Mystery Comedy Fiction

Private investigator Franki Amato has just turned 30, and she feels anything but festive. To add insult to birthday injury, she has to investigate a surreal strip club homicide - with her 60ish ex-stripper landlady. Adding to her troubles, she has to figure out what a missing amber pendant and a mysterious amaretto bottle have to do with the murder, not to mention why she's being followed. When a second dancer goes down and a third is threatened, Franki turns to a weird witch to crack the case and cancel a curse.

In the tradition of Jonathan Swift and Mark Twain, America Fantastica delivers a biting, witty, and entertaining story about the causes and costs of outlandish fantasy, while also marking the triumphant return of an essential voice in American letters. And at the heart of the novel, amid a teeming cast of characters, readers will delight in the tug-of-war between two memorable and iconic human beings—the exuberant savior-of-souls Angie Bing and the penitent but compulsive liar Boyd Halverson.

Unremarkable legal assistant Gary Thorn goes for a pint with his coworker Brendan, unaware his life is about to change. There, Gary meets a beautiful woman, but she leaves before he catches her name. All he has to remember her by is the title of the book she was reading: The Clementine Complex. And when Brendan goes missing, too, Gary needs to track down the girl he now calls Clementine to get some answers. And so begins Gary’s quest, through the estates and pie shops of South London, to find some answers and hopefully, some love and excitement.

After two rollicking adventures through Western literature, resourceful literary detective Thursday Next definitely needs some downtime. And what better place for a respite than in the hidden depths of the Well of Lost Plots, where all unpublished books reside? But peace and quiet remain elusive for Thursday, who soon discovers that the Well is a veritable linguistic free-for-all, where grammasites run rampant, plot devices are hawked on the black market, and lousy books—like the one she has taken up residence in—are scrapped for salvage.

Ever wondered what it's like to be born into a family of assassins? Gin Bombay knows, and now she's sharing her family's deepest, darkest secrets. The Bombay Family Bedtime Stories continue with My Heroes Have Always Been Hitmen! Four more family stories have been released from the vault, including Rio Bombay, wanna-be cowboy and wild west gunslinger; Caspian, the first Bombay to have to take out another Bombay; Aberdeen, the hoop-skirted Antebellum Assassin; and Dublin Bombay, the Scottish Viking Slayer! History is at its most hilarious as this darkly funny family tells all.

Even after their breakup, Ellie Davis can’t seem to shake her ex-fiancé. First it was the cheating, then it was the rumors, and now she finds out Jason’s been trying to get his greedy hands on her parents’ property. Where does it end? With revenge, Ellie decides. But she might just need a little help first. Enter Fernley Island’s OddJobs app. When the local boat mechanic she hires sends his nephew instead, Ellie has to readjust her plans to account for Hugh Hartford, who’s handsome, brooding, and only in town for a few days.

Four days before Halloween, and poor Sunny Haddock is pregnant...again...but her body isn't the only thing haunting her. She is getting psychic visions of classic horror monsters getting stalked by the invisible man. With each new incident, his actions are getting more deadly. Can she figure out the mystery before someone she cares about becomes the next victim?

When I agreed to stand by my best friend, Basia, on her big day, I had no idea what I was in for. Bouquets and unflattering evening wear I can handle. But between disgruntled dates, a beach venue, and suspicious packages, what else can go wrong? Oh, right - my parents don't know I've moved in with Slash. Oops? Thankfully, I've got everything semi under control, at least as far as Basia and Xavier know. They can leave for their honeymoon happy, knowing Elvis, Slash, and I will keep things safe at home.

With help from her friends - the irascible gray cat Pewter, the wise corgi Tee Tucker, and Tally, the exuberant Jack Russell - Sneaky crisscrosses her home state of Virginia hoping to go where no cat since Socks Clinton has gone: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. In the tradition of her heroine, Sojourner Truth, she takes her case to the masses. Journeying from the lair of the red-shouldered hawk to the nest of the tufted titmouse, from a pasture full of curmudgeonly cows to the stately halls of Monticello, the tenacious tiger cat even secures the chattering support of Thomas Jefferson’s mice.

