Funny Suspense

Sixteen delightful holiday short stories by some of your favorite Soho crime authors! This captivating collection of short mysteries and crime capers - which features New York Times best-selling authors, Crime Writers Association Gold and Diamond Dagger winners, and Edgar Award nominees - contains laughs aplenty, the most hardboiled of holiday noir, and heartwarming reminders of the spirit of the season.

On the longest night of 1895, a terrible storm rages above Harewood Hall. Max, Markham and an injured Peterson are welcomed in by the Harewood family but quickly realise that the gathering is far from celebratory. For tonight marks the Ordeal of the Haunted Room. Every Harewood heir must endure one terrifying night alone in the Haunted Room before he can inherit the family seat. Legend says that ghosts will murder anyone who isn't the true heir. Francis Harewood's ordeal will begin at midnight and end at dawn, but it isn't long before everything goes horribly wrong.

A free spirit happy to wander, a warrior destined to protect, and the devious woman who could destroy them both. Gunner Steele, a private security operative, is hired to protect the daughter of a famous actress and assumes she’ll be as much of a diva as her mother. Lily Jewel proves him wrong time and again and he finds himself drawn to the feisty, independent, and yet innocent woman. When the threat catches up with them and Lily discovers that Gunner was hired by her mother, she is furious. Can Gunner regain the carefree relationship they’d been developing, as well as her trust? Lily ...

Resourceful Bingo Riggs and his partner, Handsome Kusak, are in the sucker-bait business, snapping candid pics of tourists off Central Park. Their fly-by-night enterprise can be irresistible to souvenir lovers, but with one camera in a pawnshop and their developing room in the bathtub of a two-room dump near Hell’s Kitchen, their venture is wretchedly underexposed - until they stumble upon an insurance fraud scheme between the allegedly dead eccentric Mr. S. S. Pigeon and his business partner and beneficiary.

While chasing down the usual cast of miscreants and weirdos Stephanie discovers that a crazed woman is stalking her. The action turns deadly serious, and Stephanie goes from hunting skips to hunting a murderer. Ranger needs Stephanie for more reasons than he can say. And now, the two are working together to find a killer, rescue a missing child, and stop a lunatic from raising the body count. When Stephanie Plum and Ranger get too close for comfort, vice cop Joe Morelli (her on-again, off-again boyfriend) steps in.

This time Stephanie, Morelli, Ranger. Lula, Valerie, and Grandma Mazur are strapped in for the ride of their lives. Stephanie is hired to find a missing child. But things aren't always as they seem and Stephanie must determine if she's working for the right side of the law. Plus, there's the Morelli question: can a Jersey girl keep her head on straight when more than just bullets are aimed for her heart? And with the Plum and Morelli relationship looking rocky, is it time for Ranger to move in for the kill? Janet Evanovich's latest thriller proves that Hard Eight will never be enough.

Kendis – Hear no evil I was fired in front of a client for being late for a meeting. The client happens to be my dream-worthy one-night stand who I ditched. As despair sets in, he hires me. Although it happened in high school, Jason hasn’t forgiven me. He controls and owns the company. And anything he touches. Including me. Jason’s intense eyes watch me like he can see my secrets. I’m not immune to the way his chocolate muscles ripple. Electricity tickles my spine when he touches my hand. But we must work together and keep our hands and lips off each other. His words are dirtier ...

"A book worth reading by a promising writer." - Lars Walker, Brandywine Books What if every memory you had of your life was not your own? What if your world was not all it seemed to be? When Jay Stevens starts blacking out and living out a stranger's life, he begins to question his reality, and whether this idyllic community, isolated from the rest of the world, is all they've been told it is. The Community is all its inhabitants have ever known. Here they're safe, happy, and taken care of...except for the ones that disappear suddenly, never to be heard from again. Or the ones that go crazy...

A DARING ADVENTURE. A DANGEROUS CREW. A BOY WHO REFUSES TO GIVE UP. Twelve-year-old Elliott loves spending summer nights on his father’s fishing boat—until the night pirates steal it, not realizing he’s on board. Trapped at sea with a ruthless crew, he must use courage, quick thinking, and his faith in God to survive. When he overhears their plans to raid a defenseless town, Elliott knows he has to stop them. But what can one boy do against a ship full of pirates? As he works to sabotage their schemes, he also discovers that their hardened captain, Rigg, carries a burden of his own. ...

The wise-cracking Wysdom Ward is back and more badass than ever. It’s been five months since The God Among Men disappeared off the planet. Wysdom Ward is trying to find him while simultaneously building her new private detective business. Women are the ultimate multitaskers. AmIRight!? She has zero leads until she discovers a cryptic clue left behind by her brand-new boyfriend. He tells her to run for her life, but she’s never been one to follow the rules. Wysdom jumps into a world of secret military contractors, knife-throwing badasses, missing dry cleaning, and 55+ retirement ...

