Humor Thriller

Mma Ramotswe is busy investigating her latest case: a woman who is looking for her family. The problem is, the woman doesn't know her real name of whether any members of her family are now living. Meanwhile, Phuti Radiphuti has bought Mma Makutsi a glorious new bed. Unfortunately, it will inadvertently cause her several sleepless nights.

Out of work for months, Lussi Meyer is desperate to work anywhere in publishing. Prestigious Blackwood-Patterson isn’t the perfect fit, but a bizarre set of circumstances leads to her hire and a firm mandate: Lussi must find the next horror superstar to compete with Stephen King, Anne Rice, and Peter Straub. It’s the ’80s, after all, and horror is the hottest genre. But as soon as she arrives, Lussi finds herself the target of her coworkers’ mean-spirited pranks.

Perhaps best known for his No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, #1 New York Times best-selling author Alexander McCall Smith delights fans around the world with his warmhearted 44 Scotland Street novels. In the series’ sixth entry, the residents of 44 Scotland Street grapple with problems both trivial and severe, but none so great as when six-year-old Bertie Pollock - who longs to be seven - mislays his mum and learns a valuable lesson about wish fulfillment.

Rape. Murder. Brain-eating. Never before has a work of fiction dared to delve so deeply into the realms of perversion, sexual dementia, and bad taste. Who is he? What is he? An inbred homicidal pervert? A supernatural psychopath? Who or whatever he is, he's on a roll now, raging out of the Virginia backwoods and leaving in his wake a trail of blood, guts, and disgust far beyond the limits of your reckoning.

Maxine Tarnow is running a nice little fraud investigation business on the Upper West Side, chasing down different kinds of small-scale con artists. She used to be legally certified but her license got pulled a while back, which has actually turned out to be a blessing because now she can follow her own code of ethics - carry a Beretta, do business with sleazebags, hack into people's bank accounts - without having too much guilt about any of it. Otherwise, just your average working mom - two boys in elementary school, an off-and-on situation with her sort of semi-ex-husband Horst - till Maxine starts looking into the finances of a computer-security firm....

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.

Meg Langslow is pregnant with twins when Michael asks if she wouldn't mind having a houseguest. One of his doctoral students is directing his new translation of a play by a minor Spanish playwright, who will come to town for the production. Señor Mendoza turns out to be a partygoer who loves to spend raucous evenings among adoring students...at Casa Langslow. Into this chaos arrives the dean of the English department, who insists the play be canceled. Then the dean is found murdered.

Dorothy Graham is dead, which is inconvenient, not least for her. Luckily, she has planned for this eventuality. Now, if any of the truly dreadful people she is related to want to get their hands on her money, they’re going to have to do so via a fiendish difficult and frankly bizarre competition of Dorothy’s devising. After all, just because you’re dead, it doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a last laugh at the expense of people who made your life miserable.

Who killed Helena Henry? The shorter list may be who didn’t want her dead. Psychic Raissa Bordeaux thought she’d left her former life behind, hidden away in her eclectic shop in the French Quarter. But when a child is kidnapped and Helena Henry appears, Raissa risks her true identity by offering the police help with the case. New Orleans Detective Zach Blanchard doesn’t believe in psychic hooey and is certain Raissa didn’t get her facts about the case from a crystal ball.

I never thought I would date a dragon, or feed him chicken strips late at night, but life has gotten interesting. My steady dragon - you may know him as Lord Zavryd’nokquetal, but I get to call him Zav - is offering to take me to the elven homeland to meet my father and learn to harness the magic in my blood. Sure, I’m wary about his plans to force the elves to train me, but I need every advantage I can get. Especially when vampire attacks start cropping up all over Seattle, and my friend and business partner, Dimitri, disappears.

