Mystery Comedy Fiction

Meet Conrad. You’ve never met a cat like him before. Neither has Lulu Lewis when he walks into her life one summer’s day. Mourning the recent death of her husband, the former police detective had expected a gentle retirement, quietly enjoying life on her new canal boat, The Lark, and visiting her mother-in-law Emily in a nearby care home. But when Emily dies suddenly in suspicious circumstances, Lulu senses foul play and resolves to find out what really happened. And a remarkable cat named Conrad will be with her every step of the way.

Though another devastating hurricane is raking Florida, its awesome power can’t stop the Sunshine State’s most loyal son, Serge A. Storms, from his latest scenic road trip: a cemetery tour. With his best bro Colman riding shotgun, Serge hits the highway in his ’69 gold Plymouth Satellite, putting pedal to the metal on a grand tour of the past.

Meg Langslow is plying her blacksmith's trade at Caerphilly Days, a festival inspired by the town's sudden notoriety as "The Town That Mortgaged Its Jail". The lender has foreclosed on all Caerphilly's public buildings, and all employees have evacuated - except one. Phineas Throckmorton, town clerk, has been barricaded in the courthouse basement for over a year. But the lender seems increasingly determined to evict him, and may succeed after one of its executives is found shot, apparently from inside the basement.

It would take a miracle to keep Dortmunder out of jail. Though he cased the electronics store perfectly, the cops surprised him, turning up in the alley just as he was walking out the back door, a television in each hand. Already a two-time loser, without divine intervention he faces a long stretch inside. Then God sends J. Radcliffe Stonewiler, a celebrity lawyer who gets Dortmunder off with hardly any effort at all. Stonewiler was sent by Arnold Chauncey, an art lover with a cash-flow problem. He asks the thief to break into his house and make off with a valuable painting in exchange for a quarter of the insurance money.

It’s a club like no other. Only the most important women receive an invitation. But one daring young reporter is about to infiltrate this female-run secret society, whose bewitching members are caught up in a dark and treacherous business. From the author of Happy and You Know It.

Saffy Huntley-Oliver is an intelligent and glamorous socialite; she also happens to be a proficient serial killer. For the past fifteen years, she’s hunted down and dispatched rapists, murderers, domestic abusers—bad men all. But leading a double life has left her lonely—dating’s tough when your boyfriend might turn out to be your next victim. Saffy thinks she’s finally found a truly good man in Jonathan Desrosiers, a true-crime podcaster who’s amassed legions of diehard fans for cracking cold cases and bringing justice to victims.

The best-selling author of the classic Mars trilogy and The Years of Rice and Salt returns with a riveting new trilogy of cutting-edge science, international politics, and the real-life ramifications of global warming as they are played out in our nation's capital - and in the daily lives of those at the center of the action. Hauntingly realistic, here is a novel of the near future that is inspired by scientific facts already making headlines. BONUS AUDIO: Includes an exclusive introduction by author Kim Stanley Robinson.

The legendary Lone Star Cafe, a little corner of Texas right in the heart of New York City. At one time or another, everyone from the Rolling Stones to Willie Nelson has jammed there. But this night, Thanksgiving eve, there's a different type of jam at the Lone Star. Larry Barkin, half of the headlining Barkin Brothers, is found dead in his dressing room, his head bashed in with his own guitar and a two dollar bill stuffed in his shirt pocket. It's Kinky they call for help, but the fast-talking, cigar-smoking country singer turned amateur detective has other plans.

Unfazed by chaos and bad luck, Melvin Scott knows, "Some things a man must do himself. No matter how dumb that man is." His wife disagrees. In debt over his head, he learns that a penny will grow to more than $10,000,000 in 30 days if it doubles every day. He realizes that other things can grow that fast, too. Bacteria. Disease. Cures. Almost anything. Scott finds hope, and the adventures begin.

Meet Steven Stelfox. London, 1997: New Labour is sweeping into power, and Britpop is at its zenith. A&R man Stelfox is slashing and burning his way through the music industry, fuelled by greed and inhuman quantities of cocaine, searching for the next hit record amid a relentless orgy of self-gratification. But as the hits dry up and the industry begins to change, Stelfox must take the notion of cutthroat business practices to murderous new levels in a desperate attempt to salvage his career.

