Mystery Comedy Fiction

Sabine LaVeche needs to locate a blood relative fast - her life depends on it. Then Helena Henry shows up offering to help, and Sabine knows she's really in trouble when it's the best idea she's heard in a while. When private investigator Beau Villeneuve takes on Sabine's case, things heat up in more ways than one, and Sabine struggles to balance thoughts of a life with Beau against her chances of living at all. As the investigation proceeds, they begin to uncover the secrets of Sabine's past.

Stephanie was married to him for about fifteen minutes before she caught him cheating on her with her archnemesis, Joyce Barnhardt. Another fifteen minutes after that, Stephanie filed for divorce, hoping never to see either one of them again.

Dublin is in the middle of a heat wave, and tempers are running high. The Celtic Tiger is well and truly dead, activists have taken over the headquarters of a failed bank, the trial of three unscrupulous property developers teeters on the brink of collapse, and in the midst of all this, along comes a mysterious organisation hell-bent on exacting bloody vengeance in the name of the little guy. Paul Mulchrone doesn’t care about any of this; he has problems of his own.

Meg Langslow and Michael's house is serving as the marshalling point for the annual Caerphilly holiday parade. The theme is the 12 Days of Christmas, and it features 12 drummers from the school's marching band, 11 bagpipers, 10 leaping lords costumed in medieval finery from the college's drama department, and so on. There are also assorted floats, a live nativity scene on a flatbed truck, the three wise men on Caerphilly Zoo camels, and Santa in a bright-red horse-drawn sleigh.

Tough, cynical PI Sam Spade is hired by the story's irresistible femme fatale, Brigid O'Shaughnessy, to locate the client's sister by tailing her companion. Spade's partner, Miles Archer, takes on the assignment, and quickly both he and the man he was shadowing are murdered. As Spade pursues the mystery of his partner's death, he is drawn into a circle of colorful characters - all of them after a legendary statuette of a falcon fashioned long ago for King Charles of Spain.

Plain Heathen Mischief ups the existential ante, as Joel King, a defrocked Baptist minister, finds life even more bedeviling once he's served six months for a career-ending crime he might not even have committed. Now his incommunicado wife wants a divorce, the teenage vixen of his disgrace is suing him for a cool $5 million, a fresh start in Montana offers no hope for ex-cons of any religious persuasion, and the refuge provided by his sister turns as nasty as his parole officer. Talk about a crisis of faith.

Mma Ramotswe is busy investigating her latest case: a woman who is looking for her family. The problem is, the woman doesn't know her real name of whether any members of her family are now living. Meanwhile, Phuti Radiphuti has bought Mma Makutsi a glorious new bed. Unfortunately, it will inadvertently cause her several sleepless nights.

When up-and-coming chef Tommy Pagana settles for a less than glamorous stint at his uncle's restaurant in Manhattan's Little Italy, he unwittingly finds himself a partner in big-time crime. And when the mob decides to use the kitchen for a murder, nothing Tommy learned in cooking school has prepared him for what happens next. With the FBI on one side and his eccentric wise guy superiors on the other, Tommy has to struggle to do right by his conscience and avoid getting killed in the meantime....

Born a Parsi in Bombay, sent to university and medical school in Vienna, Dr. Farrokh Daruwalla is a 59-year-old orthopedic surgeon and a Canadian citizen who lives in Toronto. Once, 20 years ago, Dr. Daruwalla was the examining physician of two murder victims in Goa, India. Now, 20 years later, he will be reacquainted with the murderer.

Morris Duckworth can't get over Massimina, or Mimi, as he likes to refer to her. But then, he should have thought of that before he kidnapped and killed her. Only now, living in Verona and married to Mimi's sister, does he appreciate how much he misses her and how blindly he has stumbled into a trap of fate. Struggling to adjust to his good fortune, with a lavish house and cushy job, our unsavory hero finds that his new success is rife with tribulation: not least his pushy bride's staggering sexual appetite.

