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"Sister" Jane Arnold and her hounds must sniff out a thief with expensive taste when a string of missing paintings leads to murder in this exciting foxhunting mystery from New York Times bestselling author Rita Mae Brown.

Spring is peeking through the frost in Virginia, and though the hunting season is coming to a close, the foxes seem determined to put the members of the Jefferson Hunt Club through their paces. Sister and her friends are enjoying some of the best chases they've had all season when the fun is cut short by the theft of Crawford Howard's treasured Sir Alfred Munnings painting of a woman in hunting attire riding sidesaddle. When another painting goes missing five days later--also a Munnings, also of a woman hunting sidesaddle--Sister Jane knows it's no coincidence. Someone is stealing paintings of foxhunters from foxhunters. But why?

Perhaps it's a form of protest against their sport. For the hunt club isn't just under attack from the thief. Mysterious signs have started to appear outside their homes, decrying their way of life. stop foxhunting: a cruel sport reads one that appears outside Crawford's house, not long after his painting goes missing. no hounds barking shows up on the telephone pole outside Sister's driveway. Annoying, but relatively harmless.

Then Delores Buckingham, retired now but once a formidable foxhunter, is strangled to death after her own Munnings sidesaddle painting is stolen. Now Sister's not just up against a thief and a few obnoxious signs--she's on the hunt for a killer.

Following Tail Gait and Tall Tail, the beloved Mrs. Murphy series continues with this contemporary mystery involving wild animal poaching, set against a historical narrative that takes place in America s post-revolutionary past."

In this fast-paced mystery by Rita Mae Brown and her feline co-author Sneaky Pie Brown, Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen and her animal friends seek to solve a whodunit rooted in eighteenth-century Virginia—uncovering a shocking secret that refuses to stay buried.

TALL TAIL

At any moment a perfect summer day in Crozet, Virginia—nestled within the Blue Ridge Mountains—might turn stormy and tempestuous, as Harry knows too well when a squall suddenly sweeps in. In a blink, Harry’s pickup nearly collides with a careening red car that then swerves into a ditch. Harry recognizes the dead driver slumped over the vehicle’s steering wheel: Barbara Leader was nurse and confidante to former Virginia governor Sam Holloway.

Though Barbara’s death is ruled a heart attack, dissenting opinions abound. After all, she was the picture of health, which gives Harry and her four-legged companions pause. A baffling break-in at a local business leads Harry to further suspect that a person with malevolent intent lurks just out of sight: Something evil is afoot.

As it happens, Barbara died in the shadow of the local cemetery’s statue of the Avenging Angel. Just below that imposing funereal monument lie the remains of one Francisco Selisse, brutally murdered in 1784. Harry’s present-day sleuthing draws her back to Virginia’s slave-holding past and the hunt for Selisse’s killer. Now it’s up to Harry and her furry detectives—Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tee Tucker—to expose the bitter truth, even if it means staring into the unforgiving eyes of history and cornering a callous killer poised to pounce.

Praise for the Mrs. Murphy mysteries

Critically acclaimed, Rubyfruit Jungle launched Rita Mae Brown's career as one of this country's most distinctive writers and continues to be a powerful seminal work more than 40 years after its original publication. Bawdy and moving, the ultimate word-of-mouth bestseller, Rubyfruit Jungle is about growing up a lesbian in America - and living happily ever after.

Sister Jane and the Jefferson Hunt Club have traveled from Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains to the Bluegrass State of Kentucky to ride with the members of the Woodford Hounds--in the teeth of foul weather. Sister knows better than anyone that an ill wind blows no good. After the hunt, Sister Jane and her boyfriend, Gray Lorillard, head to a sumptuous party on a nearby estate, also home to a historic equine graveyard. The revelry is interrupted by jarring news: The discovery of grisly remains in the cemetery that are decidedly not equine. Now Sister and her hounds are on the case, digging up clues to an old murder that links three well-connected Southern families. When mayhem follows the Jefferson Hunt back to Virginia, the deadly doings become all too real: A dear friend of Sister's is found murdered. Sister and her animal friends must work fast to find a clever killer determined to keep deep-rooted secrets buried.

