Cozy Comedy

When Ellison Russell, reluctant finder of bodies, chairs a gala in conjunction with the museum's Chinese funerary exhibit, she expects disaster. So, she's not remotely surprised when a body turns up. Ellison is willing to leave the investigation to the police till an attempt is made on her life. Now she's juggling evading a killer, her aunt's overly-amorous beau, her dog's new love interest, and Mother's displeasure. With bodies piling up, if Ellison's not careful, staying alive might be impossible.

Northelm Boarding School on Lake Placid has the worst bully of all - a demon by the name of Hatchet Jack. M.J. Holliday, along with her partners Gilley and the handsome Dr. Steven Sable, are ready to send him back to the portal from whence he came. The school's summer construction, an uncooperative dean, and the very tempting Dr. Delicious are all trying to distract M.J. from her ghost hunting.

It's bad enough that Tara has to go on trial against the mortgage-frauding "Tennis Racketeers" who cheated banks and homeowners out of millions in between doubles matches. Now she has to go undercover - in a strip club - to strip the sleazeball owner of his indeed illegal livelihood. At least she's working as a bookkeeper, not a pole dancer. And who needs tips when her undercover crush, Special Agent Nick, is the club's bodyguard?

Cricket Crosby is back . . . and she's licensed to snoop! Fresh off divorce and a private investigator's course, Cricket's ready to balance running her antiques store with proving her PI chops . . . if someone will take a chance on her. When a local PI catches a case involving the theft of luxury goods, he hires the former debutante to go undercover to trap a thief. But snooping during PTA meetings and cotillion parties is harder than it looks, especially when Cricket's missteps cause a hunky police detective to cast suspicion on her new bestie, Ruby Balthazar.

Is Mothman real, or just another fly-by-night tourist scam? The truth is out there … way WAY out there in this deliciously snarky humorous mystery. Growing up in backwoods Florida, Bobbie Drex has seen it all – from two-headed turtles to two-timing boyfriends. Her life of hard knocks has left her short on cash, but she’s still packing enough snark to give any whack-job a run for his money. Or so she thinks. But when a mysterious stranger arrives at her mechanic shop seeking repairs to his rundown RV, suddenly it’s Bobbie who’s in for a complete overhaul...

Miss Julia feels a little wistful when Hazel Marie, once her late husband's paramour and now her best friend, prepares to move out and live in sin with that marriage-shy Mr. Pickens. Suddenly, to Miss Julia's delight, a wedding is in the offing: Handsome Deputy Coleman Bates and attorney Binkie Enloe announce their plans to run down to the courthouse and tie the knot. But Miss Julia insists they have a real wedding ceremony. When a missing preacher, a crowd of uninvited guests, and a queasy bride threaten the happy event, Miss Julia is there to restore order.

Sheriff Bo Tully is the kind of western lawman who's as good with the ladies as he is with his guns, and he never lets a death threat get in the way of a good barbecue. He's a man with a sense of humor, which comes in handy when trying to establish order in Blight County. In this latest tale, Tully pursues a 75-year-old missing persons case in which a pair of gold miners (a two-man drilling team known as a double-jack) mysteriously disappeared just as they hit the mother lode in a remote part of Blight County.

Morning sickness sucks. Which is why fashion designer turned amateur sleuth Maddie Springer has spent the last six weeks being a couch potato and Moonlight vampire movie devotee. But when Maddie's best friends finally convince her to venture out, Maddie stumbles on a dead body of a girl who has been bitten on the neck, and life suddenly imitates art in the most deadliest of ways. Now Maddie is smack in the middle of a murder investigation involving a deadly dance club and a coven of Hollywood "vampires".

When Chet the dog, "the most lovable narrator in all of crime fiction" (Boston Globe), and his partner, PI Bernie Little of the desert-based Little Detective Agency, arrive to a meeting with hydrologist Wendell Nero, they are in for a shocking sight - Wendell has come to a violent and mysterious end. What did the hydrologist want to see them about? Is his death a random robbery, or something more? Chet and Bernie, working for nothing more than an eight-pack of Slim Jims, are on the case.

Molly is terrified that she may lose her farm because her idle husband has left her for a rich hobby winemaker and is demanding his half of the land. Meg enlists Mother's help to find Molly a divorce lawyer, which Mother is all the more willing to do because the unfaithful husband's new girlfriend is the bete noire of the wine pavilion. She is so universally disliked that Meg begins to worry about her safety. But it's the unfaithful husband whose murdered body she and Michael find that night.

