Humorous Mysteries

On the first day of school, Artie falls out of his bed and hits his head. Hard. He tells his mom he's dizzy, and she says: "You’re just worried about your first day in a new school." On the second day of school, Artie falls out of bed and hits his head. Hard. He tells his mom he's dizzy, and she says: "You’re just worried about your first day in a new school." Huh?

Are you average? Normal? Forgettable? If so, The League of Unexceptional Children is for you! This first book in a hilarious new adventure series is for anyone who's struggled to be noticed in a sea of above-average overachievers. What is The League of Unexceptional Children? I'm glad you asked. You didn't ask? Well, you would have eventually and I hate to waste time. The League of Unexceptional Children is a covert network that uses the nation's most average, normal, and utterly unexceptional children as spies.

Hank encounters the weirdest cat he's ever seen when he, Slim, Drover, and Little Alfred head over to the Hodge's place to feed the cattle. Hank gets bumped out of the back of the Cammo-Stealth army truck. Mary D. Cat is the only one around to help keep Rip and Snort at bay. Will Slim realize Hank is missing in action? Is Mary D. Cat really a vampire? Or could it be - gulp - that she's a good cat after all?

In her latest mystery, Sammy Keyes feels responsible for the death of an old man whom she discovers on the fire escape and who, with his dying breath, begs her to take his wads of cash and throw them away!

Between her regular job in Afterlife Arrivals, training for her second job with IA, her community service on The Bus of Death, GA meetings, taking care of her housemates, and every other ghostly commitment in between, Bridget Sway is already stretched pretty thin. Then, her best friend, Sabrina, drops a bombshell. Sabrina thinks she was murdered. And, in the afterlife, murdered dead people usually turn into homicidal maniac dead people. Despite that, Sabrina thinks if they can work out who killed her, then she might be able to get the closure she needs.

Lex, a teenage Grim Reaper, has the power to damn souls - and it’s getting out of control. Her boyfriend, Driggs, is dead - sort of. She’s a fugitive, on the run from the maniacal new mayor of Croak and the townspeople who want to see her pay the price for her misdeeds. Uncle Mort rounds up the Junior Grims to flee Croak once again, but this time they’re joined by Grotton, the most powerful Grim of all time. Their new mission is clear: Fix his mistakes, or the Afterlife will cease to exist, along with all the souls in it.

As a shaky truce between suburban gangsters starts to unravel, schlubby civilian Scott Clark has other things on his mind: if he can't afford to buy out his ex-father-in-law, Scott's about to lose the only house he's ever called home. In the red-hot urban housing market, he doesn't have a chance - until he and his best friends take the desperate measure of staging a fake drive-by shooting on the property to push down the asking price. But then Scott's mobster-posturing stunt attracts the attention of the real criminals.

Thirteen-year-old Nick Diamond is in prison! Framed for a jewel heist, quick-thinking Nick finds himself sharing a cell with public enemy number one: Johnny Powers. Nick’s only chance of clearing his name is to nail the Fence, the country’s master criminal. But to do that, he needs to break out – which is where his bumbling older brother, Tim, comes in. Nick’s not so sure he’ll make it to his fourteenth birthday!

Stevie and Maison have a great friendship where they travel back and forth between the Overworld and the human world. Maison has earned some fame for battling off the mobs at her school, but the attention has also brought about cyberbullies DestinyIsChoice123 and TheVampireDragon555, who have hacked her computer and discovered the portal! Now, through complex coding, the cyberbullies have turned the Overworld into eternal night and unleashed a pack of zombies.

At long last, all of Bridget Sway's dreams are about to come true! She is in a department store. Shopping. Yes. Shopping! She has new makeup. New shoes. And, most importantly, is finally about to get some new underwear. But, instead of finding a frilly knicker and bra set, she finds the body of a dead medium. A familiar dead medium.