Trenton, New Jersey’s favorite used-car dealer, Jimmy Poletti, was caught selling a lot more than used cars out of his dealerships. Now he’s out on bail and has missed his date in court, and bounty hunter Stephanie Plum is looking to bring him in. Leads are quickly turning into dead ends, and all too frequently into dead bodies. Even Joe Morelli, the city’s hottest cop, is struggling to find a clue to the suspected killer’s whereabouts. These are desperate times, and they call for desperate measures.

Out of work for months, Lussi Meyer is desperate to work anywhere in publishing. Prestigious Blackwood-Patterson isn’t the perfect fit, but a bizarre set of circumstances leads to her hire and a firm mandate: Lussi must find the next horror superstar to compete with Stephen King, Anne Rice, and Peter Straub. It’s the ’80s, after all, and horror is the hottest genre. But as soon as she arrives, Lussi finds herself the target of her coworkers’ mean-spirited pranks.

Newly installed superintendent of the Virginia State Police, Judy Hammer, and her right hand and confidant, Andy Brazil, are at their wits' end trying to protect the public from the politicians - and vice versa. And amid the mayhem, an island off the coast of Virginia declares UDI, claiming its independence lies in the history of America's first settlers - those who set sail from London's Isle of Dogs in 1607.

For Detective Bunny McGarry, life is complicated, and it is about to get more so. It’s 1999 and his hard won reputation amongst Dublin’s criminal fraternity, for being a massive pain in the backside, is unfortunately shared by his bosses. His partner has a career-threatening gambling problem and, oh yeah, Bunny's finally been given a crack at the big time. He’s set the task of bringing down the most skilled and ruthless armed robbery gang in Irish history. So the last thing he needs in his life is yet another complication.

Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series has become a worldwide phenomenon thanks to the appeal of endearing protagonist Precious Ramotswe and the author’s charmingly quirky prose. In this 13th installment, Mma Ramotswe’s attention is focused on a pesky disciplinary problem at her adopted daughter’s school - while Grace Makutsi adjusts to wedded bliss and the famed Clovis Andersen arrives in Botswana looking for more than bush tea.

Venice, a really long time ago: Three prominent Venetians await their most loathsome and foul dinner guest, the erstwhile envoy from Britain who also happens to be a favorite of the Doge: The rascal-Fool Pocket. This trio of cunning plotters have lured Pocket to a dark dungeon, promising a spirited evening. Their invitation is, of course, bogus. These scoundrels have something far less amusing planned for the man who has consistently foiled their quest for power and wealth. But this Fool is no fool.…

Anisa Ellahi dreams of being a translator of “great works of literature,” but instead mostly spends her days subtitling Bollywood movies, living off her parents’ generous allowance, and discussing the “underside of life” with her best friend, Naima. Anisa’s mediocre white boyfriend, Adam, only adds to her growing sense of inadequacy with his savant-level aptitude for languages, successfully leveraging his expansive knowledge into an enviable career. But when Adam learns to speak Urdu with native fluency practically overnight, Anisa forces him to reveal his secret.

Paul can't let an incident from his past go. When he finds out a rival detective agency played a key role in it, he drags MCM Investigations into a blood feud that they can't hope to win. Soon they're faced with the prospect of the company going out of business, and Brigit going out of her damn mind. When long-buried bodies are discovered in the Wicklow Mountains, Bunny's past starts closing in on him, too.

After being duped out of her life savings in Germany, Val Fremden retreats home to Florida with more than just her pride in tatters. Broke, jobless, divorced, and 45, she knows starting over won’t be easy. But when her only friend suddenly turns up dead, Val begins to wonder if the world is out to get her.

Stormy Weather centers on the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew. The devastation of the storm has attracted crowds of voyeurs and impostors to Florida. Drawn by the chance to prey on Andrew's victims, misfits like the murderous ex-con Snapper and the dangerously seductive Edie find easy targets for their insurance scams. They're not prepared, though, when they meet their opposition, led by a hoary ex-governor who smokes toads.

Both hilariously funny and deadly accurate, Carl Hiaasen's novel will take you into a Florida that is far from the frilly palms and pink flamingos of its post cards.