Humor Mystery English

When Palmer Stoat notices the black pickup truck following him on the highway, he fears his precious Range Rover is about to be carjacked. But Twilly Spree, the man tailing Stoat, has vengeance, not sport-utility vehicles, on his mind. Idealistic, independently wealthy, and pathologically short-tempered, Twilly has dedicated himself to saving Florida's wilderness from runaway destruction. He favors unambiguous political statements - such as torching Jet-Skis or blowing up banks - that leave his human targets shaken but re-educated.

Planning for a rainy day has never been Val’s forte. But when a storm brews up right in her own backyard, Val’s forced to get off her lounge chair and spring into action. A shady, ham-fisted developer’s threatening to knock down Val’s favorite beach haunt, along with all the precious memories held within its shabby walls. With the owner’s signature on the bill of sale, the plan seems like a done deal. Or is it? Something fishy is going on at the beach, and it’s going to take all the wits Val can muster to put a pig-headed developer out to pasture.

Here, in Lynne Truss' first novel, we meet Osborne Lonsdale, a down-at-heel journalist, mysteriously attractive to women, who writes a regular celebrity interview for Come into the Garden. This week his "Me and My Shed" column will be based on the charming garden outhouse owned by TV sitcom star Angela Farmer. Unbeknownst to Osborne, driving down to Devon to interview Angela in her country retreat, the sleepy magazine has been taken over by new management.

Is someone systematically killing the judges called to the British Columbian bar? At least one has been murdered and several have disappeared. Arthur Beauchamp returns from retirement once again to take on the case, this time defending his former nemesis, backwoods poet Cudworth Brown. He finds himself chasing all kinds of leads, including tracking down a mystery novel that Brown’s unreliable former lawyer has been writing, just as Beauchamp’s own wife, Margaret, has announced her candidacy for the Green Party.

When Izzy agreed to become an undercover poison taster, she didn't anticipate that it might involve driving around the streets of Los Angeles with a corpse in the trunk. Because the police asked her to. She also didn't think finding a body together could be considered a bonding experience until she met Connor's family. But fate delights in marking its territory all over Izzy's expectations. And this time she'll be caught between the powers of Homeland Security, an evil human trafficking ring, and the Taste Society all working toward different ends....

After the notorious 'Middle Street Massacre' of 1951, when the majority of Brighton's criminals wiped one another out in a vicious battle as the local police force enjoyed a brief stop en route for an ice cream, Inspector Steine rather enjoys life as a policeman. No criminals, no crime, no stress. He just wishes Sergeant Brunswick would stop insisting that perhaps not every criminal was wiped out that fateful day. So it's really rather annoying when an ambitious - not to mention irritating - new Constable shows up to work and starts investigating a series of burglaries.

All of a sudden the streets of your city are so overpopulated with security cameras and closed-circuit TV that you have to lock yourself in the bathroom to have an undocumented moment. And locks, which used to provide the recreational pleasure of a moderately challenging crossword puzzle, have become genuinely pickproof.

For Mrs Pargeter, it is a matter of principle that she should complete any of her late husband's unfinished business. Amongst his many bequests, perhaps the most valuable is his little black book, in which he listed all the people who ever worked for him, with details of their particular skill sets. This means that whenever Mrs P has a crime to solve, she can readily contact someone with the relevant expertise.

On a blustery day in late fall, Hank sneaks into the back of Slim's pickup and finds himself at a neighboring rancher's fall branding...the very neighbor, in fact, who owns the gorgeous Miss Scamper the Beagle! Unfortunately, Miss Scamper has always been a little hard to figure out, and he can't decide if she's crazy about him...or just plain crazy. And, as the day unfolds, it even begins to look like she's angling to land him in a heap of trouble with her pit bull boyfriend, Steel!

Carole Seddon has never enjoyed holidays much. Nevertheless, she has allowed herself to be persuaded by her friend Jude to accept a fortnight’s free accommodation at a luxurious Turkish villa owned by Jude’s property developer friend Barney Willingdon. But from the outset the holiday is marred by a series of menacing incidents.

