Mysterious Reads – Bargain Mystery eBooks

A single Coronal Mass Ejection… …was all it took to bring down the grid. The world will never be the same.

Russell Cage would much rather work on his crumbling marriage and life than leave town with his best friend. But the fun weekend planned turns tragic when their plane loses power in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Battered and beaten, Russell emerges from the wreckage alone with no choice but to hike through the mountains and find help.

Teaming up with a prepper, and her faithful dog, Max, Russell battles his way back to his family. But on a road littered with roaming gangs and unscrupulous mobsters, reaching his loved ones in time maybe more than he can bear…

Bollywood P.I. California Dreaming
by Priya Khajuria
Rating: 5.0 #ad

“…An immensely satisfying mystery…” When an idealistic daydreamer and a little group of misfits stumble upon a bizarre crime operation, they find themselves on the run for their lives.

Hoping to hone her P.I. skills and find out more about her cousin’s disappearance, Jita rushes into a missing person’s case. Armed with a wonky firearm and a dodgy P.I. certification, Jita has to nix her growing attraction to sexy cop Keith Dering so she can stay on target.

But what she uncovers is unimaginable – with far-reaching consequences. Time is running out and there’s no turning back. Only the unexpected can save them.

Guardians of Illusion
by Edita A. Petrick
Rating: 3.8 #ad

They have been hiding in plain sight for thousands of years. You just have to see through them…through their avatars.

Some are predatory, others visionary. And then there are those like Niven, who comes from a long line of guardians. But, no matter what the species, no matter how well they managed to survive on Earth, their ranks are dwindling. Many believe their collective racial diversity is on the brink of extinction. And then there are few of those who believe the answer to all their problems lies in the stars—and that’s where they should return, to their respective home worlds.

Check out:
(Prisoners of Illusion: Book 2)

Heaven Came Down
by Bryan Davis
Rating: 3.8 #ad

Heavenly messengers, or deadly parasites? In the chaotic aftermath of apocalyptic war, the strange lights in the sky heralding the coming of unearthly beings seemed like an answer to prayer. When the heavenly visitors entered selected people and transformed them into angels who demanded obedience in exchange for the restoration of order, the majority accepted their new rulers.

But Ben Garrison and his siblings, Jack and Trudy, have seen a dark side to these so-called angels. They join a rebel faction with one goal: destroy the invaders and free the world from their tyranny…

Check out:
(Invading Hell)

The Night Before
by Lisa Jackson
Rating: 4.4 #ad

A southern woman is tormented by murders she herself might be committing in this psychological thriller by the #1 New York Times bestselling author.

In the dark shadows of a sultry southern town, a serial killer strikes. It’s an act of sinister precision that has happened many times before—because every victim is an offering to a hunger that can never be sated. When Caitlyn Montgomery Bandeaux wakes up covered in blood, she has no memory of the night before. Only later does she learn that her estranged husband was brutally murdered…like so many others she has known.

Check out:
(Pierce Reed/Nikki Gillette Mysteries)

Face the Winter Naked: A Great Depression Novel
by Bonnie Turner
Rating: 4.2 #ad

For fans of Steinbeck’s THE GRAPES OF WRATH

Daniel Tomelin, a battle-worn veteran with PTSD—haunted by the carnage of World War 1—deserts his wife and children in the Great Depression and becomes a hobo seeking work and relief from his nightmares.

This page-turning tale of courage is set in a tragic era in which hope was sometimes all they had and parallels today’s economic turmoil and unemployment.

It’s a wife and mother providing for her children under miserable, heartbreaking circumstances, while her husband tramps around the country playing a banjo, searching for answers to the puzzle of Daniel Tomelin, keeping his hillbilly sense of humor, his humanity, his love of God and nature intact, while deep inside feeling ashamed and unworthy of the family he loves with all his heart.

The Coldness of Objects
by Panayotis Cacoyannis
Rating: 4.7 #ad

“a thoroughly gripping novel, using the rhetoric of a real-life pandemic to fashion a chilling vision of an abnormal ‘new-normal’ to come.” Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

London 2030. When a postman knocks on his door, the news he delivers will cause 70-year-old Anthony Pablo Rubens to reflect on all the sadnesses and joys of the past, while he begins to prepare for the surprises of the future.

