Humor Mystery English

It would take a miracle to keep Dortmunder out of jail. Though he cased the electronics store perfectly, the cops surprised him, turning up in the alley just as he was walking out the back door, a television in each hand. Already a two-time loser, without divine intervention he faces a long stretch inside. Then God sends J. Radcliffe Stonewiler, a celebrity lawyer who gets Dortmunder off with hardly any effort at all. Stonewiler was sent by Arnold Chauncey, an art lover with a cash-flow problem. He asks the thief to break into his house and make off with a valuable painting in exchange for a quarter of the insurance money.

A cottage on the coast on a windy evening. Under a pool of yellow light, two figures face each other across a kitchen table. A man and a cat. The story about to be related is so unusual yet so terrifyingly plausible that it demands to be told in a single sitting. The man clears his throat, and leans forward, expectant. 'Shall we begin?' says the cat….

When Ellison Russell, reluctant finder of bodies, chairs a gala in conjunction with the museum's Chinese funerary exhibit, she expects disaster. So, she's not remotely surprised when a body turns up. Ellison is willing to leave the investigation to the police till an attempt is made on her life. Now she's juggling evading a killer, her aunt's overly-amorous beau, her dog's new love interest, and Mother's displeasure. With bodies piling up, if Ellison's not careful, staying alive might be impossible.

Through the Monster Hunt app, Chase Knowles becomes the Alpha of two powerful Huntresses: one a half-dragon female fond of combat and banter, the other a cute warrior fond of reading spell books and wielding two killer blades. Their goal? Hunt these mythological creatures in the parks, rooftops, and back alleys of New York City; build a fighting party to compete in brawls and tournaments in the city and beyond; earn money; and try their damnedest not to get arrested.

After a long period of "resting", life is looking up for Charles Paris, who has been cast in a new production of Hamlet. But rehearsals are fraught. Ophelia is played by Katrina Selsey, who won the role through a television talent show. Hamlet himself is also played by a reality TV contestant, Jared Root. But when the company reaches the first staging post of their tour, matters get more serious, with one member of the company seriously injured in what appears to be an accident, and another dead. Once again, Charles Paris is forced to don the mantle of amateur detective to get to the bottom of the mystery.

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.

Which is more powerful: romance or revenge? Mafia princess Angelina Amaro has only ever loved one man - and even that lone affair was never consummated. Why not? Because her would-be lover, Sal Martucci, fled into the Witness Protection Program after ratting out Big Paul, Angelina's father. But when Sal is discovered, a decade later, working as a bartender in Key West, the wildly dysfunctional Amaro clan heads south - one member with love on her mind, the others with murder in their hearts.

A city in chaos! The theft of a Confederate memorial plunges a once-sleepy Southern town into a dystopian nightmare. The mayor has unleashed a campaign of terror, tanks are roaming the streets, and gangsters have taken over the schools. Can 14-year-old Ignatius, his brilliant 8-year-old sister Dolly, and their misfit friends solve the mystery and save the day? Gazoon Heist is a darkly funny and thrilling tale about a society on the brink and how children pay the price for adults' ridiculous behavior.

Receiving unwanted attention after foiling an armed robbery, the unhuman Inspector Hobbes takes a long-overdue camping holiday with Andy, his accident-prone friend, and Dregs, the delinquent dog. In the bleak and dangerous Blacker Mountains, Andy stumbles across something shocking before falling for an attractive widow, while Hobbes wonders why an old gold mine has reopened.

When a young teen discovers a top-secret parenting manual, it’s kids versus grown-ups in this kooky, illustrated middle grade thriller with nonstop, seat-of-your-pants action that will delight fans of Jarrett Lerner and Stuart Gibbs. When a tween boy [Codename: Furious Popcorn] picks up what...

The second in this hilarious cozy mystery series features a woman who is a talent agent for showbiz animals and discovers that she has a talent herself: solving crimes. Kay Powell, theatrical agent to non-human animals, is babysitting - that is, birdsitting - her client, a parrot named Barney, on the set of his new TV show, Dead City. When the show’s charismatic star is shot in his trailer between scenes, the only eyewitness to the crime is - you guessed it - Barney.

This funny, smart, and action-packed book from the world’s #1 bestselling author, twelve-year-old Minerva Keen's neighbors are being mysteriously poisoned—and she's determined to crack the case Living in the luxurious Arcanum building—with its interior balconies perfect for playing tag, an...

On a blustery day in late fall, Hank sneaks into the back of Slim's pickup and finds himself at a neighboring rancher's fall branding...the very neighbor, in fact, who owns the gorgeous Miss Scamper the Beagle! Unfortunately, Miss Scamper has always been a little hard to figure out, and he can't decide if she's crazy about him...or just plain crazy. And, as the day unfolds, it even begins to look like she's angling to land him in a heap of trouble with her pit bull boyfriend, Steel!

When Jude agrees to lend her vintage chaise longue for the local Amateur Dramatic Society’s production of George Bernard Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple, little does she realise she’ll end up in a starring role. It’s an ambitious play, culminating in a dramatic execution scene: a scene that’s played for real when one of the leading actors is found hanging from the specially constructed stage gallows during rehearsals. A tragic accident - or something more sinister?

All of a sudden the streets of your city are so overpopulated with security cameras and closed-circuit TV that you have to lock yourself in the bathroom to have an undocumented moment. And locks, which used to provide the recreational pleasure of a moderately challenging crossword puzzle, have become genuinely pickproof.

Jan Nyman, the ace detective of the covert operations unit of the National Central Police, is sent to a sleepy seaside town to investigate a mysterious death. Nyman arrives in the town dominated by a bizarre holiday village - the ‘hottest beach in Finland’. The suspect: Olivia Koski, who has only recently returned to her old hometown. The mission: find out what happened, by any means necessary.

The phone hasn't rung for months. Suzy Marshall is discovering that work can be sluggish for an actress over 60 - even for the former star of a 1980s TV series. So when she's offered the plum role of Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest in Zurich, it seems like a godsend. Until, that is, the play is abruptly cancelled in suspicious circumstances, and Suzy is forced to take a job on a cruise ship to get home.

Abounding in Southern charm, Miss Julia Paints the Town finds the plucky North Carolinian pushed to the limit by a daunting heap of difficulties. Already trying to help three friends find their missing husbands, Miss Julia also must concoct a scheme to chase a slick New Jersey developer away from Abbotsville. But perhaps she's bitten off a bit more than she can chew.

It was supposed to be a simple caviar heist. Dortmunder is almost in the building when the alarm sounds, forcing him up the fire escape and onto the roof. He leaps onto the next building, smashing his ankle and landing in the den of the worst kind of creature he can imagine: nuns.

To his chagrin, Alaskan PI Cecil Younger learns his teenage daughter has launched her own detective agency. But when her first case goes awry, she’s going to need some help from an unlikely source: her father, who’s currently locked up in prison.