Books like Something in the water by Charlotte MacLeod

During the Great Depression, a veterinary student becomes caretaker of a traveling circus, forming a bond with a star equestrian, an abusive trainer, and an untrainable elephant, a relationship that becomes their only hope for survival.

Stephanie Plum, a disenchanted former lingerie buyer from Trenton, New Jersey, takes a job at her cousin Vinnie's bail‑bonding firm, steering her into the perilous world of bail jumping, undercover cop Joe Morelli and a murder mystery.

A charming and clever women detective, Precious Ramotswe, solves mysteries in Botswana's small town of Midsomin, South Africa, from 1986 to 1997, facing dangers and love in the process. The novel is beloved by readers worldwide for its clever dialogue and characters who are as flawed as the rest of us. The book is a bestseller and has been translated into 45 languages, including Polish, German, and Japanese, among others. It was also voted one of the International Books of the Year and the Millennium by the Times Literary Supplement.

Officer Peter Shandy must uncover a murder mystery in his college after a festive display of Christmas decor leads to a fatal accident.

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec investigates a surprising death in the quiet village of Three Pines, uncovering a sinister truth beneath the seeming hunting accident.

Jeff Goodell explains how rising sea levels will flood coastlines, dissolve cities, and reshape the planet—mixing climate science with on‑ground reporting to illuminate the coming global flood.

When a wife’s hidden letters go unsent, a mystery unfolds in the stacks of a husband’s books, leaving a daughter to uncover secrets that may change their lives forever.

The eighth Professor Peter Shandy mystery follows a deadly owl‑count at Balaclava Agricultural College, where the chase for a rare Snowy Owl leads to murder, kidnapping, and a scramble among faculty.

In the seventh entry of the Professor Peter Shandy mystery series, a gang of thieves target antique vanes while Peter and his wife Helen investigate the crime in a small Massachusetts town.

Former detective turned professor Homer Kelly is drawn into a high‑stakes battle to protect the priceless art of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, where hidden wills and treacherous trustees threaten the collection’s survival.

Fourth entry in Professor Peter Shandy’s mystery series, where Mrs. Martha Lomax and her cat Edmund unravel a death at Balaclava Agricultural College amid a county power struggle between town and university.

"I very much need to be dead." These are the chilling last words left by a man who had everything to live for but took his own life. In the void that remains stands his widow, FBI agent Jane Hawk, surrounded by questions destined to go unanswered unless she does what all the grief and fury inside her demand: Find the truth, no matter what. People of talent and accomplishment, people seemingly happy and sound of mind, have recently been committing suicide in surprising numbers. A disturbing pattern is beginning to emerge. Jane is determined to give up everything to find out why. And if that means going rogue and becoming America's Most Wanted, then so be it. Those arrayed against her are legion, and devoted to protecting something profoundly important-or terrifying-enough to exterminate any and all in their way. But Jane is as clever as these enemies are cold-blooded, as relentless as they are ruthless. And she is driven by a righteous rage they can never comprehend. Because it is born of love.

In his wickedly brilliant first novel, Debut Dagger Award winner Alan Bradley introduces one of the most singular and engaging heroines in recent fiction: eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison. It is the summer of 1950--and a series of inexplicable events has struck Buckshaw, the decaying English mansion that Flavia's family calls home. A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath. For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. "I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn't. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life."To Flavia the investigation is the stuff of science: full of possibilities, contradictions, and connections. Soon her father, a man raising his three daughters alone, is seized, accused of murder. And in a police cell, during a violent thunderstorm, Colonel de Luce tells his daughter an astounding story--of a schoolboy friendship turned ugly, of a priceless object that vanished in a bizarre and brazen act of thievery, of a Latin teacher who flung himself to his death from the school's tower thirty years before. Now Flavia is armed with more than enough knowledge to tie two distant deaths together, to examine new suspects, and begin a search that will lead her all the way to the King of England himself. Of this much the girl is sure: her father is innocent of murder--but protecting her and her sisters from something even worse....An enthralling mystery, a piercing depiction of class and society, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is a masterfully told tale of deceptions--and a rich literary delight.From the Hardcover edition.

Annie Swann, an aspiring children's book illustrator in Cambridge, Massachusetts, finally has the canvas for her dream painting—only to find a mysterious face appearing on the wall, followed by a tragic death and a legal showdown with her uncle, famed sleuth Homer Kelly.

When Professor Jim Feldster vanishes after a night out, librarians Helen Shandy and her husband Peter must investigate the disappearance with the help of mystery writer Catriona McBogle, uncovering a web of secrets in their Massachusetts community.

Daisy Dalrymple, a woman journalist, covers the 1923 Henley Regatta and uncovers a tangled web of jealousy and murder between Oxford rowers, aided by her fiancé, Detective Inspector Alec Fletcher.