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A reluctant centenarian much like Forrest Gump (if Gump were an explosives expert with a fondness for vodka) decides it's not too late to start over . . .After a long and eventful life, Allan Karlsson ends up in a nursing home, believing it to be his last stop. The only problem is that he's still in good health, and in one day, he turns 100. A big celebration is in the works, but Allan really isn't interested (and he'd like a bit more control over his vodka consumption) . So he decides to escape.
He climbs out the window in his slippers and embarks on a hilarious and entirely unexpected journey, involving, among other surprises, a suitcase stuffed with cash, some unpleasant criminals, a friendly hot-dog stand operator, and an elephant (not to mention a death by elephant) .
On her sixtieth birthday, Auntie Poldi retires to Sicily, intending to while away the rest of her days with good wine, a view of the sea, and few visitors. But Sicily isn't quite the tranquil island she thought it would be, and something always seems to get in the way of her relaxation. When her handsome young handyman goes missing - and is discovered murdered - she can't help but ask questions. Soon there's an investigation, a smoldering police inspector, a romantic entanglement, one false lead after another, a rooftop showdown, and finally, of course, Poldi herself, slightly tousled but still perfectly poised.
This "masterly treat" (Times Literary Supplement) will transport you to the rocky shores of Torre Archirafi, to a Sicily full of quirky characters, scorching days, and velvety nights, alongside a protagonist who's as fiery as the Sicilian sun.
Laos, 1978: Dr. Siri Paiboun, a 72-year-old medical doctor, has unwillingly been appointed the national coroner of the new socialist Laos. His lab is underfunded, his boss is incompetent, and his support staff is quirky, to say the least. But Siris sense of humor gets him through his often frustrating days. When the body of the wife of a prominent politician comes through his morgue, Siri has reason to suspect the woman has been murdered. To get to the truth, Siri and his team face government secrets, spying neighbors, victim hauntings, Hmong shamans, botched romances, and other deadly dangers. Somehow, Siri must figure out a way to balance the will of the party and the will of the dead.
Samson O'Brien has been dismissed from the police force -- quite unfairly, according to him. Now back in his home town of Bruncliffe in the Yorkshire Dales, Samson sets up the Dales Detective Agency while he fights to clear his name. However, the people of Bruncliffe aren't entirely welcoming to a man they see as trouble.
Delilah Metcalfe, meanwhile, is struggling to keep her business, the Dales Dating Agency, afloat. When Samson gets his first case, investigating the supposed suicide of a local man, things take an unexpected turn, and soon he discovers a trail of deaths that lead back to the door of Delilah's agency.With suspicion hanging over someone they both care for, Delilah and Samson soon realize that they need to work together to solve the mystery of the dating deaths. But working together is easier said than done, and the couple must find a way to kiss and make up before more villagers wind up dead.
Julia Chapman's Date with Death is the newest installation in the delightful Samson and Delilah Mystery series.
From the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Still Missing, More Than You Know, and Gossip comes the first entry in a stylish and witty mystery series featuring a pair of unlikely investigators - a shrewd novel of manners with a dark heart of murder at its center, set in small-town New England.
Indulging their pleasure in travel and new experiences, recently retired private school head Maggie Detweiler and her old friend, socialite Hope Babbin, are heading to Maine. The trip - to attend a weeklong master cooking class at the picturesque Victorian-era Oquossoc Mountain Inn - is an experiment to test their compatibility for future expeditions.
Hope and Maggie have barely finished their first aperitifs when the inn's tranquility is shattered by the arrival of Alexander and Lisa Antippas and Lisa's actress sister, Glory. Imperious and rude, these Hollywood one-percenters quickly turn the inn upside-down with their demanding behavior, igniting a flurry of speculation and gossip among staff and guests alike.
