big enough for the couple to live together. And a succession of crises brought on by the well-meaning but utterly wacky demands of her friends and family. Demands that Meg has a hard time refusing—which is why she’s tending the switchboard of Mutant Wizards, where her brother’s computer games are created, and handling all the office management problems that no one else bothers with. For companionship, besides a crew of eccentric techies, she has a buzzard with one wing—who she must feed frozen mice thawed in the office microwave—and Michael’s mother’s nightmare dog. Not to mention the psychotherapists who refuse to give up their lease on half of…