Mystery Comedy Fiction

Meg Cabot is the New York Times best-selling author of The Princess Diaries series. Susannah Simon is a teenager who can see ghosts. As a bridge between the living and the dead, she gets called on to help ghosts take care of unfinished business. After she and her mother move from New York City to sunny California, Suze meets the sexiest boy she's ever seen, too bad he's a ghost, too.

In the life of Precious Ramotswe, a woman duly proud of her fine traditional build, there is rarely a dull moment, and in the latest installment in the universally beloved No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, there is much happening on Zebra Drive and Tlokweng Road. Mma Ramotswe is experiencing staffing difficulties. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni asks to be put in charge of a case involving an errant husband. But can a man investigate such matters as successfully as the number-one lady detective can?

After her music career crashes and burns, Juliet Langley is forced to turn to the only other business she knows: food service. Unfortunately, bad luck strikes yet again when her fiancé robs her blind and runs off with her best waitress. Flushing what's left of her beloved cafe down the toilet with her failed engagement, Juliet moves back to her college stomping grounds in Nashville to manage an old friend's coffeehouse.

It looks like Fletch is finally getting hitched. It's a small affair - just a few friends, the bride's parents, the groom's mother, and, just maybe, his father. Except Fletch's father is supposed to be dead. But somebody delivered the letter, signed "Fletch Senior" and containing an invitation (and a pair of plane tickets) to visit the old man in Nairobi for the honeymoon. No sooner does the couple land in Africa then the search for Fletch's father begins. There's a murder at the airport and reports of the old man's incarceration.

The Department of Sensitive Crimes, renowned for taking on the most obscure and irrelevant cases, led by Ulf Varg, their best detective, is always prepared to take on an investigation, no matter how complex. So when Ulf is approached by the girlfriend of Trig Oloffson, who claims her beau (the infamous bad boy of Swedish letters) is being blackmailed, Ulf is determined to help. It turns out that this wild bear of a man may be more of a teddy.

It's Carnival time in Rio, and Fletch has plenty of money, thanks to a little arrangement he made stateside. But between the American widow who seems to be following Fletch and the Brazilian widow who's fingered Fletch as her long-dead husband, he suddenly doesn't have much time to enjoy the present or even get a wink of sleep. A 30-year-old unsolved murder, a more recent suicide, an inconvenient heart attack - somehow Fletch is connected to all of them, and one of those connections might just shorten his own life.

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?

“The Heron” is the nickname a big-city accountant has attached to himself in his new home near San Diego, where he’s using the alias to avoid a hit man who may be after him. It seems a former client believes that The Heron has skipped town with several million dollars not his own. Don Winslow’s ensuing, entertaining yarn is by turns twisty, dark, and comical as we observe the delicate dance between the pursuer and the pursued.

Real estate agent Violet "Spooky" Parker stumbles upon a body-part theft ring at the local funeral parlor and suspects her caustic coworker has a hand in it - or maybe a foot. Can Violet discover what's in the crates that the crooks are sneaking out of the mortuary in the dark of night? Or will she end up in one of them herself - in pieces?

“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.

Finlay Donovan is killing it...except, she’s really not. The new book she promised her literary agent isn’t written, her ex-husband fired the nanny without telling her, and this morning she had to send her four-year-old to school with hair duct-taped to her head.

Stuck with Alan's ghost following her around, Bree is in hot water now with no easy way out as she's been framed for his murder and plunked in the local pokey. If that weren't bad enough, Gran's ghost has been kidnapped, and all clues point to the Big Easy - New Orleans. With the police on her never-mind-the-size butt, two men vying for her attentions, and a mystery wrapped around the murder of her Gran and ex, she has more than enough to keep her stressed and turning prematurely gray.

Perhaps best known for his No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, #1 New York Times best-selling author Alexander McCall Smith delights fans around the world with his warmhearted 44 Scotland Street novels. In the series’ sixth entry, the residents of 44 Scotland Street grapple with problems both trivial and severe, but none so great as when six-year-old Bertie Pollock - who longs to be seven - mislays his mum and learns a valuable lesson about wish fulfillment.

Fletch, as unbridled as ever and still living the good life in Italy on his ill-gotten fortune, gets a surprising visit from two surly FBI agents. The pair offers him a deal: either he attend the American Journalism Alliance convention and work as an undercover spy for them, or be shipped back to headquarters and face jail time for tax evasion. Reluctantly agreeing to the scheme, he catches a red-eye flight back to the States. But just as rubber hits tarmac in Virginia, news breaks on a murder at the convention.

When Pat accepts her narcissistic ex-boyfriend Bruce's invitation for coffee, she has no idea of the complications in her romantic and professional life that will follow. Meanwhile, Matthew, her boss at the art gallery, attracts the attention of the police after a misunderstanding at the local bookstore. Whether caused by small things such as a cup of coffee and a book, or major events such as Stuart's application for promotion and his wife Irene's decision to pursue a PhD in Aberdeen, change is coming to Scotland Street.

Stephanie Plum is thinking her career as a fugitive apprehension agent has run its course. She's been shot at, spat at, cussed at, fire-bombed, mooned, and attacked by dogs. Time for a change, Stephanie thinks. Time to find the kind of job her mother can tell her friends about without making the sign of the cross. So Stephanie Plum quits. Resigns. No looking back. No changing her mind. She wants something safe and normal. As it turns out, jobs that are safe and normal for most people aren't necessarily safe and normal for Stephanie Plum.

Emma Trafford's new neighbor is a lady killer - but is the scoundrel with the scar capable of murder? Emma can barely contain her precocious younger sister, Lily - the child swears she spied their neighbor engaged in foul play in his Bloomsbury love nest. But when Lily goes too far searching for "evidence," Emma must save the imp by distracting Simon - with an all-consuming kiss rife with danger and desire.

There’s a literary niche for all tastes including those who think that either Agatha Christie wasn’t funny enough or that PG Wodehouse didn’t feature anywhere near as many baffling murders as he could have. The Case of the Canterfell Codicil is a classic, cozy, locked-room mystery written in the style of an homage to PG Wodehouse.

Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.

Florence Grimes is a thirty-one-year-old party girl who always takes the easy way out. Single, broke and unfulfilled after the humiliating end to her girl band career, she has only one reason to get out of bed each day: her ten-year-old son Dylan. But then Alfie Risby, her son’s bully and the heir to a vast frozen food empire, mysteriously vanishes during a class trip, and Dylan becomes the prime suspect. Florence, for once, is faced with a task she can’t quit: She’s got to find Alfie and clear her son’s name, or risk losing Dylan forever.