Showing results by author "Carolyn Ridder Aspenson" in All Categories

When the town’s biggest high school bully of all time decides to come back and haunt Castleberry High, it’s my job to stop him. The problem is, this job is bringing up a whole lot of personal baggage and bad memories...because that bully bullied me. The good news is, the town detective knows my secret and wants to protect me. The bad news is, the town detective knows my secret and wants to protect me. My goal is to send this ghost back to where he came from. But he’s pushing hard for me to solve his murder.

Talking to ghosts can be killer. Castleberry, Georgia is a small Southern town with a ton of history, and that history includes a lot of ghosts. How do I know? Because I can see them. And trust me, that’s not always a good thing. Take the Baptist church on the outskirts of town. I’m in the process of certifying it as a historical building. And not only is it full of ghosts, but...surprise!...there’s a body in the basement. And I’m the one who found it.

I have a perfect life. I recently rented the most adorable little apartment on top of my favorite bookstore coffee shop on Main Street in Holiday Hills, the charmingest of charming small southern towns. I spend my days ghostwriting a cozy mystery series for a well-known author, and maybe just a minute or two crushing on the town’s police chief. But of course, I’d never let that cat out of the bag.

New to town and a little rough around the edges, Detective Rachel Ryder finds herself on the receiving end of a suspicious person’s call in Hamby, Georgia. When the call turns out to be a dead body, the medical examiner is quick to rule the death a suicide. But was it something more sinister? Everyone in the small department believes the case is closed - except for Rachel.

I wear many hats. I'm a friend. A sort-of girlfriend. A ghostwriter, and...oh yeah, a witch. My editor always tells me to “write what you know.” Unfortunately, that’s what’s happening...literally. When the main character in my latest novel - a witch herself - takes a new job with the Magical Bureau of Investigators, she stumbles upon a threat so big, it could destroy everything she holds dear. Fiction, right? Nope. For reasons beyond my witchy sixth sense, everything I write is now happening to me in real life!

Find my killer. Rachel Ryder's world is catapulted into chaos with the discovery of a dire note on her front door begging her to solve the murder of former MLB star, Ryan Hicks. Ryan Hicks, who is very much alive. Initially written off as a dark twist on a promotional campaign for his new charter school, the grim reality hits home when Rachel and partner, Rob Bishop, find Hicks's lifeless body in his lavish home, turning a dismissed warning into a desperate plea for justice.

USA Today bestselling author Carolyn Ridder Aspenson delivers a fast-paced mystery series filled with action and intrigue, perfect for fans of Kendra Elliot, Robert Dugoni, and Lisa Regan.

When the fire department discovers a body near the scene of a suspicious blaze, Detective Rachel Ryder and her partner Rob Bishop are called to investigate. A set of numbers has been deliberately left near the body, and an autopsy reveals that the victim was killed before the fire. This death was no accident. When the investigation turns up few clues and no previous references to the killer’s calling card, Rachel and Rob turn to the media for help, eliciting contact from an unexpected source. It seems a killer from the past is back in the game...and the body count is growing.

Detective Rachel Ryder and her partner, Rob Bishop, are first on the scene. But, while the detectives have solved many tough cases in the past, they’ve never seen anything like this one. Because the dead woman lying at the surgeon’s side isn’t actually his wife - it’s her twin sister. With the same face, the same DNA, and the same ambitions in life, the two women are nearly impossible to distinguish - and every clue comes with a sinister mirror image. Rachel and Rob must untangle the web of dark family secrets, double lives, and deadly betrayals.

Jenna Wyatt thought she'd left her demons behind when she traded her GBI badge for a private detective's license. But when a desperate mother's plea echoes the unsolved mystery of Jenna's own missing sister, she's pulled into a labyrinth of deceit spanning decades.

