When a foul-tempered professor is found dead, the investigation is more than academic. When Professor Charles Carstairs was refused tenure at the university, he was delighted to accept the gift of an auto-repair shop from his Uncle Cosmo. The unpaid bills, complaining customers, and inept mechanics that were part of the package were only moderately annoying. However, when a body was discovered in the trunk of a car parked on his new premises and when—worst of all possible worsts—the dead man turned out to be Dr. Bateman, the department head who had put the whammy on Charles’s academic career, minor concerns like bankruptcy faded into nothingness. If the police had their way, Charles would soon receive tenure in prison—for murder.

Ted is having a rough time. Just before Galaxy Foods grand reopening, Ginger Jessup, the store's glamorous TV promoter, and the old owner's young girlfriend, is found dead in the cereal section. Ted prays the killer is one of the old man's truly obnoxious relatives, but they've all got allibis. As for Ted's own staff, its seems there's murder on the shelf.

The author of the Jane da Silva mysteries follows Alice Jordan, an abandoned wife, who lands a job as a sales representative for a classical music radio station that doubles as an escort service run by her recently murdered predecessor.

Affable young parking valet Tyler Benson, a master of bad timing, is accidentally involved in cases of auto theft and murder on the lot at Alba, an upscale Seattle restaurant. There’s a body in a parked car, and someone shooting at tech zillionaire Scott Duckworth. Mysterious Italian beauty Flavia Torcelli and even Tyler’s spectacularly unsuccessful dad seem somehow connected to the crime wave. The more Tyler tries to sort things out, the more the police are convinced he’s the guilty party. …Oh, and a collection of inept but homicidal Russian mafiosi seems to be after him, too.(from Amazon)