"I'm Lexi Carmichael, geek extraordinaire. I spend my days stopping computer hackers at the National Security Agency. My nights? Those I spend avoiding my mother and eating cereal for dinner. Even though I work for a top-secret agency, I've never been in an exciting car chase, sipped a stirred (not shaken) martini, or shot a poison dart from an umbrella. Until today, that is, when two gun-toting thugs popped up in my life and my best friend disappeared."

Boy Genius is a powerful identity satire, the picaresque odyssey of a child seeking to avenge the wrongs perpetrated on his parents. Park's genius, born into the turmoil of post-war Korea, is used as a puppet by the South Korean government - before being banished to America. From a remote New York city ghetto, the boy wages a clandestine guerilla war against all symbols of authority.

For a nation that elected Barack Obama as president, here is the first novel of the new era: The Mere Future, by award-winning novelist, activist, and playwright Sarah Schulman, set in a utopian (or is it dystopic?) future vision of New York City. The city has morphed into what appears to be an idealized version of itself, the result of what the new mayor calls "The Big Change," in which rent is cheap, homelessness is a thing of the past, and the only job left is marketing.

In China, in 1860, a lot of people mistakenly put their trust in Flashman: the English vicar’s daughter with her cargo of opium; Lord Elgin in search of an intelligence chief; the Emperor’s ravishing concubine, seeking a champion in her struggles for power; and Szu-Zhan, the female bandit colossus, as practised in the arts of love as in the arts of war. They were not to know that behind his Victoria Cross, Harry Flashman was a base coward and a charlatan. They took him at face value. And he took them, for all he could, while China seethed through the bloodiest civil war in history.

Landing a minor part in the Empire Theatre Eastbourne’s Christmas production of Cinderella, Charles Paris soon discovers that his main role is to gently introduce the show’s baffled American star, Kenny Polizzi, to the bizarre customs of English pantomime. During their sessions in the local pub, Charles finds himself increasingly caught up in Polizzi’s tangled affairs. But Charles is about to be far more involved than he might wish when he stumbles across a body beneath Eastbourne Pier.

Set in a small Cotswold town, Inspector Hobbes and the Blood is a fast-paced comedy cozy mystery fantasy about the adventures of Andy, an incompetent reporter, when he is reluctantly working with Inspector Hobbes, a police detective with a reputation. Andy soon finds himself immersed in a world where not everyone is human, and a late-night visit to a churchyard nearly results in grave consequences, and a ghoulish outcome. An accidental fire leads to Andy having to doss in Hobbes's spare room.

Although she hadn’t known Leonard Mallett very well, nor liked him particularly, Carole Seddon feels duty bound to attend her fellow committee member’s funeral. As she suspected, the hymns, readings, and sermon are all very predictable - not unlike Leonard himself. What she couldn’t have predicted was that the deceased’s daughter would use the occasion to publicly accuse her stepmother of murder.

Deciding that true romantic heroes are a thing of the past, Eloise Kelly, an intelligent American who always manages to wear her Jimmy Choo suede boots on the day it rains, leaves Harvard's Widener Library bound for England to finish her dissertation on the dashing pair of spies the Scarlet Pimpernel and the Purple Gentian. What she discovers is something the finest historians have missed: a secret history that begins with a letter dated 1803.

Award-winning humorist Patrick F. McManus delivers a funny and folksy whodunit from his popular Sheriff Bo Tully series. Hoping for a pleasant day of picking huckleberries, Sheriff Tully instead finds himself investigating a triple homicide and the disappearance of a local rancher.

Holt Box, a beloved country singer on the comeback trail is killed in Lucky’s lover, Jean-Charles’, kitchen. Mr. Box dies in Lucky’s father’s arms. Her former lover, Teddie, is accused of the murder. A heavy-hitter in the Macanese underworld is working over Lucky’s father. An old nemesis salivating for revenge gets out of jail on a technicality. Lucky’s mother is ramping up an ill-advised political campaign. And the holidays are racing to a crescendo.