Mystery Thrillers Humor

When Chaz Perron's wife discovers that he is running a scam (posing as a marine biologist to doctor water samples so that an agribusiness tycoon can continue illegally dumping fertilizer into the Everglades), he pushes her overboard from a cruise liner. Unlucky for Chaz, Joey survives clutching a bale of Jamaican pot. Rescued from the Atlantic by a former police officer, Mick Stranahan, she decides not to report him but instead haunt and taunt him, with Mick's help, by playing dead.

It's been a long, rainy summer for Goldy Schulz, who is engaged in planning wedding receptions for what seems to be all of Aspen Meadow. It's bad enough that Billie Attenborough, the bride from hell, wants to move the location to the Gold Gulch Spa just a scant two days before tying the knot to her doctor fiance. Then Doc Finn, best friend of Goldy's godfather Jack, is killed when his car tumbles into a ravine. But Jack thinks Doc was murdered because of research he was doing at the spa....

When Trevor Hawkins hits the open road in his beat-up old camper van with his incorrigible dog, Milly, his quest for adventure soon spirals dangerously out of control. The simple act of flushing a hotel toilet transforms his life from redundant sales assistant to fugitive from a gang of psychopathic villains, the police, and MI5. Then there's private detective Sandra Gray, who could cheerfully throttle him for turning a well-paid, piece-of-cake job into a total nightmare. Or could she?

An anytime, anywhere listen, Office Shocks is a quirky and comical account of a young, impatient and opinionated B-school graduate who enters the corporate world and discovers it in all its backstage glory. He encounters a stereotypical yet unusual ensemble: the fickle-minded boss, the girl who got fired, the flirtatious colleagues, the dreaded lunch-sharing saint, the erudite two-timing family man, and much more on what turns out to be the most shocking first day at work.

Meet twenty-two-year-old Cherry Pye (née Cheryl Bunterman), a pop star since she was fourteen—and about to attempt a comeback from her latest drug-and-alcohol disaster.

Summer 1989: Gunther Fahnstiel, once a tough cop who wasn't averse to taking a little side money from a certain madam, has just escaped the dementia ward of his Wichita nursing home. He's not exactly sure where he wants to go, but wherever it is, it has to do with the bag full of cash belonging to the man he accidentally backed over with his RV in 1979. During his search, Gunther begins to relive the violent fallout of that madam's sex lottery 40 years ago. As Gunther's memories unravel, his past and present will collide in a devastating reckoning.

A chain of events that will change the lives of each and every character will leave some of them wiser, some of them deader, and some of them definitely looking for a new line of work. With a wicked wit, razor-sharp observations, rich characters, and a plot with more twists than the Inland Waterway, Dave Barry makes his debut a complete and utter triumph.

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.

Sheriff Bo Tully is the kind of western lawman who's as good with the ladies as he is with his guns, and he never lets a death threat get in the way of a good barbecue. He's a man with a sense of humor, which comes in handy when trying to establish order in Blight County. In this latest tale, Tully pursues a 75-year-old missing persons case in which a pair of gold miners (a two-man drilling team known as a double-jack) mysteriously disappeared just as they hit the mother lode in a remote part of Blight County.

Ensconced in a lovely tropical villa on idyllic Triggerfish Lane, Jim Davenport anticipates the good life to come. But this isn't living -- it's Florida, and the neighborhood is not quite what it seems. It's got overly aggressive Little League parents, drug-free Rastafarians, homicidal hookers, unnatural sex and casual violence. Oh, yes, and there's a psychopathic serial killer-cum-Sunshine-State folklorist named Serge A. Storms living directly across the street.

In the aftermath of a family tragedy, an aspiring author is torn between love for her childhood friend and the temptation of a mysterious outsider. Trying to escape the ghosts of her past, she is swept away to a house that breathes, bleeds...and remembers.

"I'm Lexi Carmichael, geek extraordinaire. I spend my days stopping computer hackers at the National Security Agency. My nights? Those I spend avoiding my mother and eating cereal for dinner. Even though I work for a top-secret agency, I've never been in an exciting car chase, sipped a stirred (not shaken) martini, or shot a poison dart from an umbrella. Until today, that is, when two gun-toting thugs popped up in my life and my best friend disappeared."

Dr. Siri Paiboun is summoned to the mountains of Huaphan Province, where for years the leaders of the current communist government hid in caves, waiting to assume power. Now a major celebration of the new regime is scheduled to take place, but an arm is found protruding from the concrete walk laid from the president’s former cave hideout to his new house beneath the cliffs. Siri must supervise the disinterment of the body attached to the arm, identify it, and determine the cause of death.

Young Samuel Johnson and his dachshund, Boswell, are trying to show initiative by trick-or-treating a full three days before Halloween which is how they come to witness strange goings-on at 666 Crowley Road. The Abernathys don't mean any harm by their flirtation with the underworld, but when they unknowingly call forth Satan himself, they create a gap in the universe.

When Hope Bennett marries Carmela’s brother Leo she not only becomes a Fontana, but a Garden State Goddess—and not everyone is happy. Secrets will be revealed, decades-long rivalries will surface, and a sudden murder will lead to a reality reckoning no one is prepared for, least of all the show’s producer Eden who must race to catch a killer and save the most dramatic season of all time.

Meet Phluttr - a diabolically addictive new social network and a villainess, heroine, enemy, and/or bestie to millions. Phluttr has ingested every fact and message ever sent to, from, and about her innumerable users. Her capabilities astound her makers - and they don't even know the tenth of it. But what's the purpose of this stunning creation? Is it a front for something even darker and more powerful than the NSA?

With fugitive parents, a brother dodging loan sharks, a hunky cop who's made her outlaw family his business, and her ex-fiance back in the picture, Carlotta Wren thought her life couldn't get any more complicated. And then...her fugitive parents phone home. Her look-alike is found, well...dead. Under suspicion for murder, Carlotta discovers that her devious double might have been bumped off accidentally - and that she could be the real target!

Val’s always been unlucky at love—and a whole bunch of other things. But she’s never actually felt cursed. Until now. When Tom gives Val an engagement ring for her 50th birthday, she wants to fly the coop. But it’s Tom who skips out on the romantic getaway he planned. When he can’t make the trip, one of Val’s pals goes instead. On the first day, her friend entangles Val in a prank that ticks off the wrong tourist. On the second day, she gets Val charged with murder. Did I mention Val was unlucky?

A small-town Southern Missouri beauty (if she does say so herself), Hollister has an uncanny knack for accidentally robbing banks, convenience stores, and possibly even a drug cartel. Toss in a couple of grand theft autos—purely by accident, of course—but she wouldn’t hurt a fly. Not even when Ruger falls into her lap. Savvy, self-taught, and eternally optimistic, Hollister hitchhikes, runs, and drives her way across America’s heartland, stumbling into one misadventure after another.

A satire of teenage life follows cynical soon-to-graduate Flannery Culp on a raucous journey through high school in the 1990s, covering SATs, college applications, friends, boyfriends, tabloid journalism, and TV talk shows. A first novel.