Humor Mystery English

Monday mornings aren’t supposed to be fun, but they should be predictable. However, on this particular Monday, Stephanie Plum knows that something is amiss when she turns up for work at Vinnie’s Bail Bonds to find that longtime office manager Connie Rosolli, who is as reliable as the tides in Atlantic City, hasn’t shown up. Stephanie’s worst fears are confirmed when she gets a call from Connie’s abductor. He says he will only release her in exchange for a mysterious coin that a recently murdered man left as collateral for his bail.

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.

Angus McLintock, accidental Member of Parliament, has won re-election and is now the Minister of State for International Relations—or, in other words, he's the junior global affairs minister. In this new post, he and his trusty Chief of Staff, Daniel Addison, are in London to meet with their international counterparts to discuss the upcoming G8 Summit in Washington. Unfortunately, Angus is not in charge of Canada's involvement in the summit—that task falls to the actual Global Affairs Minister, not the junior one.

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

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.

It’s the year 2000, and while Bunny McGarry is theoretically on sabbatical from the police, he just can’t help sticking his nose in where it doesn’t belong. Rosie Flint is an old acquaintance of Bunny’s whose boyfriend mysteriously disappears off the face of the Earth. What starts out as a simple missing person’s case soon gets a whole lot more complicated when it emerges that the boyfriend is not who he claimed to be, and there are some rather sinister people showing an unhealthy interest in Rosie.

Harry Flashman: the unrepentant bully of Tom Brown's schooldays, now with a Victoria Cross, has three main talents - horsemanship, facility with foreign languages and fornication. A reluctant military hero, Flashman plays a key part in most of the defining military campaigns of the nineteenth century despite trying his utmost to escape them all. Flashman, soldier, duellist, lover, imposter, coward, cad, and hero triumphs in this first installment of The Flashman Papers.

Our narrator produces a sound from the piano no one else at the Conservatory can. She employs a technique she learned from her parents—also talented musicians—who fled China in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. But when an accident leaves her parents debilitated, she abandons her future for a job at a high-end beauty and wellness store in New York City.

San Francisco, 1947. Bartender Sammy “Two Toes” Tiffin and the rest of the Cookie’s Coffee Irregulars—a ragtag bunch of working mugs last seen in Noir—are on the hustle: they’re trying to open a driving school; shanghai an abusive Swedish stevedore; get Mable, the local madam, and her girls to a Christmas party at the State Hospital without alerting the overzealous head of the S.F.P.D. vice squad.

When Chet the dog, "the most lovable narrator in all of crime fiction" (Boston Globe), and his partner, PI Bernie Little of the desert-based Little Detective Agency, arrive to a meeting with hydrologist Wendell Nero, they are in for a shocking sight - Wendell has come to a violent and mysterious end. What did the hydrologist want to see them about? Is his death a random robbery, or something more? Chet and Bernie, working for nothing more than an eight-pack of Slim Jims, are on the case.

Lost something? Gabriela Rose knows how to get it back. As a recovery agent, she’s hired by individuals and companies seeking lost treasures, stolen heirlooms, or missing assets. She’s reliable, cool under pressure, and well trained in weapons of all types. But Gabriela’s latest job isn’t for some bamboozled billionaire, it’s for her own family, whose home is going to be wiped off the map if they can’t come up with a lot of money fast.

In the tradition of Jonathan Swift and Mark Twain, America Fantastica delivers a biting, witty, and entertaining story about the causes and costs of outlandish fantasy, while also marking the triumphant return of an essential voice in American letters. And at the heart of the novel, amid a teeming cast of characters, readers will delight in the tug-of-war between two memorable and iconic human beings—the exuberant savior-of-souls Angie Bing and the penitent but compulsive liar Boyd Halverson.

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.

It’s the year 2000 in Dublin and, following some traumatic events, Detective Bunny McGarry is taking a well-earned break from the force. Bunny’s former partner died in the line of duty under dubious circumstances, but his murky background has suddenly resurfaced, threatening Bunny’s reputation as well. As if that isn’t enough, a young boy is in danger and a woman from the big fella’s past is trapped in a loveless marriage to a monster. They both need Bunny’s help, but he must get to work fast - it seems someone is trying to frame him for murder.

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.

Meg Langslow's summer is not going swimmingly. In her small Virginia hometown, she's the maid of honor at the nuptials of three loved ones - each of whom has dumped the planning in her hands. One bride is set on including a Native American herbal purification ceremony while another wants live peacocks on the lawn. But when an offensive newcomer, who hints at skeletons in the guests' closets, is found dead under suspicious circumstances, level-headed Meg's to-do list extends from flower arrangements and bridal registries to catching a killer - before the next event is her own funeral.

Plain Heathen Mischief ups the existential ante, as Joel King, a defrocked Baptist minister, finds life even more bedeviling once he's served six months for a career-ending crime he might not even have committed. Now his incommunicado wife wants a divorce, the teenage vixen of his disgrace is suing him for a cool $5 million, a fresh start in Montana offers no hope for ex-cons of any religious persuasion, and the refuge provided by his sister turns as nasty as his parole officer. Talk about a crisis of faith.

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.

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.