Dark Humor Mystery

After years of pulling heist, the Great Bandit is caught. The judge discovers something different about her and gives her an opportunity that most criminals would only dream of. The Great Bandit has the ability to remember everything—she has an eidetic memory. After realizing the great potential that she could have for his country, the judge orders her to serve out eight years in the US Army and become part of the CIA. She doesn't want to go, but it was either this or 30 years in prison for all the robberies she committed.

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.

David is a blue-collar man, spending his days managing the Albuquerque Wastewater Utility plant, and nights ruminating over his painful past. Not much of import happens in his world, and that's just fine by him. That is, until a severed hand is found among the filtered debris of one of the waste filtration tanks. Thinking a few hours of paperwork will be all it takes to clear the episode from David's life, fate sends a beautiful Sheriff's Deputy named Gina, along with a series of events that drag him deep into something more sinister than he ever could have imagined.

Karl, Eleanor, and their daughter, Irina, arrive from New York City in the wake of Karl's infidelity to start anew. Karl tries to stabilize his flailing art career. Eleanor, a successful commercial novelist, eagerly pivots in a new creative direction. Meanwhile, 12-year-old Irina becomes obsessed with the brutal murders that occurred in the house years earlier. And, secretly, so does her mother.

When eighteen-year-old Ellie Canning is discovered wandering the countryside, dazed and traumatized, she tells a harrowing story of abduction, captivity, and escape. An overnight symbol of survival and empowerment, Ellie enthralls an outraged nation. Then authorities zero in on an unlikely suspect: high school teacher Suzannah Wells, identified by Ellie as the woman who kept her drugged and bound in a basement. The evidence against Suzannah is damning—vilified by the media, Suzannah’s only defense is that not a single word Ellie says is true. Suzannah has no reason to lie.

After Jake quits the drug business, his realtor/ex-wife, Nina, gets him a job as a housesitter for her wealthy clients. Jake celebrates by throwing a party in the mansion he was hired to look after. Unfortunately, the guest list gets out of hand, leaving Jake to contend with a hallucinogenic-vitamin-dispensing yogi, a dead guy in the bathroom, and the Norwegian - a criminal force of nature with a grudge against Jake.

To prevent the chaos and destruction they could impose upon the world, an age-old system has been in existence forcing beings of darkness and power to use humanity's legal systems. Snug safely under a "blanket of ignorance", most humans remain unaware of the existence of supernatural beings and the legal disputes which involve them. A select few professionals are required to participate and assist in the resolution of paranormal conflicts. Martin Sandberg is one of those professionals. This is his story.

Roby Valen's memories are covered in blood, as is her past. Imprisoned for a gruesome murder of a record executive, she finds herself rotting away, with only the memory of the eccentric rock star, Ray Harrison to keep her sane. When the lights go out and hell breaks loose, she sets out to reunite with the only person who can find her smile.

Once a cancer patient, former Orlando detective Mike Garrity is a survivor—for now, at least. Death has a way of following him around, like a black cloud over his head. If its not his own mortality he's thinking about, its someone else's. Like his teenage daughter's friend who just died of a suspected suicide. Or the woman he just met in his cancer support group, Debbie, who learns that she doesn't have much longer to live.

Don't you trust me? I mean, look at me. Blond, blue eyed, the very image of innocence. Pretty enough, if you care about that kind of thing. I don't. But would a normal person switch identities with some wet mess of a girl at the airport just to get her to stop bawling about being separated from her loser boyfriend and sent to live with some distant relatives? Nope, she wouldn't. Yet I did. I'm not as normal as you think. And you'll just have to trust me.

Henry, a New Yorker left destitute by circumstance and obsession, is plucked from vagrancy by a shadowy outfit whose primary business is arranging for staged murders of anxiety-ridden clients unhinged by the “events downtown” and seeking to experience - and live through - their own carefully executed assassinations. When Henry joins this nefarious crew, which includes a beautiful blonde tattooist named Tulip, contortionist twins, and a woman referred to only as “the knockout”, he becomes inextricably linked to its ringleader, the mysterious herring connoisseur Mr. Kindt.

To celebrate his 65th birthday, Mr. Lidman and daughter are throwing a small party at their cozy home in the countryside, only to discover an uninvited stranger among the guests. When confronted in private by Lidman, the stranger explains he has been hired to murder him, but offers more time as a birthday present (until the end of the party).

When Oliver Bonds, a revered religious studies professor at the University of Texas, loses his toddler son and undergoes intense legal scrutiny over his involvement, grief engulfs him completely. His life is upended; Oliver loses his wife, home, and faith. Three years after his son's death, Oliver lives in a shack without electricity and frequents the soup kitchen where he used to volunteer. It's only when he's befriended by Lyle, a con artist with a passion for theories of Hollow Earth, that Oliver begins to reengage with the world.

Hailed as The Awl’s 2012’s novel to anticipate, this glorious debut stars hippie detectives, a singular city, and an MFA student on the run. On a residential Bay Area block struggling with the collision of gentrifier condos and longtime residents, stymied recent MFA grad...

In the near future, Berlin’s real estate is being flipped in the name of “sustainability”, only to make the city even more unaffordable; artists are employed by corporations as consultants, and the weather is acting strange. When Anja and Louis are offered a rent-free home on an artificial mountain - yet another eco-friendly initiative run by a corporation - they seize the opportunity, but it isn’t long before the experimental house begins malfunctioning.

Two weeks after waking up as a vampire, Sarah Wright is starting to feel comfortable in her fangs. She’s doing okay, if you don’t count wicked mood swings, crushing guilt, and a pervasive sense of existential dread. On the upside, her family is adjusting to the new normal of supernatural in stride, and she’s even testing the waters with a new guy.

At 14, Robert "Hutch" Hutchinson is out of luck. His charm and singing voice can't keep him out of trouble anymore. When he's arrested (again): he's given a choice: die in juvie or become a shadow: the fearless, unstoppable, and top-secret guardian of a Future Important Person, or FIP. With nothing to lose, Hutch accepts. After two grueling years at the Future Affairs Training and Education (FATE) Center, he expects to be plunged into a battle zone. Instead he learns that his FIP is someone named Ryo Enomoto, front-man of world-famous boy band International. He must join the band and change his name to Bobby Sky.

When Ren Sharpe was 14, she was kidnapped by a shadowy organization called FATE and trained to be a human weapon. Now, four years later, she receives her assignment: protect Gareth Young at all costs. Currently a student at Texas A&M, Gareth will someday change the world. FATE calls people like Gareth "FIPs" - future important people - and they're everywhere, each with a FATE-trained shadow.

It was my father’s arrest that brought me here, although you could certainly say that I took the scenic route. Here is rehab, where Ben - the only son of a rich South Dublin banker - is piecing together the shattered remains of his life. Abruptly cut off, at the age of 27, from a life of heedless privilege, Ben flounders through a world of drugs and dead-end jobs, his self-esteem at rock bottom. Even his once-adoring girlfriend, Clio, is at the end of her tether. Then Ben runs into an old school friend who wants to cut him in on a scam.

Welcome to Pay to Stay, Los Angeles’s premier minimum-security facility where the privileged serve time Friday to Monday only. But this New Year’s weekend, seven inmates—including a driven campaign manager, a disgraced nurse, a party girl, and one mysterious male transfer—discover their abusive guard dead, wrapped in an ironic “Community Payback” vest. Now they must solve his murder before their cushy arrangement becomes a permanent stay in maximum security.