Humor Thriller

It's hard to find work as a doctor when using your real name will get you killed. So hard that when a reclusive billionaire offers Dr. Peter Brown, aka Pietro Brnwa, a job accompanying a sexy but self-destructive paleontologist on the world's worst field assignment, Brown has no real choice but to say yes. Even if it means that an army of murderers, mobsters, and international drug dealers - not to mention the occasional lake monster - are about to have a serious Pietro Brnwa problem.

On the western edge of Los Angeles is the gorgeous beachside city of Santa Monica, where the sun-kissed, wealthy residents seem to inhabit real-life California dreams. When movie-star-handsome heartthrob fitness coach Zack Doheny, is found dead on the floor of his gym, the tragedy shocks the elite community, especially those who’d spent many hours each week exercising with the charismatic trainer. As the narrative flashes back to the months leading up to Zack’s death, it quickly becomes clear that things in this coastal paradise are not as glittering as they seem.

Silicon Valley scion Captain Don Donogue is dead under mysterious circumstances. In fact, he might’ve well have been murdered. Just ask Captain Don himself. He’s been sending messages about his suspicious death from beyond the grave. Yep, he’s been tweeting from the afterlife. Or so it seems.

Björn Diemel wird von seiner Frau gezwungen, ein Achtsamkeits-Seminar zu besuchen, um seine Ehe ins Reine zu bringen, sich als guter Vater zu beweisen und die unausgeglichene Work-Life-Balance wieder herzustellen. Denn als erfolgreicher Anwalt hat Björn sehr wenig Zeit für seine Familie. Der Kurs trägt Früchte und Björn kann das Gelernte sogar in seinen Job integrieren, allerdings anders als gedacht. Denn als sein Mandant, ein brutaler und mehr als schuldiger Mafiaboss, beginnt, ihm ernstliche Probleme zu bereiten, bringt er ihn einfach um - und zwar nach allen Regeln der Achtsamkeit.

The fix is in, and the bodies are piling up. A dead actress, a dead gambler, and that’s for starters. With murder following his every step, determined underachiever Steele Hill is tangled in layers of intrigue and deviousness. Pulled from his 1980s cozy world of the racetrack, the rock-music pub, and his favorite band in the world, the Go-Betweens, everybody the wisecracking Hill meets is in danger.

IRS agent turned PI Mortimer Angel is relaxing in a hole-in-the-wall bar in a Reno casino when an attractive young girl hires him to find out who left her a cryptic message demanding a million dollars. At the girl’s house, Mort finds the body of missing rapper Jonnie Xenon - Jo-X to his legions of fans - hanging from the rafters with two bullet holes in him. Mort is shocked when he learns the identity of the girl’s father - and even more shocked when the father hires him to investigate the murder.

In the style of Dashiell Hammett, ex-IRS agent turned gumshoe-in-training Mortimer Angel is approached by a beautiful hooker, Holiday, in a casino bar in Reno. Mort first met Holiday two months ago, but now learns that she's not really a hooker. She's a college engineering student, searching for her younger sister, Allie, who disappeared three months ago. Having seen Mort in the news, Holiday knows he's a PI who finds missing persons.

Aspiring chef Hannah Wendt has a multitude of talents - prowess in the kitchen and in the bedroom - but also a penchant for disposing of bothersome chefs. Wronged by those who steal her recipes, ridicule her weight, and denigrate her talents, Hannah has turned in her apron as sous chef and food stylist to plow new territory - her overpowering hunger for revenge. Hooked on how tasty payback can be, soon she is bumping off famous chefs who've burned her ego with spectacular culinary flair.

In the seaport city of New London, Connecticut, newcomer Connor Raposo has just witnessed a gruesome motorcycle accident on Bank Street. At least he thinks it was an accident. But then he sees a familiar man - who else would wear an Elvis pompadour in this day and age? - lurking around the crime scene. Where does Connor know him from? And why does everyone he knows keep showing up dead?

Novelist Henry "Coop" Cooper is contemplating a new book between sipping rum and lounging on a Baja beach with hotel owner Grady Doyle. When Grady tries to save a drunk from two thugs, Coop tags along for the sake of a good story. The drunk is Ebbie Milch, a small-time thief on the run in Mexico because he has stolen the never-before-seen first draft of Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast from a wealthy rare-book dealer.

