Sarah Winston Garage Sale Mystery

Starting your life over at age thirty-eight isn't easy, but that's what Sarah Winston finds herself facing when her husband CJ runs off with a 19-year-old temptress named Tiffany. Sarah's self-prescribed therapy happily involves hitting all the garage and tag sales in and around her small town of Ellington, Massachusetts. If only she could turn her love for bargain hunting into a full-time career! But after returning from a particularly successful day searching for yard-sale treasures, Sarah finds a grisly surprise in one of her bags: a freshly bloodied shirt...that undoubtedly belongs to her ex, CJ, who now happens to be Ellington's chief of police. If that's not bad enough, it seems Tiffany has gone missing. Now it's up to Sarah to prove that her cold-hearted ex is not a cold-blooded killer.

When Sarah Winston turns Ellington, Massachusetts, into New England's largest garage sale for a day, it's the small town's biggest event since the start of the Revolutionary War-but without the bloodshed. That is, until a valuable painting goes missing…and the lifeless body of an Air Force officer is found in Carol Carson's painting studio, his face perfectly framed with the murder weapon-a metal picture frame. Sarah is mad as heck that someone used her town-wide garage sale to commit a crime-and frame her good friend Carol. She is definitely on this case…but it's not easy rummaging through increasingly strange clues that point to cheating spouses, downright dirty investment schemes-even the mob. And Sarah will have to be very careful if she wants to live to bargain another day.

When Sarah Winston started the virtual garage sale, it seemed like a keystroke of genius and the next logical step in her business. No more collapsing card tables and rainy-day washouts! But what began as a fun way to run garage sales during the long New England winter has become a nightmare of managing people and putting out fires. Online, she can avoid the crowds-but not the crazies. She certainly never bargained on dealing with frightening threats. And when a client is murdered, it's time for Sarah to swallow her pride and seek the help of her ex-C.J. Hooker, chief of police. Forging a tense alliance, they search-online and off-for the killer. But solving this crime before someone else gets tagged seems virtually impossible.

When Sarah Winston's estranged brother Luke shows up on her doorstep, asking her not to tell anyone he's in town-especially her ex, the chief of police-the timing is strange, to say the least. Hours earlier, Sarah's latest garage sale was taped off as a crime scene following the discovery of a murdered Vietnam vet and his gravely injured wife-her clients, the Spencers. All Luke will tell Sarah is that he's undercover, investigating a story. Before she can learn more, he vanishes as suddenly as he appeared. Rummaging through his things for a clue to his whereabouts, Sarah comes upon a list of veterans and realizes that to find her brother, she'll have to figure out who killed Mr. Spencer-and all without telling her ex.

When it comes to running a successful garage sale, Sarah Winston believes in doing her homework. She also believes in giving back. But when she agrees to manage an athletic-equipment swap, she doesn't bargain on an uncharitable killer. The day of the event, the school superintendent is found dead in the gymnasium. Suddenly, the murder suspects are the school-board members-including the husband of a very difficult client who's hired Sarah to run a high-end sale and demands she do her bidding. In between tagging and haggling, Sarah studies the clues to see who wanted to teach the superintendent a lesson. But as she closes in on the truth, the killer intends to give her a crash course on minding her own business.

A wealthy widow has asked Sarah Winston to sell her massive collection of mysteries through her garage-sale business. While sorting through piles of books stashed in the woman's attic, Sarah is amazed to discover a case of lost Hemingway stories, stolen from a train in Paris back in 1922. How did they end up in Belle Winthrop Granville's attic in Ellington, Massachusetts, almost one hundred years later? Before Sarah can get any answers, Belle is assaulted, the case is stolen, a maid is killed, and Sarah herself is dodging bullets. And when rumors spread that Belle has a limited edition of The Sun Also Rises in her house, Sarah is soon mixed up with a mobster, the fanatical League of Literary Treasure Hunters, and a hard-to-read rare-book dealer. With someone willing to kill for the Hemingway, Sarah has to race to catch the culprit-or the bell may toll for her.

As a former military spouse, Sarah Winston's learned a little about organizing, packing, and moving. Her latest project sounds promising: a couple of tech-industry hipsters, newly arrived in her Massachusetts town, who need to downsize. Unfortunately, when Sarah tries to sell their stuff, she discovers it's all stolen-and she's the unwitting fence. Michelle, an old friend of Sarah's from the Air Force base, is in line for a promotion-but not everyone is happy about it, and she's been hit with an anonymous discrimination complaint. When one of the men she suspects is behind the accusations turns up dead in Michelle's car, Sarah needs to clear Michelle's name-as well as her own for selling hot merchandise. And she'll have to do it while also organizing a cat lady's gigantic collection of feline memorabilia, or they'll be making room for Sarah in a jail cell.

Sarah Winston's garage-sale business has a new client: the daughter of a couple who recently died in a tragic accident while away on a trip to Africa. Their house is full of exotic items from around the world that need to be sold off. When Sarah learns that the deceased were retired CIA agents, the job becomes more intriguing-but when an intruder breaks in and a hidden camera is found, it also becomes more dangerous. And Sarah has enough on her plate right now-especially since she's investigating a murder on the side at the nearby Air Force base, where her status as a former military spouse gives her a special kind of access. With so much work piling up, Sarah decides to hire some help, and her new assistant, a former FBI hostage negotiator, ends up being perfect. She has a rare talent for salesmanship-which is good-because Sarah may need help haggling for her life.

Sarah's latest client, Alice Krandle, is sure she has a fortune in antiques on her hands. She's already gotten a generous offer for the whole lot before her garage sale has even begun, but she thinks she can earn more with Sarah's expert help. The problem is that while Sarah's sorting through items from decades past, her landlady, Stella, faces a clear and present danger. Stella's kidnapper has contacted Sarah with a set of instructions, and "Don't call the police" is at the top of the list. But they didn't say anything about Sarah's friend Harriet-who happens to be a former FBI hostage negotiator.