Cozy Comedy

When her old friend Karen drops by with her two-year-old son, Meg Langslow reluctantly agrees to babysit. But when night falls, the toddler is still in residence, and Karen isn't answering her phone. Concerned, Meg spends the next morning retracing her friend's steps - and what she discovers makes her begin to suspect that Karen has either been killed or kidnapped or is on the run. Since the police don't seem to care, Meg once again plays sleuth.

When Brighton Longfield discovers her treasured protection amulet is missing, she finds a note in its place from Langoria Skeenbauer telling her that Tuttlesmiths are not welcome in Coventry. Brighton confronts the woman in the town square with a crowd of Coventry's residents watching. Of course, Langoria Skeenbauer is one of the town's most upstanding citizens, so people assume she's innocent and Brighton is nuts. When Langoria is found dead in the cemetery across from Hangman's House, Brighton becomes a suspect.

Welcome to Everlasting, Maine, where there's no such thing as normal. Marcy Lewis is cursed, honestly and truly, which makes dating very interesting. With a string of loser boyfriends behind her, she’s done looking for love in all the wrong places. That is, until the new firefighter arrives in the sleepy seaside town of Everlasting. Nicholas Logan is unlike any other man she’s ever had in her life. When someone starts sending her photographs that raise a red flag, it soon becomes apparent that she’s not just cursed. She’s in serious danger.

Would you betray your friends to save them? It has been months since Lily Singer’s harrowing adventure in England, yet there has still been no word of her father or Morgan le Fay. Far from being able to relax, Lily has been kept busy doing the last thing in the world she ever imagined: dating Sebastian Blackwell.

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.

Callahan Garrity has her hands full trying to expand her House Mouse cleaning business. So she's reluctant to take on a client in need of detective services, especially when that client is the most notorious woman in Atlanta - Whitney Albright Dobbs. Whitney is a wealthy socialite who, while under the influence, hit and killed a young black girl and just kept driving. Whitney's light sentence has set the city's racial tensions ablaze, and Callahan is not especially keen on helping track down Whitney's soon-to-be-ex-husband's hidden assets.

Meet Psmith, with a silent 'P' as in psychic. A gallant, charming individual, Psmith has a gift for getting into awful scrapes, and when he takes over a gentile journal known as Cosy Moments with the aid of Billy Windsor, its sub-editor, he turns it into a radical publication...with alarming and hilarious results.

Morning sickness sucks. Which is why fashion designer turned amateur sleuth Maddie Springer has spent the last six weeks being a couch potato and Moonlight vampire movie devotee. But when Maddie's best friends finally convince her to venture out, Maddie stumbles on a dead body of a girl who has been bitten on the neck, and life suddenly imitates art in the most deadliest of ways. Now Maddie is smack in the middle of a murder investigation involving a deadly dance club and a coven of Hollywood "vampires".

Alone in the midnight hours with nothing but dead leaves, stray cats, and legends of ghosts and ghoulies to accompany him. A sleeping village doesn’t mean a simple shift, though. Between the early risers of the farming community, a badger with a sweet tooth, and getting to know his new workmates, there’s no time for Nick to kick his feet up in the station. And of course there’s Claude Jeremiah Greengrass! Why did he have to retreat hastily down a ladder from a lady’s bedroom and what happened to his trousers and shirt?

As the new wardrobe assistant for a hit TV show, shoe designer Maddie Springer is in fashion heaven. But then a young starlet is found dead. Now it's up to Maddie to sift through a secretive leading lady, an actor on the verge of a nervous breakdown, a sexy cyber scandal, and one tabloid reporter who'll stop at nothing to get the story of the century. Not to mention her tangles with the infuriatingly sexy lead detective, Jack Ramirez.

