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List: One Book, One Village: Humorous Offbeat Mysteries


A photo of Listen for the Lie

Listen for the Lie

What would you do if you thought you murdered your best friend? And if everyone else thinks so too? What if the truth doesn't matter? As Lucy Chase's Texas hometown begins to tell versions of what happened and who Lucy is to a nationwide, true crime obsessed audience, at the bequest of her grandmother, she returns to the place she vowed never to set foot in again to solve her friend's murder, even if she is the one that did it.

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A photo of Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers

Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers

Knives Out meets Kim's Convenience 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 college-aged 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 ... swipes the flash drive from the body and tucks it safely into the pocket of her apron. Why? Because Vera is sure she would do a better job than the police possibly could, because nobody sniffs out a wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands. Vera knows the killer will be back for the flash drive; all she has to do is watch the increasing number of customers at her shop and figure out which one among them is the killer. What Vera does not expect is to form friendships with her customers and start to care for each and every one of them. As a protective mother hen, will she end up having to give one of her newfound chicks to the police?

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A photo of Finlay Donovan is Killing It

Finlay Donovan is Killing It

Edgar-Award nominee Elle Cosimano's adult debut Finlay Donovan Is Killing It is the first in a witty, fast-paced mystery series, following struggling suspense novelist and single mom Finlay Donovan, whose fiction treads dangerously close to the truth as she becomes tangled in real-life murder investigations. Finlay Donovan is killing it... except, she's really not. She's 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... Soon, Finlay 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. Fast-paced, deliciously witty, and wholeheartedly authentic in depicting the frustrations and triumphs of motherhood in all its messiness, hilarity, and heartfelt moments, Finlay Donovan Is Killing It is the first in a brilliant new series from award-winning author Elle Cosimano.

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A photo of The Best Way to Bury Your Husband

The Best Way to Bury Your Husband

When Sally kills her husband with a cast-iron skillet, she's more fearful of losing her kids than of disposing of a fresh corpse. That just wouldn't be fair--not after twenty years of marriage to a truly terrible man. But Sally isn't the only woman in town reaching the brink. Soon, Sally finds herself leading an extremely unusual self-help group, and among them there are four bodies to hide. Can they all figure out the perfect way to bury their husbands . . . and get away with it?

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A photo of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Despite his overwhelming fear of interacting with people, Christopher, a mathematically-gifted, autistic fifteen-year-old boy, decides to investigate the murder of a neighbor's dog and uncovers secret information about his mother.

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A photo of The verifiers : a novel / Jane Pek.

The verifiers : a novel / Jane Pek.

Claudia Lin is looking at a cliched post-college future as a chronically underemployed English major--much to the consternation of her mother, who wants her to settle down and start dating a nice Chinese boy already; her brother, who pushes her to follow in his model-minority footsteps; and her sister, who can't get over Claudia's privileged place in their mother's affections. But Claudia is used to keeping secrets from her family. Such as the fact that she prefers girls--and that she's embarking on an unsuitable but supremely fun career. Veracity, a two-and-a-half-person detective agency that operates out of a Manhattan townhouse and verifies people's online dating personas, has recruited Claudia via an online murder mystery game. A lifelong reader of mystery novels, Claudia takes to her new job sniffing out cheaters and catfishers like a latter-day lovechild of Elizabeth Bennet and Sherlock Holmes. But when one of her very first clients turns up dead, Claudia breaks with Veracity's protocols to investigate what happened, unconvinced by the story everyone else believes. The deeper she digs, the more she discovers that nothing--her client, the death, the dating platforms that claim to know us better than we know ourselves, Veracity, even her own family--may be as it seems. Part literary mystery, part family story, The Verifiers is a witty and incisive examination of how technology shapes our choices, and what role romantic love plays in the digital age.

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A photo of The Expectant Detectives

The Expectant Detectives

The Expectant Detectives is first in a delightful new mystery series following a group of pregnant women who meet at a prenatal class and team up to solve the murder of someone in their village.

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A photo of The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

It is the summer of 1950 - and a series of inexplicable events has struck Buckshaw, the decaying English mansion that Flavia's family calls home. A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. 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.' To Flavia the investigation is the stuff of science: full of possibilities, contradictions, and connections. Soon her father, a man raising his three daughters alone, is seized, accused of murder. And in a police cell, during a violent thunderstorm, Colonel de Luce tells his daughter an astounding story - of a schoolboy friendship turned ugly, of a priceless object that vanished in a bizarre and brazen act of thievery, of a Latin teacher who flung himself to his death from the school's tower thirty years before. Now Flavia is armed with more than enough knowledge to tie two distant deaths together, to examine new suspects, and begin a search that will lead her all the way to the King of England himself. Of this much the girl is sure: her father is innocent of murder - but protecting her and her sisters from something even worse.