THE FINAL BOOK IN THE BLUE MOUNTAIN TRILOGY IS HERE... Katrina Storm is a self-made success. She's not afraid to fight hard for what she wants... Until she's confronted with the one thing she never has: love. To her eternal regret, it appears in the form of spoiled play-boy Fox Blackstone, the youngest billionaire-in-waiting for the Blackstone Empire. Caught in a whirlwind love affair, the pair are ripped apart and then thrown together again when Fox's Machiavellian maneuvers drag Katrina back into his world with an offer she can't refuse. What was his motivation all along? Did he ever ...

Theft, extortion, homicide — there’s no end to the talents of the new men in photographer Sonny Littlefield’s life. Ever since she moved to the strawberry and sheep farm that she inherited from her biological father, her problems have been piling up: her cousins keep robbing her house, she’s rapidly going broke, and she hasn’t had a date in months. Her top priority is figuring out who left a skeleton hand and threatening note in her ramshackle barn. Somebody in Gracious, Maine, is turning human remains into playthings, and it’s all Sonny can do to keep from ending up a pile of ...

The second in this hilarious cozy mystery series features a woman who is a talent agent for showbiz animals and discovers that she has a talent herself: solving crimes. Kay Powell, theatrical agent to non-human animals, is babysitting - that is, birdsitting - her client, a parrot named Barney, on the set of his new TV show, Dead City. When the show’s charismatic star is shot in his trailer between scenes, the only eyewitness to the crime is - you guessed it - Barney.

Riley Lawson, a handsome small-town guy, has just arrived in Hollywood to work as a talent agent, when he gets caught up in a love affair with a former TV star, Eliza Jones. The short fling ends after Eliza’s husband returns home, and Riley, surprised to find out Eliza was married, vows never to sleep with a client again. Everything changes when he meets Marisa––a stunning young actress. Their attraction is instant, but when he's told that Marisa is Eliza Jones' stepdaughter, he realizes she's completely off-limits. From forbidden love to complicated family dynamics, Riley's life is ...

Cheating death is the only way she can save the world…An undead motorcycle gang is terrorizing the streets of Denver. But these foul creatures are just the first wave of a far more insidious evil. Someone has harnessed forbidden magic to fulfill an ancient prophecy to bring about the apocalypse. In other words, it's just another day at the office for Dru Jasper, the world's only crystal sorceress. To stop the prophecy, Dru must find Greyson and his demon-possessed muscle car, Hellbringer. The problem is, everyone believes Greyson is dead. Is he still alive after all, or has he become a ...

There is another 1985, somewhere in the could-have-been, where the Crimean war still rages, dodos are regenerated in home-cloning kits and everyone is deeply disappointed by the ending of 'Jane Eyre'.

She must protect the apocalypse scroll, or else the world will come to a fiery end. No pressure or anything.Crystal sorceress Dru Jasper has become the unwilling guardian of an ancient instrument of destruction. Its world-ending power is held in check by only a single wax seal. Which seems like maybe a huge design flaw, but whatever. Now insidious spirits who can kill by touch are trying to get their clutches on the apocalypse scroll and break the final seal. To stop them, Dru needs a rare crystal older than the Earth itself. But it’s hidden in a meteorite crater deep in the desert, and ...

Kevin Austin has no plans of staying in the strange mountain town of Eden when he ends up becoming the new librarian after the previous one is murdered. He soon realizes this is no ordinary library. The books actually talk and fly around the rooms, and there's a ghost haunting the premises. Not to mention a collection of dangerous magical artifacts in the basement. In the town of Eden, Kevin encounters witches, zombies, demons, talking crows, angels, even gods and goddesses. Everyone in town seems to have secrets, including the alluring Olive, who Kevin falls for in book 1.

A ditzy investigator looking for love. A dangerous cheating boyfriend. Will Sarah live long enough to get revengeSingle and looking for love, Sarah Winner turns to what she knows best: social media. Finding love online is no easy task, but Sarah is ready to rise to the challenge. After meeting Gary and believing that he was ‘the one’, her illusions are shattered when she discovers he's a criminal and bigamist. She turns him into the police, but when he’s out of prison and hungry for revenge, Sarah finds herself dodging death threats and facing danger at every corner. Under the ...

A thought-provoking novel for readers who enjoy literary fiction, unpredictable originality, bizarre mystery and cool, philosophical reasoning., An old lady and a young man meet on a crosswalk in Manhattan in bizarre circumstances which drastically change the directions of their lives. A foul-mouthed youth is killed in a traffic accident. The old lady’s apartment is visited by folks that would make most people run to their psychologist. A mass murderer explains why he thinks he is a good man. A cool Jesus asks for parts of The Bible to be rewritten. Literary characters come alive and ...