Comedy Mystery Thrillers

It's another holiday and Mayor Randall Shiffley has turned Caerphilly, Virginia, into Spooky City, USA. The residents are covering every window with cobwebs and roaming the streets in costume to entertain the tourists, and Meg's grandfather is opening a new 'Creatures of the Night' exhibit in the zoo. When a real body at the zoo and a suspicious fire at the Haunted House threaten to mar the town's creepy fun, it's up to Meg Langslow to save Halloween.

Meg is relaxing in the hammock, taste-testing Michael’s latest batch of Arnold Palmers and watching the hummingbirds at their feeders when her hopes for a relaxing early summer morning are dashed. First her father recruits her to help him install a new batch of bees in the hive in her backyard. Then Mayor Shiffley recruits her to placate the NIMBYs (Not in my backyard), as she calls them—a group of newcomers to Caerphilly who have built McMansions next door to working farms and then do their best to make life miserable for the farmers.

Senator Jim MacVeagh is proud to serve his country - and his president, Mark Hollenbach, who has a near-spotless reputation as the vibrant, charismatic leader of MacVeagh’s party and the nation. When Hollenbach begins taking MacVeagh into his confidence, the young senator knows his star is on the rise. But then Hollenbach starts summoning MacVeagh in the middle of the night to Camp David. There, the president sits in the dark and rants about his enemies, unfurling insane theories about all the people he says are conspiring against him.

Morris Duckworth teaches English to the pampered rich of Verona, and Morris is not pleased. Living a meager existence in a squalid apartment, he regards his privileged students with envy and disdain, first wreaking revenge by petty theft and then, like all good criminals, graduating to grander larceny. When one of those students, a beautiful but vapid heiress named Massimina, falls in love with him, Morris can almost smell upward mobility.

Morris Duckworth can't get over Massimina, or Mimi, as he likes to refer to her. But then, he should have thought of that before he kidnapped and killed her. Only now, living in Verona and married to Mimi's sister, does he appreciate how much he misses her and how blindly he has stumbled into a trap of fate. Struggling to adjust to his good fortune, with a lavish house and cushy job, our unsavory hero finds that his new success is rife with tribulation: not least his pushy bride's staggering sexual appetite.

James Stark, a.k.a. Sandman Slim, crawled out of Hell, took bloody revenge for his girlfriend’s murder, and saved the world along the way. After that, what do you do for an encore? You take a lousy job tracking down monsters for money. It’s a depressing gig, but it pays for your beer and cigarettes. But in L.A., things can always get worse. Like when Lucifer comes to town to supervise his movie biography and drafts Stark as his bodyguard.

Molly is terrified that she may lose her farm because her idle husband has left her for a rich hobby winemaker and is demanding his half of the land. Meg enlists Mother's help to find Molly a divorce lawyer, which Mother is all the more willing to do because the unfaithful husband's new girlfriend is the bete noire of the wine pavilion. She is so universally disliked that Meg begins to worry about her safety. But it's the unfaithful husband whose murdered body she and Michael find that night.

Francesca "Franki" Amato is a straight-shooting rookie cop in Austin, Texas, until an embarrassing 911 call prompts her to take a job at her best friend’s PI agency in New Orleans. But Franki soon learns that solving crime in The Big Easy is no Bourbon Street party. Case in point, her first investigation involves the murder of a beautiful boutique manager who was strangled with a cheap yellow scarf, and her primary suspect is her client.

What, you ask, is a Fred Fitch? Well, for one thing, Fred Fitch is the man with the most extensive collection of fake receipts, phony bills of sale, and counterfeit sweepstakes tickets in the Western hemisphere, and possibly in the entire world. For another thing, Fred Fitch may be the only New York City resident in the twentieth century to buy a money machine.

When the body of a mysterious woman is found to be carrying the phone number of James Bond, Bond is called in by M to help the investigation. But before he can even reach headquarters he is nearly run off the road in a high-speed motorway chase. Someone wants Bond dead.

