Comedy Crime Fiction

A small-town Southern Missouri beauty (if she does say so herself), Hollister has an uncanny knack for accidentally robbing banks, convenience stores, and possibly even a drug cartel. Toss in a couple of grand theft autos—purely by accident, of course—but she wouldn’t hurt a fly. Not even when Ruger falls into her lap. Savvy, self-taught, and eternally optimistic, Hollister hitchhikes, runs, and drives her way across America’s heartland, stumbling into one misadventure after another.

In the haze of stale beer, bad jokes, and even worse poker hands, Joe, Ray, Mike, and Terry hatch the ultimate midlife crisis: robbing a bank. They're not criminals, just four average blokes with too much time, too little money, and one tragically convincing plan scribbled on the back of a pizza box. But what starts as a beer-fuelled fantasy soon spirals into a dangerously real operation.

Edward was a respectable architect when a disagreement over the wrong shade of Georgian red with Aubyn, a mean-spirited conservation officer, saw the full force of the law applied. Ian had been a successful accountant until he was shafted by dodgy PPI pusher Kevin. Their lives tumble and they end up in prison, where they meet Nelson, banged up after stealing a sapphire and a Bentley from a contessa in Monaco. An early release prompts Edward, Ian, and Nelson to take a road trip in search of a new life, revenge, and adventure. Will the vintage Bentley manage the trip?

From Emmy Award-winning author David Quantick, All My Colors is a darkly comic novel about a man who remembers a book that may not exist, with dire consequences. A bizarre, mind-bending story at the intersection of Richard Bachman, Charlie Kaufman, and Franz Kafka.

Nobody is more surprised than Billy when he finds himself bleeding out onto his new linoleum floor, a kitchen knife in his chest. Rose, his wife, and Born2Rock, her lover, are leaving for a night on the town. They're sure he'll be dead in no time. So is he. With the help of Consuela, the house keeper, Billy makes it to the hospital. After a short stint in the ICU, he returns to the scene of the crime, home, where he takes up residence in the attic. From this vantage point, Billy watches and waits and plots his revenge.

Deputy sheriff Constance Kopp is outraged to see young women brought into the Hackensack jail over dubious charges of waywardness, incorrigibility, and moral depravity. The strong-willed, patriotic Edna Heustis, who left home to work in a munitions factory, certainly doesn't belong behind bars. And 16-year-old runaway Minnie Davis, with few prospects and fewer friends, shouldn't be publicly shamed and packed off to a state-run reformatory. But such were the laws - and morals - of 1916.

Sandwich meets The Wedding People in this irresistible comedy of manners as three generations of a family—a snail scientist, a soon-to-be divorcée, her teenage daughter, a hapless con man, and their feckless patriarch—descend on a ritzy Lake Michigan vacation island. When the Pickford...

An uncompromising and sensually charged collection from one of the great practitioners of the short story The debut story collection from Los Angeles writer Kate Braverman assembles a vivid patchwork of interconnected narratives set in Southern California. Through brief, often haunting snapshots...

From the incendiary voice behind Your Driver is Waiting, a fierce and unforgettable novel about a Tamil refugee family stealing from corporations to survive until their lives are up-ended by a day-trading scam, threatening what little security they have left. It’s hard to be a teenager at the...

Meet The Nearly Dearly Departed Club. Four random strangers thrown together with only one thing in common. They’re all dead. Or maybe not....

Here's a first-person account of a petty thief, Bex. He's a bit of a geezer, who, with long-time partner-in-crime Ollie, just about gets by on the money he makes from house-breaking in small-time suburbia. Bex talks and walks us through a dozen noteworthy jobs and give us his thoughts on life, love and nicking. Includes an exclusive recorded interview with the author.

