Jessica is spending her holidays with an old friend, Lloyd Marcus. His daughter is found murdered in her house and her husband Donald becomes the prime suspect.

Jessica goes to New Orleans to check on a distant cousin during Mardi Gras. Upon arriving at Cal's rooming house to fulfil the aunt's request, she finds a party in full swing, a party-goer murdered, and Cal being the prime suspect. Despite not knowing her distant cousin that well, Jessica sets out to prove the man's innocence and find the real killer.

When a tennis star is killed by a bomb planted in his girlfriend's car, all the evidence points towards the girlfriend and her sister, although the sister has since died in a plane crash.

Jessica Fletcher is disputing the inclusion of her short story in a girlie magazine when she finds herself confronted by the murder of the magazine's owner.

Jessica is attending the funeral of Henry Vernon, when the service is interrupted by the departed's ex-lover, who insists that he was murdered and did not, as it was claimed, die of a heart attack.

At the request of Richard Bennett, a friend and a popular actor, Jessica Fletcher goes to an auction to bid for the diary of a dead woman whose journal was stolen on the night of her death. Jessica soon discovers that many more people are intent on getting their hands on the diary but before any bids are made, Bennett is found murdered and the diary goes missing again.

Jessica's old high-school teacher causes friction amongst her family when she revises her will and leaves her entire estate to a TV evangelist. After a confrontation with her son and grandson, Carrie is rushed to hospital suffering heart complications and dies shortly after. However, when she discovers a syringe containing cyanide by Carrie's bedside, Jessica suspects foul play.

Jessica and a colleague named Ames Caufield are on their way home from a literary conference when their car breaks down in a small, southern rural area. While waiting for the car to be fixed, they check into a local inn run by a former student of Ames. Later that night, the woman's son becomes the prime suspect when the sheriff discovers the local bully is found murdered. While working to prove the young man's innocence, Jessica soon discovers the reason why Ames is so quick to want to help has to do with a past romance he had with the young man's mother.

A new themed diner opened just off the interstate in Cabot Cove, drawing the praise of the town's residents and the ire of a competing diner owner. However, when a visiting diner ends up dead and several other diners getting sick from apparently food poisoning, Seth and Jessica help Sheriff Tupper wade through a long list of suspects to find out what their motive was for the poisoning.

It's a bad day for the jurors when Jessica is the foreperson of the jury hearing the case of a man claiming self-defense in the death of an enraged husband.

While visiting her nephew in New York, Jessica runs into a former student, Elizabeth Gordon, in town for a cosmetics convention. Visiting her apartment, Jessica finds Elizabeth murdered and her portrait defaced with lipstick.

Jessica investigates when murder fells a local Navajo Indian guide who opposed an archaeologist's desecration of tribal lands.

After Amos decides to retire early, Cabot Cove gets flooded with dozens of poison pen letters, in an attempt to cover up the surprising murder of a young woman who owns the land that a historic lighthouse is located on. With the help of a visiting travel journalist, it's up to Jessica to aid the new sheriff, Harry Pierce, in figuring who the culprit is.

On the night Jessica fills in as a night school teacher in a women's prison, she is forced to investigate what lead to a prisoner uprising following the death of the prison doctor. As her investigation progresses, she soon discovers the politics behind the everyday running of a prison can be deadly – especially after another prison employees is found dead.

Jessica must help her niece, a jockey whose first victory is followed by charges of murdering the horse's owner.

While staying at a lakeside inn, Jessica investigates the drowning of a championship swimmer.

When a friend of Jessica's expresses concern that she's losing her sanity, the sharp-eyed sleuth downs her pen and rushes to help. It soon becomes clear that things are not what they seem - is someone out to swindle the family fortune from under her nose?

Jessica hurries to London upon learning that her cousin Emma (Angela Lansbury in a dual role), has passed away unexpectedly. Upon her arrival, Jessica learns that Emma faked her death and is asking for her help in finding out who wants her dead.

Crime writer Jessica Fletcher is about to receive a special award at Grenshaw College when she finds the proceedings interrupted by a murder.

Jessica's niece, an actress in a daytime drama, becomes a suspect when the head writer for the show is murdered.

When a real estate developer, known for using substandard building equipment, is found dead at a site outside of Cabot Cove where he was planning on building a high-rise hotel, there is no shortage of suspects who wanted to see the man dead. Jessica soon has her work cut out for her in trying to convince an FBI Agent that a peaceful environmental protestor is innocent in the crime while proving to Sheriff Tupper that another set of skeletal remains that have been found at the construction scene don't belong to a Revolutionary War hero.

After receiving a letter from a friend, foretelling her death, Jessica decides to masquerade as a wealthy recluse in order to investigate her death on the tropical island where her death occurred. Upon arriving, she gets some unexpected help in the form of British spy Michael Haggerty and the local inspector.