Humorous Fiction Mysteries

My name is Zachary Nixon Johnson. The year is 2057, and after a handful of species-altering upheavals, Earth-shattering cataclysms, history-changing extraterrestrial contacts, and pop-culture disasters, the world is now a pretty safe place. But, of course, as in times past, people still run the shades-of-gray gamut from good to evil. There are still cops and robbers, saints and sinners, voters and politicians. And every once in a while some crazy thing happens that threatens all of society, all of humanity, even the entire space-time continuum. And it always happens on my watch.

Thirteen-year-old Ben Ripley has had a lot of field success despite only just beginning his second year at Spy School, something graduates rarely experience. But he'd never have survived without the help from experienced agents and his friends. Now he's been called in on a solo mission - and the fate of the United States of America is on his shoulders alone. The mission: Prevent a presidential assassination by infiltrating the White House and locating the enemy operative.

This book was never meant to exist. No one needs to know the details. Just know this: there's a Merry, a Larry, a missing tooth, and a teachers' strike that is crippling Timmy Failure's academic future. Worst of all, Timmy is banned from detective work. It's a conspiracy of buffoons. He recorded everything in his private notebook, but then the manuscript was stolen. If this book gets out, he will be grounded for life. Or maybe longer. And will Timmy's mom really marry Doorman Dave.

Zara Riddle signs up for a patch of land in the Wisteria Community Gardens. She's hoping for a bumper crop of pumpkins, but grows a dancing skeleton instead. That's not going to work in a pie. Soon she finds out that the only place more magical than Wisteria is the subterranean city below, the network of tunnels known as The Wilds.

The grand finale to the best-selling series, Attack of the BULLIES stars Ruby Peet, aka Agent Pufferfish, the team captain with super nanobyte-enhanced allergies. Pufferfish leads the team in their latest case: the kidnapping of the president' s daughter. But the NERDS discover she hasn' t been kidnapped - she' s been recruited. Their former librarian, Ms. Holiday, has started a rival organization called BULLIES, who each have their own nanobyte-enhanced upgrades. The BULLIES' plan: go back in time to make sure NERDS never existed!

The New York Times best-selling author of the Sisters Grimm series, Michael Buckley has also written and developed shows for Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon and Discovery Channel. Supervillain Gerdie Baker, assisted by criminal mastermind Simon, has created a device that opens portals to other worlds, which she and other cheerleaders have been pillaging. But the alternate realities are starting to get awfully close together, so it’s up to Matilda “Wheezer” Choi and the NERDS to stop the cheerleaders before the worlds collide.

For a policeman, there can be few things worse than a serial killer loose in your city. Except, perhaps, a serial killer who targets coppers, and a city on the brink of bloody revolution. For Commander Sam Vimes, it all feels horribly familiar. Caught on the roof of a very magical building during a storm, he's found himself back in his own rough, tough past without even the clothes he was standing up in when the lightning struck. Living in the past is hard, especially when your time travel companion is a serial killer who knows where you live.

Twas the night (okay, more like the week) before Christmas, and all through Pine Cove, California, people are busy buying, wrapping, packing, and generally getting into the holiday spirit.

For once, operations at the enormous zoo/theme park appear to be running smoothly (except for the occasional herring-related mishap in the penguin exhibit) and Teddy Fitzroy is finally able to give detective work a rest. But then a local lion is accused of killing a famous dog - and the dog’s owner, an inflammatory radio host, goes on a crusade to have the cat declared a nuisance so it can be hunted. But it looks like the lion might have been framed, and a renegade animal activist wants Teddy and Summer to help prove it.

Will the twins make it back home to California in one piece, or will they fall off the top of the Golden Gate Bridge? It's all coming to an end with this fifth book in the Genius Files series. You'll have to listen to believe it!

A bizarre chain of events begins when 16 unlikely people gather for the reading of Samuel W. Westing's will. And though no one knows why the eccentric, game-loving millionaire has chosen a virtual stranger - and a possible murderer - to inherit his vast fortune, one thing's for sure: Sam Westing may be dead...but that won't stop him from playing one last game!

The Chicken Squad is back for their second (mis)adventure, and this time they’re solving the mystery of a kidnapped…HOUSE? A hilarious chapter book from the bestselling author of Click, Clack, Moo and The Trouble with Chickens. Dirt, Sugar, Sweetie, and Poppy are the four members of The Chicken Squad, and business is booming.

Like his fellow lunarnauts - otherwise known as Moonies - living on Moon Base Alpha, twelve-year-old Dashiell Gibson is famous the world over for being one of the first humans to live on the moon. And he's bored out of his mind. Kids aren't allowed on the lunar surface, meaning they're trapped inside the tiny moon base with next to nothing to occupy their time - and the only other kid Dash's age spends all his time hooked into virtual reality games.

Set in 1991, just as Star Trek: The Next Generation has rocketed the cast to global fame, the young and impressionable actor Brent Spiner receives a mysterious package and a series of disturbing letters, that take him on a terrifying and bizarre journey that enlists Paramount Security, the LAPD, and even the FBI in putting a stop to the danger that has his life and career hanging in the balance.

In their next big adventure, S.U.I.T. headquarters is under attack, and Mango and Brash are going undercover and underground disguised as city sewer workers to unclog a sticky situation. But when their search for the criminal Crackerdile backfires, the toilets they travel through get blocked and the InvestiGators take the blame for it! Can Mango and Brash restore their good name and put the real culprit behind bars before the whole city is in deep water?

New York Times best-selling author Stephan Pastis is the creator of the award-winning comic strip Pearls Before Swine. Now Look What You' ve Done finds comically clueless kid detective Timmy Failure on the cusp of cracking the biggest case of his generation. The school globe' s been stolen and a $500 reward is up for grabs. But before claiming the prize, Timmy and his polar-bear sidekick Total will have to trip up a rascal trying to scam the system.

Twelve-year-old Ben Ripley is not exactly the best student spy school has ever seen - he keeps flunking Advanced Self Preservation. But outside of class, Ben is pretty great at staying alive. His enemies have kidnapped him, shot at him, locked him in a room with a ticking time bomb, and even tried to blow him up with missiles. And he's survived every time. After all that unexpected success, the CIA has decided to activate Ben for real.

The complete BBC Radio collection bringing together two full-cast dramatisations of Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently novels. In Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency Dirk Gently has an unshakable belief in the interconnectedness of all things, but his Holistic Detective Agency mainly succeeds in tracking down missing cats for old ladies. Then Dirk stumbles upon an old friend behaving bizarrely - and he's drawn into a four-billion-year-old mystery that must be solved if the human race is to avoid immediate extinction....

Coke and Pepsi McDonald didn’t want to jump off a cliff. They didn't want to get hit by poisoned darts from blowguns either. And they certainly don't want to get locked in their burning school, thrown into a pit at the top of a sand dune, or drowned in a vat of liquefied Spam. But what are you supposed to do when you’re being chased across the country by your insane health teacher and two guys in bowler hats who are trying to kill you? One thing's for sure, it'll be a snap for Coke and Pep to write their essays on "How I Spent My Summer Vacation."

Ben Ripley and his friends are training in Alaska when Cyrus Hale is kidnapped by his old Russian nemesis. Ben, Erica, and the others mount a rescue mission, but events quickly spiral out of control in a plot involving the secret history of US-Russian relations, a young KGB agent with skills to rival Erica’s—and lots and lots of bears.