Humor Crime

Dear Bennington College Admissions Officer: I’m probably not your average applicant from Beverly Hills, CA. And I’m not one to brag, but I’m pretty much the smartest girl in my class at Mark Frost Academy. My grades are excellent. My motivation is high. I don’t drink or do drugs or hang...

All it takes is a few underhanded moves by a tough ex-cop named Eppick to pull thief John Dortmunder into a game he never wanted to play. With no choice, he sets out on a perilous treasure hunt for a long-lost gold and jewel-studded chess set once intended as a birthday gift for the last Romanov czar. Success is not inevitable with Dortmunder leading the attack, but he's nothing if not persistent, and some gambit or other might just stumble into a winning move.

Farrah "Digit" Higgins may be going to MIT in the fall, but this L.A. high school genius has left her geek self behind in another school district so she can blend in with the popular crowd at Santa Monica High and actually enjoy her senior year. But when Farrah, the daughter of a UCLA math professor, unknowingly cracks a terrorist group's number sequence, her laid-back senior year gets a lot more interesting. Soon she is personally investigating the case, on the run from terrorists, and faking her own kidnapping - all while trying to convince a young, hot FBI agent to take her seriously.

In this novel from bestselling author John Verdon, ingenious puzzle solver Dave Gurney puts under the magnifying glass a notorious serial murder case — one whose motives have been enshrined as law-enforcement dogma - and discovers that everyone has it wrong. The most decorated homicide...

Finalist for the CALIBA 2023 Golden Poppy Award A LibraryReads Pick Utterly original and wildly entertaining, Killing Me is a laugh-loud-loud thriller with a protagonist whose life is a total mess. She escaped a serial killer. Then things got weird. Amber Jamison can’t believe she’s about to...

“I've loved Maggie Thrash's work for years, and Rainbow Black is going to set so many new hearts aflame—murder, intrigue, queer love, dark humor AND satanic panic? Welcome to the Maggie Thrash Fan Club, world!”—Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author of This Time Tomorrow For...

When Gabriel Lee escapes an unhappy marriage and moves to Porlington to start over, he finds himself part of the Porlington Philharmonia - an orchestra made up of the usual characters you would find in such a thing. Until one of them is found dead following a concert. Suddenly, everybody is a suspect, but nobody seems likely. A thriller full of intrigue and humour, this tale gives an insight into just what a barmy world musicians live in, especially when things go fatally wrong.

Kelp has a plan, and John Dortmunder knows that means trouble. His friend Kelp is a jinx, and his schemes, no matter how well intentioned, tend to spiral quickly out of control. But this one, Kelp swears, is airtight. He read it in a book.

In county lock-up for a traffic charge, Kelp came across a library of trashy novels by an author named Richard Stark. The hero is a thief named Parker whose plans, unlike Kelp and Dortmunder's, always work out. In one, Parker orchestrates a kidnapping so brilliant that, Kelp thinks, it would have to work in real life.

Multi-award winning and USA Today bestselling crime writer Lou Berney returns to his critically acclaimed thriller series starring former mob wheelman Shake Bouchon, who finds himself dragged into a high-stakes hostage rescue, among the mighty temples and shadowy underground of Cambodia. During...

On the weather front, category four Hurricane Kevin took a last-minute left and is headed straight for the Bellissimo Resort and Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi. In breaking news, undercover casino operative Davis Way has one foot out the evacuation door when 50 million dollars disappear, and in its place, a dead body. In other news, if forced to ride out the storm on the hotel's 13th-floor fortress, Davis won't be alone.

Cuervo is a pampered Nicaraguan moneyman, funding a guerrilla war from his cushy Miami penthouse. Sixto is his hulking, pistol-packing attendant, whose job satisfaction is on the wane. When an aging mobster enters their lives with a promise to help the rebel cause—with a planeload of chickens...

Problem number one: Bootsy Howard. Davis Way Cole lives a (relatively) quiet, (somewhat) simple, and (completely) witch-free life with her husband and twin daughters on the 29th floor of the Bellissimo Resort and Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi. Until Bootsy Howard shows up demanding a million dollars. Problem number two: Princess Smucker. What was marketing thinking when they booked the Southern Canine Association's annual dog show at the Bellissimo? And what was Davis thinking when she agreed to let a dog stay with her? For a week? In her home?

It’s Davis Way’s first slot-tournament season. And it may be her last. Things are dicey at work. A personal assistant goes missing, a little old lady goes on a suspicious winning streak, and a Bellissimo executive goes gaga for Davis. She follows a disappearing slot-tournament player trail to the So Help Me God Pentecostal Church in Beehive, Alabama, then jumps headlong into a high stakes holy scandal. She’s on a losing streak at home, too. Her days, nights, and dinners run together, as Davis juggles a revolving door of uninvited guests, namely her rotten ex-ex-husband, Eddie Crawford.

When Tim Kearney draws a license plate across the throat of a Hell's Angel, he's pretty much a dead man. It's his third crime and, according to California law, that gives him "life without the possibility of parole." Killing a Hell's Angel also makes him a dead man on any prison yard in...

From “one of the most gifted novelists of his generation” (Time), Other People is a tale about a woman’s path toward self-actualization. A woman wakes in an emergency room and remembers nothing—not even her own name. She hears a song about a “Mary” and a “lamb,” and decides to...

After surviving an attempt on his life in Paris, Sherlock Holmes returns to London, where the great detective is almost immediately enlisted by his brother to secure the safety of the delegates at a top-secret peace conference. With Europe a veritable powder keg in the years before World War I, Holmes understands any misstep on his part could prove fatal and possibly plunge the continent into war. However, after pledging to do his utmost for "King and Country", Holmes suddenly finds himself overwhelmed by an onslaught of cases.

Determined to thwart her parents' plans to marry her off into Asian suburbia, Fiona seeks her freedom at any price. How far will she go to bury the Hello Kitty stereotype forever? Fiona's journey of self-discovery is biting and clever as she embraces her true nature and creates her own version of the American Dream, eliminating - without fear or remorse - anyone who stands in her way.

Here, in Lynne Truss' first novel, we meet Osborne Lonsdale, a down-at-heel journalist, mysteriously attractive to women, who writes a regular celebrity interview for Come into the Garden. This week his "Me and My Shed" column will be based on the charming garden outhouse owned by TV sitcom star Angela Farmer. Unbeknownst to Osborne, driving down to Devon to interview Angela in her country retreat, the sleepy magazine has been taken over by new management.

When two best friends’ hobby of crashing weddings takes a deadly turn, they’re forced to embark on a road trip of survival in this addictive thriller. “The hairpin turns and killer twists of this propulsive bad-girls-gone-worse thriller will have you hanging on for dear life!”—Layne...

Superspy Davis Way sets sail on a Caribbean cruise aboard the MS Probability with 50 billionaires, a boatload of Louis Vuitton luggage, Anderson Cooper, and her mother. (Her mother?) The weather is perfect, the seas are calm, and suite 704 is spectacular. Until the door slams shut. For good. Obviously it's a system glitch. Surely someone will show up to free Davis, Miss Hawaii, and the creepy staff. But when the minutes turn to hours and the hours stretch into a day, Davis knows it's up to her.