Wanna Get Lucky?


Deborah Coonts - 2010
    Almost everyone writes her off as another Vegas victim. But, Lucky O’Toole, head of customer relations at the Babylon megacasino, smells a rat, though she’s got a lot on her plate: the adult film industry’s annual awards banquet, a spouse-swapping convention, sex-toy purveyors preying on the pocket-protector crowd attending ElectroniCon… Still Lucky can’t resist turning over a few stones.When a former flame is one of the snakes she uncovers, Lucky is certain the woman’s death was no Sin City suicide. To top it all off, Lucky’s best friend, Teddie—Las Vegas’s finest female impersonator—presses to take their relationship to the next level. Leave it to Lucky to attract a man who looks better in a dress than she does.Lucky must manage the Babylon’s outrageous festivities, solve the crime, and struggle to keep her life and libido from spinning out of control.

Murder with Peacocks


Donna Andrews - 1999
    Down in her small Virginia hometown, she's maid of honor at the nuptials of three loved ones--each of whom has dumped the planning in her capable hands. One bride is set on including a Native American herbal purification ceremony, while another wants live peacocks on the lawn. Only help from the town's drop-dead gorgeous hunk, disappointingly rumored to be gay, keeps Meg afloat in a sea of dotty relatives and outrageous neighbors.And, in whirl of summer parties and picnics, Southern hospitality is strained to the limit by an offensive newcomer who hints at skeletons in the guests' closets. But it seems this lady has offended one too many when she's found dead in suspicious circumstances, followed by a string of accidents--some fatal. Soon, level-headed Meg's to-do list extends from flower arrangements and bridal registries to catching a killer--before the next catered event is her own funeral...

Bubbles Unbound


Sarah Strohmeyer - 2001
    Or that she’s a gum-snapping hairdresser with Barbie-doll curves pinched into hot pants and a tube top. Or that she’s saddled with a sleazy ex-hubby, a precocious daughter and a shoplifting mother. What can a beautician do to add new highlights to her image? For starters, trip over a corpse, and implicate a wealthy town socialite in the crime. Now, with a well-muscled photographer by her side, Bubbles is playing star sleuth. But as the investigation unravels, her shining moment grows as dark as a shopgirl’s roots. However dangerous her new career, at least the hottest graduate of Two Guys Community College is finally busting loose—and this time she’s really giving Lehigh, Pennsylvania something to talk about. Sarah Strohmeyer won the 2002 Agatha Award for best first mystery for Bubbles Unbound.

The Intern's Handbook


Shane Kuhn - 2014
    That’s the mantra behind HR, Inc., an elite "placement agency" that doubles as a network of assassins-for-hire, taking down high-profile executives who wouldn't be able to remember an intern’s name if their lives depended on it.At the ripe old age of twenty-five, John Lago is already New York City’s most successful hit man. He’s also an intern at a prestigious Manhattan law firm, clocking eighty hours a week getting coffee, answering phones, and doing all the grunt work no one else wants to do. But he isn't trying to claw his way to the top of the corporate food chain. He was hired to assassinate one of the firm’s heavily guarded partners. His internship is the perfect cover, enabling him to gather intel and gain access in order to pull off a clean, untraceable hit.The Intern’s Handbook is John Lago's unofficial survival guide for new recruits at HR, Inc. (Rule #4: "Learn how to make the perfect cup of coffee: you make an exec the best coffee he’s ever had, and he will make sure you’re at his desk every morning for a repeat performance. That’s repetitive exposure, which begets access and trust. 44% of my kills came from my superior coffee-making abilities.")Part confessional, part how-to, the handbook chronicles John’s final assignment, a twisted thrill ride in which he is pitted against the toughest—and sexiest—adversary he’s ever faced: Alice, an FBI agent assigned to take down the same law partner he’s been assigned to kill.

Take the Monkeys and Run


Karen Cantwell - 2010
    Typical, that is until she sets out to find the missing link between a bizarre monkey sighting in her yard and the bone chilling middle-of-the-night fright fest at the strangely vacant house next door. When Barb talks her two friends into some seemingly innocent Charlie’s Angels-like sleuthing, they stumble upon way more than they bargained for and uncover a piece of neighborhood history that certain people would kill to keep on the cutting room floor.Enter sexy PI Colt Baron, Barb’s ex-boyfriend who would love to be cast as new leading man, filling the role just vacated by her recently estranged husband, Howard. When Colt flies in from out of town to help Barb, events careen out of control and suddenly this mini-van driving mother of three becomes a major player in a treacherous and potentially deadly FBI undercover operation. It’s up to her now. With little time to spare, she and she alone, must summon the inner strength necessary to become a true action heroine and save the lives of those she loves. The question is can she get them out alive before the credits roll?

Flirting With Danger


Suzanne Enoch - 2005
    Raised to appreciate the finer things in life, Sam has no trouble divesting the wealthy of their treasures. This all changed, however, the night she attempts to steal a valuable item from a Palm Beach estate. Before she knew what hit her, a bomb goes off, a guard is killed, and Sam ends up saving millionaire Richard Addison. She's a good thief and will own up to her jobs, but if anyone thinks to tie her to murder, they better think again.On any other night, having a one hundred plus pounds of female fling herself at you is a good thing. But on this particular night, Richard Addison is mad as hell. Not only did he just have his gallery blown up-with him about to enter it-but the woman who rescued him didn't stick around to offer any explanations. When the dust settles, Rick knows the only person with answers to his questions is the mystery woman. And if she thinks she can hide from him, she better think again.

