Comedy Mystery Thrillers

Thriller scribe Sophie Katz is as hard-boiled as a woman who drinks Grande Caramel Brownie Frappuccionos can be. So Sophie knows it's not paranoia, or post-divorce, living-alone-again jitters, when she becomes convinced that a crazed reader is sneaking into her apartment to reenact scenes from her books. The police, however, can't tell a good plot from an unmarked grave.

It's Christmas time in Caerphilly, and the town is preparing for their live nativity. During rehearsals, Meg discovers a real baby in the manger, with a note attached that says the mother is leaving the baby girl there so that her father can take care of her, and the wording of the note implicates Meg's brother, Rob, as the father. Rob protests that he can't possibly be the father, but the town's suspicion creates a rift between him and his new girlfriend. Rob asks Meg to investigate on his behalf‚ to clear his name and to find the real parents of the baby.

Cletus Byron Winston wishes to marry Jennifer Anne Donner-Sylvester (aka The Banana Cake Queen) posthaste! He’s spent the last year wanting nothing more than for the celebrations to be brief, libations flowing, and BYOB (bring your own blueberries). His future mother-in-law has other plans - plans his intended has been willing to indulge, much to Cletus’s chagrin. Therefore, so must he. To a point. But truth be told, he wouldn’t mind if the meddlesome matriarch disappeared, at least until the nuptials are over.

Idealistic, independently wealthy, and pathologically short-tempered, Twilly Spree has dedicated himself to saving Florida's wilderness from runaway destruction. When Palmer Stoat drops litter, Twilly decides to teach him a lesson.

Bryson Wilde, investigator for hire, lives in an edgy world where the dames are dangerous, cigarettes dangle from ruby-red lips, and the nights are hotter than whiskey-soaked jazz. In R. J. Jagger’s riveting noir thriller, A Way with Murder, Wilde finds himself entangled in two deadly assignments, one for a young, raven-haired attorney on the run after visiting an archeological site in Mexico, and the other for a pretty, little doll-face, who is too mysterious to trust and too hypnotic to resist.

It's 1985, and at Oxford University, Pimm's, punting, and ball gowns are de rigeur. Ursula Flowerbutton, a studious country girl, arrives for her first term anticipating nothing more sinister than days spent poring over history books in gilded libraries - and, if she's lucky, an invitation to a ball. But when she discovers a glamorous classmate on a chaise longue with her throat cut, Ursula is catapulted into a murder investigation.

In 1865 Boston, the members of the Dante Club, poets and Harvard professors Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell, along with publisher J. T. Fields, are finishing America's first translation of The Divine Comedy and preparing to unveil Dante's remarkable visions to the New World.

Beth, Portia, and Eddie Morgan haven't all been together in years. And for very good reasons - we'll get to those later. But when their wealthy grandfather dies and leaves a cryptic final message in his wake, the siblings and their respective partners must come together for a cross-country road trip to fulfill his final wish and - more importantly - secure their inheritance. But time with your family can be tough. It is for everyone. It's even harder when you're all keeping secrets and trying to forget a memory, a missing person, an act of revenge, the man in the black truck....

Sammy Dee is a mid-level Long Island mafioso in witness protection. Didier Onyekachukwu was the corrupt minister of finance of the former Upper Volta. Both men find themselves in middle age, living in the Southern California version of genteel poverty in a down-market condo complex called Paradise Gardens. Enter Marcy Gray, a "mature" actress barely getting by on a meager SAG pension.

Harry Flashman: the unrepentant bully of Tom Brown's schooldays, now with a Victoria Cross, has three main talents - horsemanship, facility with foreign languages and fornication. A reluctant military hero, Flashman plays a key part in most of the defining military campaigns of the 19th century, despite trying his utmost to escape them all.