When Chaz Perron's wife discovers that he is running a scam (posing as a marine biologist to doctor water samples so that an agribusiness tycoon can continue illegally dumping fertilizer into the Everglades), he pushes her overboard from a cruise liner. Unlucky for Chaz, Joey survives clutching a bale of Jamaican pot. Rescued from the Atlantic by a former police officer, Mick Stranahan, she decides not to report him but instead haunt and taunt him, with Mick's help, by playing dead.

Precious Ramotswe's comfortable existence as the only detective in Botswana is suddenly rattled when the Satisfaction Guaranteed Detective Agency opens, and its brochure proclaims, "Don't take any chances! Entrust your enquiries to a MAN!" As if the development isn't enough, Mma Ramotswe has also taken on two difficult cases, one of which hits close to home. But with wisdom on her side, Mma Ramotswe figures to crack both cases and upstage her competition.

Evanovich fans rejoice for Plum Spooky! Stephanie Plum is back in town, along with her sidekick Lula, her Grandma Mazur, and an ever-widening cast of freaks, criminals, deranged felons, and lunatics looking for love. And just when Stephanie thinks her life can't get any more complicated, in walks the mysterious Diesel. A man who seems to show up at the most inconvenient moments.

Recipe for disaster: Celebrity chef Stanley Chipotle comes to Trenton to participate in a barbecue cook-off and loses his head—literally. Throw in some spice: Bail bonds office worker Lula is witness to the crime, and the only one she'll talk to is Trenton cop, Joe Morelli. Pump up the heat: Chipotle's sponsor is offering a million-dollar reward to anyone who can provide information leading to the capture of the killers. Stir the pot: Lula recruits bounty hunter Stephanie Plum to help her find the killers and collect the moolah.

Henry and his wife, Frances, have gone bamboo - living an idyllic, tequila-drenched life as two of the Caribbean's most charming expatriates (and professional assassins). But when Charlie "Wagons" Iannello, a powerful capo with a heart of gold, is relocated to the island under the Federal Witness Protection Program, Henry and Frances' plan suddenly, dangerously falls apart.

Paul can't let an incident from his past go. When he finds out a rival detective agency played a key role in it, he drags MCM Investigations into a blood feud that they can't hope to win. Soon they're faced with the prospect of the company going out of business, and Brigit going out of her damn mind. When long-buried bodies are discovered in the Wicklow Mountains, Bunny's past starts closing in on him, too.

Con man Nick Fox is after Garson Klepper’s golden Peruvian relics. For Fox, convincing Klepper to hire him as security for the relocation of the relics to the Getty museum in L.A. was easy. Problem is, Fox wasn’t planning on Klepper also enlisting the help of the FBI. Fox also wasn’t planning on being paired up with rookie special agent Kate O’Hare. She’s smart, she’s tenacious, and when she’s conned, she holds a grudge. Life for Fox and O’Hare will never be the same again.

Venice, a really long time ago: Three prominent Venetians await their most loathsome and foul dinner guest, the erstwhile envoy from Britain who also happens to be a favorite of the Doge: The rascal-Fool Pocket. This trio of cunning plotters have lured Pocket to a dark dungeon, promising a spirited evening. Their invitation is, of course, bogus. These scoundrels have something far less amusing planned for the man who has consistently foiled their quest for power and wealth. But this Fool is no fool.…

From internationally best-selling author Alexander McCall Smith comes the seventh novel in the phenomenally popular and endlessly charming series that began with The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. Once again Botswana's only female detective, Mma Ramotswe, and her invaluable assistant, Mma Makutsi, puzzle out the mysteries of life while finding comfort in steaming mugs of bush tea.

Still bruised and heartbroken from their last calamitous quest, Gorm Ingerson and his band of washed-up heroes try to make amends for the orcs they accidentally betrayed. But justice is put on hold when an old foe marches to the city gates. Gorm is horrified to discover a liche pitching the frightened city-dwellers on the merits of the undead lifestyle...at the head of a corpse army. To save the city from high-pressure sales tactics and an inevitable siege, the dwarf warrior and his misfit band hatch a harebrained scheme that lands them at the top of the king’s kill list.