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Tess and Tilly book cover 1
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Tess and Tilly
Series · 15
books · 2017-2024

Books in series

The Christmas Letter book cover
#1

The Christmas Letter

2017

A cozy mystery series featuring family who are friends and friends who are family. Set in the small town of White Eagle Montana, the series features Tess and her dog Tilly, who spend their days delivering the latest gossip along with the daily mail. When a close friend is murdered they join forces with the new Veterinarian in town to sleuth out the truth behind the shocking murder that is rocking the community as it prepares for the annual Christmas Festival.
The Valentine Mystery book cover
#2

The Valentine Mystery

2018

If you love small towns, endearing relationships, food, animals, and a touch of murder, you will love this new mystery series by Kathi Daley, author of the popular Zoe Donovan Cozy Mystery Series. It is Valentine's Day in White Eagle Montana and Tess and Tilly are busier than ever delivering Valentine Cards along with the daily mail. Of course it wouldn't be Valentine's Day in White Eagle without a mystery to solve or a holiday adoption party to prepare for. When Tess happens upon a vehicle accident where one man dies, she gets pulled into a mystery with roots into the past. With Tony's help she not only tracks down a killer but she looks into the occurrence of a missing person as well. Tony is still looking into the case of Tess' father's disappearance, meanwhile Tess and Tilly team up with Brady to make sure that every animal shelter resident finds their perfect match in time for Valentine's Day.
The Mother's Day Mishap book cover
#3

The Mother's Day Mishap

2018

If you love small towns, endearing relationships, food, animals, and a touch of murder, you will love this new mystery series by Kathi Daley, author of the popular Zoe Donovan Cozy Mystery Series. It's Mother's Day in White Eagle Montana and spring has come to the small foothills community. It's the season for puppies and kittens to be born and rehomed, families to gather for an outdoor picnic and a baseball game, friends to fall in love, and a shocking mystery to filter to the surface after so many years. Join Tess and Tilly as they sleuth out the truth while delivering the daily mail.
The Halloween House book cover
#4

The Halloween House

2018

Every town has one. The big old house which has stood empty for so long that no one really remembers anyone living there. The iconic subject of lore and folktales which hints at supernatural occurrences, tragedy, and family curses, that can be neither confirmed nor denied. For the town of White Eagle, Montana, the house that served as the subject of ghostly stories by the campfire was a huge old mansion built more than fifty years ago by a wealthy industrialist as a summer home for his wife and five children. The house, void of love and laughter, served as a sort of luxury prison far away from the hustle and bustle of Hartford Harrington’s full and busy life in San Francisco. Structurally, Harrington House had weathered the long winters and hot summers of northern Montana. It had endured long after every one of those five children had been buried in the little family cemetery at the edge of the huge estate. I’m really not sure why the place was never sold, or even lived in, by whichever Harrington relation inherited the place, but after the summer Houston Harrington jumped from the third floor window to the concrete bricks of the veranda below, not a single Harrington or Harrington heir had set foot in the place. Until now. When Jordan Westlake inherits the house from his mother, he decides to break tradition and take up residence. He expected that the renovation on the old mansion would be an expensive and time consuming endeavor, what he didn't expect to find was a skeleton in his closet. Literally.
The Thanksgiving Trip book cover
#5

The Thanksgiving Trip

2018

The entire Thomas family takes a Thanksgiving trip to a mountain cabin after Tess learns that her father visited the area every autumn to hunt and fish before his supposed death in a fiery truck accident. After arriving at the cabin, Tess and Tony, along with Mike and Bree, team up to investigate a suspicious death, while Tess and Tony secretly talk to people who live in the area and once knew her father. Hoping to finally find answers for her unanswered questions regarding her father's current whereabouts, Tess widens her search which lead her to a startling realization. Meanwhile, a stray dog seems intent on adopting Mike in spite of Mike's insistence that there is no way he has room in his life for an energetic and mischievous puppy.
The Saint Paddy's Promise book cover
#6

