Mystery Comedy Fiction

Check out Sylvia Table: he drives a seafoam-green 1968 Ranchero, owns a badass sword, and is one dead uncle away from an inheritance that should set him and the love of his life, Lady Sixkiller, on the road to easy living and the family she’s always wanted. Sure, he may not be cut out for any kind of conventional job, but as long as Lady can hold things down as a waitress until rich old Methuselah shuffles off this mortal coil, what’s the big deal? Yes, things are looking good for Sylvia Table, aka Big Noise, aka Grandest Poobah, aka Big Quiche.

No vuelve con un detective chiflado, sino con nueve. No vuelve con un caso, sino con tres.Vuelve el mejor Eduardo Mendoza. Barcelona, primavera de 2022. Los miembros de una organización gubernamental secreta se enfrentan a la peligrosísima investigación de tres casos que tal vez estén relacionados entre sí, o tal vez no: la aparición de un cuerpo sin vida en un hotel de Las Ramblas, la desaparición de un millonario británico en su yate y las singulares finanzas de Conservas Fernández.

Stephanie Plum may not be the best bounty hunter in beautiful downtown Trenton, but she's pretty darn good at turning bad situations her way . . . and she always gets her man. In To the Nines, her cousin Vinnie (who's also her boss) has posted bail on Samuel Singh, an illegal immigrant. When the elusive Mr. Singh goes missing, Stephanie is on the case. But what she uncovers is far more sinister than anyone imagines and leads to a group of killers who give new meaning to the word hunter.

England, 1976. Mrs Creasy is missing, and The Avenue is alive with whispers. As the summer shimmers endlessly on, 10-year-olds Grace and Tilly decide to take matters into their own hands. And as the cul-de-sac starts giving up its secrets, the amateur detectives will find much more than they imagined.

Callahan Garrity is the owner of House Mouse, a cleaning service that tidies up after Atlanta's elite. She's also a former cop and a part-time sleuth. She and her coterie of devoted helpers can ransack a house for clues faster than it takes a fingerprint to set. From her time on the Atlanta police force, Callahan has excelled at mopping up messes of all kinds. But she has no idea what she's getting into when she agrees to work for infamous antiques dealer Elliot Littlefield. The first day on the job, she and her crew are on the trail of a stolen Civil War diary.

For centuries, the Koh-i-Noor diamond has set man against man and king against king. Now part of the British Crown Jewels, the priceless gem is a prize that many have killed to possess. So when the Crown Jewels go on display in Mumbai, security is everyone's principal concern. And yet on the very day Inspector Chopra visits the exhibition, the diamond is stolen from under his nose. The heist was daring and seemingly impossible. The hunt is on for the culprits.

From Emmy Award-winning author David Quantick, All My Colors is a darkly comic novel about a man who remembers a book that may not exist, with dire consequences. A bizarre, mind-bending story at the intersection of Richard Bachman, Charlie Kaufman, and Franz Kafka.

Chaz Perrone might be the only marine scientist in the world who doesn't know which way the Gulf Stream runs. He might also be the only one who went into biology just to make a killing, and now he's found a way, doctoring water samples so that a ruthless agribusiness tycoon can continue illegally dumping fertilizer into the endangered Everglades. When Chaz suspects that his wife, Joey, has figured out his scam, he pushes her overboard from a cruise liner into the night-dark Atlantic.

For the first time in Spellman history, Isabel Spellman might be the most normal member of her family. Mom has taken on an outrageous assortment of extracurricular activities. Dad has a secret. Her brother and sister are at war, but neither will reveal the source of the conflict. While domestic disturbances abound, there is one source of sanity in the Spellman household: Demetrius Merriweather, employee of the month for 18 months straight. Things aren't any simpler on the business side of Spellman Investigations....

Lora Weaver follows romance from New York to Montreal and expects to find a touch of Paris in North America — cobblestone streets, sidewalk cafés, fabulous shopping, and a little joie de vivre [zest for life]. Not dangerous liaisons. But, when she takes a job at a PI agency owned by a French brother and sister team, her life takes on more twists and turns than a Cirque du Soleil show.

All of a sudden the streets of your city are so overpopulated with security cameras and closed-circuit TV that you have to lock yourself in the bathroom to have an undocumented moment. And locks, which used to provide the recreational pleasure of a moderately challenging crossword puzzle, have become genuinely pickproof.

The Extravaganza of the Seas is a 5,000 ton cash cow, a top-heavy tub whose sole function is to carry gamblers three miles from the Florida coast, take their money, then bring them back so they can find more money.

A woman falls from a tour helicopter to the horror of the 8:30 pirate show crowd. Was it suicide? An accident? Could she have been pushed? Lucky's day began with the invasion of the Adult Video Awards and trade show convention. It got more hectic when the spouse-swapping annual event checked in. And if adding a body to the mix wasn't enough, Lucky's got a new suitor. Her best friend, Teddie, a female impersonator who is pressing to take their relationship to the next level. Can she really date a man who looks better in a dress? What happened to the woman over the pirate show?

Meg is relaxing in the hammock, taste-testing Michael’s latest batch of Arnold Palmers and watching the hummingbirds at their feeders when her hopes for a relaxing early summer morning are dashed. First her father recruits her to help him install a new batch of bees in the hive in her backyard. Then Mayor Shiffley recruits her to placate the NIMBYs (Not in my backyard), as she calls them—a group of newcomers to Caerphilly who have built McMansions next door to working farms and then do their best to make life miserable for the farmers.

The Aventine is full of fracturing families. Wives plot to leave their husbands, husbands plot to spend more time with their mistresses. Masters must endure slaves taking obscene liberties, while aggressive slaves are learning to ape dangerous masters. But no one wants to hire an investigator during the holiday. Albia is lumped with her own domestic stress: overexcited children and bilious guests, too many practical jokes and her magistrate husband Tiberius preoccupied with local strife.

Seal Island is home to a moonshine-making billionaire, a pot-growing fisherman, a celebrity flower child, a handsome romance writer, a sex-addicted realtor, a womanizing pub owner, a cop, a pot-bellied pig…and a serial killer. The island is serene and remote. It is only accessible by boat. The residents like it that way, until those with the deepest and darkest of secrets start dying in the most bizarre of ways.

Dilbert Pinkerton's not the greatest private detective, but he's good at sniffing out clues. Of course, it's hard to take a five-foot-nothing mutant armadillo in a trench coat and fedora seriously. He sticks his snout where it doesn't belong far too often while digging for the truth. So when some rich dame asks him to steal - ahem, retrieve - a pearl necklace from her ex-husband, Dill almost reconsiders. Until, that is, she offers him so much money that he can't refuse.

Italy might seem like a long way to go to hide after a disastrous date. But when sexy uberhacker Slash (no, that's not his real name) asks me to go with him to Rome on an investigation, the timing is sort of perfect. My messed-up love life becomes the least of my worries, though, after the dead body, the near-kidnapping and the discovery of a top secret encrypted file that even I can't hack.

When Jude agrees to lend her vintage chaise longue for the local Amateur Dramatic Society’s production of George Bernard Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple, little does she realise she’ll end up in a starring role. It’s an ambitious play, culminating in a dramatic execution scene: a scene that’s played for real when one of the leading actors is found hanging from the specially constructed stage gallows during rehearsals. A tragic accident - or something more sinister?

That’s what the tour guide promises Dr. Linda Farmer and her family when they move to Plymouth Valley. Sure, the locals are privileged hot house flowers who observe a weird religion Hollow, but the schools are blue ribbon, the air’s clean, the food’s fantastic, and Linda’s out of options. With the outside world in shambles, this move is her family’s last chance.