Spring has sprung in Crozet, Virginia—a time for old friends to gather and bid farewell to the doldrums of winter. Harry and her husband, Fair, are enjoying a cozy dinner with some of the town’s leading citizens, including beloved University of Virginia history professor Greg “Ginger” McConnell and several members of UVA’s celebrated 1959 football team. But beneath the cloak of conviviality lurks a sinister specter from the distant past that threatens to put all their lives in jeopardy.

When Professor McConnell is found murdered on the golf course the next day—gunned down in broad daylight by an unseen killer—no one can fathom a motive, let alone find a suspect. Just as Harry and her furry cohorts begin nosing into the case, however, a homeless UVA alum confesses to the crime. Trouble is, no one believes that the besotted former All-American could have done the foul deed—especially after Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker make another gruesome discovery.

As the questions surrounding Ginger’s death pile up, Harry’s search for answers takes her down the fascinating byways of Virginia’s Revolutionary past. The professor was something of a sleuth himself, it seems, and the centuries-old mystery he was unraveling may well have put a target on his back. As Harry edges closer to identifying an elusive killer, her animal companions sense danger—and rally to find a way to keep Harry from disappearing into history.

From the best-selling author of Rubyfruit Jungle and Bingo, here is a writers' manual as provocative, frank, and funny as her fiction. Unlike most writers' guides, this one had as much to do with how writers live as with mastering the tools of their trade. Rita Mae Brown begins with a very personal account of her own career, from her days as a young poet who had written a novel no publisher wanted to take a chance on, right up to her recent adventures as a Hollywood screenwriter. In a sassy style that makes her outspoken advice as entertaining as it is useful, she provides straight talk about paying the rent while maintaining the energy to write; and dealing with agents, publishers, critics, and the publicity circus; about pursuingj ournalisim, academia, or screen-writing; and about rejecting the Hemingway myth of the hard-living, hard-drinking genius. In addition Brown, a former teacher or writing, offers a serious examination of the writer's tool--language, plotting, characters, symbolism--plus exercises to sharpen the ear for dialogue, and a fascinating, annoted reading list of important works from the seventh century to the late twentieth.

Only Rita Mae Brown, author of Rubyfruit Jungle, could have written a novel as passionately delightful as Southern Discomfort. Here is a witty, warm and pentrating tale of two decades in Montgomery Alabama--a world where all is not what it seems. Meet Hortensia Reedmuller Banastre, a beautiful woman entrenched on old money, white magnolia and a loveless marriage--until she meets an utterly gorgeous young prizefighter. Amid such memorable characters as Banana Mae Parker and Blue Rhonda Latrec (two first-class whores) and Reverend Linton Ray (who wears his clerical collar too tightly for anyone's good), Hortensia struggles to survive the hurricane of emotions caused by her scandalous love. How she ultimately triumphs is a touching and beautiful human drama--an intense and exuberant affair of the heart.

For years a "lost" collector's item, here is the second novel from a brilliant young author testing her literary muscle, and it's bursting at the seams with Rita Mae Brown's trademark cast of characters and crackling quips. Written immediately after her classic Rubyfruit Jungle, In Her Day takes a loving swipe at the charged political atmosphere of Greenwich Village in the early seventies. Elegant art history professor Carole Hanratty insists brains transcend lust—until she crashes into Ilse, a revolutionary feminist flush with the arrogance of youth. Blazing with rhetoric, their romance is a sexual and ideological inferno. Ilse campaigns to get Carole to join The Movement, but forty-four-year-old Carole and her zany peers have twenty years of fight behind them and are wary of causes bogged down in talk. After all, says Carole's best friend, the real reason for a revolution is so the good things in life circulate. Her idea of subversion is hiring a Rolls-Royce to go to McDonald's. In Her Day, with its infectious merriment and serious underpinnings, proves that if politics is the great divider, humor is the ultimate restorative.

From the celebrated author of Rubyfruit Jungle and Bingo comes a stirring novel of the Civil War, a tale of true love and mistaken identity. Brimming with colorful characters and vivid settings, High Hearts is Rita Mae Brown at her most ambitious and entertaining.