As the holidays draw near in Caerphilly, Mother volunteers to take part in a big Christmas-themed decorator show house - each room of a temporarily untenanted house is decorated to the hilt by a different decorator for the public to tour. Of course, Mother insists that Meg pitch in with the organization, and she finds herself surrounded by flamboyant personalities with massive egos clashing and feeling their professional reputations are at stake.

The summer season on Cape Cod is over - now it's time for the real fun to begin. Dominick is always just passing through. He is a professional houseguest who follows the sun and the leisure class from resort to resort. But this winter he lingers on a quaint New England island and, in spite of his best intentions, becomes involved in the travails of his eccentric geriatric hosts. An environmental protest against a proposed liquid natural gas terminal turns ugly, and by accident and happenstance Dominick becomes a mistaken suspect in terrorist bombings.

When Adeline Bertrand-Verdon, the haughty, conniving president of the Proust Association, is murdered, Inspector Jean-Pierre Foucheroux is called on to lead the investigation. Soon Inspector Foucheroux is overwhelmed by a seemingly endless list of suspects: from her assistant to her colleagues, her fiancé to her lover, almost everyone Adeline knew had motive to kill her.

Easy's getting harder every day for Tara. A tax-evading pet groomer managed to buzz off a big chunk of her hair...just in time for her strictly-business meeting with country-music heartthrob Brazos Rivers. Of course Tara shouldn't care - she's devoted to Special Agent Nick Pratt, after all - but Rivers does know how to steal a woman's heart with a song....

Dirigió Alemania con mano firme. Ahora no le temblará el pulso para resolver un caso de asesinato. Angela Merkel se retiró hace seis semanas y acaba de mudarse con su esposo, el guardaespaldas y su perrito Putin a una despoblada pero encantadora región del interior de Alemania. Acostumbrada a una vida turbulenta que le llevó a enfrentarse a duros líderes mundiales, situaciones límite y unos tres mil banquetes de Estado, ahora tiene dificultades para concentrarse en la tranquilidad del campo. Dedicarse sólo a hacer pasteles y senderismo va camino de convertirse en un soberano aburrimiento.

Juniper Bean has big plans for her writing career. Swoony kisses, sigh-inducing happily ever afters—she’s going to write them all. There’s just one problem: she can’t seem to stop killing off her main characters. After accepting that a genre change is in order, Juniper sets out to do some research. What’s the best way to carry a dead body? How exactly does one pick a lock? Juniper is going to find out—with the unwilling help of her new roommate, Aiden.

For all those craving more adventures of their favorite bookseller-by-day and burglar-by-night, The Burglar in Short Order for the first time ever collects all of Bernie Rhodenbarr's short-form appearances in one complete volume. From the story in which a prototype of Bernie first appeared (“A Bad Night for Burglars”) to his appearances in Playboy and (maybe? It's kinda complicated) Cosmopolitan...from an essay discussing Bernie's misadventures in Hollywood to a piece commissioned by a European publisher for a tourist guide to New York....

He's no Tony Soprano. Still, local crime boss Giustino "Tino" Fabrizio is one shady character that Tara would love to see behind bars. He operates a security business - or so he claims on his tax forms - but his clients don't feel so secure when it's time to pay up. Problem is, no one can get close enough to nail this wiseguy for extortion. No one, that is, except Tara. Going undercover, Tara lands a waitress job at Benedetta's Bistro - which is owned and operated by Tino's wife.

Callahan Garrity is the owner of House Mouse, a cleaning service that tidies up after Atlanta’s elite. She’s also a former cop and a part-time sleuth. She and her coterie of devoted helpers can ransack a house for clues faster than it takes a fingerprint to set. When Callahan Garrity gets caught in a liquor store holdup on the way home from a St. Paddy’s Day party, one of her best friends is shot.

Although she hadn’t known Leonard Mallett very well, nor liked him particularly, Carole Seddon feels duty bound to attend her fellow committee member’s funeral. As she suspected, the hymns, readings, and sermon are all very predictable - not unlike Leonard himself. What she couldn’t have predicted was that the deceased’s daughter would use the occasion to publicly accuse her stepmother of murder.