Comedy Crime Fiction

When grandmother Maureen Phelan is surprised in her home by a stranger, she clubs the intruder with a Holy Stone. The consequences of this unplanned murder connect four misfits struggling against their meager circumstances. Ryan is a fifteen-year-old drug dealer desperate not to turn out like his alcoholic father, Tony, whose feud with his next-door neighbor threatens to ruin his family. Georgie is a sex worker who half-heartedly joins a born-again movement to escape her profession and drug habit.

Freshly laid-off Wisconsinites Patrick and Barbara McDougall are going to sunny Florida for a modest romantic vacation. But the motel they picked isn't quite a pastel paradise, and they have to be midwesterners and make the best of a bad situation. Except bad goes to worse, and a string of misfortunes renders them unable to leave the state. Meanwhile, the next Mexican-American War is being fought, this time in Fort Lauderdale, between the Kentucky mafia and the Oxy cartel over control of the lucrative pain clinic market.

Stephanie Plum may not be the best bounty hunter in beautiful downtown Trenton, but she's pretty darn good at turning bad situations her way . . . and she always gets her man. In To the Nines, her cousin Vinnie (who's also her boss) has posted bail on Samuel Singh, an illegal immigrant. When the elusive Mr. Singh goes missing, Stephanie is on the case. But what she uncovers is far more sinister than anyone imagines and leads to a group of killers who give new meaning to the word hunter.

In his day, Tom was a hard man. He came up with Dillinger in the 1930s, and pulled a lot of high-profile jobs before the state put him away. They meant it to be for good, but after twenty-three years the prisons are too crowded for seventy-year-old bank robbers, and so they let the old man go. Finally free, he heads straight for John Dortmunder's house. Long ago, Tom buried $700,000, and now he needs help digging it up. While he was inside, the government dammed a nearby river, creating a reservoir and putting fifty feet of water on top of his money.

“Ms. Rabi, as usual, had me laughing out loud. I highly recommend this to all romantics at heart.” Amazon Reviewer. Gabriel is a high-powered attorney, with a beautiful wife and two adorable children. He has achieved success in record time, carved a name for himself in the legal arena, and can finally enjoy the fruits of his labor. There is just one problem; Gabriel is bored of everything. Every. Goddamn. Thing. So, while on a business trip to Vegas (Business in Vegas? Yeah right!) he encounters the blonde and voluptuous Sinead. Not only is she sexy, but she is uninhibited and totally ...

COLLEGE INSTALOVE LIKE YOU'VE NEVER SEEN. ANNABELLE WINTERS STYLE. I called her Princess before I even knew her name. And when I looked into her eyes I almost forgot my own darned name . . . I also forgot what kind of a man I was . . . The kind of man always looking for something fresh and new, never going down the same road twice . . . But Princess makes me want to be a different sort of man. The Forever sort of man. Sweetness and a hint of darkness. No cheating. And a guaranteed happy ending. This is campus-love, Annabelle Winters style. HERE'S WHAT READERS ARE SAYING ABOUT THE CURVY IN ...

When the manuscript of a debut crime novel arrives at a Parisian publishing house, everyone in the readers’ room is convinced it’s something special. And the committee for France’s highest literary honor, the Prix Goncourt, agrees. But when the shortlist is announced, there’s a problem for editor Violaine Lepage: She has no idea of the author’s identity. As the police begin to investigate a series of murders strangely reminiscent of those recounted in the book, Violaine is not the only one looking for answers.

Recently dumped and stuck with a mortgage, artist Esther Ray wants to burn the world, but instead, she reluctantly accepts a scrapbooking job from the deliriously wealthy Naomi Duncan. The scrapbooks, a secret birthday gift for Naomi’s husband, Bryce, trace the Duncan’s 25-year marriage.

Bryson Wilde, investigator for hire, lives in an edgy world where the dames are dangerous, cigarettes dangle from ruby-red lips, and the nights are hotter than whiskey-soaked jazz. In R. J. Jagger’s riveting noir thriller, A Way with Murder, Wilde finds himself entangled in two deadly assignments, one for a young, raven-haired attorney on the run after visiting an archeological site in Mexico, and the other for a pretty, little doll-face, who is too mysterious to trust and too hypnotic to resist.

