Humor Thriller

Deputy coroner Mattie Winston knows a thing or two about dead bodies. That's why she's on the case of Derrick Ames, a high school math teacher stabbed to death with a barbecue fork straight to the heart. Sure, she's turned up some motives and a few suspects, but nothing adds up. Especially when the evidence points to Ames's teenage son. Newly pregnant Mattie can't believe it, even as her own long-estranged father may be following her.

Within months of having taken control of the family detective business, Izzy Spellman is accused of embezzling from a former client, the ridiculously wealthy Mr. Slayter, who happens to have Alzheimer's, which Izzy and he are diligently trying to keep under wraps. Not only is Slayter's business and reputation on the line, but if Izzy gets indicted for embezzlement, she'll lose everything - her business, her license, and her family's livelihood. Is this the end of Izzy Spellman, PI?

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.

It's the score of a lifetime: easy access to a lavish New York City apartment, hordes of valuables, and an absentee owner avoiding the lawyers of his unhappy ex-wives. But before they pull the job, Dortmunder's crew is startled to find their beloved gin joint, the OJ, in the clutches of the Mafia--who consider it perfect for a little fraud, courtesy of a nice big fire. For tactical and highly superstitious reasons, the fate of the OJ is even more important to the crew than the enormous score.

After one too many terrifying encounters, Millie Masters sets up a hotline for women who feel unsafe walking home alone at night: Message M. But very quickly she realises that there’s much more to be done to help the women who call in. Because the men just do it again the next night, and the next, and the next… And when her own sister is assaulted on a night out, the temptation to take the law into her own hands becomes too much to resist. Because M can also stand for murder.

Being an undercover poison taster for the rich and famous might sound glamorous, but for Isobel Avery it means stomaching bad clients and even worse coffee. The one side of the job that lives up to expectations is the money. Which is just as well for Izzy, since she needs an awful lot of it. Who knew when she made a lifelong commitment to a man that it would be one year living with him and the rest of her life paying for it?

Amber Jamison can’t believe she’s about to become the latest victim of a serial killer. She’s savvy and street smart, so when she gets pushed into, of all things, a white windowless van, she is more angry than afraid. Things get even weirder when she’s miraculously saved by a mysterious woman . . . who promptly disappears. Who was she? And why is she hunting serial killers? You’d think escaping one psychopath would be enough, but Amber’s problems are just beginning.

Nick is settling into his role as a police constable in Aidensfield, getting to grips with rural life and his new colleagues and neighbors. But Nick soon finds himself facing a canine crisis. Farmer Lowe’s overworked sheepdog is feigning deafness. Without the dog, the cows cannot be milked, bringing his farming business to a screeching halt. Meanwhile, five sheep turn up dead, and Sidney Chapman’s dog is accused of the crime, much to his dismay. Can Nick salvage Aidensfield’s farming future, not to mention the reputations of two dogs, while juggling his other cases?

When teenager Benji Hammerton goes worryingly quiet, his parents turn to the one person who might be able to help—Agatha Pleasant, an ageing government agent who operates largely in the shadows. As luck would have it, Agatha has a batch of new recruits at her disposal. Untapped potential desperately in need of work experience.

"Work," said Psmith, with simple dignity. "I am now a member of the staff of this bank. Its interests are my interests. Psmith, the individual, ceases to exist, and there springs into being Psmith, the cog in the wheel of the New Asiatic Bank; Psmith, the link in the bank's chain; Psmith, the Worker. "I shall not spare myself," he proceeded earnestly. "I shall toil with all the accumulated energy of one who, up till now, has only known what work is like from hearsay."

The Extravaganza of the Seas is a 5,000 ton cash cow, a top-heavy tub whose sole function is to carry gamblers three miles from the Florida coast, take their money, then bring them back so they can find more money.

No one worships the Sunshine State as much as Serge A. Storms. Perpetually hunting Floridian arcana and lore, he and his permanently baked sidekick, Coleman, are on the road again. This time they're on a frenzied literary pilgrimage that leads them back to Riviera Beach, the cozy seaside town where the boys spent their formative years.

Seventeen-year-old Esme Pearl has a babysitters club. She knows it's kinda lame, but what else is she supposed to do? Get a job? Gross. Besides, Esme likes babysitting, and she's good at it. And lately Esme needs all the cash she can get, because it seems like destruction follows her wherever she goes. Let's just say she owes some people a new tree. Enter Cassandra Heaven. She's Instagram-model hot, dresses like she found her clothes in a dumpster, and has a rebellious streak as gnarly as the cafeteria cooking.

Tax cheats, beware: The Treasury Department's Criminal Investigations Division has a new special agent on its payroll. A recovering tomboy with a head for numbers, Tara's fast becoming the Annie Oakley of the IRS-kicking ass, taking social security numbers, and keeping the world safe for honest taxpayers. Or else. Tara's latest mission finds her in hot pursuit of ice-cream vendor Joseph "Joe Cool" Cullen. Along with frozen treats he's selling narcotics-and failing to report his ill-gotten gains on his tax returns. Over Tara's dead body.

It may not be as grim up north as they say, but it wasn't where amateur private investigators Natasha DuVivien and Miriam Birdseye intended to spend their Christmas. When the principal boy in a production of Cinderella is murdered, and a ballerina hits the bottle a little too hard, they do the only logical thing they can do and join the cast, stranding themselves in a small industrial town for the sake of art and sleuthing. The show must go on, after all, and the detective duo must get to the bottom of things - before the final curtain falls.

Wild rabies runs rampant through the woods. The foxes are gaining ground, boldly making their way into the village. In Dichtersruhe, an insular yet charming haven stifled by the Swiss mountains, these omens go unnoticed by all but the new parish priest. The residents have other things on their mind: literature. Everyone’s a writer - the nights are alive with reworked manuscripts. So when the devil turns up in a black car claiming to be a hot-shot publisher, unsatisfied authorial desires are unleashed and the village’s former harmony is shattered.

Rhoda West is Silicon Valley’s favorite female CEO: the luminously charismatic founder of the fast-growing startup Radical, a wellness company whose core mission is the betterment of women’s lives. Rhoda’s Instagram page offers intimate glimpses of her personal life alongside promotions for the cult-status products developed in the Well, Radical’s secretive lab.

Freshly laid-off Wisconsinites Patrick and Barbara McDougall are going to sunny Florida for a modest romantic vacation. But the motel they picked isn't quite a pastel paradise, and they have to be midwesterners and make the best of a bad situation. Except bad goes to worse, and a string of misfortunes renders them unable to leave the state. Meanwhile, the next Mexican-American War is being fought, this time in Fort Lauderdale, between the Kentucky mafia and the Oxy cartel over control of the lucrative pain clinic market.

In his career, Dave Barry has done just about everything - written bestselling nonfiction, won a Pulitzer Prize, seen his life turned into a television series. And now, at last, he has joined the long list of literary figures from Jane Austen to Tolstoy who have made the transition from humor columnist to novelist - and done it with a style and inventiveness that establishes that, yes, he is very good at that, too.

The peace and calm of Hampton Cove is brutally disturbed when celebrity chef Niklaus Skad, famous for his show Kitchen Disasters, is found cooked in his own oven. The chef wasn’t a well-liked man, and there are plenty of suspects to go around. Odelia Poole, Hampton Cove Gazette reporter and civilian consultant to the police department, teams up with Detective Chase Kingsley to catch the killer, but soon finds this proves a lot harder than she thought. Max, Odelia’s blorange tabby, would love to help out, but is faced with a cat emergency when Odelia takes in a new stray.