Mystery Game

Three complete stories in one collection! Includes The Spy Game, The Dog-Gone Mystery, and The Vampire Mystery.

Despite his usual clientele of gamers, Ben is barely earning enough to keep the store running and stay on top of his father's medical bills. Then a local toy and game collector named Clive offers him a winning strategy—to purchase a turn-of-the-twentieth-century edition of The Landlord's Game, the realty and taxation game that inspired Monopoly, at a tenth of the rare edition's true value. Suspicious of Clive's shady, low-priced deal, Ben turns the offer down.

Picture Salmon Bay: an isolated, run-down northern California village, home to an idle fleet of fishing boats, a deserted amusement park, and a handful of secretive, even hostile residents. When private investigator Sharon McCone arrives in search of one of the town's wayward daughters, the trail leads to the thriving resort of Port San Marco. McCone believes that the missing woman, a former social worker named Jane Anthony, was involved in the suspicious deaths of three terminally ill patients at an exclusive hospice.

When the body of Sextus Verpa, a notorious senatorial informer and libertine, is found stabbed to death in his bedroom, his slaves are suspected. Pliny, a very respectable young senator and lawyer, is ordered by the emperor Domitian to investigate. However, the Ludi Romani, “the Roman Games”, have just begun, and for the next 15 days the law courts are in recess. If Pliny can’t identify the murderer in that time, Verpa’s entire slave household will be burned alive in the arena.

Washington, DC: Twin brothers are found drowned in a Perspex box, one gagged and strapped to a chair. It's the latest in a series of cruel and elaborate murders with two things in common: the killer has left a family history chart at each crime scene, and the victims all have a connection to genealogical sleuth Jefferson Tayte. Hoping his insight and expertise will help solve the case, the FBI summon Tayte back to the capital. But as he struggles to crack the clues, the killer strikes again - and again.

A woman appears on the streets of Shanghai. She has thousands of cuts - and is screaming for Inspector Danilov... Days later, the woman is dead. But another body is left waiting for the Inspector. Someone is playing with Danilov... someone prepared to kill, just to get their message across. At first, the victims seem unconnected. But with each body bringing a new message for Danilov, he knows this is a riddle especially designed for him. As more bodies start appearing, time is running out to solve the deadly puzzle.

Over the past five years, Allison Parker has survived a serial killer, an attempted murder, a terrorist attack, and an international assassin. How could agreeing to investigate the claims of a confidential informant possibly be dangerous? Answer: When the confidential informant is the little sister of convicted murderer and prison kingpin J.T. Begley. Seizing the opportunity to ensure inside protection for her brother Rice, Allison agrees to take the case.

The Hopeless Tigers just won the biggest football game in school history! But as often happens in the quirky yet snakebitten town of Hopeless, Idaho...there's a bit of a problem. A dead body has shown up. That's right. Another one. As usual, investigative reporter Hope Walker is on the scene. But this time, the mystery is particularly thorny. Hope has to sort through various motives and suspects in her most confusing mystery yet. Plus, she has to figure out where she stands with the handsome sheriff in town.

The islanders are up to the high doh. Scotland's popular reality game show, Game of Trust, is being filmed at Vik Castle and two of their own are taking part. Will the “Saviours” team help them survive, or will the “Murderers” team eliminate them first? When Sergeant Wilson receives intelligence that the international art thief, Shoogledy Jack, has infiltrated the game in order to steal Laird Hamish's valuable painting, she commandeers Losers Club to help her unmask the villain.

Come along as CJ and the gang get involved in their craziest adventure yet. Danger and surprise, new friends and enemies, all mean that Heavenly Acres will never be the same. A Peeping Tom is far more than he seems. CJ and the gang divide ranks in order to stop drug lords from taking over the mountain they love. When they realize why years of crime were centered around their tiny house community, the news shocks them to the core.

Front-page news in the quiet town of Dumont, Wisconsin, where former Chicago reporter Mark Manning runs the town’s Daily Register, involves the annual exhibition of the Midwest Miniatures Society and new zoning laws for an adult bookstore. But murder becomes the headline when “King of Miniatures” Carrol Cantrell, the nation’s foremost expert, is found strangled in the guesthouse of a local shop owner. It seems Cantrell was leading a double life. He was having an affair with Doug Pierce, Dumont’s closeted sheriff and a good friend of Manning’s.

Tess, Tony, and Tilly head to Lake Tahoe where they join Shaggy for a video game convention. The convention has been promoted as a place to get a first look at the video games that have recently been released or will be released on the near future. Of course, the hype created by this high-profile affair pretty much guarantees that all the big names in the industry will turn out, including Zak Zimmerman, who is scheduled to arrive via private jet with his wife Zoe, her dog Charlie, and Zak's honorary daughter Alex.

The city that never sleeps has something lurking in the darkness and Poet Parker can't decide if it's friend or foe. The rich history of the area comes into play when research uncovers a mine disaster more than 100 years in the past...and a tragic outcome that still haunts the locale to this day. Between dust storms bringing forth a creature with glowing red eyes, screams in the desert and Poet's increasing conviction that they're not alone, the team has their hands full. That's on top of the fact that Max decides now is the time to make his move.

After a freak Colorado earthquake, two people are found murdered. Detective Eileen Reed and her partner are called to investigate. But as Eileen races to uncover the pieces of the puzzle, she is confronted with a frightening connection between the murders and the tremors — and the possibility that this earthquake was not an act of God.

An FBI profiler on leave. A detective haunted by their shared past. After a serial killer who hunts men ravages her college town, psychology student Dominique St. Clair becomes an FBI profiler. Twelve years later, she returns to the town to confront her dark past when the Black Widow Killer resurfaces to terrorize the peaceful seaside community. Now Dom must help a local detective uncover the killer before she claims her next victim.

After the disaster of the month before, Dahlia Poplar, cursed witch and helper extraordinaire, is ready for her serene, supernatural small-town life to return to normal. However, her hopes for a more peaceful existence don’t last when a childhood friend moves back to Luna Lane to open up an escape room.

A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Sasha Pryce, a teenage chess prodigy, presented me with a problem. She wanted me to track down Steve Chapin, her coaching assistant. Steve had mysteriously disappeared, leaving no clue as to his whereabouts. However, Sasha insisted that I should follow her strict instructions - her father, eminent pharmacologist Professor Christian Pryce, must not learn of my investigation. Meanwhile, Professor Pryce had hired a handsome bodyguard, Blake, to protect Sasha.

When a fire ravages the local bookstore late one evening, Liss immediately fears the worst for owner Angie and her two young children. After the terrible blaze dies down, however, the family is nowhere to be found among the ruins. It's as if the three just vanished into smoke. Or, even stranger, like they never existed at all.

When a young woman's nude body is discovered on the Xenon game company's corporate campus, community manager Lexy Cooper gets an early morning call from her uncle, homicide detective Mike Malick, to ID the corpse. As Malick investigates the crime, Lexy works the case from inside Xenon and discovers more about the seedy underbelly of the games industry than she ever wanted to know.

Sarah Levi's thought-provoking "The Asshole Pickup Artist: How to Be an Alpha Male Douchebag and Get Laid Fast" is the second installment of her "Secrets of Pimpology Applied to the Seduction Game" series. This book takes a controversial stand, claiming to reveal the methods that represent the 'alpha male douchebag' persona, a character frequently chastised for using deceptive and impolite methods to win over sexual interests. By offering a manual that claims quick outcomes using dubious techniques, Levi's work aims to dispel misconceptions and spark discussion.