The Saint Paddy's Promise

2019

If you love small towns, endearing relationships, food, animals, and a touch of murder, you will love this cozy mystery series.Sixty years ago a man made a promise to the woman he loved to meet her on Saint Patrick's Day. They were to meet in the park on the bench where they liked to sit and watch the world go by. The couple were deeply in love and planned to marry but he never showed up at the rendezvous point. Every Saint Patrick's Day since then the woman has made a pilgrimage to the bench to wait for her one true love. Tess and Tilly see the woman sitting with her granddaughter on the bench and decide to stop and chat. During their conversation the granddaughter tells Tess the story of her grandmother and the man who professed his love and promised to return but never did. Tess is drawn in by her story and agrees to try to find the answers, the elderly woman has sought all her life. She enlists the help of Tony as well as the woman's granddaughter. Meanwhile, Bree is knee deep in wedding planning, there is a new murder in town, and Tony gets a lead on Tess' father.
The Halloween Haunting book cover
#7

The Halloween Haunting

2019

If you love small towns, endearing relationships, food, animals, and a touch of murder, you will love this cozy mystery series. In book 7, Tess and Brady are planning a haunted house fundraiser so they can expand the shelter to include a top of the art training facility as well as a permanent residence for hard to place animals. During the decorating party they find a skeleton - a real skeleton - hidden behind a false wall in the attic. They turn the skeleton over to Mike but once they do everything starts going wrong and Tess wonders if they haven't somehow managed to awaken an angry spirit. Mike thinks Tess is letting her imagination run away with her but she trusts her instinct so, with Tony's help, she begins to dig around on her own. The deeper they dig the more they find including a second more recent body hidden within the creepy old house. Meanwhile, Bree and Mike are adjusting to married life, Tess finds out something alarming about her father's life before he met her mother, and plans are underway for another Thomas Thanksgiving.
The Christmas Clause book cover
#8

The Christmas Clause

2019

If you love small towns, endearing relationships, food, animals, and a touch of murder, you will love this cozy mystery series. With just two weeks until the highly anticipated Christmas on Main event, the tiny town of White Eagle Montana is all decked out for the season. With the annual tree lighting just around the corner, Tess and Tony are busy with their own holiday preparations, until someone close to Tess is shot and killed in front of her own home. Tess jumps in to help Mike track down the killer, believing the gunman to have been connected to the mystery surrounding her own father’s disappearance. Her theory seems plausible, and even probable, until Santa is found dead an hour before the annual Santa parade, messing up Tess’s theory and complicating things even further.
The Puppy Project book cover
#9

The Puppy Project

2020

If you love small towns, endearing relationships, food, animals, and a touch of murder, you will love this cozy mystery series. Tony has decided to donate a hundred percent of the proceeds from the video game he developed with his friend Shaggy to the White Eagle Animal Shelter. Tess and Brady plan to use the generous donation to expand the facility. Permanent housing for elderly, sick, and other hard to place animals, is their main focus, but then Brady decides to go all in on the new state of the art service dog and search and rescue training facility, and Tess makes a major decision that will affect the rest of her life. Meanwhile, Tess has her feeling hurt when her dad contacts Tony directly to ask for help tracking down someone from his past, but as they dig deeper into the correspondence they begin to wonder if the email even really is from her dad. Could someone other than Tess’s dad be using Tony to find the women Grant Tucker helped decades ago?
The Wedding Plan book cover
#10

The Wedding Plan

2020

If you love small towns, endearing relationships, food, animals, and a touch of murder, you will love this mystery series set in the small town of White Eagle Montana. In book 10 in the series, Tess and Tony plan a secret wedding ceremony, Nona plans a visit, and Tess and Mike plan a face to face meeting with their father. Of course you know what they say about the best laid plans. Meanwhile, Tess starts her new job, Tess and Tony welcome a new member to their family, the partial remains of two different men are found during a search and rescue mission, and Mike and Bree are faced with an important decision.
The Baby Plan book cover
#11

The Baby Plan

2021

If you love small towns, endearing relationships, food, animals, and a touch of murder, you will love this mystery series set in the small town of White Eagle Montana. In book 11 in the series, Tess fills in at the post office after the woman who took over her route broke her leg. While on route for the first time in a year she discovers that her father has left her brother Mike with a baby to hide and protect. Tess has never really been one to go all gooey over babies but when she discovers this particular little darling in need she enlists Tony's help to make sure she is well hidden and to look for the babies mother. Meanwhile Tess' mother has a new boyfriend her father isn't too happy about and Mike has a new murder to solve.
The Murder Chronicles book cover
#13