April 12, 1861. Bright, gutsy and young,Geneva Chatfield marries Nash Hart in Albemarle County, Virginia, the same day Fort Sumter's guns fire the start of the Civil War. Five days later she loses him as Nash joins the Confederate Army. Geneva, who is known as the best rider since Light Horse Harry Lee, cuts her hair, dons a uniform, enlists as "Jimmy Chatfield," then rides off to be with her beloved Nash. But sensitive Nash recoils in horror from the violence of war, while Geneva is invigorated by the chase and the fight. Can she be all the man her husband isn't? She'll sure as hell try. But there is a complication, and his name is Major "Mars" Vickers. This macho major, to his own shock and amazement, finds himself inexplicably attracted to the young soldier named "Jimmy." And this is only the beginning of a novel that moves with sureness and grace from the ferocity of battle to the struggle on the homefront, and brings passion and sly humor to a story of dawning love. High Hearts is a penetrating, delightful and sweeping tale that gives fresh life to a fascinating time.

In the sequel to her beloved Six of One, Rita Mae Brown returns with another witty tale of passion and rivalry in the small Southern town of Runnymede, Maryland. Newspaper editor Nickel Smith is scrambling to save the local paper from corporate extinction, even as she is engaged in an affair that would shock the town as much as it amazes Nickel herself. Meanwhile, her mother, Julia, and her aunt Louise, the infamous Hunsenmeir sisters, who've set the town on its ears for decades, keep an eagle eye on Nickel. No matter that she's a grown woman and that they're going on ninety; they need someone to gossip about! Not even the town's weekly bingo games can keep Louise and Julia out of trouble when Ed Tutweiler Walters, an eligible newcomer, arrives in town--and has the sisters fighting over him like schoolgirls. A telling look at the foibles of modern relationships, Bingo is full of wisdom about the comforts, trials, and absurdities of small-town life and especially of our own nearest and dearest.

Winter has come to Crozet, Virginia, bringing with it a fresh blanket of snow. Harry and her husband Fair are hip deep in their usual end-of-year activities: wrapping presents, distributing food to needy residents, and shopping for outfits for the Silver Linings youth organization's annual fundraising gala. But buried beneath the white stuff are dark secrets from Crozet's past--and Harry and her posse of pet detectives are determined to sniff them out. The truth will be revealed. A cold case will be solved. And a twenty-five-year-old love triangle is about to get untangled. The weather outside may be frightful, but Harry and her four-legged friends refuse to be spooked off the case.

Winter has come to Crozet, Virginia, bringing with it a fresh blanket of snow. Harry and her husband, Fair, are hip deep in their usual end-of-the-year activities: distributing food to needy residents, and shopping for outfits for the Silver Linings youth organization’s annual fundraising gala. But buried beneath the white stuff are dark secrets from Crozet’s past—and Harry and her posse of pet detectives are determined to sniff them out.

Two Silver Linings mentors have been found dead in suspicious circumstances. If that weren’t enough to chill the bones of the locals, a pair of severed human fingers has turned up in a pencil jar in the bookkeeper’s office at St. Cyril’s church. What does this grisly display have to do with the mysterious disappearance of Harry’s voluptuous high school Latin teacher, a quarter of a century ago? Maybe nothing. But when the animals make another gruesome discovery in the woods behind Harry’s farm, it becomes clear that terrible crimes have been committed in Crozet—and somebody’s gone to great lengths to cover them up. It’s time to stop shoveling snow and start digging for clues.

The truth will be revealed. A cold case will be solved. And a twenty-five-year-old love triangle is about to get untangled. The weather outside may be frightful, but Harry and her four-legged friends refuse to be spooked off the case.

Rita Mae Brown collaborates with feline co-author Sneaky Pie Brown in a new mystery starring Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen, the curious cat detectives Mrs. Murphy and Pewter, and Tee Tucker, the valiant crime-solving corgi. Halloween arrives early this year to rural central Virginia, when a twisted killer will stop at nothing to protect a multimillion-dollar scheme.

