Critics and fans alike are wild about Rita Mae Brown's richly imagined and utterly engaging foxhunting mysteries-and this latest novel promises more thrilling hunts, breathtaking vistas, and an all-new sinister scandal.
Millions of dollars seem to be missing after a long-overdue audit of the local aluminum plant reveals a major accounting discrepancy. Company president Garvey Stokes finds himself at a loss-in more ways than one. He turns to his sharp-tongued, ornery bookkeeper, Iphigenia "Iffy" Demetrios, for an explanation, but she's no help. Yet when the fuzzy math suddenly includes a...

A rich, atmospheric murder mystery . . . rife with love, scandal . . . redemption, greed and nobility, raved the San Jose Mercury News about Outfoxed, Rita Mae Brown s first foxhunting masterpiece. In The Hunt Ball, the latest novel in this popular series, all the ingredients Brown s readers love are abundantly present: richness of character and landscape, the thrill of the hunt, and the chill of violence.
The trouble begins at Custis Hall, an exclusive girls school in Virginia that has gloried in its good name for nearly two hundred years. At first, the outcry is a mere tempest in a...

From the bestselling author of the landmark work Rubyfruit Jungle comes an engaging, original new novel that only Rita Mae Brown could have written. In the pristine world of Virginia foxhunting, hunters, horses, hounds, and foxes form a lively community of conflicting loyalties, where the thrill of the chase and the intricacies of human-animal relationships are experienced firsthand--and murder exposes a proud Southern community's unsavory secrets. . . .
As Master of the prestigious Jefferson Hunt Club, Jane Arnold, known as Sister, is the most revered citizen in the Virginia Blue Ridge...

Curiosity just might be the death of Mrs. Murphy--and her human companion, Mary Minor "Harry" Haristeen.Small towns are like families: Everyone lives very close together. . .and everyone keeps secrets.Crozet, Virginia, is a typical small town-until its secrets explode into murder.Crozet's thirty-something post-mistress, Mary Minor "Harry" Haristeen, has a tiger cat (Mrs. Murphy) and a Welsh Corgi (Tucker), a pending divorce, and a bad habit of reading postcards not addressed to her.When Crozet's citizens start turning up murdered, Harry remembers that each received a card with a tombstone on...

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...

Perched right on the Mason-Dixon line, tiny Runnymede, Maryland, is ripe with a history almost as colorful as the women who live there--from Celeste Chalfonte, headstrong and aristocratic, who murders for principle and steals her brother's wife, to Fannie Jump Creighton, who runs a speakeasy right in her own home when hard times come knocking. Then of course, there're Louise and Julia, the boldly eccentric Hunsenmeir sisters. Wheezie and Juts spend their whole lives in Runnymede, cheerfully quibbling about everything from men to child-rearing to how to drive a car. But they never let...

If you crossed Mitford, North Carolina, with Peyton Place, you might come up with Runnymede, Maryland, the most beguiling of Southern towns. In Loose Lips, Rita Mae Brown revisits Runnymede and the beloved characters introduced in Six of One and Bingo, serving up an exuberant portrayal of small-town sins and Southern mores, set against a backdrop of homefront life during World War II.
-I'm afraid life is passing me by, - Louise told her sister.
-No, it's not, - Juts said. -Life can't pass us by. We are life.-
In the picturesque town of Runnymede, everyone...

Mrs. Murphy thinks the new man in town is thecat's meow.... Maybe she should think again.Small towns don't take kindly to strangers--unlessthe stranger happens to be a drop-dead gorgeous andseemingly unattached male. When Blair Bainbridgecomes to Crozet, Virginia, the local matchmakerslose no time in declaring him perfect for theirnewly divorced postmistress, Marry Minor "HarryHaristeen." Even Harry's tiger cat, Ms.Murphy, and her Welsh Corgi, Tee Tucker, believe hesmells A-okay. Could his one little imperfectionbe that he's a killer? Blair becomes the mostlikely suspect when the pieces of a...

Mrs. Murphy digs into Virginia history--and gets her paws on a killer.

The most popular citizen of Virginia has been dead for nearly 170 years. That hasn't stopped the good people of tiny Crozet, Virginia, from taking pride in every aspect of Thomas Jefferson's life. But when an archaeological dig of the slave quarters at Jefferson's home, Monticello, uncovers a shocking secret, emotions in Crozet run high--dangerously high.

The stunning discovery at Monticello hints a hidden passions and age-old scandals. As postmistress Mary Minor "Harry" Haristeen and some of Crozet's Very Best...

It takes a cat to write the purr-fect mystery--

"People who love cats...have a friend in Rita Mae Brown," declares The New York Times Book Review. And nowhere is it more obvious than in this, her sixth deliciously witty foray into detective fiction written with the paws-on help of collaborator Sneaky Pie Brown, and starring that irrepressible crime-solving tiger cat, Mrs. Murphy.

As the principal of St. Elizabeth's, an exclusive private school that caters to Crozet, Virginia's, best families, Roscoe Fletcher has proven himself to be a highly effective and vastly popular...