Mystery Thrillers Humor

The Great Recession has shuffled Clay Jannon out of his life as a San Francisco Web-design drone - and serendipity, sheer curiosity, and the ability to climb a ladder like a monkey has landed him a new gig working the night shift at Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. But after just a few days on the job, Clay begins to realize that this store is even more curious than the name suggests. There are only a few customers, but they come in repeatedly and never seem to actually buy anything....

Have you ever walked home at night, keys in hand, ready to throw a punch in self-defence? That’s how it all started. The killing spree, I mean. I sort of tripped into this role. Literally. The first one was following me. That guy from the nightclub who wouldn’t leave me alone. I pushed him, he stumbled, and fell onto his own broken wine bottle. Oops. It was such a waste of a good house white. But now I can’t seem to stop and nor do I want to, I’ve got a taste for revenge and quite frankly, I’m killing it.

Junior Bender, Los Angeles burglar and off-the-books detective to the felonious, is reminded that rock and roll will never die (no matter how fervently he wishes some of it would) when Hollywood’s most dangerous geriatric mobster, Irwin Dressler, retains Junior’s investigative services to solve a rather unharmonious problem. Junior has one weekend to figure out who’s to blame—a weekend that begins with his tires being slashed, threatening notes left on his car, and a theatrical backdrop falling on a drummer during the truly terrible first set of the first concert.

The cold touch of winter has hit Haven Hollow… Something naughty is plaguing the mundanes of Haven Hollow lately. ‘Naughty’ as in dancing curses that leave the victim exhausted and even injured, every milk product in town souring for no apparent reason, and elf-knots that are nearly impossible to brush out of your hair… After deciding these curses are fae created, we call in Prince Reynard, the Prince of the Autumn Court, otherwise known as Fox Aspen. The only problem? Fox is currently waging his own war with our Chief of Police, Taliyah, who is meant to be Fox’s intended but ...

"It's okay to love me, Joey. But don't be in love with me." New York, 1941. Joey El Bueno is just a smart-aleck kid, confounding the nuns and bullies at St. Stephen's School on East 28th Street, when he first meets Jane Bent, a freckle-faced girl with red pigtails and yellow smiley-face barrettes, who seems to know him better than he knows himself. A magical afternoon at the movies, watching Carey Grant in Gunga Din, is the beginning of a puzzling friendship that soon leaves Joey baffled and bewildered.

Everything’s just going to pieces… I got me a real important job. Important because I need to make my boss, Mr. Howard, happy with me like yesterday. It’s no secret that Mr. Howard has never liked me, but if he fires me? Well, I’m sure that will mean the end of Cain Morgan’s ghost taking up residency inside my head. See, Cain shares my body all because he’s supposed to be helping Taliyah settle into her job as the new Chief of Police. And though Taliyah’s pretty well settled by now (by my way of thinking), no one’s said anything about moving Cain on to the other side. And I ...

In this 11th entry, America’s favorite senior citizen wants to stay hidden under the bed covers. It’s bad enough her husband Sam wants them to attend marriage enrichment classes. But when she hears Dr. Fred Fowler will lead the sessions, she’s mortified. Yet she can’t hide forever, especially when someone knocks Francie Pitts in the noggin and sends her to the hospital.

They said she was special. That she had a bright future. It wasn't a lie, but they didn't say that was necessarily a good thing. Clara Cassidy was a C student just trying to get by in life. Nothing had worked out as she planned and now she spent her days without purpose or attachments. All of that changed suddenly when an elderly woman knocked on her door. 'Magic is real,' the woman insisted and offered her a spot at Crossedlake University, a school for rising stars in the casting world. Clara didn't buy it. Not until she accidentally touched the woman's staff and her world exploded into a ...

Praising Tim Dorsey’s tongue-in-cheek humor, the Miami Herald wrote, “Nobody, but nobody, writes like this guy.” Here Florida politics take the main stage in a rollicking satire that proves Dorsey’s at the top of his game. When a traumatic experience forever changes Florida gubernatorial race candidate Marlon Conrad’s life, he hits the road in a Winnebago to find the “real” Florida. But his odyssey is plagued with would-be assassins and cutthroat journalists.

All Bunny McGarry wants is a spot of breakfast and a decent cup of tea. So imagine how annoyed he gets when two masked men attempt to rob the New York diner he is in. Unfortunately, dealing with that problem just leads to a whole lot more. One of the diner’s other customers isn’t who she appears to be, and the odds aren’t great that she is going to live to see another breakfast.