But the disruption soon turns deadly. After a suspicious late-night fire is brought under control, Alex's charred body is found in the ashes. Enter the town's deputy sheriff, Buster Babbin, Hope's long-estranged son and Maggie's former student. A man who's finally found his footing in life, Buster needs a win. But he's quickly pushed aside by the "big boys," senior law enforcement and high-powered state's attorneys who swoop in to make a quick arrest.
Maggie knows that Buster has his deficits and his strengths. She also knows that justice does not always prevail - and that the difference between conviction and exoneration too often depends on lazy police work and the ambitions of prosecutors. She knows too, after a lifetime of observing human nature, that you have a great advantage in doing the right thing if you don't care who gets the credit or whom you annoy.Feeling that justice could use a helping hand--as could the deputy sheriff - Maggie and Hope decide that two women of experience equipped with healthy curiosity, plenty of common sense, and a cheerfully cynical sense of humor have a useful role to play in uncovering the truth.
When Meddelin Chan ends up accidentally killing her blind date, her meddlesome mother calls for her even more meddlesome aunties to help get rid of the body. Unfortunately, a dead body proves to be a lot more challenging to dispose of than one might anticipate, especially when it is inadvertently shipped in a cake cooler to the over-the-top billionaire wedding Meddy, her Ma, and aunties are working at an island resort on the California coastline. It's the biggest job yet for the family wedding business - "Don't leave your big day to chance, leave it to the Chans!" - and nothing, not even an unsavory corpse, will get in the way of her auntie's perfect buttercream flowers. But things go from inconvenient to downright torturous when Meddy's great college love - and biggest heartbreak - makes a surprise appearance amid the wedding chaos.
The first installment in Jasper Fforde's New York Times bestselling series of Thursday Next novels introduces literary detective Thursday Next and her alternate reality of literature-obsessed England - from the author of Early Riser
Fans of Douglas Adams and P. G. Wodehouse will love visiting Jasper Fforde's Great Britain, circa 1985, when time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice) , and literature is taken very, very seriously: it's a bibliophile's dream. England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in a Wordsworth poem and forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. All this is business as usual for Thursday Next, renowned Special Operative in literary detection. But when someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature and plucks Jane Eyre from the pages of Bronte's novel, Thursday is faced with the challenge of her career. Fforde's ingenious fantasy - enhanced by a Web site that re-creates the world of the novel - unites intrigue with English literature in a delightfully witty mix.
Finlay Donovan is killing it?. . . except, she?s really not. A stressed-out single-mom of two and struggling novelist,?Finlay?s life?is?in chaos: the new book she promised her literary agent isn?t written, her ex-husband fired the nanny without telling her, and this morning she had to send her four-year-old to school with hair duct-taped to her head after an incident with scissors. When?Finlay is?overheard discussing the plot of her new suspense novel with her agent over lunch, she?s mistaken for a contract killer, and inadvertently accepts an offer to dispose of a problem husband in order to make ends meet.?Finlay?soon discovers that crime in real life?is?a lot more difficult than its fictional counterpart, as she becomes tangled in a real-life murder investigation.
"The House on Vesper Sands is a delicious book. Somehow it manages to do a hundred marvelous things at once: Funny, eerie, tender, haunting and unsettling, smokily atmospheric and fantastically enjoyable, it's a nineteenth-century supernatural procedural mystery that is also an impassioned meditation on love and duty, loss, suffering, power and injustice. I absolutely loved it." -- Helen Macdonald
With all the wit of a Jane Austen novel, and a case as beguiling as any in Sherlock Holmes' casebook, Paraic O'Donnell introduces a detective duo for the ages, and slowly unlocks the secrets of a startling Victorian mystery.
London, 1893: high up in a house on a dark, snowy night, a lone seamstress stands by a window. So begins the swirling, serpentine world of Paraic O'Donnell's Victorian-inspired mystery, the story of a city cloaked in shadow, but burning with questions: why does the seamstress choose to jump out of that window? Why is there a cryptic message sewn into her skin? And how is she connected to a rash of missing girls, all of whom seem to have disappeared under similar circumstances?
