Mystery Comedy Fiction

With fugitive parents, a brother dodging loan sharks, a hunky cop who's made her outlaw family his business, and her ex-fiance back in the picture, Carlotta Wren thought her life couldn't get any more complicated. And then...her fugitive parents phone home. Her look-alike is found, well...dead. Under suspicion for murder, Carlotta discovers that her devious double might have been bumped off accidentally - and that she could be the real target!

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.

Meg Cabot is the New York Times best-selling author of The Princess Diaries series. Susannah Simon is a teenager who can see ghosts. As a bridge between the living and the dead, she gets called on to help ghosts take care of unfinished business. After she and her mother move from New York City to sunny California, Suze meets the sexiest boy she's ever seen, too bad he's a ghost, too.

“Dorsey’s brilliantly, profanely funny 11th novel…zips along like P.G. Wodehouse’s best work.” —Richmond Times-Dispatch Tim Dorsey’s outrageously zany, gleefully violent, and uproariously funny Nuclear Jellyfish marks the triumphant return of lovable, thrill-killing Florida...

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?

Miss Julia has promised her husband, Sam, to mind her own business. What a relief! She doesn't have to spring into action when a dead body is found in a toolshed six blocks from her house. Instead, she can concentrate on what's really important-like figuring out who's been passing bad checks in her name and, most important, preparing for Hazel Marie's impending due date. Then again, who else can figure out why that awful Thurlow Jones is trying to cast suspicion on someone Miss Julia feels certain is innocent? And, after all, what Sam doesn't know won't hurt him, right?

Real estate agent Violet "Spooky" Parker stumbles upon a body-part theft ring at the local funeral parlor and suspects her caustic coworker has a hand in it - or maybe a foot. Can Violet discover what's in the crates that the crooks are sneaking out of the mortuary in the dark of night? Or will she end up in one of them herself - in pieces?

Someone is looking to wreck the nation's economy, and they're spending plenty to do it. With every lead going nowhere, Flynn's most dizzying logic is put to the test.

Meet The Nearly Dearly Departed Club. Four random strangers thrown together with only one thing in common. They’re all dead. Or maybe not....

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.

From the author who brought the world Paddington Bear, comes the new book in the delightful Parisian mystery-series featuring Monsieur Pamplemousse and his canine partner, Pomme Frites. In this latest adventure, they must get to the bottom of a mystery surrounding the tarnishing of the integrity of Le Guide - France's premier hotel and restaurant guide. What they couldn't anticipate was that the case would involve a nun who is in the habit of joining the Mile High Club...

For a nation that elected Barack Obama as president, here is the first novel of the new era: The Mere Future, by award-winning novelist, activist, and playwright Sarah Schulman, set in a utopian (or is it dystopic?) future vision of New York City. The city has morphed into what appears to be an idealized version of itself, the result of what the new mayor calls "The Big Change," in which rent is cheap, homelessness is a thing of the past, and the only job left is marketing.

Maddie Faraday's life would be perfect if it weren't for her cheating husband, her suspicious daughter, her gossipy mother, her secretive best friend, her nosy neighbors, and that guy she lost her virginity to 20 years ago.

In Tell Me Lies, Jennifer Crusie dishes up a funny, sexy, suspenseful novel about small-town secrets, big-time betrayals and the redemptive power of love, laughter and chocolate brownies.

A woman falls from a tour helicopter to the horror of the 8:30 pirate show crowd. Was it suicide? An accident? Could she have been pushed? Lucky's day began with the invasion of the Adult Video Awards and trade show convention. It got more hectic when the spouse-swapping annual event checked in. And if adding a body to the mix wasn't enough, Lucky's got a new suitor. Her best friend, Teddie, a female impersonator who is pressing to take their relationship to the next level. Can she really date a man who looks better in a dress? What happened to the woman over the pirate show?

An old enemy seeking revenge sends James Flynn back around the bend and into a wild adventure even more deranged than his last one. Once again he believes that his psychiatric hospital is the headquarters of Her Majesty’s Secret Service and that he is a secret agent with a license to kill. With the help of Sancho, his reluctant sidekick, Flynn confronts a mysterious new adversary just as unhinged as he is and far more deadly. The entire planet is in danger, and the only one who can save it is someone no one believes.

Robert James, a private detective more interested in chronicling his cases than solving them, gets a midnight call from a young woman whose older husband has been found with a knife in his chest. Murder, corruption, and betrayal ensue as he's drawn into the dark underworld of his client, but hapless Robert and his sidekick, a flower-delivery guy, can't stop drinking, smoking, and philosophizing long enough to keep up. Imagine The Big Sleep via Fernando Pessoa, with a side of Buster Keaton.

At long last, all of Bridget Sway's dreams are about to come true! She is in a department store. Shopping. Yes. Shopping! She has new makeup. New shoes. And, most importantly, is finally about to get some new underwear. But, instead of finding a frilly knicker and bra set, she finds the body of a dead medium. A familiar dead medium.

A debut novel to charm all readers, that shows beyond all doubt that it's books, along with love, that make the world go round. It all began with a correspondence between two quite different women: 28-year-old Sara from Haninge, Sweden, and 65-year-old Amy from the small town of Broken...

Everyone has that coworker — the one they imagine stepping just a little too close to the curb as they speed through the parking lot. Maybe it’s the incompetent manager or the smug new hire who acts like they run the place after only three months. Around here, it’s not a question of if they need to go. It’s how we can make it look like an accident...

Senhor Jose is a low-grade clerk in the city's Central Registry, where the living and the dead share the same shelf space. A middle-aged bachelor, he has no interest in anything beyond the certificates of birth, marriage, divorce, and death that are his daily routine. But one day, when he comes across the records of an anonymous young woman, something happens to him.