Home Repair is Homicide

Since she bought her rambling fixer-upper of a house, Jacobia Tiptree has gotten used to finding things broken. But her latest problem isn't so easily repaired. Along with the rotting floor joists and sagging support beams, there's the little matter of the dead man in Jake's storeroom, an ice pick planted firmly in his cranium. Not much happens in her tiny Maine town, but that's about to change. Jake's unknown guest turns out to be local boy turned billionaire Threnody McIlwaine. When Jake's best friend, quiet and dependable Ellie White, confesses to the murder, cops and journalists swarm into the snowbound Eastport. Jake smells a cover-up and begins poking into past history between McIlwaine and Ellie's family. But someone doesn't like nosy neighbors-and Jake's rustic refuge may become her final resting place.

Jacobia Tiptree saved her sanity-and her son, Sam-the day she abandoned Wall Street for the seacoast village of Eastport, Maine. In her new home, a charmingly dilapidated fixer-upper, she looks forward to repairing old radiators and restoring antique shutters for years to come. But Jake's hopes of serenity are dashed when tiny Eastport erupts in a crime wave. Hometown bad boy Kenny Mumford-old flame of Jake's best friend and fellow sleuth, Ellie White-is the first victim. When his corpse washes up on the beach at Prince's Cove, all evidence points to a drowning-except the bullet hole in his forehead. When bodies begin littering the Maine scenery, Jake and Ellie learn that the ante on Kenny's small-town antics has been upped. Add a pair of unwelcome arrivals-Jake's ex-husband, and an unscrupulous New York ex-money mogul-and you've got a blueprint for more deadly danger than one old house can hold.

For ex-Wall Streeter Jacobia "Jake" Tiptree and her teenage son, Sam, September promises tranquil days winter-proofing their rambling handyman's special of a home in Eastport, Maine. But there's nothing idyllic about this Down East autumn. For starters, the return of truly vicious native son Reuben Tate stirs up the town. And when somebody slits Reuben's throat and hangs his corpse on the cemetery gate, the police trace a bloodied scalpel to surgeon Victor Tiptree-Jake's former husband. Yet Jake knows her troublesome, trouble-prone ex is capable of just about anything except murder. Proving that, though, will involve nailing the real killer.

Jacobia Tiptree and her teenage son are used to their Eastport, Maine, home attracting more than its share of house guests. This year Jake is hoping the plaster dust will keep them away while she finally gets her gem of a fixer-upper into shape-from doorknobs and chandeliers to ghostly phenomena. But when the charming and mysterious Jonathan Raines appears on her doorstep and then just as suddenly disappears, remodeling the house becomes the least of Jake's problems. Could Jonathan's disappearance have something to do with his quest for a cursed violin that local legend says was hidden by a long-ago owner of Jake's house, before he too vanished without a trace? Jake needs to strip Eastport's past of its idyllic veneer before a killer paints her very dead indeed!

Christmas is just weeks away, but what Jacobia "Jake" Tiptree discovers at Faye Anne Carmody's house is far from festive: a dazed Faye Anne covered with blood. Her no-good husband, Merle-Eastport's butcher and least-liked citizen-is nowhere in sight. Nowhere, that is, until Jake finds his body-wrapped in his own butcher paper. It looks like an open-and-shut case, but Jake isn't convinced. Then another resident turns up dead, and Jake knows the trail doesn't begin-or end-with Merle. Jake had planned to spend the winter rehabilitating her old house, but now she'll have to work on nailing a killer before her beloved town gets even smaller.

It began with the mysterious disappearance of Harriet Hollingsworth-Eastport, Maine's snoopiest resident. Everyone is convinced the old busybody bolted out of town to escape her creditor-everyone except Jake and her best friend, Ellie, who suspect otherwise. But they'll need to come up with proof more sinister than a pair of abandoned binoculars. Just as Jake starts poking around for clues, things take a troubling turn for the worse. A suspicious accident nearly kills her teenage son, Sam, and her husband, Wade, just misses getting his head blown off. Jake is prepared to attribute these incidents to a spate of bad luck-until another accident leaves a visitor to Eastport unmistakably dead.

When Jacobia "Jake" Tiptree and her friend, Ellie White, agree to refurbish Eastport's most disreputable old dwelling, Harlequin House, pulling up the floorboards reveals something far more sinister than dry rot. A hidden trapdoor unearths the skeleton of a notorious 1920s flapper with a fresh corpse sitting neatly beside her. With a good old-fashioned Maine murder on their hands, Jake and Ellie are hot on the trail of the murderer-but this time more than their reputations may be on the line.

Jacobia "Jake" Tiptree's leisurely summer dreams involve rebuilding the front porch of her Maine fixer-upper and shingling the leaky tool shed out back. That's why she's hired the avenging angel of household hygiene, Bella Diamond, to keep her house-and her teenage son Sam-in tip-top shape. But when Bella confides in Jake that she's been receiving death threats, Jake has two choices: find out who is frightening the hapless housekeeper-or risk losing her. With a marauding moose loose in town, a troublesome love triangle occupying Sam, and her estranged relatives about to descend for the Fourth of July-and the upstairs bedroom still unpainted-Jake's summer is sure to be anything but peaceful. No matter how carefully you remodel your life, murder can take up residence anywhere.

