Victorian Mansion Series

Art Parker, an unemployed journalist, answers an ad for employment, but the ad has few details about what the job entails or where he’ll be working. He gets the job after an evening interview at a huge Victorian-style mansion miles from anywhere. The owner, an incredibly wealthy old man, hires Art as live-in writing coach for his teenage granddaughter. That sounds like an easy, relaxing sort of job, at least until the next afternoon when Art and Mary Ann—she’s the granddaughter—find the housemaid dead on the girl’s bedroom floor. An out-of-control sheriff, a bizarrely named lawyer, a beautiful librarian, a marvelous cook, and a huge valet/gardener clutter the landscape and add a pile of confusion while Art and Mary Ann decide to do some detecting on their own. What do they turn up? Another body. After enlisting the help of Mary Ann’s friend, Jennifer, the unlikely sleuths eventually solve both murders but not before nearly becoming victims themselves.

What could be more fun than a day at the beach? A month at the beach, perhaps? That’s what teenager Mary Ann Markham, her live-in writing coach Art Parker, and her best friend Jennifer Martin think when Mary Ann convinces her wealthy grandfather to rent a fancy beach house for the entire month of July near the small East Coast town of Shipwreck. But then strange things begin to happen, especially with the appearance of several not very well preserved bodies, an unexpected shooting or two, and a murder with mob overtones. Meanwhile, Art becomes close friends with a local emergency room doctor named Marsha, and he and the girls become somewhat less than close friends with the local police chief, primarily because of the bodies they keep finding. Then Mary Ann and Jennifer disappear shortly before a major hurricane hits the area. Could it be retired mobster “Little” Tony Gambolo, who lives a short distance down the beach, that’s behind all these deaths and the disappearance of the girls? Art, with Marsha’s help, is at his wits’ end trying to find Mary Ann, Jennifer, and the answer to who’s behind the killings.

The butler did it, or maybe he didn’t. It’s summer, and fourteen-year-old Mary Ann Markham is bored. Then she remembers that her wealthy grandfather just happens to own a rather rundown lake a short distance down the hill from his huge Victorian mansion. She enlists her live-in writing coach, Art Parker, and her friend, Jennifer Martin, to help restore the lake and its surroundings to a thing of beauty, using Grandfather’s money, of course. Things get off to a good start—that is until they discover the decomposing body of a teenage girl in the woods. Then there’s the butler who likes to stargaze, the local youth hostel that just happens to catch fire while Mary Ann and Art are attending a sing-along there, the two bodies discovered in the ashes of the hostel, and the local sheriff who thinks everybody’s guilty of something. While fishing from a boat on the lake Jennifer hooks something big—you guessed it—the nude body of another teenage girl. Suspects abound, but especially the new butler, gardener, and housemaid. Time passes. The girls throw a Halloween party at the mansion for their classmates and then disappear. Now Art, with little help from the local sheriff’s department, must try to find them and their abductor before they join the growing list of corpses.

Fifteen-year-old Mary Ann Markham, and her best friend, Jennifer Martin, decide to host an innocent Halloween party for some schoolmates at the Victorian mansion of Mary Ann’s wealthy grandfather. Her live-in writing coach, Art Parker, and his fiancée, Marsha Brown, M.D., have joined the other party attendees in a rather complicated treasure hunt when the game is interrupted by the discovery of a very dead body in a cave. After Mary Ann and Jennifer are nearly killed in a school bus accident another body is found in the cave, and then two more, but what makes things even more bizarre is the presence of symbols indicative of black magic. While the local sheriff’s department seems stymied, Art, Marsha, and the two girls join a local hiking club, thinking maybe its members are somehow involved in the murders. However, instead of finding the murderer or murderers they discover another body in the cave. Things go from bad to worse, with Mary Ann, Jennifer, Art, and Marsha all in line to be victims before the mystery is solved.

Art and Marsha Parker finally have a chance to get away for a week from Marsha’s medical clinic in the small town of Bearford to visit a plush resort for a honeymoon, a gift from their wealthy benefactor, Charles Drummond. Somehow their adopted sixteen-year-old daughter, Mary Ann Markham, who is also Drummond’s granddaughter, and Mary Ann’s best friend, Jennifer Martin, manage to convince the old man that Art and Marsha need chaperoning, so the two girls show up at the resort at the end of the first week, ostensibly to notify Art and Marsha that they’ve been booked for another week but really to investigate a corpse—soon to be two—discovered at the foot of a high waterfall on the resort’s property. With their usual lack of good luck, all four get involved with searching for counterfeit fifty-dollar bills. Then Art, Mary Ann, and Jennifer manage to get themselves kidnapped by three thugs while attempting some unauthorized detective work on their own. While Marsha, inspired by the waterfalls at the resort, convinces Drummond to build a trail to an overlook for a waterfall on his property, the search for the counterfeiters goes on. Art, Mary Ann, and Jennifer keep getting themselves in more and more trouble until Art and Mary Ann come up with a brainstorm that finally leads them to the head of the counterfeiting ring and almost to their own deaths.

A beautiful mid-autumn day, just the day for a Sunday drive in the country. At least that's what former journalist Art Parker, his wife, Dr. Marsha Parker, their sixteen-year-old adopted daughter, Mary Ann Markham, and her best friend, Jennifer Martin, think when they visit a hilltop in the western part of Mercer County that contains a Christmas tree farm; an old, apparently abandoned mansion; and... a corpse. If that isn’t bad enough, after reporting the corpse to Jennifer's uncle, Sheriff's Deputy J.J. McClure, the girls decide they want to disregard the "No Trespassing" sign and explore the mansion's interior--several times. As usual, they discover more dead bodies. Add to that a couple of kidnappings and a cache of smuggled goods, and they're lucky to escape with their lives before they finally discover the real murderer at a most unexpected location.

A dead man leaves his money to his father and niece, but who is the dead man? A man’s body lies on a narrow ledge in a remote Arizona canyon, but who is he? Is the old gold mine really a mine? Why was the girl murdered behind the mountain cabin? What’s it like to be lost in a desert mountain range without food, water, or shelter? Finally, who are the mysterious riders, and what are they up to in the dead of night? Join Art Parker, his daughters Heather Parker and Mary Ann Markham, and their best friend Jennifer Martin as they travel to southern Arizona to try to answer these questions and stumble upon the solution to several murders as well as other illegal activities. The Cochise County Sheriff’s Department is not amused, but that’s a normal reaction to this team of amateur sleuths.

Eighteen and now legally adults, Mary Ann Markham and best friend, Jennifer Martin, offer to help a high school friend find out who murdered her boyfriend at a nearby trout nursery. However, instead of quickly identifying the killer the girls are hounded by additional bodies that may or may not be victims of the same murderer. A surprise addition to their team from a local homeless shelter adds her expertise, and Mary Ann’s adoptive parents, Art and Marsha Parker, get dragged into the investigation as usual. The girls get trapped in an abandoned warehouse, nearly get run over by a train, and are imprisoned in a walk-in refrigerator before finally stumbling on the solution, which almost results in their names being added to the growing list of corpses.

Seventeen-year-old Mary Ann Markham and her best friend, Jennifer Martin, decide to audition with a local amateur theatrical group. They plan to drag along Art Parker, Mary Ann’s adoptive father, until they discover that the tryouts have been postponed because of a dead body cluttering the stage. Never ones to be thwarted in their pursuits by a few extraneous corpses, they soon find themselves involved in trying to identify a clever murderer who seems hell-bent on wiping out actors and stage crew alike. They survive a severe thunderstorm in an abandoned gristmill only to find themselves a target for the killer as well as for a big black dog named Satan.