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A photo of Size 12 is Not Fat

Size 12 is Not Fat

Heather Wells Rocks! Or, at least, she did. That was before she left the pop-idol life behind after she gained a dress size or two, and lost a boyfriend, a recording contract, and her life savings (when Mom took the money and ran off to Argentina). Now that the glamour and glory days of endless mall appearances are in the past, Heather's perfectly happy with her new size 12 shape (the average for the American woman!) and her new job as an assistant dorm director at one of New York's top colleges. That is, until the dead body of a female student from Heather's residence hall is discovered at the bottom of an elevator shaft. The cops and the college president are ready to chalk the death off as an accident, the result of reckless youthful mischief. But Heather knows teenage girls and girls do not elevator surf. Yet no one wants to listen, not the police, her colleagues, or the P.I. who owns the brownstone where she lives, even when more students start turning up dead in equally ordinary and subtly sinister ways. So Heather makes the decision to take on yet another new career: as spunky girl detective! But her new job comes with few benefits, no cheering crowds, and lots of liabilities, some of them potentially fatal. And nothing ticks off a killer more than a portly ex-pop star who's sticking her nose where it doesn't belong.

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A photo of One for the Money

One for the Money

Out of work and out of money, Stephanie Plum lands a job as bounty hunter and her first prey is, guess who? None other than Joe Morelli, the macho pig who deflowered her in high school and bragged on the lavatory wall of Mario's Sub Shop. Now a cop, he is wanted for murder. The intriguing thing is she still rather fancies him and even more intriguing is that he will save her life.

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A photo of The Big Over Easy

The Big Over Easy

Unconvinced that a former convict and millionaire philanthropist has been murdered by his suicide-victim ex-wife, detective inspector Jack Spratt and his assistant, Mary Mary, uncover a plot involving money laundering and asylum-seeking titans.

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A photo of A Murder of Magpies

A Murder of Magpies

It's just another day at the office for book editor Samantha Clair ... [including] lunch scheduled with gossipy author Kit Lowell, whose new book will deliciously dish the dirt on the fashion industry. But little does she know how much trouble Kit's book is about to cause-- before it even goes to print. When police inspector Field turns up at the venerable offices of Timmins & Ross, asking questions about an undelivered package that was addressed to Sam, she knows something is wrong. The messenger sent to deliver the package was murdered, and then Kit goes missing.

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A photo of Hollywood Homicide

Hollywood Homicide

Dayna Anderson doesn't set out to solve a murder. All the semi-famous, mega-broke actress wants is to help her parents keep their house. So after witnessing a deadly hit-and-run, she pursues the fifteen grand reward. But Dayna soon finds herself doing a full-on investigation, wanting more than just money she wants justice for the victim. She chases down leads at paparazzi hot spots, celeb homes, and movie premieres, loving every second of it until someone tries to kill her. And there are no second takes in real life.

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A photo of Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions

Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions

Recently widowed Auntie Poldi moves to Sicily in order to drink herself comfortably to death with a sea view. But fate intervenes when she finds the corpse of a young man on the beach, and becomes a potential murder suspect. Poldi falls for the gorgeous Commissario Montana and they soon form an investigative -- and romantic -- partnership.

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A photo of The Framed Women of Ardemore House

The Framed Women of Ardemore House

A neurodivergent, hyperlexic book editor, Jo Jones, taking possession of a possibly haunted family estate in North Yorkshire, finds herself at the center of a murder investigation when the groundskeeper is found dead and a family portrait goes missing, and to clear her name, she must unearth the town's secrets--and her own.

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A photo of A Shot in the Dark

A Shot in the Dark

1957. Famed theater critic A. S. Crystal has come to the British seaside resort of Brighton with something other than the local production of A Shilling in the Meter on his mind. He intends to tell Constable Twitten the secret he knows about the still-unsolved Aldersgate Stick-Up case of 1945. Just before Crystal names the criminal mastermind involved, he's shot dead in his seat. As Constable Twitten and his colleague Sargent Jim Brunswick set out to solve the decade-old mystery, they venture deep into the criminal underworld that lies beneath Brighton's holiday-happy veneer. When they discover a criminal conspiracy that dates back decades, will Brunswick and Twitten be able to foil the mastermind?

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A photo of An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good

An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good

Maud is an irascible 88-year-old Swedish woman with no family, no friends, and... no qualms about a little murder. This funny, irreverent story collection by Helene Tursten, author of the Irene Huss investigations, features two-never-before translated stories that will keep you laughing all the way to the retirement home. Ever since her darling father's untimely death when she was only eighteen, Maud has lived in the family's spacious apartment in downtown Gothenburg rent-free, thanks to a minor clause in a hastily negotiated contract. That was how Maud learned that good things can come from tragedy. Now in her late eighties, Maud contents herself with traveling the world and surfing the net from the comfort of her father's ancient armchair. It's a solitary existence, and she likes it that way. Over the course of her adventures--or misadventures--this little bold lady will handle a crisis with a local celebrity who has her eyes on Maud's apartment, foil the engagement of her long-ago lover, and dispose of some pesky neighbors. But when the local authorities are called to investigate a dead body found in Maud's apartment, will Maud finally become a suspect?

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