The Bailey Weggins mystery series by author Kate White is a cross between Nancy Drew, Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City, and occasionally, the cutthroat office politics from Lauren Weisburger’s The Devil Wears Prada. Like NBC’s Castle and the aforementioned Bradshaw character, Bailey is a writer for a fashion magazine called Gloss.

If you’ve ever suspected that something sinister was happening at your local nail or hair salon, this is a series for you. Bailey, like Bradshaw, has a life full of high fashion and crazy relationships, and hence, does not know her way around a kitchen, though she tries. Incidentally, Castle has a series of books that are penned under the name Richard Castle, the fictional character, and there’s some conjecture online as to who the ghost writer could be.

White is the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine. You can read her biography on her website. Her books highlight trends that one might read about in fashion magazines, with an obvious influence from her day job, but for White, the decision to become a mystery writer was all about following her dream. She even found time to write an open letter to Shiloh in the Huffington Post.

The Bailey Weggins series:

• If Looks Could Kill (2002)
• A Body to Die For (2003) — Bailey encounters spa hijinks when she tries to get away.
• ‘Til Death Do Us Part (2004) — Martha Stewart-esque perfectionist Peyton gets married in Greenwich, Connecticut, but there's a murderer afoot.
• Over Her Dead Body (2005)
• Lethally Blond (2009)
• Mostly Fiction Book Reviews: Kate White

Standalone thrillers:

• Hush focuses on a Park Avenue fertility clinic and a new protagonist, Lake.
• The Sixes, White's newest novel, looks at a college sorority and the exclusionary practices of its resident “mean girls.”

I wanted to highlight White’s mysteries, in part, because NYPL has her novels available in both eBook and print formats. If you happen to be traveling somewhere for the holidays or the new year, you should be able to get a hold of a copy, though I recommend that you don’t download during takeoff, lest you pull an Alec Baldwin. (I jest — in truth Baldwin has done a lot to support libraries).