New York Times-bestselling author Lisa Lutz conspires with-or should we say against?-coauthor David Hayward to write an original and hilarious tag-team crime novel. Meet Paul and Lacey Hansen: orphaned, pot-growing twentysomething siblings eking out a living in rural Northern California. When a headless corpse appears on their property, they can't exactly dial 911, so they move the body and wait for the police to find it. Instead, the corpse reappears, a few days riper . . . and an amateur sleuth is born. Make that two. When collaborators Lutz and Hayward (former romantic partners) start to disagree about how the story should unfold, the body count rises, victims and suspects alike develop surprising characteristics (meet Brandy Chester, the stripper with the Mensa IQ), and sibling rivalry reaches homicidal intensity. Think Adaptation crossed with Weeds. Will the authors solve the mystery without killing each other first? Watch Videos

Heads You Lose

Literature & Fiction

Lutz, Lisa

Hayward, David

Humor & Satire

G.P.Putnam's Sons

Dave, I just finished the first chapter of a new novel-a real crime novel with a dead body and all-and I thought of you... Paul and Lacey Hansen are pot-growing, twentysomething siblings sharing a modest rambler of a home in rural Northern California. When they find a headless corpse on their property they can't exactly call 911, so they simply move the body to another location. Let somebody else find it. Instead, the corpse reappears on their land. Clearly, someone is sending them a message, and it's getting riper by the day. But that's only half of the story...
Enter authors Lisa Lutz and David Hayward-former real-life partners (professionally and personally) who have agreed to reunite for a tag- team mystery novel written in alternating chapters. One little problem: they disagree on pretty much every detail of how their novel should unfold. While the body count rises in Paul and Lacey's wildly unpredictable fictional world, so too does the intensity of Lisa and David's rivalry. The result is a literary brawl like no other, and a murder mystery every bit as unanticipated (and bloody).

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

Penguin Publishing Group

“How to Start a Fire will keep you captivated from beginning to end.”—Town &amp; Country “Excellent . . . Over the course of the novel we come to know intimately these three complicated women.”—Chicago Tribune “Whip smart and cunning, deeply funny and profoundly moving . . . A knockout.”—Megan Abbott, author of The Fever When college roommates Anna and Kate find Georgiana Leoni passed out on a lawn, they wheel her to their dorm in a shopping cart. Twenty years later, they gather around a campfire at a New England mansion. What came between—the wild adventures, unspoken jealousies, and one night that changed everything—is the witty, poignant story of our strongest friendships, the people who know us better than we know ourselves. Anna is the de facto leader, as fearless as she is reckless. Quirky Kate is the loyal sidekick, until she’s pushed too far. And stunning George is always desired, but just as frequently dumped. Alive with Lutz’s crackling dialogue and propulsive storytelling, How to Start a Fire pulls us into the tangled bond shared by three intelligent, distinctive, and deeply real women and pays homage to the abiding, irrational love we have for the family we choose. “Lutz joins the ranks of authors who write deeply and sensitively about the shadowy yet life-affirming terrain of female friendship.”—Globe &amp; Mail “Lutz hits a home run in this glorious exploration of friendship . . . [she] portrays three fully drawn, flawed, and compelling women with fresh insight into the mysterious terrain of female friendships—a mix of shared experiences, affection, empathy, jealousy, anger, and love.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

How to Start a Fire

Parenting & Relationships

Houghton, mifflin, harcourt

How To Start A Fire

Mariner Books

Curse Of The Spellmans

Contemporary

Simon&Schuster

Izzy Spellman, a twenty-eight-year-old amalgamation of Nancy Drew and Bridget Jones, launches her career as a private investigator while working for the firm of her outlandishly dysfunctional family. A first novel. 150,000 first printing.

The Spellman Files: A Novel

Simon & Schuster Audio

A follow-up to The Spellman Files finds Izzy struggling to retain her private investigator's license after a pseudo engagement and her fourth arrest, a challenge that is further complicated by David's marriage to Petra and Rae's teenage angst. Simultaneous.

Curse of the Spellmans: A Novel

United States

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.

The Spellman Files

Thorndike Pr

Izzy struggles to retain her private investigator's license after a pseudo engagement and her fourth arrest, a challenge that is further complicated by David's marriage to Petra and Rae's teenage angst.

Curse of the Spellmans (Thorndike Press Large Print Core Series)

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lutz, Lisa. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Lutz, Lisa

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lutz, Lisa. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Heads You Lose

Heads You Lose

How to Start a Fire

How To Start A Fire

Curse Of The Spellmans

The Spellman Files: A Novel

Curse of the Spellmans: A Novel

The Spellman Files: A Novel

The Spellman Files

Curse of the Spellmans (Thorndike Press Large Print Core Series)