Poppy Fields has a movie-star mother, 84 million Instagram followers, paparazzi following her every move, and a problem. Her Mexican vacation just went sideways (abducted-by-a-drug-lord sideways). Suddenly her life resembles one of her mother's movies, except the bullets are real, people are dying, and there's no guarantee of a happy ending. Surrounded by trained killers and unsure who she can trust, only one thing is certain - if Poppy doesn't escape, this vacation will be her last.

Perhaps best known for his No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, #1 New York Times best-selling author Alexander McCall Smith delights fans around the world with his warmhearted 44 Scotland Street novels. In the series’ sixth entry, the residents of 44 Scotland Street grapple with problems both trivial and severe, but none so great as when six-year-old Bertie Pollock - who longs to be seven - mislays his mum and learns a valuable lesson about wish fulfillment.

Lenny Marks is excellent at not having a life. She bikes home from work at exactly 4pm each day, buys the same groceries for the same meals every week, and owns thirty-six copies of The Hobbit (currently arranged by height). The closest thing she has to a friendship is playing Scrabble against an imaginary Monica Gellar while watching Friends reruns. And Lenny Marks is very, very good at not remembering what happened the day her mother and stepfather disappeared when she was still a child. The day a voice in the back of her mind started whispering, You did this.

Most people flee to Hawaii for gorgeous weather, white-sand beaches, and cocktails at sunset. Charlotte Gibson, however, is fleeing for her life after a vengeful mobster leaves a severed finger on her doorstep as a warning. Message very much received. That’s how Charlotte - Charlie to everyone except her mom - finds herself on Maui with six dollars to her name, living with a mother who can’t stop giving her advice on how to land herself a husband

The Expo begins with a literal bang: a bomb wrecks the hotel, killing a housekeeper and causing extensive damage. Luckily for Pickax, Qwill is on the scene, his moustache twitching with suspicions that this bomb was intended as something stronger than a warning to someone. His evidence: Koko and Yum Yum's new interest in cheese, especially Gruyere, Brie and Feta. Qwill and the Siamese are on a case that will demand all their feline intuition and mustachioed insight!

When the body of a mysterious woman is found to be carrying the phone number of James Bond, Bond is called in by M to help the investigation. But before he can even reach headquarters he is nearly run off the road in a high-speed motorway chase. Someone wants Bond dead.

Trying to get a rise out of Marley, Ida's been making crank calls and even vandalizing the pancake house. The police can't do much about the pranks, so Marley sets out to bury the hatchet once and for all. But someone's beat her to it - in the most shocking way possible. After stumbling across Ida's dead body, Marley's suddenly the number one suspect in her murder. Clearing her good name is going to be a tall order, but Marley's not about to let Ida keep ruining her life - especially from beyond the grave.

Con man Nick Fox is after Garson Klepper’s golden Peruvian relics. For Fox, convincing Klepper to hire him as security for the relocation of the relics to the Getty museum in L.A. was easy. Problem is, Fox wasn’t planning on Klepper also enlisting the help of the FBI. Fox also wasn’t planning on being paired up with rookie special agent Kate O’Hare. She’s smart, she’s tenacious, and when she’s conned, she holds a grudge. Life for Fox and O’Hare will never be the same again.

This is a darkly hilarious coming-of-age novel and a richly plotted suspense tale told through the distinctive voice of its heroine, Blue van Meer. After a childhood spent moving from one academic outpost to another with her father, Blue is clever and possessed of a vast lexicon of knowledge. But when a drowning and the shocking death of a teacher lead to a confluence of mysteries, Blue is left to make sense of it all with only her gimlet-eyed instincts and cultural references to guide - or misguide - her.

Athens, 460 B.C. Life's tough for Nicolaos, sole investigating agent in Athens. His girlfriend's left him and his boss wants to fire him. But when an Athenian official is murdered, Pericles has no choice but to put Nico on the job. The case takes Nico, with a beautiful slave girl, to the land of Ionia within the Persian Empire. The Persians will execute him on the spot if they think he's a spy.