Mystery Comedy Fiction

Lola Pink is in all shades of trouble. Her shop is still under construction, she's sort-of fired from her job, and her hottest date this week is with a microwave burrito. However, when Dane Clark finds himself at the center of a murder investigation, Lola slips on her gorgeous vintage sunglasses and takes the case. She's determined to prove that her sometimes-boss, sometimes-boyfriend is innocent, even if that means dealing with Dane's "charming" parents and planning a "splendid" charity gala in under two weeks.

Monday mornings aren’t supposed to be fun, but they should be predictable. However, on this particular Monday, Stephanie Plum knows that something is amiss when she turns up for work at Vinnie’s Bail Bonds to find that longtime office manager Connie Rosolli, who is as reliable as the tides in Atlantic City, hasn’t shown up. Stephanie’s worst fears are confirmed when she gets a call from Connie’s abductor. He says he will only release her in exchange for a mysterious coin that a recently murdered man left as collateral for his bail.

The balance is off in Widow's Bay. The once powerful vampire in charge is no longer at the top of the food chain. It's a broomstick race to find out why before reporter Marzie Nowak and her friends become the latest bat snack! Plus a murder on Main Street is making it quite a challenge to lure tourists to this haunted resort town in Michigan.

For a policeman, there can be few things worse than a serial killer loose in your city. Except, perhaps, a serial killer who targets coppers, and a city on the brink of bloody revolution. For Commander Sam Vimes, it all feels horribly familiar. Caught on the roof of a very magical building during a storm, he's found himself back in his own rough, tough past without even the clothes he was standing up in when the lightning struck. Living in the past is hard, especially when your time travel companion is a serial killer who knows where you live.

The Byzantine Fire is much more than a flawless ninety-carat ruby. As a stone it's worth over a million dollars, a value vastly increased by its pure gold band - but its history is what makes it priceless. A ring that has been fought for with sword and pen and passed from nation to nation by all manner of theft and trickery, has finally made its way to the United States. The US agrees to return it to Turkey, but it's about to be stolen twice more.

Being a hit man has its perks, but I never thought getting an accidental mooning by an attractive PI while he’s caught on a fence would be one of them. While it’s not exactly love at first sight, he’s captured my interest and won’t let go. Suddenly, I find myself caught in a game of cat and mouse, determined to attract the attention of Jackson, the PI who should be my enemy. He pretends like he’s not flattered by my flowers and the mentions of my totally-not-fictitious blow-up doll, Randy (or was it Dandy?), but I know better.

Resourceful Bingo Riggs and his partner, Handsome Kusak, are in the sucker-bait business, snapping candid pics of tourists off Central Park. Their fly-by-night enterprise can be irresistible to souvenir lovers, but with one camera in a pawnshop and their developing room in the bathtub of a two-room dump near Hell’s Kitchen, their venture is wretchedly underexposed - until they stumble upon an insurance fraud scheme between the allegedly dead eccentric Mr. S. S. Pigeon and his business partner and beneficiary.

Dr. Siri Paiboun, the ex-national coroner of Laos, may have more experience dissecting bodies than making art, but when he manages to smuggle a fancy movie camera into the country he devises a plan to shoot a Lao adaptation of War and Peace. The only problem? The Ministry of Culture must approve the script first. That and he can't figure out how to turn on the camera. Meanwhile, the skeleton of a woman has appeared under the Anusawari Arch in the middle of the night. Siri assists his friend, the newly promoted Senior Police Inspector Phosy Vongvichai, with the ensuing investigation.

In a prosperous yet gruesomely violent near future, superhero vigilantes battle thugs whose heads are full of supervillain fantasies. The peace is kept by a team of smooth, well-dressed negotiators called The Men in Fancy Suits. Meanwhile a young girl is caught in the middle and thinks the whole thing is ridiculous. Zoey, a recent college graduate with a worthless degree, makes a reluctant trip into the city after hearing that her estranged con artist father died in a mysterious yet spectacular way.