While transporting a woman to an insane asylum, Deputy Kopp discovers something deeply troubling about her story. Before she can investigate, another inmate bound for the asylum breaks free and tries to escape. In both cases, Constance runs instinctively toward justice. But the fall of 1916 is a high-stakes election year, and any move she makes could jeopardize Sheriff Heath's future - and her own. Although Constance is not on the ballot, her controversial career makes her the target of political attacks.

She'd heard the stories, seen the movies, read the books. But now police Chief Inspector Sigrid Ødegård has to leave her native Norway and actually go there - to that land across the Atlantic where her missing brother is implicated in the mysterious death of a prominent African-American academic. America. Sigrid is plunged into a United States where race and identity, politics and promise, reverberate in every aspect of daily life.

It’s all Tinkler’s fault. If it weren’t for his obsession with the 1970s band Black Dog, none of this would have happened. The members of Black Dog performed an infamous publicity stunt on Halig Island: they burned a million dollars on an enormous bonfire. But the stunt backfired, splitting the band for good and increasing the value of their final, recalled album tenfold.

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?

Welcome to another typical summer in Florida, the season of the storms. Serge Storms. That loveable serial killer, an under-under-medicated dispenser of truth, justice, and trivia, is back with a vengeance. And not a weirdness-laced moment too soon. His cherished home state is about to take a beating, and from far more than the way-too-routine conga line of hurricanes bearing down on the peninsula. Corpses have begun turning up at a disturbing rate, even for Florida.

When Fergus tells Diana he's taking her on a flower-arranging retreat for her birthday, she should have been more suspicious. Especially when he announces that he's coming with her. After discovering the whole truth about the retreat, Diana is still considering how to murder Fergus...when one of their fellow flower arrangers is found dead - stabbed in the back with a mystery weapon. With the retreat on complete lockdown, Diana and Fergus have a mystery to solve that wasn't part of the itinerary. Will they find the killer before the clock runs out?

In a dingy office in Fisherman's Wharf, the glass panel in the door bears the names of A. Kimrean and Z. Kimrean. Private Eyes. Behind the door there is only one desk, one chair, one scrawny androgynous P.I. in a tank top and skimpy waistcoat. A.Z., as they are collectively known, are twin brother and sister. He's pure misanthropic logic, she's wild hedonistic creativity. The Kimreans have been locked in mortal battle since they were in utero...which is tricky because they, very literally, share one single body. That's right. One body, two pilots.

Daniel T. Drunk, Jr. if you really wanna know. And I’m on a plane headed to Paradise Isle on the trip of a lifetime. The occasion? My honeymoon. Except, there’s only one problem. I’m riding solo. It’s a really long story, and if you don’t mind, I’d prefer to leave it at that. Really? You must know? Fine, I get it. You’re the nosey type. Here’s the abbreviated version. I came within an inch of marrying a cheating slut. There. Get the picture? Good.

The year is 1977, and America is finally getting over the nightmares of Watergate and Vietnam and the national hangover that was the 1960s. But not everyone is ready to let it go. Not aging comedian Koo Davis, friend to generals and presidents and veteran of countless USO tours to buck up American troops in the field. And not the five remaining members of the self-proclaimed People’s Revolutionary Army, who’ve decided that kidnapping Koo Davis would be the perfect way to bring their cause back to life....

Cuervo is a pampered Nicaraguan moneyman, funding a guerrilla war from his cushy Miami penthouse. Sixto is his hulking, pistol-packing attendant, whose job satisfaction is on the wane. When an aging mobster enters their lives with a promise to help the rebel cause - with a planeload of chickens originally intended for voodoo sacrifice - a tense situation turns combustible. From the wickedly funny mind of Carl Hiaasen comes "The Edible Exile", a raucous story of sleazeball nihilists, lovable thugs, and jungle-weary freedom fighters who collide in a battle of wills, ego, and the almighty dollar.

Which is more powerful: romance or revenge? Mafia princess Angelina Amaro has only ever loved one man - and even that lone affair was never consummated. Why not? Because her would-be lover, Sal Martucci, fled into the Witness Protection Program after ratting out Big Paul, Angelina's father. But when Sal is discovered, a decade later, working as a bartender in Key West, the wildly dysfunctional Amaro clan heads south - one member with love on her mind, the others with murder in their hearts.