Showing results by author "Glen Ebisch" in All Categories

Charles Bentley, sometimes retired professor of English at Opal College in Opalsville, Massachusetts, once again deals with crime in a small New England college town. HIs investigations take him both on campus and off campus, frequently to some unlikely places, as he and his wife, Joanna, chief of police, pursue those who would commit murder even in a place of pastoral beauty. Charles discovers that as he gets older there is always something new to learn about the hearts of others and about his own.

Susan Marlowe, librarian and retired jewel thief, gets involved in her old life when her fiancé, Richard Scott, an insurance investigator, asks her if she can discover the identity of the person who fashioned the replica of a stolen pink diamond. Susan's investigations get her into a confrontation with a murderer and into a collaboration with The Phantom, a charming and notorious high-end jewel thief. When their attempts to ensnare the killer don't go as planned, Susan finds herself facing an enraged killer, and she must rely on her wits and luck to survive.

Innkeeper Max Moran is again involved in solving a murder when the actor playing the victim at a murder mystery dinner held at the Fireside Inn gives the best performance of his life and actually dies. Chief of police Philpot, who hates Max with a passion, dearly wishes to prove that Max is the killer, thus forcing Max to discover the killer's true identity. As usual, Max travels unsteadily along a twisty road that eventually leads him to the culprit. At the same time, Max has a starring role in the local Christmas play, Curzin' Toward Bethlehem, which reinterprets the story of the three ...

Clarissa Abbot has been the minister at Shore Side Community Church in Shore Side, New Jersey for just over three months. She feels she is settling into the job well, when difficulties arise. One of the members of her congregation owns a haunted bed and breakfast. The peaceful ghost had previously been something of a tourist attraction, but now it has suddenly begun assaulting people, and the owner wants it exorcised. Clarissa explains that ministers don’t do that, and she also expresses some doubts about whether the attacks are really being carried out by a ghost. This leads the owner to...

Charles Bentley receives two surprises. First of all his wife, Joanna, who is also chief of police in Opalsville where they live, wants to have a large Thanksgiving celebration in their new home. She asks Charles to do the inviting. Under some pressure he agrees, wondering all the while where he will round up enough people for such a gathering. The second surprise comes when his old friend Sidney Collins comes to see him. Charles and Sidney were undergraduates together at Yale and went on together for graduate school in English literature at Harvard. Sidney is a well known public ...

Max Moran reluctantly attends a Halloween party at the Congressional Hotel. When he has too much to drink - which is only a couple of glasses of champagne for Max - he goes off to the hotel library, where he promptly falls asleep. He is awakened by a woman dressed as a gypsy who insists on telling his fortune. She catches his undivided attention when she tells him that his lifeline may be about to run out. She also warns him that a mysterious man will soon come into his life, and he should be particularly respectful of this individual. When just such a strange man shows up that night but ...

Charles Bentley, retired professor of English at Opal College in Opalsville, Massachusetts, and recently published mystery writer, travels to Royston College in New Hampshire to help a woman he loved over forty years ago. Although she abruptly broke up with him at the time, he still feels obligated to her. She is now Royston's president but is accused of improperly attempting to influence a tenure committee, a charge which could force her from office. She requests that Charles represent her at the hearing, and he somewhat reluctantly agrees to do so. Charles soon discovers that fulfilling ...

Shawn Burke is a retired television actor who, for twelve years, portrayed private detective Quentin Mars on a popular television show. Taking some of the substantial money he made as a result of his success, Shawn has purchased a former church in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts and renovated it to be a theater where he intends to put on legitimate theater productions for the many New Yorkers who travel to the Berkshires during the summer. He sees this as an opportunity to give young talent, both actors and writers, a chance to get started. It will also be his opportunity to be an ...

Susan Marlowe is a librarian who doubles as a jewel thief. When Richard Scott, an insurance investigator with mysterious government connections, catches her switching a real diamond for a paste replica, she is forced to help him steal back the famous Eye of Mumbai from an unscrupulous and violent Russian oligarch. Warning herself not to get personally involved with the attractive investigator, Susan soon finds herself becoming progressively more entangled in the theft and in her feelings for Richard. When things go wrong and she is placed in great danger, Susan must rely on her own ...

Charles Bentley, a retired professor of English at Opal College, was once present at the tragic death of an American soldier in Vietnam. Now, a grandchild of that soldier is seeking revenge against all of those there at the time of the incident. One person has already been murdered, and more deaths are promised to come. While Charles looks over his shoulder, hoping to spot the killer before he strikes, he is also tapped to be director of the students' fall play, a production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. The students want to put on a gay version, while the ninety-five-year-old ...