Jacobia "Jake" Tiptree took the dangerous plunge from Wall Street power broker to homeowner. Now the do-it-yourself enthusiast is about to discover that her own dream house is built on a foundation of murder. Buying a beachfront fixer-upper to lease out to Eastport, Maine's, burgeoning tourist crowd seems like a good idea to Jake Tiptree and her best friend, Ellie White. But working double-time as landladies to a coven of wannabe witches is not what they had in mind. And it only gets worse when Jake is called out one stormy night to make a repair-and stumbles on a dead body in the utility shed. A small-time thief and street preacher with a particularly violent message, the deceased was no favorite of Jake's nor of anyone else in Eastport. But what's he doing shot to death on Jake's property? Jake's bewitching tenants-including an ex-cop, a con man, and a mute teenage girl-claim to have been too busy conjuring spells to have heard or seen a thing. Then a member of the coven disappears without a trace, and Jake doesn't think it's a case of witchcraft but a kidnapping-or worse. Scandal, secrets, and a mysterious box buried deep in the foundation of her own home are just the beginning of a mystery that threatens to bring Jake's house-and life-crashing down. Now she and Ellie are racing to find a missing girl who may either be the key to it all-or lead them to a killer holding the final nails to their coffins.

Spring has sprung in Eastport, Maine, and in Jacobia Jake Tiptree's 1823 Federal style fixer-upper, that means a housecleaning so thorough even the skeletons in the closet get polished! But nothing can prepare Jake for what she'll uncover: a trio of mysteries certain to make her usual home repair projects seem as simple as scraping paint. What do an old book hidden in Jake's cellar, the appearance of her ex-husband's ghost, and the murder of her housekeeper's son have in common? Only Jake can jigsaw the clues into place-and she'd better do it fast, before a killer snares her in a trap she can't escape.

When a mysterious book is unearthed from the foundation of Jake's 1823 fixer-upper, she immediately sends it off to local book historian Horace Robotham. After all, there must be a logical explanation for why the long-buried volume has her name in it-written in what looks suspiciously like blood. But all logic goes out the window when the book disappears-and Horace turns up dead. When two more victims turn up in a town better known for its scenic views and historic homes than its body count, Jake and her comrade-in-sleuthing, Ellie White, need to go on the prowl to find someone who may believe that the pages of an ancient book are the blueprint for a perfect murder.

As a toddler, in a room illuminated only by the flames of a fallen candle, Jacobia Tiptree watched a man kill her mother. Jake once believed that man to be her father. Now, thirty-five years after the murder, as the real killer's long-delayed trial is about to begin, the defendant has vanished.Jake tries to distract herself from murder with the constant attempts to keep her 1823 federal-style fixer-upper from tumbling down on her head. But when her best friend's infant daughter suddenly goes missing, Jake feels her dark past wrapping itself around her, and needless to say, it's nowhere near as charming as her rickety old house.

The infamous Dodd murders are hardly among Eastport's proudest legacies. So when bestselling true-crime author Carolyn Rathbone arrives to research the case for a new book, the locals in the seaside town let her know that she's about as welcome as a spoiled clam. But surely no one would harm a crime writer out of a sense of civic pride-or would they? Jake has her own problems, from the mysteries of old house insulation to an anonymous caller plaguing her with death threats. But with Carolyn's arrival, the slayings of the wealthy Dodd women suddenly go from cold case to hot topic-much to someone's dismay, for Carolyn Rathbone's untimely investigation has unearthed a string of deadly secrets that a cunning killer is grimly determined to rebury, right along with Carolyn herself.

Jacobia 'Jake' Tiptree is deep in her latest home improvement project when she notices the man repeatedly biking past her house. His face is unsettlingly familiar, but his chilling message seems inexplicable: Blood shows up again. Murder will out. Back in her days as a hotshot financial manager she did business with plenty of shady characters, but she's still baffled as to the identity of her nemesis - until she receives a photo of a murdered man. Now Jake knows what she's up against.

Driving deep into the woods to her husband's cottage with her best friend in tow, Jake knows she has a challenging week ahead of her. They soon realize that they're not alone. Recently escaped from prison and having fled into the woods, Dewey Hooper recognizes Jake the instant he sees her. Her testimony got him sent away for murder years ago and here he can finally exact his revenge.

As an epic nor'easter bears down on the idyllic island town of Eastport, Maine, Jacobia Tiptree hurries to prepare her antique house for the big blow, while the town battles to evacuate tourists and save the beloved 200-year-old Seaman's Church steeple, threatened by the storm. But when a local teen beauty-pageant winner from a troubled family is found murdered in the steeple's bell tower and Jake's son Sam's visiting childhood friend comes under scrutiny as a suspect, the resulting storm of gossip and suspicion rivals anything the Atlantic could brew up.