Humor Suspense

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....

The winds of change are blowing, bringing gentrification to Callahan Garrity's funky Atlanta neighborhood. Though it probably won't harm her House Mouse housecleaning service, not everyone welcomes the rebirth. And when the body of a murdered microbrewer is discovered in the aftermath of a furious Halloween gale, suspicion falls on the aging "flower child" shopkeeper whom the victim put out of business.

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.... Keeping Rita Fontaine, a washed-up 1960s teenage rock star, out of jail is a tough job. It's nothing less than murder when Stu Hightower, the vain, temperamental president of a thriving Atlanta recording company, is found murdered in the den of his posh home. His only companions are the slug in his heart and Rita, dead drunk and looking guilty.

Callahan Garrity has her hands full trying to expand her House Mouse cleaning business. So she's reluctant to take on a client in need of detective services, especially when that client is the most notorious woman in Atlanta - Whitney Albright Dobbs. Whitney is a wealthy socialite who, while under the influence, hit and killed a young black girl and just kept driving. Whitney's light sentence has set the city's racial tensions ablaze, and Callahan is not especially keen on helping track down Whitney's soon-to-be-ex-husband's hidden assets.

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. From her time on the Atlanta police force, Callahan has excelled at mopping up messes of all kinds. But she has no idea what she's getting into when she agrees to work for infamous antiques dealer Elliot Littlefield. The first day on the job, she and her crew are on the trail of a stolen Civil War diary.

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.

Isabel Spellman's life consists of 24-hour surveillance, routine investigations into her acquaintances, and listening devices planted in her deadbolt-locked room. For a 28-year-old in a family composed almost entirely of private investigators or former cops, the tools of the trade turn typical family dysfunction into commonplace espionage.

Little is what it seems to be in a leafy Savannah neighborhood as members of an afternoon cocktail and dog walking club mourn a neighbor’s death. Jealousies surface when friends vie for the widower running for mayor. An old woman with an infamous uncle plots to avenge a wrong. Memories haunt a once successful children’s writer. And a model has won the trip of a lifetime. But a killer lurks and secrets unfold, as does a web of deceit. Is anyone really who he or she seems to be?

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.

Meg's husband has decided to escalate his one-man show of Dickens's A Christmas Carol into a full-scale production with a large cast including their sons Jamie and Josh as Tiny Tim and young Scrooge and Meg helping as stage manager. When a famous, although slightly over-the-hill, actor comes to town to play the starring role of Scrooge, no one expects that he's bringing a lot of baggage and enemies with him.

Sherlock Holmes is an unparalleled genius. Warlock Holmes is an idiot. A font of arcane power, certainly. But he's brilliantly dim. Frankly, he couldn't deduce his way out of a paper bag. The only thing he has really got going for him are the might of a thousand demons and his stalwart companion. Thankfully, Dr. Watson is always there to aid him through the treacherous shoals of Victorian propriety and save him from a gruesome death every now and again.

Mystery-book aficionado Birdie Lindberg has an overactive imagination. Raised in isolation and homeschooled by strict grandparents, she's cultivated a whimsical fantasy life in which she plays the heroic detective and every stranger is a suspect. But her solitary world expands when she takes a job the summer before college, working the graveyard shift at a historic Seattle hotel. In her new job, Birdie hopes to blossom from introverted dreamer to brave pioneer, and gregarious Daniel Aoki volunteers to be her guide.

Having delivered a particularly stirring speech at his recently deceased colleague's funeral, Monsieur Pamplemousse is more than a little disturbed when the coffin explodes during the ceremony. Luckily, his faithful hound Pommes Frites gave out a warning cry just in time, so there were no casualties. But, who exactly is behind this explosion? And was the same person responsible for his late co-worker's demise?

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.

Almost everyone in prison will tell you they’re in there for a crime they didn’t commit, but Anthony Rourke really means it. That’s because he’s actually Bunny McGarry, who has got himself into one of Nevada’s finest penitentiaries under false pretenses. He is there to bust someone else out.

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.

It’s almost Christmas and Bunny McGarry is not in the festive spirit. His mood is not improved when an old friend becomes the victim of a violent assault and, for reasons he can’t understand, the police force he is a member of has decided not to investigate. Getting to the bottom of the case ends up putting him on the wrong side of some powerful people.

Maud Drennan is a dedicated caretaker, but her sunny, capable disposition and snappy quips mask a deep sadness. A tragic childhood event left her in the company of a cast of patron saints who pop in and out of her life like unwelcome tourists. She tries to find solace in her hard work in London...but then she meets the inimitable Mr. Flood. A menace by all accounts, Cathal Flood is a widower living alone in a Gothic Dorset mansion crawling with collector's items and feral cats.

Bobby Gold is a lovable criminal. After nearly 10 years in prison, he's no sooner out than he's back to work breaking bones for tough guys. His turf: the club scene and restaurant business. It's not that he enjoys the job - Bobby has real heart - but he's good at it, and a guy has to make a living. Things change when he meets Nikki, the cook at a club most definitely not in his territory. Smitten, he can't stay away. Bobby Gold has known trouble before, but with Nikki the sauté bitch in his life, things take a turn for life or death.

From Martin Clark - praised by Entertainment Weekly as "our best legal-thriller writer" - comes a wickedly clever, tenderhearted, and intricately plotted novel about a hard-luck lawyer's refusal to concede defeat, even as fate, the court system, and a gang of untouchable con artists conspire against him.