Humor Mystery English

Outside Los Angeles, a driver pulls up to find a young woman sitting on a large black box. She offers him $200,000 cash to transport her and that box across the country, to Washington, DC. But there are rules: He cannot look inside the box. He cannot ask questions. He cannot tell anyone. They must leave immediately. He must leave all trackable devices behind. As these eccentric misfits hit the road, rumors spread on social media that the box is part of a carefully orchestrated terror attack intended to plunge the USA into civil war.

Warning: You may have a huge, invisible spider living in your skull. This is not a metaphor. You will dismiss this as ridiculous fearmongering. Dismissing things as ridiculous fearmongering is, in fact, the first symptom of parasitic spider infection - the creature secretes a chemical into the brain to stimulate skepticism, in order to prevent you from seeking a cure. That’s just as well, since the “cure” involves learning what a chain saw tastes like. You can’t feel the spider, because it controls your nerve endings.

Isobel Avery is on her second assignment as an undercover poison taster for Los Angeles's rich and famous. And she's actually enjoying herself. Until her sweet, agoraphobic client mysteriously leaves the safety of his apartment and winds up dead. When crucial evidence goes missing, investigator Connor Stiles will need Izzy's inside knowledge to help track down the killer. But despite three months of absence to make Connor's heart grow fonder, he doesn't seem pleased to be working with her again.

Life is reasonably rosy for plus-size ex-pop star turned assistant dormitory director and sometime sleuth Heather Wells. Her freeloading ex-con dad is finally moving out. She still yearns for her hot landlord, Cooper Cartwright, but her relationship with "rebound beau", vigorous vegan math professor Tad Tocco, is more than satisfactory. Best of all, nobody has died lately in Death Dorm, the aptly nicknamed student residence that Heather assistant directs. Of course every silver lining ultimately has some black cloud attached.

Florence Grimes is a thirty-one-year-old party girl who always takes the easy way out. Single, broke and unfulfilled after the humiliating end to her girl band career, she has only one reason to get out of bed each day: her ten-year-old son Dylan. But then Alfie Risby, her son’s bully and the heir to a vast frozen food empire, mysteriously vanishes during a class trip, and Dylan becomes the prime suspect. Florence, for once, is faced with a task she can’t quit: She’s got to find Alfie and clear her son’s name, or risk losing Dylan forever.

What if a reality TV show like Jersey Shore set up production in the fictional seaside resort Sea Haven? What if hitting the gym, tanning, and doing a little laundry aren't the only things the contestants get into? By-the-book officer John Ceepak and his wisecracking young partner, Danny Boyle, have to babysit the buff and boozy kids partying it up in a Jersey shore rental house for TV’s summertime hit Fun House while simultaneously trying to stop the rowdy kids from breaking the law up and down the beach. But even Ceepak and Danny can’t stop one young cast member from being murdered—and others from being threatened with the same fate.

Callahan Garrity is the owner of House Mouse, a cleaning service that tidies up after Atlanta's elite. She's also a former cop and a part-time sleuth. She and her coterie of devoted helpers can ransack a house for clues faster than it takes a fingerprint to set. Some people might call Callahan Garrity nosy, but she prefers to think of her tendency toward snooping as a healthy interest in the truth. So when news reaches her of her cousin Patti's death during a carjacking, Callahan shakes off her House Mouse cleaning uniform to don her detective's cap.

Although she hadn’t known Leonard Mallett very well, nor liked him particularly, Carole Seddon feels duty bound to attend her fellow committee member’s funeral. As she suspected, the hymns, readings, and sermon are all very predictable - not unlike Leonard himself. What she couldn’t have predicted was that the deceased’s daughter would use the occasion to publicly accuse her stepmother of murder.

Eloise Foley, known to her friends as Weezie, has been through the divorce from hell. Her ex-husband Tal (aka Talmadge Evans III) was awarded their house in Savannah's historic district, the house that Weezie had spent years painstakingly restoring to its original splendor. Weezie was awarded the two-bedroom carriage house on the same property. Each was sure the other would sell.

In The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning, Wodehousian clubman, flaneur, idler, and sleuth Anty Boisjoly pits his sardonic wits against another pair of impossible murders. This time, Anty Boisjoly’s Aunty Boisjoly is the only possible suspect when a murder victim stands his old friends a farewell drink at the local, hours after being murdered.

When Val tries to revive her old writing career, story ideas prove as elusive as a moment alone without her boyfriend Tom breathing down her neck. Tom’s moved in, and Val’s itching to move out–at least temporarily. A last-minute getaway to the country seems like the perfect solution for dissolving her writer’s block. But a fateful fish fry ends up inspiring a whole different kind of dead end.

Unfazed by chaos and bad luck, Melvin Scott knows, "Some things a man must do himself. No matter how dumb that man is." His wife disagrees. In debt over his head, he learns that a penny will grow to more than $10,000,000 in 30 days if it doubles every day. He realizes that other things can grow that fast, too. Bacteria. Disease. Cures. Almost anything. Scott finds hope, and the adventures begin.

John Grisham returns to Ford County, Mississippi, the setting of his immensely popular first novel, A Time to Kill. This wholly surprising collection of stories reminds us once again why Grisham is America's favorite storyteller.

A few nights before Christmas, Meg is awakened when Michael is summoned to the New Life Baptist Church, where someone has rigged a cage full of skunks in the choir loft. The lengthy process of de-skunking the church requires its annual pre-Christmas concert to relocate to Trinity Episcopal, despite the protests of Mr. Vess, an elderly vestryman.

Athens, 460 B.C. Life's tough for Nicolaos, sole investigating agent in Athens. His girlfriend's left him and his boss wants to fire him. But when an Athenian official is murdered, Pericles has no choice but to put Nico on the job. The case takes Nico, with a beautiful slave girl, to the land of Ionia within the Persian Empire. The Persians will execute him on the spot if they think he's a spy.

She's old-money Miami. He's barefoot Coconut Grove. The only thing they had in common was the law, until they faced each other in the steamiest murder trial of the century, a case that would make sparks fly, headlines scream, and opposites attract. Surrounded by crooks, con men, and a cast of colorful characters, Steve Solomon and Vickie Lord must solve the crime before they end up in ruin, in jail, or, worse, in bed.

When Stephanie’s beloved Grandma Mazur’s new husband died on their wedding night, the only thing he left her was a beat-up old easy chair...and the keys to a life-changing fortune. But as Stephanie and Grandma Mazur search for Jimmy Rosolli’s treasure, they discover that they’re not the only ones on the hunt. Two dangerous enemies from the past stand in their way - along with a new adversary who’s even more formidable

Looking at real estate isn’t usually a life-or-death situation, but an apartment open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes a group of strangers hostage. The captives include a recently retired couple who relentlessly hunt down fixer-uppers to avoid the painful truth that they can’t fix their own marriage. There’s a wealthy bank director who has been too busy to care about anyone else and a young couple who are about to have their first child but can’t seem to agree on anything.

Born a Parsi in Bombay, sent to university and medical school in Vienna, Dr. Farrokh Daruwalla is a 59-year-old orthopedic surgeon and a Canadian citizen who lives in Toronto. Once, 20 years ago, Dr. Daruwalla was the examining physician of two murder victims in Goa, India. Now, 20 years later, he will be reacquainted with the murderer.

Five years ago, Geeta lost her no-good husband. As in, she actually lost him—he walked out on her and she has no idea where he is. But in her remote village in India, rumor has it that Geeta killed him. And it’s a rumor that just won’t die.