Leave it to me, Lexi Carmichael, to become a target for an elite organization of cybercriminals simply by being in the wrong place at the right time. As if I weren't already freaking out about planning my best friend's bachelorette party, I now have to keep my eyes peeled for people trying to kill me. After accidentally intercepting a dangerous hack into the NSA and discovering the involvement of a foreign country in said hack, things begin to get seriously complicated. Diplomats, danger, and spies, oh my!

When Miss Julia hears that Miss Mattie Freeman has taken a fall and is in the hospital, she wishes she'd spent more time getting to know the woman - and not just because she's last to hear about the accident! So when the tumble proves fatal, the last thing Miss Julia expects is a phone call from Ernest Sitton, Attorney at Law. Suddenly, Miss Julia finds herself the executrix of Miss Mattie's estate, and from what Ernest has to say, Miss Mattie's coffers weren't exactly full.

After a series of high-profile cases at my cyberintelligence firm, I was looking forward to a simple job. All I had to do was personally deliver a revolutionary microchip to a manufacturing plant in Indonesia. Easy, right? Wrong. Someone else wants the design and is willing to kill to get it. A failed hijacking attempt lands me; my best friend, Basia; and our boss, Finn, in the middle of the jungle.

A fake fiancée. An alive deceased husband. Samantha’s life just got more complicated. When Stella MacInerney asks Samantha to be her maid of honor, she's surprised. The woman has enough stepdaughters from her three previous marriages to ask one of them. Why didn’t she? Then Leo asks Samantha to be his plus-one to the wedding, as his fake fiancée. What’s up with that? So when Stella is kidnapped the eve of her wedding it’s up to Samantha to get to the bottom of these mysteries. When Stella’s ransomed for three million dollars, Samantha has 24 hours to find her alive.

There’s no rule book for this deadly game. When Samantha’s friend and sometimes boss AJ Gunn is accused of murdering the star quarterback for the Oregon pro-team she knows three things: No way is AJ guilty even if he doesn’t have a solid alibi, this is not a one gal PI gig, she’s going to need help, and rich people are crazy. If Samantha thought she was out of her element in Wind River, investigating in a new town is like working in a foreign land. Looking for a real suspect, Samantha meets a host of powerful characters with deep pockets and dark secrets.

Deputy coroner Mattie Winston knows a thing or two about dead bodies. That's why she's on the case of Derrick Ames, a high school math teacher stabbed to death with a barbecue fork straight to the heart. Sure, she's turned up some motives and a few suspects, but nothing adds up. Especially when the evidence points to Ames's teenage son. Newly pregnant Mattie can't believe it, even as her own long-estranged father may be following her.

It was supposed to be a simple caviar heist. Dortmunder is almost in the building when the alarm sounds, forcing him up the fire escape and onto the roof. He leaps onto the next building, smashing his ankle and landing in the den of the worst kind of creature he can imagine: nuns.

A 1935 hurricane in the Florida Keys destroyed the East Coast Railway, killed five-hundred people and blew away the town of Islamorada. Lost in that storm was Mathew Kriegel, a finance director for the railroad, and one and a quarter million dollars in gold. Now newly minted private investigators Skip More and James Lessor, of More Or Less Investigations have been hired to find that lost treasure. Fighting off competitors, scuba diving, digging in a spooky cemetery and almost getting killed is only part of their job. Skip and James have stumbled onto the biggest most dangerous adventure of their lives.

When Claire's grandfather and his army buddies converge in the Arizona desert to find new wives, it's her thankless job to keep them out of trouble with the opposite sex. But when she finds a human leg bone and partners with a reluctant geotechnician to dig up secrets from the past, trouble finds her. If she doesn't stop digging, she could wind up dead.

Holt Box, a beloved country singer on the comeback trail is killed in Lucky’s lover, Jean-Charles’, kitchen. Mr. Box dies in Lucky’s father’s arms. Her former lover, Teddie, is accused of the murder. A heavy-hitter in the Macanese underworld is working over Lucky’s father. An old nemesis salivating for revenge gets out of jail on a technicality. Lucky’s mother is ramping up an ill-advised political campaign. And the holidays are racing to a crescendo.