The town's psychic cat, Irene Peggledrip, is being visited by a band of malevolent spirits who all claim to be murderers. The stage is set for Hettie and Tilly to solve an old murder mystery, where all the cats involved appear to be dead. Will our feline sleuths finally lay the ghosts to rest? Can Molly Bloom’s new cafe survive the seance? And will the moving claw give up its secrets before the gravy congeals? Join Hettie and Tilly for another spirited adventure.

When a freak accident hospitalizes Marty Golden's sister and condemns him to babysitter duty, he thinks it's just another case of hardwired bad luck in Silicon Valley. Until a suspicious murder suggests the mishap was no mere coincidence. Something must be done. Too bad this quirky, fashion-backward uncle isn't exactly hero material. Convinced his sister is in mortal danger, he follows clues to an oddball array of suspects. Armed with nothing but an eye for detail and powers of self-delusion, Marty tangles with gangsters, a cantankerous school secretary, and a perplexing woman.

I’m being forced to move in with my brother’s best friend. After my life falls apart, the last person I want to face is my childhood crush. Much less live with him. Unfortunately for me, my overprotective brother and his equally overprotective best friend show up on my doorstep and don’t take no for an answer. I put up my best fight, but it’s no use. Soon enough, I’m boarding a plane with them and my newborn son.

Maybe there are people in Antarctica with penguins in their basements, but in Virginia? Finding a body down there is somewhat more likely for Meg. Explaining the penguins' presence is easy; Meg's dad volunteered to take care of the birds until the future of the bankrupt local zoo could be determined. But identifying the body in the basement proves a harder task.

Going undercover is second nature for Private Investigator Lola Cruz, but she’s out of her league when the case of a murdered Royals Courtside Dancer leads her to a local nudist resort. Parading around the sidelines of Sacramento’s professional basketball scene in a barely there cheerleading outfit is one thing - but parading around in nothing but a smile? If she’s going to have any chance of hiding this from her traditional family and on-again, off-again boyfriend, Jack, she’s going to have to keep a lot more than her duct tape bra and killer dance moves under wraps.

With a cheating boyfriend, a thankless career in waitressing, and her BA in English going to waste, Mira James jumps at the chance for a fresh start in rural Battle Lake, Minnesota. Right away she lands a job as a librarian, snags another as an on-call reporter for the weekly newspaper, and is swept off her feet by Jeff Wilson, a handsome archaeologist unearthing the town’s storied history. Moving here might be the best decision Mira’s ever made. Until she finds Jeff’s body between the library’s reference stacks.

One writer, one editor, one hot summer . . . Will this be a romance for the books? Ciara Sheridan’s father has left her with three things: a sprawling and distinctly ramshackle estate on the Irish coast, the outline for the finale to his bestselling epic fantasy series that he wanted her to...

Fashion designer Maddie Springer has just tied the knot and is on her way to honeymoon paradise in Tahiti with her hot new husband. Warm sand, cool surf, and a romantic suite all to themselves... what could possibly go wrong? That is until Maddie stumbles on the dead body of a Tahitian dancer, strangled with her own flower lei.

Franki Amato is in Venice to celebrate her best friend’s Christmas Eve nuptials. She’s looking forward to a relaxing break from the PI grind and a romantic gondola ride with her Casanova. But when a chef goes belly-up after making violet risotto for the reception, her holiday plans start sinking like La Serenissima. Dead set on finding the killer and saving her BFF’s wedding, Franki navigates the city’s streets and canals, which are darker and more twisted than catacomb tunnels, and all while the ghosts of past and present are quite literally haunting her.

For all those craving more adventures of their favorite bookseller-by-day and burglar-by-night, The Burglar in Short Order for the first time ever collects all of Bernie Rhodenbarr's short-form appearances in one complete volume. From the story in which a prototype of Bernie first appeared (“A Bad Night for Burglars”) to his appearances in Playboy and (maybe? It's kinda complicated) Cosmopolitan...from an essay discussing Bernie's misadventures in Hollywood to a piece commissioned by a European publisher for a tourist guide to New York....