Comedy Crime Fiction

Wanted: NY apartment in exchange for a great Key West house with swimming pool. In February. Who wouldn't take a swap like that? Then again, if a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is, as Meg and Peter Kaplan soon discover. Heading south for a supposed dream vacation, what they find instead is a panic attack waiting to happen. Coconuts crash through windows, bearing cryptic death threats.

Flavia Albia, daughter and successor of private informer Marcus Didius Falco is twiddling her thumbs with no clients during the December festival of Saturnalia. But that doesn't mean all is quiet. Her husband Tiberius and the Fourth Cohort are battling organized crime interests that are going to war over the festival nuts. A series of accidental poisonings, then bloody murders of rival nut-sellers, and finally a gruesome warning to Tiberius from the hidden criminal powers to back off.

WHEN WIZARDS WAR Deep in the woods lives a wizard called the Professor. In the depths of the Depression, the residents of Fester, Pennsylvania call on “powwowers” such as the Professor to heal ailments, tell fortunes . . . and exact revenge. When an upstart powwower threatens to horn in on the Professor’s business, he starts making plans for his own revenge. The sinister forces he sets in motion spiral out of control, and soon threaten to consume the leading citizens of the town.

The Aventine is full of fracturing families. Wives plot to leave their husbands, husbands plot to spend more time with their mistresses. Masters must endure slaves taking obscene liberties, while aggressive slaves are learning to ape dangerous masters. But no one wants to hire an investigator during the holiday. Albia is lumped with her own domestic stress: overexcited children and bilious guests, too many practical jokes and her magistrate husband Tiberius preoccupied with local strife.

Fred Van Lente's brilliant debut is both an homage to the Golden Age of Mystery and a thoroughly contemporary show-business satire. As the story opens, nine comedians of various acclaim are summoned to the island retreat of legendary Hollywood funnyman Dustin Walker. The group includes a former late-night TV host, a washed-up improv instructor, a ridiculously wealthy "blue collar" comic, and a past-her-prime Vegas icon.

All the magick in the realm can’t make the food in Wonderland palatable, but maybe a little bit of Honey can! FREE on Kindle Unlimited! Princess Hanako, Honey to her friends, is moments away from launching a career as a reality TV star when a mysterious portal whisks her away to another world. Magick may rule in Wonderland, but no amount of hocus pocus can fix the terrible food. Cooking for her new family gives Honey a purpose, and hunky Alex from the Order of Falcon is nothing short of delicious, but when her popular café is burgled Honey begins to wonder what the powers that be really ...

Detective Valentine investigates the murder of a scathing judge of a singing competition. An unknown assailant strikes and kills the popular judge with her own Emmy. As Valentine investigates the homicide, she discovers the victim had earned the nickname "The Dream Crusher" and gathered numerous enemies. After she digs deeper, she finds a rival judge, an arrogant producer, an estranged brother, and a host of others with more than enough motive to deliver the deadly blow. When bodies start to pile up and her suspect list grows, Valentine must uncover the murderer before her own voice is ...

It's hard to find work as a doctor when using your real name will get you killed. So hard that when a reclusive billionaire offers Dr. Peter Brown, aka Pietro Brnwa, a job accompanying a sexy but self-destructive paleontologist on the world's worst field assignment, Brown has no real choice but to say yes. Even if it means that an army of murderers, mobsters, and international drug dealers - not to mention the occasional lake monster - are about to have a serious Pietro Brnwa problem.

Detective Sydney Valentine chases down clues to uncover the identity of a physician's killer. The doctor is bludgeoned to death in his medical office. Without warning, Detective Sydney Valentine's lieutenant assigns her a new and annoying new partner. While the two detectives pursue the investigation into the bloody murder of this high-profile physician, they discover he's going through a nasty divorce. When the body of a John Doe turns up in an alleyway and strange connections between the murders emerge, the likelihood of a simple case looks grim. False Claims is the fourth book in the ...