On the case is Gideon Bliss, a young Cambridge dropout who is in love with one of the missing girls, and his partner Inspector Cutter, a detective as sharp and committed to his work as he is wryly hilarious.
Welcome to Guards! Guards!, the eighth book in Terry Pratchetts legendary Discworld series.Long believed extinct, a superb specimen of draco nobilis noble dragon for those who dont understand italics has appeared in Discworlds greatest city. Not only does this unwelcome visitor have a nasty habit of charbroiling everything in its path, in rather short order it is crowned King it is a noble dragon, after all.... How did it get there? How is the Unique and Supreme Lodge of the Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night involved? Can the Ankh-Morpork City Watch restore order and the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork to power?Magic, mayhem, and a marauding dragon...who could ask for anything more?,
Jameela Green?only has one wish. To see her memoir on the New York Times bestseller list. When her dream doesn't come true, she seeks spiritual guidance at her local mosque. New imam and recent immigrant Ibrahim Sultan is appalled by?Jameela's?shallowness, but agrees to assist her on one condition: that she perform a good deed.?Jameela?reluctantly accepts his terms, kicking off a chain of absurd and unfortunate events. When the person the two do-gooders try to help is recruited by a terrorist group called D.I.C.K.--Dominion of the Islamic Caliphate and Kingdoms--the federal authorities become suspicious of Ibrahim, and soon after, the imam mysteriously disappears. Certain that the CIA have captured Ibrahim for interrogation via torture,?Jameela?decides to set off on a one-woman operation to rescue him
A shy but successful film editor, travels to a small island off the coast of Delaware to work with the legendary--and legendarily demanding--director Tony Rees on a feature film with a familiar logline. Some girl dies. It's not much to go on, but the specifics don't concern Marissa. Whatever the script is, her job is the same. She'll spend her days in the editing room, doing what she does best: turning pictures into stories. But she soon discovers that on this set, nothing is as it's supposed to be--or as it seems.
There are rumors of accidents and indiscretions, of burgeoning scandals and perilous schemes. Half the crew has been fired. The other half wants to quit. Even the actors have figured out something is wrong. And no one seems to know what happened to the editor she was hired to replace. Then she meets the intrepid and incorrigible teenage girls who are determined to solve the real-life murder that is the movie's central subject, and before long, Marissa is drawn into the investigation herself. The only problem is, the killer may still be on the loose. And he might not be finished.
A wickedly funny exploration of our cultural addiction to tales of murder and mayhem and a thrilling, behind-the-scenes whodunit, Pretty as a Picture is a captivating page-turner from one of the most distinctive voices in crime fiction.
Lexy Campbell fell in love and left her native Scotland for a golden life in California -- hitched to a hunk, building her marriage counseling practice, living the dream. Six months later she's divorced, broke, and headed home. There's just one last thing. Lexy's only client -- sweet little old Mrs. Bombarro -- is in jail for murdering her husband with a fireworks rocket. Lexy knows the cops have got it wrong; all she needs is a few days to prove it and somewhere cheap to sleep at night. But checking into the Last Ditch Motel leads Lexy to a whole new cast of characters with troubles of their own.
Carl Hiaasen's Squeeze Me is set among the landed gentry of Palm Beach. A prominent high-society matron--who happens to be a fierce supporter of the President and founding member of the POTUSSIES--has gone missing at a swank gala. When the wealthy dowager Kiki Pew Fitzsimmons is later found dead in a concrete grave, panic and chaos erupt. The President immediately declares that Kiki Pew was the victim of rampaging immigrant hordes. This, as it turns out, is far from the truth.
Meanwhile, a bizarre discovery in the middle of the road brings the First Lady's motorcade to a grinding halt (followed by some grinding between the First Lady and a lovestruck Secret Service agent) . Enter Angie Armstrong, wildlife wrangler extraordinaire, who arrives at her own conclusions after she is summoned to the posh island to deal with a mysterious and impolite influx of huge, hungry pythons .
