Gillian Roberts: Amanda Pepper Mysteries

Amanda Pepper Mysteries

	The debut of Philly Prep English teacher and accidental sleuth, Amanda Pepper, (and of C.K. Mackenzie, homicide detective) won the World Mystery Convention's "Anthony" for best first mystery. When the body of a colleague is found dead in Amanda's living room, she has to clear herself of suspicion—and make sure she isn't the next victim as well. And all she's got as a clue to the real killer's identity is a locket shaped like Winnie-the-Pooh. Read the First Chapter of Caught Dead in Philadelphia
	Amanda attempts to instill the spirit of Christmas by having her students prepare and serve a meal for the homeless, but her plan backfires. A wealthy and politically ambitious parent, Alexander "Sandy" Clausen, turns the event into a lavish, catered publicity and personal photo-op. Worse, his party ends in fire and death, and his daughter, Amanda's student, is one of three people who insist they alone started the fire. Read the First Chapter of Philly Stakes
	Someone has donated a book about domestic violence to the school fund-raiser, and has annotated it in the margins. Amanda reads the frightening words "I know he will kill me. He says so. I believe him. He will kill me soon," and hopes this cry for help comes in time for her to prevent a murder. In the process, she learns hard lessons about the consequences of this form of brutality. Read the First Chapter of I'd Rather Be in Philadelphia
	When her father is sidelined with an injury, Amanda reluctantly accompanies her mother to the fiftieth birthday of an old acquaintance who is using the occasion to make peace with a host of former friends. His attempt is more than futile—it's fatal. He dies, poisoned, at his own party. And worse, Amanda's mother's gift—the home baked tarts the dead man loved— turn out to be the murder weapon. Read the First Chapter of With Friends Like These…
	Amanda's friend Sasha has a photography assignment in Atlantic City, and she invites her broke schoolteacher friend to come along for a free mini-vacation. But the two quickly discover there's more to lose than money at the shore when Sasha finds a stranger bludgeoned to death in her bed. When a witness identifies Sasha as having been at the scene, she Goes Directly To Jail and does not pass "Go." Under the boardwalk and between the slot machines, and sometimes with the help of a motley crew of gamblers, Amanda works to unearth the truth and free her friend. Read the First Chapter of How I Spent My Summer Vacation
	Something's very wrong about the English classroom's chemistry during a special summer school program. The class is reading Romeo and Juliet, but the population of Philly Prep seems as star-crossed as Shakespeare's lovers. A Vietnamese girl disappears. There's a drive-by shooting outside the school. An Afro-American computer teacher receives hate messages on her answering machine. Amanda's tenacious search for the missing girl takes her to Chinatown, to neighborhoods filled with new immigrants and old prejudices and ultimately to dark truths much too close to home. Read the First Chapter of In the Dead of Summer
	It's New Year's Day, which means it's time for Philadelphia's flesh-and-blood "historical monument"—the Mummers—to strut their stuff. Amanda's happily watching the parade along with her young niece and Mackenzie—until a reveler in fancy dress is shot dead in front of thousands of viewers—without anyone seeing the gunman. To make matters worse, when a suspect is finally found, he insists he was with Amanda during the crucial time, and to make matters still worse, the murder weapon ultimately is discovered—inside Amanda's pocketbook. Read the First Chapter of The Mummers' Curse
	The ultra-elegant fund-raiser in a fabled Main Line mansion benefits Philly Prep's Library, and gives Amanda a chance to play Cinderella for a night. The first clue that all might not go well is the host's figure hanging in effigy outside the estate, put there by the "Moral Ecologists" who have a long list of classic books that "pollutes the mind." When murder follows, Amanda becomes immeshed in old secrets and young lives. Read the First Chapter of The Bluest Blood
	When a high school senior shows signs of mental illness, Amanda attempts to get him help, but she's rebuffed by his parents. When the same boy then becomes the prime suspect in a murder at the Philadelphia Main Library, and runs away, Amanda who knows he's confused and in need of help—whether or not he committed the crime—has no choice but to run after. And to run into the possibility of becoming the next victim herself. Read the First Chapter of Adam and Evil
	The day after Amanda's book club heatedly discusses a fictional woman's suicide, one of the members, Helen Coulter, falls to her death from the roofgarden of her house. Helen's death is declared a suicide, but because of what she'd said during the book discussion, the rest of the group, including Amanda, have trouble accepting this verdict. In order to interest the police in investigating her death, the women pool their individual memories and definitions of who Helen was. But as Helen's own story begins to take shape, the picture becomes still murkier and more dangerous for all concerned. Read the First Chapter of Helen Hath No Fury
