Humor Suspense

Mags Rogers and her wire-haired dachshund, Baxter, dig up the dirt in the second scintillating novel from New York Times best-selling author Rita Mae Brown’s delightful series. The foreclosure crisis has hit hard in Reno, Nevada, where rows of homes sit unsold and forsaken. When a former banker is found murdered in one of the abandoned homes, the notion of cutthroat business practices takes on a whole new meaning.

When London journalist Eleanor-Rigby Donovan receives an anonymous letter alluding to a crime committed by her deceased mother, her life is turned upside down. It points her to a bar on the Baltimore Harbor, where she finds a stranger who has received the same mysterious letter about his own mother. Together, Eleanor-Rigby and this young man, George-Harrison Collins, embark on a quest through the shadowy past of the Stanfields, a moneyed Maryland family full of unimaginable secrets.

Forty-eight hours after leaving her husband's body at the base of the stairs, Tanya Dubois cashes in her credit cards, dyes her hair brown, demands a new name from a shadowy voice over the phone, and flees town. It's not the first time. She meets Blue, a female bartender who recognizes the hunted look in a fugitive's eyes and offers her a place to stay. With dwindling choices, Tanya-now-Amelia accepts. An uneasy - and dangerous - alliance is born.

In modern-day America, Dez is a former lawyer and teacher - an ephebophile with a proclivity for teenage girls hiding out in a trailer park with his latest conquest, Chloe.

Having been in and out of courtrooms (and therapists' offices) for a number of years, Dez is adrift, at odds with a society that persecutes him over his desires. From his couch one afternoon, Dez watches an interview with Jasper Ulrickson, a doting father and loving husband whose heartrending memoir, Lessons from My Daughter, has become a national best seller.

Who killed Eric Davenport? A senior mathematics professor at Underhill College has been found dead in his office, the victim of murder. At Underhill, a small liberal arts college with a pricy tuition and a pampered student body, all of the students are close to their professors. But at least one loved Eric Davenport in a deeply inappropriate fashion. Some hated him. And then there is the faculty at war with itself. And the idiotic administration. And the twin boys who live next to campus. And what’s with all those praying mantises?

After the death of his fiancee due to medical errors, hospital pharmacist Daniel O'Dwyer escapes to Oak Island, North Carolina. The only things on his mind are fresh sea air, fresh seafood, Fat Tire Amber Ale, and the avoidance of any type of healthcare institution. But fate and jellyfish draw him back, and reluctantly, he agrees to go undercover to combat narcotic drug diversion at nearby Boiling Grove Community Hospital.

Eloise Foley, known to her friends as Weezie, has been through the divorce from hell. Her ex-husband Tal (aka Talmadge Evans III) was awarded their house in Savannah's historic district, the house that Weezie had spent years painstakingly restoring to its original splendor. Weezie was awarded the two-bedroom carriage house on the same property. Each was sure the other would sell.

It’s been seven years since Gloomy Knob landed in the Ted Stevens High-Security Federal Penitentiary and five years since the end of the war, the one North Korea started when they sent a missile to Cold Storage, Alaska. Serving a life sentence for the murder of his sister, Gloomy spends his time trying to forget about the past. Then one day, Gloomy is snatched from his off-site work station. Instead of celebrating his newfound freedom, Gloomy comes unmoored - he feels he belongs in prison. But his kidnappers believe Gloomy knows where a second nuclear warhead is hidden.

Someone is trying to kill celebrated author Dylan St James. But who would want him dead? And why? And who the hell shoots someone with a harpoon, anyway? Disgruntled failed crime writer Freddie Winters spends his days conning old ladies, setting up fake book signings, sneaking into literary festivals uninvited and lamenting his lack of success. When his old friend Dylan turns to him for help, Freddie agrees to use his limited detective skills to find out who’s behind the murder attempt.

Wisecracking private detective Sam Rockwell is running for his life, but that doesn't keep him from taking the case of a Return who's slipped past Heaven's radar and overstayed his time on Earth. Together with his fiance, Amelia, Sam brawls and dances his way through San Francisco to unravel a zany mystery where nothing is what it seems at first blush.

When a dip-net fisherman hauls in a severed human foot, Lieutenant Jim Wekle is thrown into another whodunit on his remote island. Alaskan mayhem ensues with a rogue gang of elderly women on ATVs, a Planet Patrol environmental boat with an oil leak, and an influx of tourists, each clutching a fresh copy of a book titled, Muskeg Mama. Kram is in rare form as he decides to enter the local work force by applying his unique perspective to a series of part-time jobs.

At 14, Robert "Hutch" Hutchinson is out of luck. His charm and singing voice can't keep him out of trouble anymore. When he's arrested (again): he's given a choice: die in juvie or become a shadow: the fearless, unstoppable, and top-secret guardian of a Future Important Person, or FIP. With nothing to lose, Hutch accepts. After two grueling years at the Future Affairs Training and Education (FATE) Center, he expects to be plunged into a battle zone. Instead he learns that his FIP is someone named Ryo Enomoto, front-man of world-famous boy band International. He must join the band and change his name to Bobby Sky.

It would be easier for Thomas Mullen to move on from what he'd seen if Sarah stopped calling. It would be even better if she stopped appearing to him, and only him, to remind him of what he was powerless to stop. But months later, after Thomas loses his phone and the random woman who recovers it arranges to return it to him, his predicament intensifies. This woman tells him that while she's had his phone, his mother has called. His mother really needs him to call her back. And who is Sarah?

When a young woman is attacked walking home from her local supermarket, Bea Jordan, a smart but unfulfilled checkout girl, is determined to investigate. Colleagues and customers become suspects; secrets are uncovered. While fear stalks the town, Bea finds an unlikely ally in Ant, the seemingly gormless new trainee, but risks losing the people she loves most as death comes close to home.

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.

The Winchester School of the Arts is where dropouts from good prep schools get their last chance. Yet graffiti artist Fun might not even graduate. Enter Carli, an undercover actress researching her latest role. Fun must serve as Carli's assistant to earn his diploma. One problem. Popular senior Darcy has vanished, and as Fun and Carli investigate, they head straight into a trap.

Paraffin, Vermont, is home to the Grosholtz Candle Factory. There, 17-year-old Poppy finds something dark and unsettling: a room filled with dozens of startlingly lifelike wax sculptures. Later, she's shocked when one of the figures - a teenage boy who doesn't seem to know what he is - jumps naked and screaming out of the trunk of her car. Poppy wants to return him to the factory, but before she can, a fire destroys the mysterious workshop.

Karl, Eleanor, and their daughter, Irina, arrive from New York City in the wake of Karl's infidelity to start anew. Karl tries to stabilize his flailing art career. Eleanor, a successful commercial novelist, eagerly pivots in a new creative direction. Meanwhile, 12-year-old Irina becomes obsessed with the brutal murders that occurred in the house years earlier. And, secretly, so does her mother.

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.

Don't you trust me? I mean, look at me. Blond, blue eyed, the very image of innocence. Pretty enough, if you care about that kind of thing. I don't. But would a normal person switch identities with some wet mess of a girl at the airport just to get her to stop bawling about being separated from her loser boyfriend and sent to live with some distant relatives? Nope, she wouldn't. Yet I did. I'm not as normal as you think. And you'll just have to trust me.