Comedy Crime Fiction

Excuse me if I'm feeling sentimental. I might die tonight. My name is Candy Tran. Before I was hunting down serial killers and feeding men to alligators, I was a normal, church-going, tax-paying citizen. Before all of this. I've been given a chance to tell my story, so please, listen closely. This is going to take a while.

It’s 1997 at the dawn of the digital age in San Francisco. Ex-journalist and struggling alcoholic David “Itchy” Crane’s fledgling “information consultancy” business is getting slowly buried by bad luck, bad decisions, and the growing presence of the Internet. Before he can completely self-destruct, a private investigator offers him 50 grand to find a missing girl named Ashley. Crane takes the job because the money’s right and because the only clue to her disappearance is a dead-on oil portrait of Crane himself - painted by the mysterious missing girl he has never met.

Wilt Fusarium, a clueless American ad executive, unwittingly finds himself in the middle of political intrigue and revolution on the tiny island of Costa San Rica, while trying to save the ad agency's Choad Banana account. Complications and misunderstandings abound, as the island's despot leader thinks Wilt is a revolutionary, the revolutionaries think he's a government agent, the banana company thinks he's CIA, and the CIA, well, they don't know what to think.

Despite being son to Don Allesandro Fugue, AKA Big Al, AKA The Al Mighty, AKA King of the Denver streets, Tommy Fugue has never had much interest in the family business. But when his father assigns him the “summer job” of mastering digital money laundering, Tommy figures he can list some fake projects on FunFunder, pledge them with zombie accounts, and clean a dirty $20,000 in time for college in the fall.

Mob princess Lucie Rizzo can’t catch a break. Or take one. Building a business empire is hard work, even without her family’s notoriety. Staying out of trouble isn’t exactly her forte. Still, Lucie could use a vacation from Chicago winters and the town where everybody knows her father’s name. So when a certain Irish cop promises warmer days - and hotter nights - Lucie sees an offer she can’t refuse. Detective O’Hottie sweeps her away to the land of sun, sand, and...retirees? Before the real romantic getaway begins, Tim wants to visit his Uncle Henry.

Montclair Retirement Community is the poshest home for seniors Savannah, Georgia has to offer. When Montclair is under threat of foreclosure, its devil-may-care Southern Belle resident, Geraldine Ford, refuses to let her home be lost. After all, to Geraldine, Montclair and its residents are the closest thing to a home and family she has had in all 70 years of her life. She recruits her closest gal pals, who are also residents of Montclair, on a felonious adventure to acquire cash to pay Montclair’s debts.

Rachael O'Brien's summer starts with a promising trip to England with her eccentric grandmother, her dad's long-time assistant, and her very good-looking, very gay friend, Travis. She thinks that distancing herself from the southern men she's developed an appetite for is the emotional breather she needs. But for Rachael O'Brien, nothing is ever simple. An amethyst oyster brooch with a scandalous past leads her into trouble far from home. Discovering that she has been followed across the Atlantic, surviving British culinary challenges becomes the least of Rachael's worries.

Kelp has a plan, and John Dortmunder knows that means trouble. His friend Kelp is a jinx, and his schemes, no matter how well intentioned, tend to spiral quickly out of control. But this one, Kelp swears, is airtight. He read it in a book.

In county lock-up for a traffic charge, Kelp came across a library of trashy novels by an author named Richard Stark. The hero is a thief named Parker whose plans, unlike Kelp and Dortmunder's, always work out. In one, Parker orchestrates a kidnapping so brilliant that, Kelp thinks, it would have to work in real life.

Vientiane, 1980: For a man of his age and in his corner of the world, Dr. Siri, the 76-year-old former national coroner of Laos, is doing remarkably well - especially considering the fact that he is possessed by a 1,000-year-old Hmong shaman. That is, until he finds a mysterious note tied to his dog's tail. The death threat is not just aimed at him, but at everyone he holds dear. And whoever wrote the note claims the job will be executed in two weeks. Thus, at the urging of his wife and his motley crew of faithful friends, Dr. Siri must figure out who wants him dead.

All Mason Dixon wants is to mix classy drinks for classy people... Mason owns a bar, and he's not getting any younger. He wants nothing more than to retire in peace, fishing and drinking with the locals. But his past as an assassin is catching up with him. Mason moonlights as an assassin, taking jobs to remove "marks" from the playing field. It pays well, and he's good at it. So when he makes a mistake, things quickly get out of hand and he finds himself racing against the clock to save a life he inadvertently put into danger.