THE LITTER OF THE LAW

Autumn has descended and crops are being harvested all over Crozet, Virginia, ideal conditions for a scenic drive for Harry and husband Fair. Bucolic views are all well and good, but Harry’s nose for trouble leads her straight to a cornfield’s macabre scarecrow—an all too real murder victim that frightens all but the noisy crows.

This accountant’s gruesome death is only the first of many disturbing events in this normally pastoral corner of the world. While Harry tends her beloved grapes and sunflowers, a killer edges closer—as does Harry’s protective menagerie of animals.

Halloween’s approach brings with it bona fide terror and a beloved local tradition that threatens to become fatal. Rooting out the guilty in the treacherous center of a lucrative conspiracy requires Harry’s farmer’s wisdom—along with the quick wits and extraordinary senses of Sneaky Pie, Pewter, and Tucker. A vicious murderer may know the lay of the land far better than Harry does, but that’s about to change. It’s up to her vigilant four-footed companions to make sure that the unearthing of this plot is not Harry’s last act.

Praise for The Litter of the Law and the Mrs. Murphy mysteries.

Finally, a candidate representing all Americans—both predator and prey!

Tired of politics as usual? Despair not: This election year, Rita Mae Brown has thrown her cat into the ring. Her intrepid feline co-author, Sneaky Pie Brown, is taking time off from her busy schedule writing bestselling mysteries to run for President of the United States.

Hail to the Chief: Sneaky Pie heads to the Oval Office with an animal-friendly agenda to unify all Americans—regardless of whether they walk on two or four feet or even if they fly.

With help from her friends—the irascible gray cat Pewter, the wise Corgi Tee Tucker, and Tally, the exuberant Jack Russell—Sneaky crisscrosses her home state of Virginia hoping to go where no cat since Socks Clinton has gone: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. In the tradition of her heroine, Sojourner Truth, she takes her case to the masses. Journeying from the lair of the red-shouldered hawk to the nest of the tufted titmouse, from a pasture full of curmudgeonly cows to the stately halls of Monticello, the tenacious tiger cat even secures the chattering support of Thomas Jefferson’s mice.

Mice backing a cat for president? Yes, we can!

Now, if Sneaky can get the animal community to band together for the common good, why not the humans? After all, who better to get the economy purring again than an honest tabby with authentic political stripes? Human candidates have had their chance in Washington, with dubious results of late: nowhere does it say in the Constitution that the president cannot be a cat.

Isn’t it time for real change? Vote Sneaky!

To celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the beloved Mrs. Murphy mystery series, Rita Mae Brown and her intrepid feline co-author Sneaky Pie Brown return with a charming claw-biting tale starring Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen. Of course prowling faithfully at Harry’s side are the sleuthing cats Mrs. Murphy, ever wise, and Pewter, reliably cranky and always primed with a razor-sharp quip. Fiercely loyal and on the alert, corgi Tee Tucker is also never far behind. This time, Harry and her menagerie throw a wrench into the gears of a killer of grease monkeys.

It’s mid-May, and Crozet, Virginia, is heating up fast, or so it seems to Harry. The town’s beloved ex–post mistress is never idle, dividing her time between raising this year’s bounty of crops; taking care of her veterinarian husband, Fair; indulging her passion for classic cars; and adding further to her reputation as a nosy neighbor. It starts when Harry’s dear friend Miranda Hogendobber takes her on a leisurely drive that ends in a narrow drainage ditch. The chaos continues when the Very Reverend Herbert Jones’s Chevy pick-up also abruptly goes kaput. But these vehicular mishaps are nothing compared to the much more distressing state of a mechanic discovered by Harry in a local repair shop: His head’s been bashed in.

Despite numerous warnings from her much-loved coterie of friends, human and otherwise, Harry rather quickly surmises that the time has come to pop the hood and conduct her own investigation. Her animal companions see disaster fast approaching but can do little except try their best to protect their foolishly intrepid human. Harry’s race to the truth leads straight to powerful forces determined to avoid scrutiny at any cost—even if it means running Harry Haristeen off the road for good.