Failing grocery store manager Larry Prescott just wants a quickie. With a frigid wife waiting at home, Larry decides to have some extramarital fun with an employee named Maxine Watkins. Though he has no way of knowing it, Larry is sowing the seeds for a crime spree that will be dubbed “The MegaSaver Massacre”.

Antoine Eyrolles, un procureur français en vacances, passe le temps des fêtes au Québec. Il rencontre Tao Bilodeau, qui couvre l’affaire de l’Eggzotique, le drame d’une restauratrice sauvagement poignardée à qui l’on s’empresse de trouver un assassin convenable. Mais ce qui convient aux uns ne suffit pas toujours aux autres. Et ce qui éblouit au premier coup d’oeil n’impressionne guère celui qui prend le temps de regarder…

Midnight Rider Productions is a dark-web nightmare machine, headed by the one man who years ago drove Darby to hide in the seamy environs of Old Town and make his life there. But Darby left his own mark back in the day, and the shadowy head of production has a grudge to settle. Rider has found him at long last and plans to make an example of him.

Time is up in Old Town. As the pace of gentrification reaches frenzy in Portland, Oregon, Darby Holland’s beloved tattoo parlor, Lucky Supreme, is destroyed by a bomb that ripped through an entire city block. Only a warning call from his favorite prostitute saved his life. Developers have been like wolves at the door of Dmitri (the drunken landlord) for the past few years, but this is different.

The night world of Old Town, Portland, Oregon, has gone mad in the grip of gentrification, and at the center of it all is Lucky Supreme, a seedy tattoo parlor, whose proprietor is a street-bred artist with a unique approach to problem solving. Darby Holland has enough on his radar, but when some flash (tattoo artwork) stolen from him resurfaces in California, he can't help himself. His efforts to reclaim it set him on a dangerous path, dragging along his delightfully eccentric colleagues.

Meet Jack Jordan. He’s a smooth-talking con artist with a penchant for the fast life. He’s snuck into Lufkin, Texas, in the dead of night with little more than a beat-up Honda, a hollowed-out King James Bible full of cocaine, and enough emotional baggage to sink a steamship. He’s charming, dedicated, and extremely paranoid.

When eighteen-year-old Ellie Canning is discovered wandering the countryside, dazed and traumatized, she tells a harrowing story of abduction, captivity, and escape. An overnight symbol of survival and empowerment, Ellie enthralls an outraged nation. Then authorities zero in on an unlikely suspect: high school teacher Suzannah Wells, identified by Ellie as the woman who kept her drugged and bound in a basement. The evidence against Suzannah is damning—vilified by the media, Suzannah’s only defense is that not a single word Ellie says is true. Suzannah has no reason to lie.

Meet Tommy Martini, the monk with an anger management problem. His meditations are interrupted by a legacy from his uncle, a crooked priest. Arriving in a New Age Arizona town to claim his inheritance, Brother Tommy meets a charismatic, smoking-hot cult leader who claims that women are being impregnated by alien beings while they sleep. Tommy’s own sleep is disturbed - by cartel hitmen, Mafia bill collectors, and women intrigued by his vow of chastity.

The Edgar-nominated author of Gun Monkeys is back with a thrill-a-minute suspense novel that mixes crime and academia - with hilarious results. Here Victor Gischler draws us into a wild and wicked world, where tenured professors are busy burying bodies, cash-up-front P.I.’s hunt for missing coeds and one desperate street-tough has to decide which he’d rather be: a live poet or a dead criminal.

The second crime novel by internationally best-selling writer Eoin Colfer is a gritty and utterly compelling follow-up to the critically acclaimed Plugged. In Screwed, Colfer adds an entirely new chapter to the adventures and misadventures of Daniel McEvoy, the down-on-his-luck Irish bouncer at a seedy New Jersey bar who, with the help of a motley crew of unlikely characters, solved a bizarre string of murders - including the one of the girl he loved. But people around him continue to die mysteriously, and Daniel is called into action once again.