When psychic medium Chantilly Adair receives cryptic messages from the lacrosse park’s dead groundskeeper, she knows something bad is coming. What she doesn’t expect is tragedy to hit so close to home. Now her son’s best friend is missing and feared dead, and the only clues Chantilly has are the babblings of a confused ghost who won’t accept his death. Will Chantilly be able to decipher the obscure messages in time to save the boy, or will it be too little, too late?

Witches don’t always follow the rules, and when they don’t, bad things happen. Like Cassandra Bloom’s death, for starters. Holiday Hills residents, magical and humans, were afraid of Cassandra. She was the bad witch in every fairytale, the one with the ugly wart and long, stringy gray hair. But she didn’t just look scary. She was scary. Sure, everyone in town might feel secretly relieved Cassandra’s no longer with us, but they’re missing the bigger picture. Cassandra didn’t die of old age. She was murdered.

My name is Abby Odell, and I’m leading a double life. Don’t get me wrong. I love it! But being a witch in a predominantly human world is challenging sometimes. My hometown, Holiday Hills, isn’t your typical small town. It’s a magical town, but not to the humans. At least not until recently. Something’s happening, and it’s not good. Magic is no longer hidden, and people are starting to witness events that don’t seem humanly possible.

Standing over the body of a teenage boy on the lawn of a wealthy family, Rachel has no idea that three more will shortly follow. However, as the young bodies pile up, Rachel is called on to go undercover. Deputized as a Drug Enforcement agent and tasked to work hand-in-hand with the Hamby PD, she becomes a counselor at the local high school. When what seems like a basic sting operation ends in a shootout, Rachel must dig through layers of secrets and betrayal to protect not only the youth in her new community, but the lives of those she loves.

When her best friend Gen comes from Birmingham for an extended visit, psychic medium Chantilly Adair can’t wait to show her Castleberry, Georgia. Excited to introduce her to what makes her home town so unique, Chantilly plans to throw a party the size of Atlanta’s Mercedes Stadium. Though she hasn’t attempted an event that big since her own wedding, she’s ready and willing to take the ball and run with it.

Thirty-five years ago, Genevieve Ryland stepped off the stage of her high school graduation and disappeared without a trace. For years her mother searched for her, hitting dead end after dead end. Now that she’s on her deathbed, her other daughter has asked me to find out what happened to her sister. Before her mother passes. It’s like opening a time capsule buried in 1985 when neon shirts, scrunchies, and big hair were all the rage.

Widow Missy Kingston takes on the job of a lifetime, and it’s not the one at her town’s animal shelter. It’s Halloween season, and the local animal shelter’s pooch adoption manager, Missy Kingston, is excited to show off the available dogs at her town’s Halloween festival! But when she discovers the festival’s organizer dead in a pile of pumpkins, Missy’s convinced there’s more to the story than meets the eye. When Missy sets out to investigate the murder on her own, what she discovers could solve the case, but only if the killer doesn’t get to her first.

I’d sell more homes if the dead bodies didn’t get in the way. I made a promise, multiple times, actually, to my husband, the Bramblett County Sheriff. I promised I wouldn’t put my life at risk doing his job. But... When I find my potential client’s son standing over her dead body, all bets are off. I just can’t let it go, no matter how hard I try. Truth be told, I’d put myself up against a murderer any day if it kept me from taking sides between Henrietta and Bonnie, besties currently on the outs.

Bramblett County Georgia realtor Lily Sprayberry's brand new listing is a hit, just not the kind she expected. When Lily stops by the staged home, she finds the dead body of another realtor lying on the living room floor. With only a week until her destination wedding, and no leads, no potential suspects, and no possibility to leave the state until the murder is solved. Determined to find the killer in time to say I do, she does a little investigating herself. But the killer knows of Lily's knack for solving crimes and sets his eyes on her.

It’s one thing to get attitude from her teenagers, but when Angela Panther’s newest ghost in distress is an in-her-face, snarky teenage boy, the psychic medium lays down the law. When an unidentified 14-year-old boy takes a dive off an interstate overpass, to solve the case, Atlanta area detective Aaron Banner calls Angela to get the truth about his junior John Doe.