	In the City of Brotherly Love, nobody knows a thing about Emmie Cade, a young widow who “appeared from nowhere,” and in the blink of an eye was engaged to Leo Fairchild, a middle-aged bachelor with a fortune. However, as her marriage date approaches, Emmie's mother-in-law to be, the ailing, autocratic Claire Fairchild, receives anonymous letters. They suggest, none too subtly, that there's a great deal to learn about the mysterious young woman, none of it good, and much of it involving the violent deaths of the men in her life. Enter Amanda Pepper who, after completing her day of teaching English at Philly Prep, now moonlights as a P.I. along with C.K. Mackenzie, former homicide detective, current graduate student at Penn. The two of them are hired by Mrs. Fairchild to find out who the charming but evasive Emmie Cade really is. At thirty-two, the young woman has changed her address and name more often than some women change nail polish—and deliberately or not, she's provided no clues or access to her past. For Amanda, becoming C.K. Mackenzie's investigative partner is an exhilarating change from the politics and problems of the new school term, and a welcome distraction from the ordeal of meeting her own prospective in-laws. She's determined to prove herself an able investigator by ferreting out Emmie Cade's secrets, but almost immediately, instead of looking at events of the past, she's forced to deal with the here and now—including murder. Read an excerpt from Claire and Present Danger
	Traditionally, Old Philadelphians keep a low profile. They associate with one another and leave life as discreetly as they have lived it. So Philly Prep English teacher Amanda Pepper, who thinks her only current problems are keeping her well-meaning family from hijacking her wedding, is understandably stunned to discover a perfect specimen of the species dying at the foot of the school's marble staircase. It is anybody's guess what led to Tomas Severin's apparent fall and, indeed, why he was in the building in the first place. More questions arise when Amanda enters her otherwise empty classroom and finds a take-out cup of herbal tea laced with the party drug her students call roofies. Why would a middle-aged Philadelphian have a date-rape drug in his tea? Why does he have Amanda's name scribbled in his pocket notebook? Hired by a member of the Severin family household, Amanda and her fiancé, C.K. Mackenzie, realize that many people felt their lives would improve if Tom's life ended–making it seemingly impossible to determine who'd been harassing Severin with threatening phone calls. Tom Severin leaves behind angry ex-wives, one recently dropped fiancée, and the current (about to be exed) Mrs. Tomas Severin. As secrets are unearthed, and cruelties old and new revealed, it's apparent that The End of Tom is just the beginning of the grief he caused. Read the First Chapter of Till The End of Tom
	No matter the season, the Philadelphia private school where Amanda Pepper teaches English is never a center of tranquility. But with Halloween and the annual Mischief Night party only days away, the hope is that nothing more than old-fashioned vandalism and pranks will take place. No such luck. Trouble erupts long before the witching hour, as the school is plagued by a series of mishaps ranging from the trivial to the potentially deadly–and most of which seem to center on a group of popular seniors. A fire alarm rings during a test; all the orange and black paint is stolen from the art room; the mustard packets are taken from the cafeteria. Perhaps more serious: chemicals and equipment disappear from the science lab, as does one of Amanda's exams and her attendance book. And the dapper new science instructor, Juan Reyes, receives a threatening message recalling that a teacher was once flayed to death by his students. As Amanda juggles teaching, moonlighting as a private investigator with her husband, C.K. Mackenzie, and coping with C.K.'s visiting sixteen-year-old high school-dropout nephew, she tries to find out what, or who, is behind the ominous events. Before she can unmask the tricksters, the turmoil in the school increases when students rise up against the administration's censuring (and censoring) of a campus poet. Then unrest escalates into a lethally explosive menace, and Amanda receives a warning that there is more–and far worse–to come. Read the First Chapter of A Hole in Juan
	Barring the usual teenage pranks, all seems peaceful at Philly Prep, the private school in Philadelphia where Amanda Pepper teaches English. No doubt the money that appears to be missing from funds collected to aid victims of a catastrophic hurricane Down South will turn up. Probably the rumor that some of Amanda's students have discovered the thrills of gambling is totally unfounded. In any case, Amanda has other things to think about. Her husband, private investigator C.K. MacKenzie, is struggling to help his Louisiana kinfolk reconstruct their post-hurricane lives. Her friend Sasha's stepmother has just committed suicide—although, according to Sasha, Phoebe Ennis would never have killed herself, especially not while having a drink and wearing a red silk blouse and red sandals with four-inch heels. Amanda isn't persuaded but reluctantly agrees to help investigate the woman's demise, though the evidence for foul play is slim. True, the middle-aged compulsive collector of knickknacks wasn't universally loved. Phoebe's own son hated her and she bored her friends to death with hints of her "royal" lineage. And with four marriages behind her, she was already preparing to announce her renewed availability on the Net. But when another woman is found dead in Phoebe's house, it becomes clear that something is indeed murderously amiss, and much closer to home than Amanda or anyone else could have imagined. Read the First Chapter of All's Well That Ends