Meet Tommy Martini, the monk with an anger management problem. His meditations are interrupted by a legacy from his uncle, a crooked priest. Arriving in a New Age Arizona town to claim his inheritance, Brother Tommy meets a charismatic, smoking-hot cult leader who claims that women are being impregnated by alien beings while they sleep. Tommy’s own sleep is disturbed - by cartel hitmen, Mafia bill collectors, and women intrigued by his vow of chastity.

The sensational new crime novel from the best-selling author of Snap. Pensioner Felix Pink is about to find out that it’s never too late...for life to go horribly wrong. When Felix lets himself in to Number Three Black Lane, he’s there to perform an act of kindness and charity: to keep a dying man company as he takes his final breath. But just 15 minutes later Felix is on the run from the police - after making the biggest mistake of his life.

It’s been a year since Simi Chopra’s motley crew pulled off a high-wire diamond necklace heist with the help of sexy rogue Jack Danger. After living it up on the reward money, they're back where they started, struggling to pay their bills. So when a Chicago Mafia boss demands they return the jewels—plus interest, or else—they need to get the team back together…and fast. Unfortunately, Simi soon discovers that the necklace is in the hands of Jack's nemesis, a highly skilled and supremely vengeful master thief who is not above a little blackmail to get even.

A man with dark thoughts on his mind is racing along the remote snowy roads of Hurmevaara in Finland when there is flash in the sky and something crashes into the car. That something turns about to be a highly valuable meteorite. With euro signs lighting up the eyes of the locals, the unexpected treasure is temporarily placed in a neighbourhood museum, under the watchful eye of a priest named Joel.

Best-selling author Jasper Fforde begins an effervescent new series. It's Easter in Reading - a bad time for eggs - and no one can remember the last sunny day. Humpty Dumpty, well-known nursery favourite, large egg, ex-convict and former millionaire philanthropist, is found shattered beneath a wall in a shabby area of town.

Here, in Lynne Truss' first novel, we meet Osborne Lonsdale, a down-at-heel journalist, mysteriously attractive to women, who writes a regular celebrity interview for Come into the Garden. This week his "Me and My Shed" column will be based on the charming garden outhouse owned by TV sitcom star Angela Farmer. Unbeknownst to Osborne, driving down to Devon to interview Angela in her country retreat, the sleepy magazine has been taken over by new management.

Edward is living in a world he can't afford and to which he doesn't belong. To camouflage himself, he has catered to his friends' needs – fetching drycleaning, sorting flowers for premieres. It's a noble effort, really – anything to keep his best pals Robert and Stanza happy. In return, his proximity to them might sponge the shame of his birth and violent past cleanly away. But the chink in his armour is his painfully unrequited love for Stanza. When he realises Stanza and Robert are an item, Edward is pushed too far.

The Black Mass of Brother Springer tells the story of Sam Springer, a drifter novelist who meets Jack Dover, the retiring Abbot of the Church of God's Flock. Dover's final official act is to ordain Springer and send him off to serve as pastor of an all-Black church in Jacksonville, Florida. Springer soon becomes entangled in the city's growing civil rights movement...and with the church deacon's earthy young wife, Merita.

In 1965 Manhattan, patrons flock to Masha’s to savor its brisket bourguignon and impeccable service and to admire its dashing owner and head chef Peter Rashkin, the most eligible bachelor in town. But Peter does not care for the parade of eligible women who come to the restaurant hoping to catch his eye. Running Masha’s consumes him, as does his terrible guilt over surviving the horrors of the Nazi death camp while his wife, Masha - the restaurant’s namesake - and two young daughters perished. Then exquisitely beautiful June Bouquet, an up-and-coming young model, appears at the restaurant, piercing Peter’s guard.

To his chagrin, Alaskan PI Cecil Younger learns his teenage daughter has launched her own detective agency. But when her first case goes awry, she’s going to need some help from an unlikely source: her father, who’s currently locked up in prison.

In his career, Dave Barry has done just about everything - written bestselling nonfiction, won a Pulitzer Prize, seen his life turned into a television series. And now, at last, he has joined the long list of literary figures from Jane Austen to Tolstoy who have made the transition from humor columnist to novelist - and done it with a style and inventiveness that establishes that, yes, he is very good at that, too.