Winner of the CRIME WRITERS' ASSOCIATION DEBUT DAGGER AWARD and the AGATHA AND DILYS AWARD - "A wickedly clever story, a dead-true and original voice" - Laurie R. King
It is the summer of 1950-and at the once-grand mansion of Buckshaw, young Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, is intrigued by a series of inexplicable events: A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Then, hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath. For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. "I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn't. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life."
On the day he retires, Inspector Ashwin Chopra inherits two unexpected mysteries.. The first is the case of a drowned boy, whose suspicious death no one seems to want solved. And the second is a baby elephant.. As his search for clues takes him across the teeming city of Mumbai, from its grand high rises to its sprawling slums and deep into its murky underworld, Chopra begins to suspect that there may be a great deal more to both his last case and his new ward than he thought.. And he soon learns that when the going gets tough, a determined elephant may be exactly what an honest man needs. . ..?
From the award-winning author of The Passenger comes the first novel in the hilarious Spellman Files mystery series featuring Isabel "Izzy" Spellman (part Nancy Drew, part Dirty Harry) and her highly functioning yet supremely dysfunctional family of private investigators.
Meet Isabel "Izzy" Spellman, private investigator. This twenty-eight-year-old may have a checkered past littered with romantic mistakes, excessive drinking, and creative vandalism; she may be addicted to Get Smart reruns and prefer entering homes through windows rather than doors - but the upshot is she's good at her job as a licensed private investigator with her family's firm, Spellman Investigations.
Invading people's privacy comes naturally to Izzy. In fact, it comes naturally to all the Spellmans. If only they could leave their work at the office. To be a Spellman is to snoop on a Spellman; tail a Spellman; dig up dirt on, blackmail, and wiretap a Spellman. Izzy walks an indistinguishable line between Spellman family member and Spellman employee. Duties include: completing assignments from the bosses, aka Mom and Dad (preferably without scrutiny) ; appeasing her chronically perfect lawyer brother (often under duress) ; setting an example for her fourteen-year-old sister, Rae (who's become addicted to "recreational surveillance") ; and tracking down her uncle (who randomly disappears on benders dubbed "Lost Weekends") . But when Izzy's parents hire Rae to follow her (for the purpose of ascertaining the identity of Izzy's new boyfriend) , Izzy snaps and decides that the only way she will ever be normal is if she gets out of the family business. But there's a hitch: she must take one last job before they'll let her go - a fifteen-year-old, ice-cold missing person case. She accepts, only to experience a disappearance far closer to home, which becomes the most important case of her life.
From the bestselling author of My Lovely Wife comes a reckless, delicious thriller about a young couple that gives a whole new meaning to the dangers of modern dating.. Wes and Ivy are madly in love. They've never felt anything like it. It's the kind of romance people write stories about.. But what kind of story?. Because when it's good, it's great. Flowers. Grand gestures. Deep meaningful conversations where the whole world disappears.. When it's bad, it's really bad. Vengeful fights. Damaged property. Arrest warrants.. But their vicious cycle of catastrophic breakups and head-over-heels reconnections needs to end fast. Because suddenly, Wes and Ivy have a common enemy--and she's a detective.. There's something Wes and Ivy never talk about--in good times or bad.
A lonely shopkeeper takes it upon herself to solve a murder in the most peculiar way in this captivating mystery by Jesse Q. Sutanto, bestselling author of Dial A for Aunties.Vera Wong is a lonely little old lady - ah, lady of a certain age - who lives above her forgotten tea shop in the middle of San Francisco's Chinatown. Despite living alone, Vera is not needy, oh no. She likes nothing more than sipping on a good cup of Wulong and doing some healthy detective work on the Internet about what her Gen-Z son is up to. Then one morning, Vera trudges downstairs to find a curious thing - a dead man in the middle of her tea shop. In his outstretched hand, a flash drive. Vera doesn't know what comes over her, but after calling the cops like any good citizen would, she sort of .
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