Dark Humor Mystery

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.

Meet Jack Jordan. He’s a smooth-talking con artist with a penchant for the fast life. He’s snuck into Lufkin, Texas, in the dead of night with little more than a beat-up Honda, a hollowed-out King James Bible full of cocaine, and enough emotional baggage to sink a steamship. He’s charming, dedicated, and extremely paranoid.

Veranix Calbert leads a double life. By day, he’s a struggling magic student at the University of Maradaine. At night, he spoils the drug trade of Willem Fenmere, crime boss of Dentonhill and murderer of Veranix’s father. He’s determined to shut Fenmere down. With that goal in mind, Veranix disrupts the delivery of two magical artifacts meant for Fenmere's clients, the mages of the Blue Hand Circle. Using these power-filled objects in his fight, he quickly becomes a real thorn in Fenmere's side.

One winter morning, Lorimer Black - young, good-looking, but with a somewhat troubled expression - goes to keep a perfectly routine business appointment and finds a hanged man. A bad start to the day by anyone's standards and an ominous portent. For Lorimer works in the only-slightly corrupt business of financial adjusting, and he is about to learn that it is much uglier - and even more crooked - than he ever imagined. Suddenly, he's being unfairly blamed for all kinds of irregularities. Next, his life is threatened.

No one knows the real Marked Queen, but now everyone wants to know her. In this sequel to the insatiable first novel, High School Queens, you will die to know more about your favorite dirty little Queens. As we say goodbye to the Johnson Prep Seniors, the scandals and lies that exposed them in the beginning are back with a vengeance. The Marked Queen thought she had the last laugh at prom. Now, it seems a new girl is coming for her crown. With a new title, The Revenged Queen, she was out for blood and her prime targets—the ones exposing everyone’s dark and dirty little secrets. As we ...

Kody Rawlee Green is stuck in juvie. Tella “Teal Cartwheels” Carticelli is packing her bags for Rome—on the orders of her parents, who want her as far from Kody as possible. But teenage love is too strong a force for the obstacles of reality. And the highway beckons.

When the Vatican's top assassin, a Rhodesian merc, a pair of serial killer lovers, a dirty cop, and a professional sadist compete in a mad race for a pair of priceless magical artifacts, betrayal, theft, and murder are just the opening moves in a game of death.

The odious Jeanette Sobriquet is dead and her granddaughter, Fizzy, is too relieved to grieve. Unfortunately for her, when Fizzy announces her refusal to attend the abusive woman’s funeral, her life becomes a living nightmare. Now, she has demons, ghosts, and the threat of homelessness hunting her down, all demanding she caves into the dead woman’s iron will.

Kabuto is an ordinary guy; stressed with work, hassled by his wife and disrespected by his son. No wonder he visits his doctor so often. Except 'the Doctor' is actually his handler, and Kabuto is a hired assassin. The 'prescriptions' the Doctor hands over are his unlucky targets. Because although Kabuto may seem like a small man at home, he's really good at killing people.

Welcome to another kind of terror as Peter Straub leads us into the outer reaches of the psyche. Here the master of the macabre is at his absolute best in seven exquisite tales of living, dying, and the terror that lies in between.

A madcap new novel from the one-of-a-kind author of The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden. It's never too late to start again. And again. It's always awkward when five thousand kronor goes missing. When it happens at a certain grotty hotel in South Stockholm, it's particularly awkward because the money belongs to the hitman currently staying in room seven.

Ben the tramp's uncanny knack of running into trouble is unsurpassed in the final crime thriller written for him by J. Jefferson Farjeon. On a grey afternoon he was destined never to forget, Ben sat down on a park seat and proceeded to think, not of cabbages and kings but of numbers, lucky and unlucky. But it wasn't Ben's lucky day, or that of the nondescript-looking stranger sitting at the other end of the bench - murdered before his very eyes!

Recently dumped and stuck with the 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 twenty-five-year marriage. As Esther binges true-crime podcasts and works through the near-two hundred-boxes of Duncan detritus, she finds herself infatuated with the gilded family - until, mid-project, Naomi dies suspiciously.

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.

Her shoulders are small, her troubles many, but when destruction threatens her family, Loraine Pruitt's worn-out spirit must rise to the size of ten tough men. The tragedies that befell Loraine brought her from fun and optimistic to embittered and weary and finally to giving up on life. Her happy home and thriving Wisconsin dairy farm slid into decay, and she struggles to get by with her blind husband, underdeveloped adult son, and her own afflictions. As if not enough misfortune and heartbreak came her way, one fine summer day her son innocently wrongs the state’s richest man, his ...

“If you’ve ever stalked your ex on Facebook, or cried when the man you loved married another, then you will love Burn’s World.” Amazon Reviewer When the school star athlete, blue-eyed, Brody McGraw asks Burn out, she can hardly believe her luck. Brody is crazy about Burn, Burn is crazy about Brody, and finally, she gets to change her Facebook relationship status to 'In a relationship.' However, Brody’s mother Dawn, has huge political plans for her family, and she makes it clear, that they do not include someone like mixed-race Burn. Because of Dawn’s rejection, Burn suffers ...

You won't remember Mr Heming. He showed you round your comfortable home, before you took the plunge and bought it. But all these years later, he still has the key. That's absurd, you laugh. Of all the many hundreds of houses he has sold, why would he still have the key to mine? The answer to that is, he has the keys to them all.

While on her daily walk with her dog in the nearby woods, our protagonist comes across a note, handwritten and carefully pinned to the ground with stones. Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body. Shaky even on her best days, she is also alone and new to this area, having moved here from her long-time home after the death of her husband, and now deeply alarmed. Her brooding about the note grows quickly into a full-blown obsession as she explores multiple theories about who Magda was and how she met her fate.

The day after an epically hideous and embarrassing disaster, Allison comes to school transformed. Suddenly she's sporting a cute new hairstyle, and she has all the right answers in class. With the help of a strangely wise freshman boy, Jane discovers the unbelievable truth behind the drastic change: Allison has sold her soul to the devil. Now it's up to Jane to put it all on the line to save her friend - without losing her own soul in the process.

Maybe if I hadn't slept through my alarm, slammed into Kristin - my high school's reigning mean girl - or stepped in a puddle, destroying my mom's new suede DVF boots (which I borrowed without asking), I wouldn't have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I wouldn't have been pushed in front of that arriving train. But I did, and I was. And because I died under mysterious circumstances, I can't pass straight over to the Other Side. Apparently the only way out of this limbo is to figure out who killed me. But at least I'm not alone.