Mystery Comedy Fiction

When Inspector Peter Glebsky arrives at a remote ski chalet on vacation, the last thing he intends to do is get involved in any police work. He's there to ski, drink brandy, and loaf around in blissful solitude. But he hadn't counted on the other vacationers, an eccentric bunch, including a famous hypnotist, a physicist with a penchant for gymnastic feats, a sulky teenager of indeterminate gender, and the mysterious Mr. and Mrs. Moses.

Emma Trafford's new neighbor is a lady killer - but is the scoundrel with the scar capable of murder? Emma can barely contain her precocious younger sister, Lily - the child swears she spied their neighbor engaged in foul play in his Bloomsbury love nest. But when Lily goes too far searching for "evidence," Emma must save the imp by distracting Simon - with an all-consuming kiss rife with danger and desire.

Sam Meeko never thought that he’d ever get a superpower, especially one that allows him to smell everything. Everything. With his unconventional power, Sam joins forces with a group of women hellbent on getting to the bottom of a countrywide conspiracy. It’s going to take some thinking outside the box, and when that doesn’t work, Sam and his group might need to tear the walls down.

Bob Howard is a special operative for the British agency called The Laundry, and his task is to stop a rogue billionaire from using an artifact, known as Gravedust, with the power to reanimate the dead. The U.S. Black Agency sends the lethal Ramona Random to aid Bob’s mission, but she seems to have a different agenda.

Meet Tommy Martini, the monk with an anger management problem. His meditations are interrupted by a legacy from his uncle, a crooked priest. Arriving in a New Age Arizona town to claim his inheritance, Brother Tommy meets a charismatic, smoking-hot cult leader who claims that women are being impregnated by alien beings while they sleep. Tommy’s own sleep is disturbed - by cartel hitmen, Mafia bill collectors, and women intrigued by his vow of chastity.

My name’s Ernest Cunningham. I used to be a fan of reading Golden Age murder mysteries, until I found myself with a haphazard career getting stuck in the middle of real-life ones. I’d hoped, this Christmas, that any self-respecting murderer would kick their feet up and take it easy over the holidays. I was wrong. So here I am, backstage at the show of world-famous magician Rylan Blaze, whose benefactor has just been murdered. My suspects are all professional tricksters: masters of the art of misdirection.

Bo Tully is the sheriff of Blight County, Idaho, where law enforcement is usually pretty mundane: tracking down truants running away from school, picking up country boys who've had a few too many beers. But Tully gets a little more than the country norm when an ex-con calls with the startling news that there's a corpse draped across one of his fences.

I'm not Goth to hide my Drow heritage, I'm Goth because I'm not a quitter. My name is Cheyenne Summerlin, remember that name. Somebody should. The world can't know I'm a Drow halfling. Not yet. I barely have these powers under my control, but time's up. I'm about to take magic for a test drive. Want to come along? The black ops government group believe they can run my life... But I have plans of my own. Watch out magical evil doers - I'm about to crash your party. But will my training be enough?

Sherlock Holmes is an unparalleled genius. Warlock Holmes is an idiot. A font of arcane power, certainly. But he’s brilliantly dim. Frankly, he couldn’t deduce his way out of a paper bag. The only thing he has really got going for him are the might of a thousand demons and his stalwart companion. Thankfully, Dr. Watson is always there to aid him through the treacherous shoals of Victorian propriety...and save him from a gruesome death every now and again.

Sunshine State trivia buff Serge A. Storms loves eliminating jerks and pests. His drug-addled partner Coleman loves cartoons. Hot stripper Sharon Rhodes loves cocaine, especially when purchased with rich dead men's money. On the other hand, there's Sean and David, who love fishing and are kind to animals - and who are about to cross paths with a suitcase filled with $5 million in stolen insurance money. Serge wants the suitcase. Sharon wants the suitcase. Coleman wants more drugs... and the suitcase.

Finlay Donovan is killing it...except, she’s really not. The new book she promised her literary agent isn’t written, her ex-husband fired the nanny without telling her, and this morning she had to send her four-year-old to school with hair duct-taped to her head.

Gretel - yes, that Gretel - is now all grown up and working as a private investigator in 18th-century Bavaria. Her professional interest is piqued when she begins to hear whispers of of mysterious goings-on off the coast of Schleswig-Holstein: sailors are disappearing, and there are rumors of mermaids and sea creatures and all manner of slippery, sea-based happenings. Ordinarily, Gretel's interest in sea life does not extend beyond that which is edible and already on the plate before her. However, funds are low....

Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.

In a renovated Gothic church on Long Island lives Jonathan Hemlock, an art professor and a world-renowned mountain climber who finances his black-market art collection by working as a freelance assassin. Now, Hemlock is being tricked into a hazardous assignment that involves an attempt to scale one of the most treacherous mountain peaks in the Swiss Alps: the Eiger. His target is one of his three fellow climbers. The problem is that the CII can't tell him which one.

Tom Hazard has a dangerous secret. He may look like an ordinary 41-year-old, but he was born in 1581. Owing to a rare condition, he’s been alive for centuries. From Shakespeare’s England to Jazz Age Paris to voyaging the Pacific alongside Captain Cook, Tom has seen a lot, and he now craves an ordinary life. Tom now has the perfect cover - working as a history teacher at a London school. Here, he can teach the kids about wars and witch hunts as if he’d never witnessed them first-hand. He can try to tame the past that is catching up with him. The only thing Tom can’t do is fall in love.

STOP. You should not have touched this flyer with your bare hands. NO, don't put it down. It's too late. They're watching you. My name is David Wong. My best friend is John. Those names are fake. You might want to change yours. You may not want to know about the things you'll read on these pages, about the sauce, about Korrok, about the invasion, and the future. But it's too late. You touched the book. You're in the game. You're under the eye. The only defense is knowledge. You need to read this book, to the end. Even the part with the bratwurst. Why?

Richard is a middle-aged Englishman who runs a B&B in the fictional Val de Follet in the Loire Valley. Nothing ever happens to Richard, and really that’s the way he likes it. One day, however, one of his older guests disappears, leaving behind a bloody handprint on the wallpaper. Another guest, the exotic Valérie, persuades a reluctant Richard to join her in investigating the disappearance. Richard remains a dazed passenger in the case until things become really serious and someone murders Ava Gardner, one of his beloved hen...and you don’t mess with a fellow’s hens!

Evaleen Bechmann is too busy running Human Resources for the billion-dollar company, Mimir, to even consider dating. As for emotions, she refuses to discuss that, too. It doesn't matter anyway. She's invisible to men, especially one man in particular. Evaleen is fine with that. Not everyone gets their happily ever after; that's only for novels.

Meg Cabot is the New York Times best-selling author of The Princess Diaries series. Susannah Simon is a teenager who can see ghosts. As a bridge between the living and the dead, she gets called on to help ghosts take care of unfinished business. After she and her mother move from New York City to sunny California, Suze meets the sexiest boy she's ever seen, too bad he's a ghost, too.

For Colorado caterer Goldy Schulz, business isn’t just booming—it’s skyrocketing. Her friend Marla is constantly warning her, “Success can kill you.” But Goldy doesn’t take the warning literally until her next booking: a cocktail party for the Westside Mall’s Elite Shoppers Club. While setting up, Goldy is nearly run down by a truck with no intention of stopping. Then she finds an old friend in a pile of sale shoes—stabbed with one of Goldy’s new knives. Goldy must catch the real killer between whipping up Sweethearts’ Swedish Meatballs, Quiche Me Quick, and Diamond Lovers’ Hot Crab Dip.