The past still revolves around the moment in the summer of 1984 when young Anthony first realized he had fallen in love.

The present is a Kafkaesque nightmare worse than Orwell’s 1984, “a hideous world where people don’t need to be watched by Big Brother.” It’s a world that Anthony has mostly shut his eyes to, but which suddenly he is forced to confront.

Friday’s Mystery eBooks

May 14, 2021

Condos and Corpses
by Angela K. Ryan
Rating: 4.5 #ad

A life of service is her passion, but this stunning place could be perfect. That is, aside from the dead body…

Connie Petretta wonders if it’s time for a change. After eleven years at a Boston nonprofit, the dedicated humanitarian worker struggles to find her way as she deals with the bequest of her beloved aunt’s Florida beachside condo. But selling it goes sideways when somebody plummets from an adjacent balcony seven stories to his death.

Sleuthing on the side to absolve her friend next door of the crime, Connie finds herself enchanted by the charming gulf-front town… Can Connie clear her neighbor’s name and bring a killer to justice?

Check out:
(Sapphire Beach Cozy Mystery Series)

I Let You Go
by Clare Mackintosh
Rating: 4.3 #ad

I Let You Go follows Jenna Gray as she moves to a ramshackle cottage on the remote Welsh coast, trying to escape the memory of the car accident that plays again and again in her mind and desperate to heal from the loss of her child and the rest of her painful past.

At the same time, the novel tracks the pair of Bristol police investigators trying to get to the bottom of this hit-and-run. As they chase down one hopeless lead after another, they find themselves as drawn to each other as they are to the frustrating, twist-filled case before them.

Promise of Blood
by Brian McClellan
Rating: 4.5 #ad

Civil unrest cripples the citizens of Adro in the aftermath of the revolution that obliterated the monarchy. Now, Field Marshal Tamas and his lieutenants must confront the true cost of freedom in book one of the Powder Mage Trilogy. It’s a bloody business overthrowing a king. . .

Field Marshal Tamas’ coup against his king sent corrupt aristocrats to the guillotine and brought bread to the starving. But it also provoked war with the Nine Nations, internal attacks by royalist fanatics, and the greedy to scramble for money and power by Tamas’s supposed allies: the Church, workers unions, and mercenary forces. It’s up to a few. . .

Check out:
(Powder Mage Mysteries)

Mutation
by Michael McBride
Rating: 4.3 #ad

IT LIVES. In a research hangar in Virginia, a Unit 51 team studies an ancient but long-dormant virus that can transform human physiology—and turn it into something else. . .

IT MUTATES. In the Amazon rainforest, a newly evolving life form known as Subject Z acquires the ability to think conceptually, build elaborate traps, create new carriers—and spawn a new race . . .

IT SPREADS.

Check out:
(A Unit 51 Mysteries)

The Munich Girl
by Phyllis Edgerly Ring
Rating: 4.3 #ad

The secret surfaces with a mysterious monogrammed handkerchief, and a man, Hannes Ritter, whose Third Reich family history is entwined with Anna’s.

Plunged into the world of the “ordinary” Munich girl who was her mother’s confidante—and a tyrant’s lover – Anna finds her every belief about right and wrong challenged. With Hannes’s help, she retraces the path of two women who met as teenagers, shared a friendship that spanned the years that Eva Braun was Hitler’s mistress, yet never knew that the men they loved had opposing ambitions.

Mystery Writers of America Presents Vengeance
by Mystery Writers of America Inc., Lee Child
Rating: 4.3 #ad

When a different kind of justice is needed — swift, effective, and personal — a new type of avenger must take action. Vengeance features new stories by bestselling crime writers including Lee Child, Michael Connelly, Dennis Lehane, and Karin Slaughter, as well as some of today’s brightest rising talents.

The heroes in these stories include a cop who’s seen too much, a woman who has been pushed too far, or just an ordinary person doing what the law will not. Some call them vigilantes, others claim they are just another brand of criminal.

Bridge of Lies
by Edita A. Petrick
Rating: 4.1 #ad

Accidental death turns into murder for a reporter in a small Idaho town where finding the truth could result in her own downfall…or death.