Meg Langslow is pregnant with twins when Michael asks if she wouldn't mind having a houseguest. One of his doctoral students is directing his new translation of a play by a minor Spanish playwright, who will come to town for the production. Señor Mendoza turns out to be a partygoer who loves to spend raucous evenings among adoring students...at Casa Langslow. Into this chaos arrives the dean of the English department, who insists the play be canceled. Then the dean is found murdered.

When Fletch learns there are four ex-cons on the loose in his part of the county, little does he suspect that one of the scruffy and very dangerous men will claim to be the son he never knew - a son about whom he was never even told, in fact. But when a muddy and bedraggled young man accosts him in his study, it doesn't take our wily reporter and investigator long to surmise this kid might well be his son. When Fletch meets the kid's compatriots, he wonders how either of them is going to get out of this situation unscathed.

Elderflower Tea Shop is next door to Cardinal Woolsey's, the yarn shop Lucy runs and home to the late-night Vampire Knitting Club. The tea shop owners are a pair of octogenarian spinsters and old family friends, so Lucy wants to help clear up the mystery that's keeping their shop closed. But murder isn't the only issue troubling the Miss Watts. A man has come between them. Miss Florence Watt is being romanced by an old flame, one Mary Watt distrusts.

Scientist Maryse Robicheaux thought that a lot of her problems had gone away with her mother-in-law's death. The woman was rude, pushy, manipulative and used her considerable wealth to run herd over the entire town of Mudbug, Louisiana. Unfortunately, death doesn't slow down Helena one bit. DEA Agent Luc LeJeune is wondering what his undercover assignment investigating the sexy scientist has gotten him into - especially as it seems someone wants her dead.

Welcome to another typical summer in Florida, the season of the storms. Serge Storms. That loveable serial killer, an under-under-medicated dispenser of truth, justice, and trivia, is back with a vengeance. And not a weirdness-laced moment too soon. His cherished home state is about to take a beating, and from far more than the way-too-routine conga line of hurricanes bearing down on the peninsula. Corpses have begun turning up at a disturbing rate, even for Florida.

When a dip-net fisherman hauls in a severed human foot, Lieutenant Jim Wekle is thrown into another whodunit on his remote island. Alaskan mayhem ensues with a rogue gang of elderly women on ATVs, a Planet Patrol environmental boat with an oil leak, and an influx of tourists, each clutching a fresh copy of a book titled, Muskeg Mama. Kram is in rare form as he decides to enter the local work force by applying his unique perspective to a series of part-time jobs.

Venice, a really long time ago: Three prominent Venetians await their most loathsome and foul dinner guest, the erstwhile envoy from Britain who also happens to be a favorite of the Doge: The rascal-Fool Pocket. This trio of cunning plotters have lured Pocket to a dark dungeon, promising a spirited evening. Their invitation is, of course, bogus. These scoundrels have something far less amusing planned for the man who has consistently foiled their quest for power and wealth. But this Fool is no fool.…

When the call comes in that Mike Wilson, the unlikable owner of West Branch Lodge, has gone missing, Sheriff Tully is delighted. This is an excellent opportunity for Tully, his tracker pal Dave, and his retired sheriff father, Pap, to enjoy a few evenings of hot tubs and single-malt scotch at the luxurious lodge while working the case. However, visions of R & R vanish in a flash on the drive up, when Tully and Pap suddenly realize an avalanche is thundering down the mountain, straight toward them.

Meg Langslow is spending the summer at the Biscuit Mountain Craft Center, helping her grandmother Cordelia run the studios. But someone is committing acts of vandalism, which threaten to ruin the newly opened center's reputation.

Everyone who's anyone wants to be seen at one of Emory Jackman's legendary parties, from royalty to politicians, tech billionaires to Instagram models. But something sinister is happening on Little Pearl. Journalist Sven Olsen has heard rumors about the Jackmans trafficking young girls, and a secret auction joined by the rich and famous. He's been invited under the pretense of writing a profile about Emory and his mysterious wife, Tess, and will do just about anything to get the scoop.