Rumor has it that a collection of priceless ancient relics representing the Seven Deadly Sins have made their way to Boston’s North Shore. Partnered with pastry chef Lizzie Tucker, Diesel bullies and charms his way through historic Salem to track them down - and his mastermind cousin Gerewulf Grimorie. The black-haired, black-hearted Wulf is on the hunt for the relic representing gluttony. Now in a race against time, the pair soon finds out that more isn’t always better, as they battle Wulf and the first of the deadly sins.

The battle of the dead was won, but at a great cost. Sion, leader of the Mist Village, was left with only pain and regret as Richter was claimed by the abyss. What no one but the abandoned chaos seed knows is that he narrowly avoided the curse of the lich Singh, a curse that still hangs above his head. Now, surrounded by miles of darkness and tons of crushing rock, Richter has to find his way back into the light.

Set adrift by his pirate crew, Pocket of Dog Snogging - last seen in The Serpent of Venice - washes up on the sun-bleached shores of Greece, where he hopes to dazzle the Duke with his comedic brilliance and become his trusted fool. But the island is in turmoil. Egeus, the Duke’s minister, is furious that his daughter Hermia is determined to marry Demetrius, instead of Lysander, the man he has chosen for her. The Duke decrees that if, by the time of the wedding, Hermia still refuses to marry Lysander, she shall be executed...or consigned to a nunnery.

On the 12th floor of the Acme Building, on a cold February day in St. Paul, Guy Noir looks down the barrel of a loaded revolver in the hands of geezer gangster Joey Roast Beef, who is demanding to hear what lucrative scheme Guy is cooking up with stripper-turned-women's-studies-professor Naomi Fallopian. Everyone wants to know, and Guy faces them one by one, as he and Naomi pursue a dream of earning gazillions by selling a surefire method of dramatic weight loss.

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....

Harvard professor of symbology Robert Langdon awakens in an Italian hospital, disoriented and with no recollection of the past thirty-six hours, including the origin of the macabre object hidden in his belongings. With a relentless female assassin trailing them through Florence, he and his resourceful doctor, Sienna Brooks, are forced to flee.

All it takes is a few underhanded moves by a tough ex-cop named Eppick to pull thief John Dortmunder into a game he never wanted to play. With no choice, he sets out on a perilous treasure hunt for a long-lost gold and jewel-studded chess set once intended as a birthday gift for the last Romanov czar. Success is not inevitable with Dortmunder leading the attack, but he's nothing if not persistent, and some gambit or other might just stumble into a winning move.

Buddhist monk Wayan Bagus lost his island of solitude and wants to get it back. The island was about 200 miles northeast of Samoa. It had a mountain, beaches, a rainforest, and a volcano. And now it's gone. Poof! Vanished without a trace. Brilliant and boyishly charming Emerson Knight likes nothing better than solving an unsolvable, improbable mystery. And finding a missing island is better than Christmas morning in the Knight household.

Dr. Siri might finally be allowed to retire (again). Although he loves his two morgue assistants, he’s tired of being Laos’ national coroner - a job he never wanted in the first place. Plus, he’s pushing 80 and wants to spend some time with his wife before his untimely death, which has been predicted by the local transvestite fortune teller. But retirement is not in the cards for Dr. Siri after all. He’s dragged into one last job for the Lao government: supervising an excavation for the remains of a US fighter pilot....

Harry Flashman: the unrepentant bully of Tom Brown's schooldays, now with a Victoria Cross, has three main talents - horsemanship, facility with foreign languages and fornication. A reluctant military hero, Flashman plays a key part in most of the defining military campaigns of the nineteenth century despite trying his utmost to escape them all. Flashman, soldier, duellist, lover, imposter, coward, cad, and hero triumphs in this first installment of The Flashman Papers.

London, 2044. Britain is a republic. President Jan Polak has vanished overnight from Buckingham Palace, just weeks before an election. Has he been kidnapped? Or even killed? One man is determined to find out - as soon as he's had his breakfast. His name is Pond. Howie Pond - the president's official spokesperson and wannabe secret agent. With just a love of James Bond films to guide him, Howie sets out on a mission to solve the missing-president mystery.