From Publishers WeeklyFall is a splendid season on Martha's Vineyard, with spectacular views of land and sea in the ever-changing light. The sudden death of four people in one month, all parishioners at the same church, however, upsets the island's tranquility. In Riggs's absorbing fourth Vineyard mystery (after 2003's Cemetery Yew), Victoria Trumbull, the wise and sprightly nonagenarian island native, is caught in the middle of a jealous battle between the new minister and the retiring minister (both named Jack) at the community church. The ministers' wives are spreading gossip about the four deceased, all of whom provided handsomely for the church. If Victoria's granddaughter, a fugitive from a vengeful and abusive husband, adds to her worries, Victoria can take solace in her developing friendship with the new, city-bred police chief. A complex, well-paced plot, involving a never-mentioned grandparent, an auto accident, a dead seagull and a basket of mushrooms, comes to a neat resolution. A sensitive observer of the scene, Riggs writes with warmth and humor about all-too-human characters with whom readers can readily identify.Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Jack in the Pulpit

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Cynthia Riggs

Mystery

Worldwide Mystery

When Colley Jameson, the unpopular, egocentric editor of the Island Enquirer abruptly cancels Victoria Trumbull's weekly column, the ninety-two-year-old Martha's Vineyard native takes her reporting skills to the competition, and immediately outscoops the Enquirer-with a murder story. Body parts of a local man wash up at two separate locations, and an investigation reveals that he was having an affair with a woman who is fatally poisoned-and just happens to be one of Jameson's ex-wives. A third victim connected to the newpaperman coincides with a series of fake obituaries detailing the ruthless editor's own demise. Certain she's the only person on the island with enough insight to save his skin-and his newspaper-Colley tells Victoria to name her price, before a killer terminates his career. . . permanently. (From back cover)

The Paperwhite Narcissus

Worldwide

Victoria Trumbull, ninety-two-year-old native of Martha's Vineyard, is savoring the sea air over Vineyard Sound with her granddaughter, Elizabeth, when she spots a person who seems in trouble near the top of the cliff. Elizabeth goes for help, but it's too late-the man dies before he can be rescued. The man had been hired as a consultant to see whether a site's soil could support a sewage system for a possible casino. The police call it an accident, but his death is just the first in what becomes a series of baffling murders, involving a Harley Davidson and Indian motorcyclists' rally, tribal disputes, squabbling developers, and deeply buried family secrets. Victoria, who was named a deputy police officer after she proved how valuable she was to fighting crime on the Island, is on the case, assisted by her Wampanoag friend Dojan Minnowfish. Her official position is giving her the confidence to take risks that horrify police chief Casey O'Neill. But Victoria compensates for her physical limitations by out-thinking the bad guys. As in her previous books in the series, Cynthia Riggs captures the rich and varied setting of Martha's Vineyard---from colorful Gay Head cliffs to the motorcyclists' campground where Indian pipes blossom and die---in this stunning sixth Victoria Trumbull adventure.

Indian Pipes (A Victoria Trumbull Mystery)

From Publishers Weekly Victoria Trumbull, indomitable 92-year-old deputy police officer and poet, investigates smalltown skulduggery in Riggs's engaging eighth Martha's Vineyard mystery (after 2007's Shooting Star). Along with the dead body of widow Lucy Pease, Victoria finds property cards containing tax information in the home of one of the three town assessors, Ellen Meadows, who's off island. Knowing these cards should never have left the town hall, Ellen gets on the trail of a skimming scheme involving the assessors and their clerk, Oliver Ashpine. Meanwhile, Victoria learns that Ashpine is threatening to reveal the unsavory past of Delilah Sampson, a flamboyant TV star who owns an island property, if Delilah doesn't pay her outrageously high property tax. Getting an agricultural restriction by turning her property into a farm could be the solution to Delilah's problem. Once again, Riggs, a 13th-generation Vineyarder, depicts the flaws and foibles of her island characters with sym

Death and Honesty (Victoria Trumbull Mysteries, 5) by Cynthia Riggs (2010-05-03)

Deadly Nightshade: A Martha’s Vineyard Mystery

Literature & Fiction

Blackstone

The Cemetery Yew: A Martha’s Vineyard Mystery

Blackstone Audio,Inc.

Gravediggers were supposed to disinter the Norton girl's coffin for reburial in Milwaukee. But the grave under the yew tree is empty. Victoria Trumbull, ninety-two-year-old poet-sleuth, located the coffin only to have it mysteriously disappear again. One after another, people who seemed overly concerned about the coffin vanish, later to be found brutally murdered. As Victoria closes in on the killer, she realizes she may know too much about the yew tree and its potential to cure -- or kill.  Available only in Americana 5.

The Cemetery Yew

Contemporary

Thorndike Press

Jack In The Pulpit: A Martha's Vineyard Mystery

Martha's Vineyard literary journal of short stories, essays, poetry, and cartoons by Island writers, poets, and artists.

Martha's Vineyard Writing, vol. 2, no. 1

Editor)

Cleaveland House Books

Martha's Vineyard Writing is a literary journal by Island writers consisting of short stories, essays, poetry, and cartoons.

Martha's Vineyard Writing, Vol. 1, No. 1

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Books by Cynthia Riggs