The Murder Chronicles

2022

If you love small towns, endearing relationships, food, animals, and a touch of murder, you will love this mystery series set in the small town of White Eagle Montana. Tess and Tony are busy preparing for the annual Spring Fling, an event designed to both ring in the tourism season and welcome the end of cold temperatures and drifting snow, when a man with a mission sends Tess a letter detailing an odd but intriguing request. It seems that years ago, Simon Baldwin, one of twelve members of a secret society, identified fifteen cold case murders which they then took it upon themselves to solve them. They chronicled the investigation of each murder in a journal they titled: The Murder Chronicles. Of the fifteen murders, fourteen had been successfully closed by the group. One case remained unsolved and Simon, the only surviving member of the original group of twelve, is determined to solve the case before his death. Simon is a Montana native who’d heard about Tess and her success tackling this very sort of thing, so he sent her the journal and asked for her help in solving the last unsolved murder.
The Castle Caper book cover
#14

The Castle Caper

A Cozy Mystery

2022

If you love small towns, endearing relationships, food, animals, and a touch of murder, you will love this mystery series set in the small town of White Eagle Montana. In book 14 in the series, strange lights, sounds in the night, cold drafty spaces, and moved and missing items, can only mean one thing to the locals who’ve lived in the isolated Scottish countryside for generations. But in spite of the assurance of the villagers that the other worldly pranksters will have their fun and then leave, the new owner of the Faulkner Castle hires Tony to come to Scotland and install a state-of-the-art security system. Tony doesn’t believe in ghosts and the job seems like a perfect opportunity to take some time away from White Eagle, so he talks to Tess, and they agree to make the trip. Fun is had by all until Tess spots her dad in a local pub and realizes that something more than they originally thought might actually be going on.
The Christmas Visitor book cover
#15

The Christmas Visitor

2023

If you love small towns, endearing relationships, food, animals, and a touch of murder, you will love this mystery series set in the small town of White Eagle Montana. It's December in White Eagle and Tess and Tony are preparing for a huge Christmas celebration. The town is planning their annual festival, which has Tess and Tony struggling to stay ahead of things. In addition to their work with the festival, Tess fills in for the mail carrier who took over her route and Tony spends long days with Shaggy working to finish the development of their most recent video game. In spite of their busy schedules' things seem to be going smoothly until an unexpected visitor comes to town with an unusual request sending Tess and Tony off in a direction no one had seen coming. A Cozy Mystery
The Sleuthing Game book cover
#16

The Sleuthing Game

2024

If you love small towns, endearing relationships, food, animals, and a touch of murder, you will love this mystery series set in the small town of White Eagle Montana. Tess, Tony, and Tilly head to Lake Tahoe where they join Shaggy for a video game convention. The convention has been promoted as a place to get a first look at the video games that have recently been released or will be released on the near future. Of course, the hype created by this high-profile affair pretty much guarantees that all the big names in the industry will turn out, including Zak Zimmerman, who is scheduled to arrive via private jet with his wife Zoe, her dog Charlie, and Zak's honorary daughter Alex. As can be expected, Tony and Shaggy, as well as Zak and Alex, are busy demonstrating their new offerings. Tess and Zoe find themselves at loose ends and decide to go snowboarding. It's the perfect day, with blue skies and an incredible view of the lake, until the amateur sleuths venture out of bounds only to find a rival in the video game industry, face down in the snow.

Author

Kathi Daley
Kathi Daley
Author · 207 books

Kathi lives with her husband, kids, grandkids, and dogs in beautiful Lake Tahoe. When she isn't writing, Kathi likes to read (preferably at the beach or by the fire), cook (preferably something with chocolate or cheese,) and garden (planting and planning not weeding). She also enjoys spending time on the water when she's not hiking, biking, or snowshoeing, the miles of desolate trails surrounding her home. Kathi uses the mountain setting in which she lives, along with the animals (wild and domestic) that share her home, as inspiration for her cozy mysteries. Join me on Facebook at Kathi Daley Books (www.facebook.com/kathidaleybooks) for updates on my books, photos of life in Lake Tahoe, recipes, contests, and giveaways. For weekly updates and contests sign up for The Daley Weekly Newsletter (http://eepurl.com/NRPDf).

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