Max Moran looks like Superman but has the personality of Clark Kent. People expect him to take charge, but he'd much rather be a follower. Women expect an alpha male, but he's more the best friend of the romantic lead. This disconnect between his looks and his personality has caused him problems with his family, his girlfriends, and his attempts to develop an acting career in New York. Now he is managing his Uncle Edward's inn in the resort town of Lighthouse Point along the New Jersey Shore, and life is quiet, just the way Max likes it. Then a dead body turns up in one of the rooms, and it...

When the body of journalism professor Joseph Teller is found outside his office building on the Minton State University campus, questions are raised as to whether he fell accidentally or committed suicide. Both seem plausible since the open window in his office sits very low, and he lost his wife to cancer a little over a year ago. Kate Cameron, a retired police officer and current real estate broker, gets involved when her boyfriend, editor of the local paper and former student of Teller, asks her to investigate the death in order to make certain the truth is revealed.

Charles Bentley, a senior professor of English at the prestigious Opal College, is forced into retirement when Garrison Underwood is brought in from England to take his place. When Underwood is found bludgeoned to death in Charles' office, he must discover who murdered Underwood in order to clear himself. Only after the investigation leads to disturbing revelations about his own past and his closest relationships does Charles discover the truth about the body in his office. Newly edited and revised for 2024.

When widowed sixty-five-year-old Ruth breaks her foot in a fall from a ladder, she is surprised when her caregiver turns out to be a sixty-year-old man. Is the successful mystery writer really ready to change her life for love, even if he is handsome and attentive? At the same time Ruth's thirty-year-old niece, Emma, is breaking up with her older lover, who is also a senior partner in the law firm where she works. Will the animosity between them force Emma to change her view of life and her profession? Love can happen in either the early acts of life or in a later one. In either case, it ...

Max Moran, who looks like a hot Superman but has the personality of Clark Kent, is in a musical at The Lighthouse Point Community Theater called Song of the Sagebrush, about a Jersey boy who goes to work on a dude ranch and discovers what it means to be a man. One night when Max and his co-star, Grant, are walking home from rehearsal, they are attacked by two guys and Grant is injured. Since Max was too drunk to fight and help his friend, the only way to salvage his reputation is to discover who the assailants were. As he digs into the event, Max faces increasing danger and is also forced ...

When one of the guests at the Fireside Inn is murdered, Max becomes a person of interest because the dead guest had complaints about the inn and was threatening to go public. The police also have discovered that the victim was killed by a left-handed assailant,and they think Max is probably the killer because he is starring in a play entitled The Left-Handed Man. Even though Max tries to convince them that he is actually strongly right-handed, the police chief is determined to prove Max to be guilty, and the only way he can save himself is by discovering who is the real Left-handed Man.

The Man Who Never Checked Out begins when fourteen-year-old Herman (Herm as he hates to be called) Krause, the son of the manager of the Quarter Deck Hotel along the shore of southern New Jersey, discovers the body of a murdered guest. He makes this discovery while with his cool-headed frenemy, Becca Collins. Herm is a part-time cleaner (never to be called a maid), and Becca is a bus person, as she insists on being called, who clears tables in the restaurant. When it becomes apparent that the violent death of a guest may jeopardize his father's job, Herman decides that he must solve the ...

Pastor Clarissa Abbot is struggling through the pandemic as minister at The Shore Side Community Church, doing more home visits than ever and trying to keep her congregation healthy and safe. Adding to her problems, a member of her congregation, Brenda Fisher, who is a real estate agent, finds the body of a murdered woman in one of her beach rentals. Distressed by her discovery and concerned that the police may see her as a suspect, Brenda comes to Clarissa and asks her to become involved in the investigation. Although she initially resists, Clarissa finds herself being drawn more and more ...

Charles Bentley, semi-retired professor of English at prestigious Opal College in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, is confronted in his office one day by Sebastian Locke, a survivalist living in upstate Vermont who is on campus to give a speech. Locke is concerned because his daughter’s history professor approached her in an inappropriate way. Bentley has the daughter in class, so Locke has come to him for information on this professor. Charles gives him some advice, and they also have an intense discussion about Thoreau. Charles decides to attend Locke’s presentation that afternoon, ...

When seventeen-year-old Abigail Taylor turns down the proposal of her suitor, Tom Dawkins, her family feels that she must go out and make her own way in the world. So a position as a servant is secured for her in the home of Ralph Waldo Emerson.Derest David is the story of the few months in the year 1841 during which Abigail experiences life in the Emerson household at the peak of both its intellectual and emotional intensity. She falls in love with the free spirited but emotionally cool Henry David Thoreau. She discovers the power of the prophetic and frightening Lidian Emerson. She meets ...