Mystery Thrillers Humor

Meet Vanessa Salomon, a privileged and misanthropic French-American translator hailing from a wealthy Parisian family. Her twin sister is a famous movie star, which Vanessa resents deeply and daily. The only man Vanessa ever loved recently killed himself by jumping off the roof of her building. It’s a full life. Vanessa has just started working on an English translation of a titillating, experimental thriller by a dead author when she’s offered a more prominent gig: translating the latest book by an Extremely Famous French Writer who is not in any way based on Michel Houellebecq.

Top surfer Dolphin Smoote gets more than he bargains for when he works up the nerve to ask out the brown-eyed beauty on a date. The search of quick coin without having to work will always lead a surfer to precarious places, and Dolphin is no exception. With the help of his lovable surfer crew who often have more to say about stylishness than anything else, Dolphin finds himself between conmen, ghosts, an impending storm from the coast of Mexico … and still no money for a second date.

Melanie knew someone should have kept Barry Turk on a short leash. The star Poodle handler and lady killer had a habit of chicanery that bred contempt in the dog show circuit. But when Barry is shot dead in his own driveway, even Melanie is stunned at how unsporting the competition can get. Now, as Melanie digs for clues deep under Connecticut's well-groomed surface, she finds herself sniffing around in the killer's own backyard, and counts herself lucky to have the animal instincts to keep herself alive. .

First, there's the media frenzy over the “Hollow Man,” a gutless corpse found on the beach. And yet people think it’s perfectly normal to find dead sharks in the middle of downtown boulevards - or to spot black mushroom clouds behind the airport. Then there are the roving bands of carjackers who suddenly find themselves inconvenienced. Not to mention people lurking outside sex-addiction meetings. Could this be the work of Serge, that eccentric trivialista and one-man vigilante? And why is he extensively photographing foreign consulates right before the critically important Summit of the Americas?

Being an undercover poison taster for the rich and famous might sound glamorous, but for Isobel Avery it means stomaching bad clients and even worse coffee. The one side of the job that lives up to expectations is the money. Which is just as well for Izzy, since she needs an awful lot of it. Who knew when she made a lifelong commitment to a man that it would be one year living with him and the rest of her life paying for it?

Meg Langslow is pregnant with twins when Michael asks if she wouldn't mind having a houseguest. One of his doctoral students is directing his new translation of a play by a minor Spanish playwright, who will come to town for the production. Señor Mendoza turns out to be a partygoer who loves to spend raucous evenings among adoring students...at Casa Langslow. Into this chaos arrives the dean of the English department, who insists the play be canceled. Then the dean is found murdered.

As the holidays draw near in Caerphilly, Mother volunteers to take part in a big Christmas-themed decorator show house - each room of a temporarily untenanted house is decorated to the hilt by a different decorator for the public to tour. Of course, Mother insists that Meg pitch in with the organization, and she finds herself surrounded by flamboyant personalities with massive egos clashing and feeling their professional reputations are at stake.

Life is reasonably rosy for plus-size ex-pop star turned assistant dormitory director and sometime sleuth Heather Wells. Her freeloading ex-con dad is finally moving out. She still yearns for her hot landlord, Cooper Cartwright, but her relationship with "rebound beau", vigorous vegan math professor Tad Tocco, is more than satisfactory. Best of all, nobody has died lately in Death Dorm, the aptly nicknamed student residence that Heather assistant directs. Of course every silver lining ultimately has some black cloud attached.

Desperate to complete the last chapter of his law thesis on workplace dynamics for women to secure his tenure, Professor Stanley Hopkins stumbles on an old close college friend, Donald Johansson, who has plenty of female employees. The problem is that Donald is a porn video king. Taking his wife to California’s seedy city of Burbank to help with taping interviews, Stanley realizes he is in way over his head the moment a leading porn star is brutally killed in Donald’s office during a party.

There are not many people brave enough to say no to Irwin Dressler, Hollywood’s scariest mob boss turned movie king. Even though Dressler is 93 years old, LA burglar Junior Bender is quaking in his boots when Dressler’s henchmen haul him in for a meeting. Dressler wants Junior to solve a crime he believes was committed more than 70 years ago, when an old friend of his, once-famous starlet Dolores La Marr, had her career destroyed after compromising photos were taken of her at a Las Vegas party. Dressler wants justice for Dolores and the shining career she never had.