Beloved authors Rita Mae Brown and her feline co-conspirator, Sneaky Pie Brown, sow the seeds of an all-new mystery featuring Mary Minor "Harry" Haristeen, sleuthing cats Mrs. Murphy and Pewter, and that incorrigible corgi Tee Tucker. This time around, the onset of spring ushers in more than hay fever as the animal friends must come to the aid of an ailing Harry to sniff out the season's first blossom of murder. Ah, spring! The redbuds open, the robins return, and the days lengthen. People's spirits lift--as do those of their animal companions. As a wave of tilling and planting sweeps over Crozet, Virginia, Harry is especially excited: This year is her first harvesting grapes to sell. But then a health crisis sends her reeling into the forbidding world of hospitals and doctors, treatments and procedures. Surviving this journey will be tough, but Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker will do their best to steer Harry in the right direction--as will her ever-helpful husband, Fair. Others will have worse luck: An especially promising nurse's lifeless body is discovered without a mark on her. Then another hospital employee, who had seemed in perfect health, is also found dead. It's clear there's a mystery afoot--and that's one thing Harry and her menagerie can't keep their noses out of.

Acclaimed authors Rita Mae Brown and her feline partner, Sneaky Pie Brown, are back with this new mystery starring Mary Minor, Harry Haristeen, the sleuthing cats Mrs. Murphy and Pewter, and corgi Tee Tucker. And this time they must catch a killer determined to turn a birthday party into a funeral.Harry's beloved and tart-tongued Aunt Tally is about to turn the big 1-0-0. The alumnae association of her alma mater sees an opportunity to honor the event and make some loot off the centennial as well. The plan is to hold a big fund-raiser in Aunt Tally's honor to recoup some of the school revenue lost in the cratered economy. But soon there's more at risk than investments and endowments.

Since the publication of Rubyfruit Jungle in 1973, Rita Mae Brown has been a major American literary voice and a best-selling author. In The Sand Castle , she revisits some of her most unforgettable characters: sisters Juts and Wheezie Hunsenmeir, and Juts’s precocious young daughter, Nickel.

It’s August, 1952, and seven-year-old Nickel sets off for a day at the seashore with her mother, aunt, and cousin Leroy. Everyone’s excited when they reach Chesapeake Bay--everyone except for Leroy, who is recently motherless and frightened of the world around him. Nickel delights in tormenting her cousin, but, as the group lounges on the beach and begins work on a magnificent sand castle, the sisters try to coax him out of his shell by telling stories about their own childhood trips to the shore. But Nickel’s taunting of Leroy escalates, and the family history between her mother and aunt rises to the surface--and then a crab bites Leroy, and they must all come together. Only years later can Nickel see that day for what it truly was--a life-changing lesson about family and the pleasure and heartbreak that comes with it.

New York Times bestselling authors Rita Mae Brown and her feline partner, Sneaky Pie Brown, are back for the holidays in a new mystery featuring Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen, the sleuthing cats Mrs. Murphy and Pewter, and corgi Tee Tucker. Can they save the season from a killjoy who’s decided to gift the festive little town…with murder?

As Harry well knows, there’s hardly a place on earth cozier than Crozet, Virginia, at Christmastime. The snowflakes drifting lazily down, the soft glow of the winter light, the sound of old carols in the streets…even cats Mrs. Murphy and Pewter get into the spirit batting ornaments and climbing the holiday tree. In fact, it’s this year’s tree that Harry and her husband, Fair, have gone to fetch when they find the one they’ve chosen grimly decorated with a dead body.

The tree farm is run by The Brothers of Love, a semimonastic organization that tends to AIDS patients. The brothers live in a monastery atop the scenic Blue Ridge Mountains. Harry is surprised to find an old high-school friend associated with The Brothers of Love. Christopher Hewitt wasn’t a bad man, but good works weren’t exactly one of his priorities. But then, if even Scrooge could turn over a new leaf, certainly Chris could. And after the scandal that all but destroyed his life, there were probably few in Crozet who needed the gift of a second chance more.

Harry knows she shouldn’t take it personally, but it was her tree that someone left the corpse under. Now, as the season grows merrier, a murderer is growing bolder. One by one, prominent men of Crozet are being crossed off Christmas shopping lists and added to the morgue. And if Harry and her four-legged helpers aren’t very good—and very careful—this Christmas may be her last.