Bree-Anne Carver thought it would be a dream job working for the New York Times. But she finds herself installed at a satellite office in rural Idaho assigned to write a blog on fictional and entertaining interactive murders, playfully writing Murders-of-the-Week. She has two years to get one million subscribers. With not much else to draw on, she starts to look into local crimes by the direction of one of her cyber-stalker fans, Wrong Question

Check out:
(Wrong Question)

Darknet
by Matthew Mather
Rating: 4.4 #ad

In a world where corporations have the same rights as human beings… Profit is everything and psychopathic executives call the shots… Anything is possible.

Jake O’Connell leaves a life of crime and swears he’ll never return, but his new life as a stock broker in New York is ripped away when his childhood friend Sean Womack is murdered. Thousands of miles away in Hong Kong, scientist Jin Huang finds a list of wealthy dead people in a massive banking conspiracy. Problem is, some of the people don’t stay dead.
Check out:

Thursday’s Mystery eBooks

May 13, 2021

Myrtle Grove Garden Box Set
by Loulou Harrington
Rating: 4.7 #ad

Welcome to Myrtle Grove, a small town nestled in the lake country of Oklahoma, where life revolves around friendship, family and Sunday dinner, and no one seems to have noticed the recent rise in the local murder rate. The founding members of the Myrtle Grove Garden Club are Jesse Camden and her mother, Sophia, who are co-owners of the Gilded Lily Tea Room and Coffee House, along with Vivian Windsor, who is Myrtle Grove’s resident oil heiress and a lifelong friend of the Camden ladies.

Bonus: Recipes included in each book.

Check out:
(Myrtle Grove Garden Club Mysteries)

Surviving the Fatherland
by Annette Oppenlander
Rating: 4.7 #ad

Winner/Nominee of eight awards. “This book needs to join the ranks of the classic survivor stories of WWII such as ‘Diary of Anne Frank’ and ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’. It is truly that amazing!” InD’tale Magazine

Based on a true story and set against the epic panorama of WWII, SURVIVING THE FATHERLAND is a sweeping saga of family, love, and betrayal that illuminates an intimate part of history seldom seen: the children’s war – a tale of two youths whose courage and resilience stands for the forgotten childhood of an entire generation.

Solingen, Germany, 1940: When her father goes off to war, seven-year-old Lilly is left with an unkind mother who favors her brother and chooses to ignore the lecherous pedophile next door. A few blocks away, twelve-year-old Günter also loses his father to the draft and quickly takes charge of supplementing his family’s ever-dwindling rations by any means necessary.

A Surgeon’s Knot
by William Lynes
Rating: 4.7 #ad

2020 PenCraft Award Winner – Medical Thriller

“Heart-pounding tales of a surgical intern that are both terrifying and profound. This medical thriller will stay with you long past the final chapter.” –Best Thrillers

Jackson Cooper, MD will never forget that first day, its stunning conclusion forever etched in his mind. His year as a surgical intern is a story of medical suspense, tragedy, and occasional terror, as a young physician deals with the world of surgery.

Floating Staircase
by Ronald Malfi
Rating: 4.7 #ad

Horror writer Travis Glasgow and his wife, Jodie, have bought their first house in Westlake, Maryland, just steps from Travis’s older brother’s home. Travis is buoyed by the thought of renewing his relationship with his estranged sibling and overcoming the darkness from his past. But the house has other plans for him. Travis is soon awakened by noises in the night and finds watery footprints in the basement that lead him to the nearby lake, which has a strange staircase emerging from its depths.

When Travis discovers that a former occupant of his house—a ten-year-old boy—drowned in the lake, he draws connections to his own childhood tragedy. As his brother and wife warn him to leave well enough alone, Travis is pulled into a dark obsession, following the house’s secrets to the floating staircase—and into the depths of madness . . .

The Body Keeper
by Anne Frasier
Rating: 4.7 #ad

A boy’s frozen body is found trapped in the ice of a Minneapolis lake. The horrifying discovery leads Detective Jude Fontaine and her partner, Uriah Ashby, to more bodies in the ice, all of twelve-year-old boys missing for twenty years.