When Sloane Osborn and Amelia Miller-Poe arrive at Tangle Glen mansion, they have one goal: find the two million dollars that went missing on its premises decades ago. Solving the mystery would be just the kind of splashy victory their new detective agency needs to gain traction. Except that everything from the weirdly intense peony competition to the mansion's cook who may or may not be hiding murder dolls in the attic seems to get in the way of their investigation. Not to mention Amelia's obsession with speaking in 1920s slang, which sounds like a whole lot of nonsense to Sloane.

It's scrap day on the ranch, and Hank is looking forward to a delicious feast of juicy, fatty bacon scraps. But just as Little Alfred is doling out the goods, two very unusual-looking creatures fly overhead, and what was promising to be a glorious day takes a dramatic turn for the worse. Suddenly the scraps have vanished, and the Head of Ranch Security finds himself dealing with an invasion by a couple of ancient dinosaur birds! Can Hank get to the bottom of this latest mystery...before it's too late?

Gina, Edgar, Elena, and Kevin have been best friends for as long as they can remember. So when their arch-nemesis points out that their initials make them literally GEEKs, they decide to go with it. The GEEKs’ hometown of Elmwood was once the headquarters of the famous toymaker Maxine Van Houten. Her popular puzzle sphere, the Bamboozler, put the town on the map. But Maxine passed away long ago. Now the toy factory is shutting down, and Elena’s mom and Kevin’s dad are losing their jobs. They might have to move—and that would mean splitting up the GEEKs!

Flowers, favors, and a cake with a body in it...what a way to start a wedding! Diana already regrets saying yes to her neighbor's ridiculous wedding flower demands, but when she discovers a body in the middle of the multi-tiered centerpiece...it's really taking the cake! The man in the cake has been murdered. Diana suspects that one of her neighbors may be the killer. And she already knows that some of them are keeping skeletons in their closets. Sometimes literally.

Leroy Ninker is a small man with a big dream: he wants to be a cowboy, but for now he's just a thief. In fact, Leroy is robbing the Watsons' kitchen right this minute! As he drags the toaster across the counter ( screeeeeech) and drops it into his bag ( clannngggg), little does he know that a certain large pig who loves toast with a great deal of butter is stirring from sleep.

Okay, so just know from the start that it wasn't supposed to go like this. All we wanted was to get near The Ruperts, our favorite boy band. We didn't mean to kidnap one of the guys. It kind of, sort of happened that way. But now he's tied up in our hotel room. And the worst part of all, it's Rupert P. All four members of The Ruperts might have the same first name, but they couldn't be more different. And Rupert P. is the biggest flop out of the whole group.

Young dairymaid Begonia has lost her cow Alfalfa. So she has set off on a search across the countryside even though she has nothing but a magical map to guide her. Along the way she meets a mother and baby, a woodcutter, a very dirty young man, and an eight-foot ostrich. Meanwhile, the emperor has gone missing from the royal palace in a most mysterious manner. Was it murder? Was it magic? It will take all of Begonia's wits to save the empire and get Alfalfa home safely.

Cass finds herself alone and disoriented, a stranger in a dream-like, medieval world. Where is she? Who is she? With the help of a long-lost relative, she begins to uncover clues and secrets--piecing together her family's history as she fights her way back to the present world. Meanwhile, back home, Cass is at the hospital in a deep coma. Max-Ernest knows she ate Time Travel Chocolate - and he's determined to find a cure. Can our expert hypochondriac diagnose Cass's condition before it's too late?

The Bobton-Trent seniors certainly know how to make the most of their extravagant wealth - socialising, doing things, buying things and generally being more than a little bit...irresponsible.... Luckily for them, their son, Hubert Horatio, is an exceptionally intelligent, talented and sensible child. Unluckily for Hubert, this tends to mean that a lot of his spare time is spent steering his rather unruly set of grown-ups out of trouble.

When Brian and Gregory receive an invitation to stay at a distant relative's strange manse...well, they should know better than to go, since this is a middle-grade adventure novel. But they go anyway. Why not? Once there, they stumble upon The Game of Sunken Places, a board game that mirrors a greater game for which they have suddenly become players. Soon the boys are dealing with attitudinal trolls, warring kingdoms, and some very starchy britches.