Failing grocery store manager Larry Prescott just wants a quickie. With a frigid wife waiting at home, Larry decides to have some extramarital fun with an employee named Maxine Watkins. Though he has no way of knowing it, Larry is sowing the seeds for a crime spree that will be dubbed “The MegaSaver Massacre”.

The Edgar-nominated author of Gun Monkeys is back with a thrill-a-minute suspense novel that mixes crime and academia - with hilarious results. Here Victor Gischler draws us into a wild and wicked world, where tenured professors are busy burying bodies, cash-up-front P.I.’s hunt for missing coeds and one desperate street-tough has to decide which he’d rather be: a live poet or a dead criminal.

Stanley Hopkins cannot resist the invitation from a honey-voiced US attorney asking him to track down the source of photographs of a young dance major abducted five years earlier from her apartment in Clarkeston, Georgia. A journalist has stumbled across newly posted pictures of Diana Cavendish on the Internet, apparently taken just days before she disappeared with her boyfriend.

Julia Blair is hoping for a fresh start. So when she sees an apartment-for-rent sign on Brambleberry House, she can’t help but feel that it’s a good omen. Having spent summers as a teen in a cottage near the rambling Victorian home, Julia easily pictures herself and her two children starting over in the one place that’s always felt welcoming to her. When Julia walks up to inquire about the apartment, she finds her old friend Will Garrett repairing the house.

In the favelas of Porto Alegre, Brazil, marijuana is hard to come by. Supermarket stock clerks Pedro and Marques spend their days unloading trucks, restocking shelves, and dreaming of a better life, of breaking the cycle of poverty that has afflicted their families and their community. Well-acquainted with the drug dealers in their neighborhood and seeing an opportunity to earn a little extra cash, they decide to start a weed-dealing operation.

Ex-con artist Bee Cardello is going legit. Divorced from her mafia boss husband, she is determined to stay on the straight and narrow. So, when ex-hubby Charlie steals $37.5 million from a dangerous kingpin, who puts out a hit on Bee and her ten-year-old son Oliver, she finds herself pulled back into the life she's worked so hard to escape. Part of that old life being one Adam Gage, an old flame and all-round sexy badass who Charlie's now employed to keep her and Oliver safe. Well, that's what he tells her.

Mi chiamo Grace Bernard e, con ogni probabilità, il mio nome non vi dice proprio niente. Nessuno mi conosce perché languisco dietro le sbarre per l’unico crimine che non ho commesso. Eppure, se devo dire la verità nient’altro che la verità, ho ucciso diverse persone, alcune in modo brutale, altre con maggior delicatezza – vale la pena specificarlo, perché fa un’enorme differenza agli occhi giudicanti della gente. Quando ripenso a ciò che ho fatto, avverto persino una punta di tristezza, giusto una fitta trascurabile, al pensiero che nessuno verrà mai a conoscenza del mio strabiliante piano.

Ellis Coldwater is a pretty easy-going bank robber. Wendy Larkin is a pretty woman—a little shy, a little nervous, and a little married. What happens when these two get together “on the job”? Whose recipe for living life will lead to the most happiness, the most laughter, and the least amount of jail time? Our tale jumps in immediately as this novel adroitly rolls up its sleeve to expose the funny bone of crime, love, right, wrong, the pursuit of money, happiness, the vagaries of humanity that gives life meaning.

Coalville is on fire—from below. The old mines are burning, and everyone has poison gas in their brain. Maybe that’s why the town is so corrupt. Now that he’s a Benedictine monk, Tommy Martini never wants to see the place again—hell-raisers there hold a grudge till they die, and he’s on their wish list. But a girl he once loved has gone missing, and his best friend from childhood has been murdered. Among the living is a shy girl from Tommy’s past, who wants to help. Together, they learn the secret of the elephant’s graveyard, and it’s not in Africa.

Aldo is determined to become a better person. His best pals Dougie and Craig and the four-legged love of his life, Bruce the Staffy, do their best to keep him on the path to redemption, but his lawless nature and chaotic home life propel him into a series of comical, exhilarating, occasionally brutal adventures.