Isobel Avery is on her second assignment as an undercover poison taster for Los Angeles's rich and famous. And she's actually enjoying herself. Until her sweet, agoraphobic client mysteriously leaves the safety of his apartment and winds up dead. When crucial evidence goes missing, investigator Connor Stiles will need Izzy's inside knowledge to help track down the killer. But despite three months of absence to make Connor's heart grow fonder, he doesn't seem pleased to be working with her again.

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.

For PI Franki Amato, New Orleans is anything but The Big Easy. Her best friend and employer has assigned her an unsettling investigation - the murder of a gorgeous cosmetics CEO at an allegedly haunted plantation. Adding to Franki’s stress, her meddling Sicilian nonna is planning her engagement even though her boyfriend, Bradley, hasn’t popped the question, and his new secretary seems determined to ensure a proposal never happens. As Bradley grows distant and the plantation grows dangerous, Franki turns to a psychic who is deathly afraid of ghosts.

After putting her would-be-murderer behind bars, Claire Hartley is determined to get back to planning elaborate marriage proposals and exploring her undefined relationship with grumpy filmmaker Luke. If she could just kick her new sleepwalking habit, everything would be perfect. Unfortunately, perfect isn't in the cards for Claire when her archnemesis slaps her with a lawsuit, someone from her past comes knocking, and she becomes the target of mysterious threats that feel oddly familiar.

When Brighton Longfield discovers her treasured protection amulet is missing, she finds a note in its place from Langoria Skeenbauer telling her that Tuttlesmiths are not welcome in Coventry. Brighton confronts the woman in the town square with a crowd of Coventry's residents watching. Of course, Langoria Skeenbauer is one of the town's most upstanding citizens, so people assume she's innocent and Brighton is nuts. When Langoria is found dead in the cemetery across from Hangman's House, Brighton becomes a suspect.

Behind every assassination, there is an anonymous mastermind - a plotter - working in the shadows. Plotters quietly dictate the moves of the city's most dangerous criminals, but their existence is little more than legend. Reseng is an assassin. Raised by a cantankerous killer named Old Raccoon in the crime headquarters "The Library", Reseng never questioned anything: where to go, who to kill, or why his home was filled with books that no one ever read. But one day, Reseng steps out of line on a job, toppling a set of carefully calibrated plans.

When Claire's grandfather and his army buddies converge in the Arizona desert to find new wives, it's her thankless job to keep them out of trouble with the opposite sex. But when she finds a human leg bone and partners with a reluctant geotechnician to dig up secrets from the past, trouble finds her. If she doesn't stop digging, she could wind up dead.

Emerson Wilde has built the life of her dreams. Youngest Chamber of Commerce president in St. Cyprian history, successful indie bookstore owner, and lucky enough to have her best friends as found family? Done. But when Emerson is attacked by creatures that shouldn’t be real, and kills them with what can only be called magic, Emerson finds that the past decade of her life has been…a lie.

Josephine Ying longs to overthrow Big Uncle as the best host, and after his roast duck incident, she’s finally getting her chance this Chinese New Year. Even better, her son is bringing a surprise. Unfortunately, the surprise turns out to be a gold-digging fiancée—who dies at the dinner table. Her problems just got a lot bigger than hosting the perfect meal. Certain there’s a killer at the table, Josephine sharpens her questions to find them out.

Still relishing the notoriety from her spectacular resolution of the Candela case, Poldi is alive to the faintest whiff of criminality. What to others might seem a series of misfortunes - the water supply cut off, a poisoned dog - is clearly, to Poldi, an escalation: the Mafia have had her in their sights ever since she solved Valentino's murder. Poldi has tasted blood. No one is above suspicion. And trouble will surely follow....

Morris Duckworth teaches English to the pampered rich of Verona, and Morris is not pleased. Living a meager existence in a squalid apartment, he regards his privileged students with envy and disdain, first wreaking revenge by petty theft and then, like all good criminals, graduating to grander larceny. When one of those students, a beautiful but vapid heiress named Massimina, falls in love with him, Morris can almost smell upward mobility.