Modern Fiction

Jared craved an ordinary life. Clock in, do paperwork, clock out. He gave up magic, joined the Meta Marshal Service, and just wanted to be left alone. Until a routine prisoner transport went awry and blew up his entire existence. That was when he found Cassie down on her knees in the wreckage, asking him for help. And he knew in that instant: Magic just wouldn't leave him alone. Now he's on a hunt for an escaped convict and a powerful ancient artifact with the potential to ruin their world for good.

Filled with frisky pets and fine suspense, the Mrs. Murphy mysteries are instant New York Times best sellers. Fans love the sleuthing team of spunky postmistress "Harry" Harristeen and Mrs. Murphy, her savvy tiger stripe cat.

Winner of both the Harper Lee Award and the Richard Wright Award for Literary Excellence, Carolyn Haines has thrilled countless readers with her Sarah Booth Delaney mysteries. Here, Sarah investigates when two wealthy heiresses claim a four-million-dollar family necklace was stolen. All the evidence points to insurance fraud, but when Sarah starts poking into the family’s dark secrets, one of the heiresses disappears.

Jacobia "Jake" Tiptree's leisurely summer dreams involve rebuilding the front porch of her Maine fixer-upper and shingling the leaky tool shed out back. That's why she's hired the avenging angel of household hygiene, Bella Diamond, to keep her house--and her teenage son Sam--in tip-top shape. But when Bella confides in Jake that she's been receiving death threats, Jake has two choices: find out who is frightening the hapless housekeeper--or risk losing her.

In disgrace after a badly handled arrest in New Orleans, Sergeant Lloyd Hopkins is assigned as a liaison officer to an FBI investigation of a series of diabolical and clever bank robberies. Three men have done their homework: they choose bank managers who are having affairs, kidnap their girlfriends, and force the managers to open the banks early.

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....

Against the mythical dreamscape of America, Auster brilliantly weaves the bizarre narrative of Marco Stanley Fogg, an orphan searching for love, his father, and the key to the riddle of his origin and fate.

In the winter of 1996, on the orders of the British government, the SAS stole the contents of a safe belonging to the Provisional IRA. Rick Fuller headed that team. Days later Fuller's wife was brutally murdered. Convinced he was betrayed from within, Fuller begins a relentless search for her murderers. Ten years on, Fuller is a Manchester gangland enforcer, a lone and bitter figure.

Eliot Rosewater, a drunk volunteer fireman and president of the fabulously rich Rosewater Foundation, is about to attempt a noble experiment with human nature, with a little help from writer Kilgore Trout. The result is Kurt Vonnegut's funniest satire, an etched-in-acid portrayal of the greed, hypocrisy, and follies of the flesh we are all heir to.

Simon Serrailler is faced with that most complicated of investigations - a cold case. Freak weather and flash floods have hit southern England. The small cathedral town of Lafferton is underwater, and a landslip on the moor has closed the roads. As the rain slowly drains away, a shallow grave - and a skeleton - is exposed; 20 years have passed, and the remains of missing teenager Joanne Lowther have finally been uncovered. Joanne, an only child, had been on her way home from a friend's house that night.

This version of the Bennet family - and Mr. Darcy - is one that you have and haven't met before: Liz is a magazine writer in her late 30s who, like her yoga instructor older sister, Jane, lives in New York City. When their father has a health scare, they return to their childhood home in Cincinnati to help - and discover that the sprawling Tudor they grew up in is crumbling, and the family is in disarray.

Police chief Cameron McDonald has lived in idyllic Wheelock, Massachusetts for most of his life, as has his beloved wife Allie. Their comfortable lives are thrown into tumult, however, when Cam's distant cousin Jamie arrives in town along with his wife's dead body. Jamie admits to the murder - a mercy killing to end the pain caused by a ravaging cancer. And now Cam is torn by his oath to uphold justice and his family obligations as chief of the Scottish McDonald clan.

The beloved writing tandem of Rita Mae Brown and her feline collaborator Sneaky Pie craft another tantalizing mystery with Hiss of Death. Spring is in the air in Crozet, Virginia, and Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen looks forward to her first season of harvesting grapes. But then Harry falls ill and finds herself in a hospital—where a nurse turns up dead. When another hospital staffer kicks the bucket soon after, it falls to Harry’s animal friends to crack the case.

After her good friend Godwin has a nasty quarrel with John, his significant other, full-time needlework shop owner and part-time sleuth Betsy Devonshire finds herself with a roommate. Betsy doesn't mind having company, though Godwin is restless and unhappy over the sudden break-up. But sadness turns to grief when Betsy and Godwin discover John dead in his home, and Godwin is arrested for the murder. Betsy knows her friend couldn't be the killer, and sets out to prove it.

As the pace of modern life accelerates, the old ways wither and die. But to the Society for Magickal Heritage, that just isn’t good enough.

My tiny town of Fig Harbor's just recovering from our last tango with murder, only to be faced with yet another - and this time, it sure looks an awful lot like a vampire's on the loose in the PNW. Vampires are just Twilight fiction, right? I'm not so sure after a murder victim is found in my koi pond right next to my favorite fish, Koi George, (not good!), with bite marks on her neck and a gothic antique chalice next to her body with blood residue.

The New York Times best-selling Mrs. Murphy mystery series is a favorite with cozy fans and cat lovers all over the world, and Sour Puss has all the red herrings and surprising plot twists fans adore. When world-renowned grape and fungus expert Professor Vincent Forland is decapitated in Crozet, Virginia, it looks like a political killing. Forland had recently lectured on how distilled fungus plays a critical role in chemical warfare.

Nestled quietly on the Pacific Coast below San Francisco, Molena Point is a quaint hamlet - not the kind of place an escaped convict would choose for a hideout. But it just happens to be the home of a state's witness who put a thief named Cage Jones behind bars - until he broke out, that is. With danger closing in, the feline detective Joe Grey, his girlfriend Dulcie, and their tattercoat friend Kit must put paws and whiskers together to capture a very nasty criminal before he strikes again.

The husband of Monk's former assistant, Sharona, has been arrested for murder. Now back in San Francisco, she's ready to reclaim her place in Monk's life - much to the chagrin of his current assistant, Natalie. While Monk tries to maintain a delicate balance between the two women, he discovers a few unsettling snags in the case against Sharona's husband, and may be up against a killer who not only understands him, but is one step ahead.

Some people think Hawaii is paradise, but Monk knows that danger, like dirt, lurks everywhere. Look at Helen Gruber, the rich tourist who took a fatal blow from a coconut. The police say it fell from a tree, but Monk suspects otherwise. His assistant Natalie isn't exactly thrilled about Monk's latest investigation. It was bad enough Monk followed her on vacation, and now it looks like the vacation is over.