It's everyday business when Wattles, the San Fernando Valley's top "executive crook", sets up a hit. He establishes a chain of criminals to pass along the instructions and the money, thereby ensuring that the hitter doesn't know who hired him. Then one day Wattles finds his office safe open and a single item missing: the piece of paper listing the crooks in the chain. When people associated with the chain begin to pop up dead, the only person Wattles can turn to for help is Junior Bender, professional burglar and begrudging private eye for crooks.

Los Angeles burglar Junior Bender is in the middle of burgling a house and has just gotten his hands on one of the world's rarest stamps when the job goes terrifically wrong. After barely escaping, Junior realizes the danger is far from over. He's gotten himself on the wrong side of a man whose name is synonymous with violence, and to save his own skin he's set off a chain reaction of blackmail, strong-arming, and escalating crime.

Junior Bender is a Los Angeles burglar with a magic touch. Since he first started breaking into houses at age fourteen, he's never once been caught. But now, after twenty-two years building an exemplary career, Junior has been blackmailed by Trey Annunziato, one of the most powerful crime bosses in LA, into acting as a private investigator on the set of Trey's porn venture, which someone keeps sabotaging.

Tara's career comes with a lot of pros and cons - which is a nice way of saying that she's kick-ass in her fight against professional con artists. And she's tough enough to deal with all the money launderers, tax evaders, and other such criminals who cross her path...until her own boyfriend, Nick, joins their leagues. Now all bets are off. Nick is about to go deep undercover - and the stakes are higher than Tara could have ever imagined. It's all part of a joint task force with the DEA to bring down a powerful, violent drug cartel.

Weddings aren't my thing - never have been. But eloping would break my mother's heart, especially since the president of the United States put in a good word for me with his daughter's wedding planner. I'm going to have the wedding of the year...whether I like it or not. Before we can say I do, Slash and I are flying off to the Brazilian rain forest. Our mission: stop hackers from stealing a vaccine that could save millions of lives. I thought it'd be easy, but from the moment we step off the plane, I'm up to my neck in trouble.

When Oliver Bonds, a revered religious studies professor at the University of Texas, loses his toddler son and undergoes intense legal scrutiny over his involvement, grief engulfs him completely. His life is upended; Oliver loses his wife, home, and faith. Three years after his son's death, Oliver lives in a shack without electricity and frequents the soup kitchen where he used to volunteer. It's only when he's befriended by Lyle, a con artist with a passion for theories of Hollow Earth, that Oliver begins to reengage with the world.

When a dip-net fisherman hauls in a severed human foot, Lieutenant Jim Wekle is thrown into another whodunit on his remote island. Alaskan mayhem ensues with a rogue gang of elderly women on ATVs, a Planet Patrol environmental boat with an oil leak, and an influx of tourists, each clutching a fresh copy of a book titled, Muskeg Mama. Kram is in rare form as he decides to enter the local work force by applying his unique perspective to a series of part-time jobs.

Easy's getting harder every day for Tara. A tax-evading pet groomer managed to buzz off a big chunk of her hair...just in time for her strictly-business meeting with country-music heartthrob Brazos Rivers. Of course Tara shouldn't care - she's devoted to Special Agent Nick Pratt, after all - but Rivers does know how to steal a woman's heart with a song....

“The afternoon of September first, dishwater-gray and rainy, a man named Dale Figgo picked up a hitchhiker on Gus Grissom Boulevard in Tangelo Falls, Florida. The hitchhiker, who reminded Figgo of Danny DeVito, asked for a lift to the interstate. Figgo said he’d take him there after finishing an errand.” Thus begins Fever Beach, with an errand that leads—in pure Hiaasen-style—into the depths of Florida at its most Floridian: a sun-soaked bastion of right-wing extremism, white power, greed, and corruption.

For Scott Hatcher, a former television writer turned struggling novelist with a failing marriage to boot, social-distancing and mask-wearing feel like fitting additions to his already surreal life. When his wife Marie and neighbor John Bergman disappear in the middle of the raging COVID-19 pandemic, Scott is naturally mystified and disturbed, but he is also about to learn that his picturesque neighborhood hides more than just the mundane routines of suburban life.