At first, high school freshmen Rex McClendon and Leif Nelson believe what they’ve been told - that local students’ strange demises at Whitewood, a local reformatory, were all tragic accidents. But when the shoot for their low-budget horror masterpiece, PolterDog, goes horribly awry - and their best friend, Alicia Boykins, is sent to Whitewood - Rex and Leif are forced to question everything they know about their unassuming hometown and its cherished school for delinquents.

Richard's cousin is missing, and his best hope of finding her rests with the wily, one-eyed, ex-governor of Florida. Carl Hiaasen introduces his iconic character Skink to a younger audience in this nail-biting adventure! Classic Malley: Her parents are about to ship her off to boarding school, so she takes off with some guy she met online...Poor Richard: He's less of a rebel than Malley, and a lot less trusting. He knows his cousin is in trouble before she does. Wild Skink: He's a ragged, one-eyed, ex-governor of Florida, and enough of a renegade to think he can track Malley down.

Blorange tabby Max and ragamuffin Dooley are on the case again. This time a world-famous reality star has been found murdered in her own bed, and it looks like the crime just might be terror-related. The Kenspeckles, stars of the well-known reality show Keeping Up with the Kenspeckles, are in town to film a new season of their show, so the case soon turns into a complete media circus, with the Kenspeckles insisting the entire investigation is filmed for their show.

There have been a rash of grave robberies in Haven Hollow lately… So maybe it’s not such a surprise that during one of my open houses, I find my eyes tracking every movement of a suspicious-looking character. Suspicious, as in everything about this guy, is shifty… from how he keeps trying to avoid attention to his extreme interest in my client’s china cabinet. So when the same man winds up dead on a random grave in the cemetery between Poppy and Wanda’s houses? Yeah… something is rotten in the state of Oregon. Things get even stranger when I find two objects randomly stashed in ...

Lookout, Dr. Frankenstein, because here comes Wanda Depraysie… It’s not as though I meant to create a life. I didn’t, but that life is still here, all the same. And the worst part? I created it with… sigh… my detested cousin, Maverick. Now, before you think I’m a double-timing, good-for-nothing witch, I’m not. It was all an accident. Swear. And the even craziest part? This little mixup isn’t even the worst thing that’s happened to me this week. No, that award goes to the invitation I receive to my own funeral—a party sponsored by the leader of the vampires, Rupert, ...

So, it’s official: Andre and I are now an item. How do I feel about it? Excited and just a little nervous. Okay, a lot nervous—what if I mess this up? I’ve promised myself that I won’t focus on the negative! Instead, I’m trying not to be too depressed because Andre is leaving Haven Hollow for a few weeks. Why? Because he’s a traveling Magician. As a goodbye present, I’ve whipped up a potion I haven’t made in a long while: Gypsy Gold. I figure it will make an impressive stage trick when he’s able to turn things into fool’s gold! But after Andre leaves town (taking with ...

Amber Jamison can’t believe she’s about to become the latest victim of a serial killer. She’s savvy and street smart, so when she gets pushed into, of all things, a white windowless van, she is more angry than afraid. Things get even weirder when she’s miraculously saved by a mysterious woman . . . who promptly disappears. Who was she? And why is she hunting serial killers? You’d think escaping one psychopath would be enough, but Amber’s problems are just beginning.

After 50 years of bumbling around on the planet, Val Fremden’s got nothing to show for her life but a long string of dead-end jobs and a two-digit bank balance. But just as she’s about to toss her champagne dreams and caviar wishes into the dumpster, Val discovers that Marco Shamway—the jerk who plagued her all through high school—is now a millionaire. Worse yet, the idea that catapulted Marco to fame and fortune was one he’d stolen … from her!

Being an undercover poison taster for the rich and famous might sound glamorous, but for Isobel Avery it means stomaching bad clients and even worse coffee. The one side of the job that lives up to expectations is the money. Which is just as well for Izzy, since she needs an awful lot of it. Who knew when she made a lifelong commitment to a man that it would be one year living with him and the rest of her life paying for it?

Librarian Martha Storm has always found it easier to connect with books than people—though not for lack of trying. She keeps careful lists of how to help others in her superhero-themed notebook. And yet, sometimes it feels like she’s invisible. All of that changes when a book of fairy tales arrives on her doorstep. Inside, Martha finds a dedication written by her best friend—her grandmother Zelda—who died under mysterious circumstances years ago. When Martha discovers a clue within the book that her grandmother may still be alive, she becomes determined to discover the truth.