Comedy Crime Fiction

Ivan Connor's publisher has just turned down his wonderful new novel. His agent is out of ideas, and the only person to turn up at his latest reading is his mum. He's also desperately jealous of the marketable Francesca Brady, a hugely successful author of fat romantic books for fat romantic people, whose expansive hair and bright red lipstick attack him from posters everywhere he goes. But Ivan has a brilliant idea. He's going to beat Francesca at her own game....

The career of George, the famed Greek mob boss, gets off to a bad start. As a teenager, he kills Joey, the man who might have been his father. Joey's twin brother, Lazarus, vows revenge. All George has to do to survive is to marry a Greek girl picked by his family. Unfortunately, George falls in love with Kelly, a girl who isn't Greek. She loves him. All she asks is that he leave his family. This is the first book in The Saga of George trilogy, a satire of mob novels. Set in the late 1960s, it blends Greek culture, mythology, and religious themes with sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

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.

There are only a few weeks left before an asteroid destroys the planet. It’s the countdown, and all of humanity is just waiting for the end. In Phoenix, AZ, the sheriff’s department and National Guard are battling for supremacy, gas is as good as cash, and elementary school kids are out for blood. Most people in town have become the worst versions of themselves. Except for Dutch Kovaks, private detective. Dutch wants to right some wrongs, help a few people in need, and use the days he’s got left for good. Most of all, he wants to track down a bottle of gin.

The Black Mass of Brother Springer tells the story of Sam Springer, a drifter novelist who meets Jack Dover, the retiring Abbot of the Church of God's Flock. Dover's final official act is to ordain Springer and send him off to serve as pastor of an all-Black church in Jacksonville, Florida. Springer soon becomes entangled in the city's growing civil rights movement...and with the church deacon's earthy young wife, Merita.

It’s been seven years since Gloomy Knob landed in the Ted Stevens High-Security Federal Penitentiary and five years since the end of the war, the one North Korea started when they sent a missile to Cold Storage, Alaska. Serving a life sentence for the murder of his sister, Gloomy spends his time trying to forget about the past. Then one day, Gloomy is snatched from his off-site work station. Instead of celebrating his newfound freedom, Gloomy comes unmoored - he feels he belongs in prison. But his kidnappers believe Gloomy knows where a second nuclear warhead is hidden.

In a former life, Nick Lutz, sold cars in the Golden State. He had a wife and a young son, and they struggled along until Nick was shot in the head when a potential customer hijacked the car he was demonstrating. The incident sets off a bad-luck domino fall, and he loses an eye, his job, his family, and, eventually, his self-respect. With nothing left, Nick heads for Mexico, where he sheds his former self among an eclectic group of expats and locals, who fondly name him “Pirata” on account of his eye patch.

The Casting Director is a black comedy crime thriller about Lee Hamill whose specialty is finding unknowns on the streets of Dublin for low-budget Irish movies. He's the middleman, matchmaker, and awkward buffer zone between performer and producer. Lee is HR for actors, but one of them wants him dead.

'Are you waiting for Monsieur Bellivier, madame?' Helena Folasadu should of course say no. She doesn't know the man talking to her, she doesn't know Monsieur Bellivier and she certainly isn't waiting for him. But, bored of life, and sparked by a whim, she says yes. The go-between leads her to a deserted floor in an office building and offers her a large sum of money to sit at a computer and forward emails to Monsieur Bellivier.

When his third in command gets brutally murdered, mob boss Enzo Clowneone immediately suspects his arch-nemeses, the Juggler and Mime families. In order to stand a chance against their combined might, he must rally allied Carnival families to his cause - but who are his true allies? This book is a dark comedy set in an insulated world of crime. It touches upon the impotence of power, and the struggle for the Don to be both good and feared at the same time.

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.

In this quirky debut novel from author Matthew Dicks, career criminal Martin uses his OCD to pilfer items from his victims' houses without being discovered. It helps that he only takes things the homeowner would never notice are missing - like a roll of toilet paper or a bottle of maple syrup. Martin has spent so much time snooping through homes he feels like he knows the owners, but when he starts meddling in their personal lives, his precise world turns to haos.

Cold Storage, Alaska, is a remote fishing outpost where salmonberries sparkle in the morning frost and where you just might catch a King Salmon if you're Zen enough to wait for it. Settled in 1935 by Norse fishermen who liked to skinny dip in its natural hot springs, the town enjoyed prosperity in the mid-20th century, at the height of the frozen fish boom. But now the cold storage plant is all but abandoned and the population is shrinking every day.

For Ellen Homes, not only does she wish it - she actually lives it. She spends her days quietly observing but unobserved, watching and recording in her notebooks the lives of her neighbors, coworkers, and total strangers. Overweight, socially stunted, and utterly alone, one night Ellen saves a blind young woman from being mugged. Then everything changes.

I am sure you have heard of "Operation Mincemeat", the ingenious plan to land a dead man on a Spanish beach - to fool the Nazis and send their jack-booted, Panzer-clad, stiff-armed, blond-haired boys up the wrong alley. Allow me to let you into a secret. I was the rehearsal, some months before hostilities began; before the unpleasantness, so to speak. I was the practice run; the "upper-class twit" sent on a wild goose chase, scattering fair Albion's imminent enemies hither and thither.

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.

Susan Frobisher and Julie Wickham are turning 60. They live in a small Dorset town and have been friends since school. On the surface Susan has it all - a lovely house and a long marriage to accountant Barry. Life has not been so kind to Julie, but now, with several failed businesses and bad relationships behind her, she has found stability: living in a council flat and working in an old people's home.

Veronica's summer fling is flung into the fireworks of Hilton Head Island's 4th of July. She loves singing at the resort, but with a shocking ransom note to pay, who can you trust when you're new in town?

Critically acclaimed author David Schickler made a splash with Kissing in Manhattan, a best-selling story collection that Booklist said is "magical" and "never ceases to amaze and impress". Now this gifted writer's extraordinary imagination produces a brazen novel that reads like Bonnie and Clyde meets Robin Hood.

Strap on your athletic cup and grab a barf bag. The Dr. Reverend Lance Carbuncle is going to kick you square in the balls and send you on a wild ride that may or may not answer the following questions: What happens when two white trash, trailer park-dwelling, platonic life partners go on a moronic and misdirected crime spree? Can their manly love for each other endure when one of them suffers a psychological bitch-slap that renders him a homicidal maniac? Will a snaggletoothed teenage prostitute tear them apart?