Hazardous Duty


Christy Barritt - 2006
    Claire dropped out of school and started her own crime scene cleaning business. Now, when a routine cleaning job leads her to a murder weapon the police overlooked, she realizes that the wrong man is in jail. With the help of her new and attractively single neighbor, Riley Thomas, Gabby plays the detective to make sure the right man is put behind bars.

Murder 101


Maggie Barbieri - 2006
    Her car has been stolen so she has to walk to the train station to get to her office at St. Thomas, a college in the Bronx, New York. When she arrived she finds two homicide detectives waiting for her. The good news is that they found her car; the bad news is that in the trunk was the body of one of the students in her Shakespeare seminar.Trying to get her name off of the handsome Detective Crawford’s suspect list turns out to be just one of her problems. Alison has to bail her ex out of jail; deal with the victim’s distraught parents, classmates of hers when she was a student at St. Thomas; and grade those Shakespeare exams, which seem to be getting a lot of attention for a boring old stack of reports. And in the meantime, who would want to kill college student Kathy Miceli?

Gone With a Handsomer Man


Michael Lee West - 2011
    . . Teeny Templeton believes that her life is finally on track. She’s getting married, she’s baking her own wedding cake, and she’s leaving her troubled past behind. And then? She finds her fiancé playing naked badminton with a couple of gorgeous, skanky chicks. Add a whole lot of trouble . . . Needless to say, the wedding is off. Adding insult to injury, her fiancé slaps a restraining order on her. When he’s found dead a few days later, all fingers point to Teeny. And stir like crazy! Her only hope is through an old boyfriend-turned-lawyer, the guy who broke her heart a decade ago. But dredging up the past brings more than skeletons out of the closet, and Teeny doesn’t know who she can trust. With evidence mounting and the heat turning up, Teeny must also figure out where to live, how to support herself, how to clear her name, and how to protect her heart.

Lethal


Sandra Brown - 2011
    But that "sick" man turns out to be Lee Coburn, the man accused of murdering seven people the night before. Dangerous, desperate, and armed, he promises Honor that she and her daughter won't be hurt as long as she does everything he asks. She has no choice but to accept him at his word.But Honor soon discovers that even those close to her can't be trusted. Coburn claims that her beloved late husband possessed something extremely valuable that places Honor and her daughter in grave danger. Coburn is there to retrieve it -- at any cost. From FBI offices in Washington, D.C., to a rundown shrimp boat in coastal Louisiana, Coburn and Honor run for their lives from the very people sworn to protect them, and unravel a web of corruption and depravity that threatens not only them, but the fabric of our society.

Homicide in Hardcover


Kate Carlisle - 2009
    Sure, her patients might smell like mold and have spines made of leather, but no ailing book is going to die on her watch. The same can’t be said of Abraham Karastovsky, Brooklyn’s friend and former employer. On the eve of a celebration for his latest book restoration, Brooklyn finds her mentor lying in a pool of his own blood. With his final breath Abraham leaves Brooklyn with a cryptic message, “Remember the Devil,” and gives her a priceless—and supposedly cursed—copy of Goethe’s Faust for safe-keeping. Brooklyn suddenly finds herself accused of murder and theft, thanks to Derek Stone, the humorless—and annoyingly attractive—British security officer who found her kneeling over the body. Now she has to read the clues left behind by her mentor if she is going to restore justice…

Calamity Jayne


Kathleen Bacus - 2006
    Crowned "Calamity Jayne" by Iowa Department of Natural Resources officer Rick Townsend, Tressa's out to gain a little hometown respect --or die trying. Unfortunately for Tressa, that may be the case. She's just been handed the perfect opportunity to get "Ranger Rick," the doubting Don Juan of the DNR, and a skeptical citizenry to finally take her seriously. How? By solving a murder no one else believes happened...No one, that is, except the killer.Yup, Calamity Jayne is in it up to her hot pink snakeskin cowgirl boots and matching rhinestone belt. Tressa would tell you her momma never raised no dummies, but the jury's still out on that one.

I, Spy?


Kate Johnson - 2007
     All she has on her side is sarcasm, blonde hair and a small cat called Tammy, but that’s not going to keep her from saving the day...once she’s figured out who to save it from. Sexy spies, plane crashes, firebombs and multicoloured cocktails: they’re all in a day’s work for Sophie. Roll over Bond, there’s a new bombshell in town! This is a new edition of the beloved book, containing brand new material.

Divorced, Desperate and Delicious


Christie Craig - 2007
    But all that changes when the reindeer-antlered Fabio drags in a very desperate, on-the-run detective who decides to take refuge in her house.

Cocoa and Chanel


Donna Joy Usher - 2013
    There, she becomes entangled in a case of the worst kind - a serial killer targeting young women.As she is drawn further into the seedy underground in her attempt to unravel the truth, Chanel makes new friends, new enemies and attracts the attention of the killer. Can she solve the case in time, or will she become the killer's next victim?This is a light-hearted cozy mystery with plenty of laughs suitable for fans of Janet Evanovich, Deborah Coonts, Jana Deleon and Stephanie Bond.