An extravaganza of suburban noir - complete with one orgy, one brothel and a series of firearms disputes - from Adam Thirlwell, twice selected as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. This yarn takes place in the suburbs of a giant city. In Brasilia they’re coming off their night shift; in Tokyo they’re having their first whisky sours. That’s what’s happening elsewhere in the world when our hero wakes up. Together with his wife and dog, he lives at home with his parents.

Meet Sam Applewhite, a security consultant with no staff, no resources, and some big jobs to tackle. When an armed robber targets a local bank, things quickly go wrong and hostages are taken. Sam’s stage magician dad is in the firing line and no magic tricks are going to get him out of this situation. The police say they’ve got things under control, but Sam knows there’s something strange going on. Why has a law-abiding man suddenly turned to crime? How can it be an armed robbery if the robber has left his gun at home? Sam has to put the pieces together before it’s too late.

When wannabe criminal Jonathan hears about a life-changing amount of unprotected cash just begging to be stolen, the opportunity is too good to pass up. Problem is he can’t do it alone, so he ropes in a couple of low rent potheads, kicking off a whole bunch of trouble. It’s left to Nuke, a gangster with an explosive temper and marital difficulties, to sort out the mess, all the time dealing with his psychotic bosses, some dodgy cops, his bored wife, and of course Jonathan, the man with the plan.

A caper gone bad is the setting for this comic novel about three 20-somethings searching to find themselves in year one of The Revolution: 1960. The year marked the arrival of John F. Kennedy, The Pill, Women’s Lib, and the crazy concept of personal satisfaction. The world, and their lives, would never be the same. Follow Mickey, Tippy, and Nino from Manhattan’s garment district filled with low-end goods, loan sharks, and knock-off artists to the couturiers of Paris with the insane pressure to constantly create great art. A hilarious story of self-realization, love, and friendship.

“Vivid . . . These stories, in which class divisions form impassable rifts and submission to the status quo comes at great psychic cost, have much to say about our contemporary reality." —The New York Times Book Review “What a gift to have these stories translated, finally, into English...

Was tun, wenn man auf seinem Konto plötzlich 200 Millionen Euro vorfindet, die einem nicht gehören? Der insolvente Antiquitätenhändler Hans Bäumler aus Frankfurt am Main traut seinen Augen nicht, als sein Kontostand über Nacht neunstellig geworden ist. Er nutzt die Chance und taucht mit seiner neuen Freundin Tonja, einer feurigen Kroatin, und den 200 Millionen an der Adria unter. Doch dann gibt es ungeahnte Probleme, und sogar die Mafia ist hinter ihm her. Bäumler fällt von einer Überraschung in die andere. Von wegen reich und glücklich.

Chris Benson looks up to his older brother. In fact, everyone looks up to Chris’ older brother. Most have no choice when they're lying on their stomachs in the middle of Barclays bank. But when Gavin Benson gets sent down for 15 years, the somewhat unprofessional trio of Chris, Sid and Vince are left without a ringleader. As if Chris hasn't got enough problems, his adulterous partner Debbie is spending money faster than he can steal it, his sexually frustrated sister-in-law needs a man about the house and the Neighbourhood Watch Scheme want to sign him up for a tour of duty.

Existential noir meets absurd comedy when a young man reluctantly enlists as source material for an art project. Stanley had known it was a mistake to accept his uncle Lech's offer to apartment-sit in Prague - he'd known it was one of Lech's proposals, a thinly veiled setup for some invasive, potentially dangerous performance art project. But whatever Lech had planned for Stanley, it would get him to Prague and maybe offer a chance to make things right with T after his failed attempt to propose.

Bobby Palumbo is a low-level bagman for the Brooklyn mob. After he is persuaded to "borrow" $200,000 from his collection bag for 24 hours, he is left on the hook for the missing money. On the run, he hooks up with Frannie Jo Overby, a savvy young girl from the dying Texas town of Ecstasy. Bobby is largely clueless, and it's Frannie Jo who turns out to have the street smarts. She's the one who cooks up the scheme to save Bobby's bacon.