Then, in one of the worst blizzards the city has ever seen, a four-year-old is abandoned on Jude’s doorstep. The child can’t tell them where he’s from, who his parents are, or how he got there. He doesn’t even know his name.

Check out:
(Detective Jude Fontaine Mysteries)

Wrong Question
by Edita A. Petrick
Rating: 3.8 #ad

A newly minted intern at the prestigious New York Times has great expectations…but murder wasn’t one of them.

Bree-Ann Carver is sent to work in New York Times’ makeshift satellite office, in Idaho. Her job as an intern is to write a blog about fictional murders–and get a million subscribers. But her very first subscriber criticizes her efforts and then aggressively moves to take over her blog via his unsolicited input into her work. She invites him to unsubscribe and finds that she has no control over this particular cyber-entity. He follows her to her private chat-room, he hacks her colleagues’ email accounts and he terrorizes her through her desktop and her laptop.

Check out:
(Bridge of Lies)

The Long Call
by Ann Cleeves
Rating: 4.3 #ad

In North Devon, where two rivers converge and run into the sea, Detective Matthew Venn stands outside the church as his estranged father’s funeral takes place. On the day Matthew left the strict evangelical community he grew up in, he lost his family too.

Now, as he turns and walks away again, he receives a call from one of his team. A body has been found on the beach nearby: a man with a tattoo of an albatross on his neck, stabbed to death.

Rebellious Secrets
by Elizabeth Rose
Rating: 4.5 #ad

The Outlaw: After being framed and stripped of his title, Sir Jacob Quincey vows revenge on the High Sheriff of Durham who ruined his life and stole his lover. With no family, land or title to his name, Jacob takes to the forest to live as an outcast. But after a few years, he’s managed to assemble an army, teaching commoners to fight. Now is the time for justice to be served, but one lady stands in his way.

The Rebellious Bride: Lady Maira Douglas, daughter of Rowen (Legendary Bastards of the Crown) resents that her father has betrothed her to the High Sheriff of Durham. The last thing she wants is to marry a man who will make her act like a lady and force her to put down her blade.

Check out:
(Secrets of the Heart)

Wednesday’s Mystery eBooks

May 12, 2021

Temptation, Trouble & Murder
by Christa Nardi
Rating: 4.2 #ad

Caffeine à la corpse, anyone? The last thing Stacie Maroni expected to find in the break room was a dead guy. And even worse, a dead guy with her name, phone number, and office location in his pocket. If that’s not bad enough, a fellow member of the foundation she spearheads seems to be missing in action.

Although these events don’t seem to be linked, Stacie is in the thick of things and sleuthing for her life. At least the two mysteries distract her from the attention of, and her attraction to, the handsome detective.

Check out:
(A Stacie Maroni Mysteries)

Secrets Mothers Keep
by Anya Mora
Rating: 4.5 #ad

On Friday night in the clay fields of Bethel Creek, seventeen-year-old Daniel Reyes is found brutally attacked and left for dead.

On Saturday morning, Cora Maxwell finds her teenage son’s clothes covered in blood. A small town torn apart by a horrific hate crime. An investigative reporter hell bent on finding the truth.

A mother’s worst nightmare. What really happened to the Reyes boy?

Police at the Station and They Don’t Look Friendly
by Adrian McKinty
Rating: 4.7 #ad

Belfast, 1988. A man is found dead, killed with a bolt from a crossbow in front of his house. This is no hunting accident. But uncovering who is responsible for the murder will take Detective Sean Duffy down his most dangerous road yet, a road that leads to a lonely clearing on a high bog where three masked gunmen will force Duffy to dig his own grave.

Hunted by forces unknown, threatened by Internal Affairs, and with his relationship on the rocks, Duffy will need all his wits to get out of this investigation in one piece.

Check out:
(The Sean Duffy Mysteries)

Kimchi
by Bonnie Turner
Rating: 5.0 #ad

Adopted by an American couple – the son of a Korean woman and a Black G.I. – Paul arrives in the U.S. after the Korean conflict with foggy memories of the family he left behind. His past haunts him as scenes from his homeland invade his mind at odd times: his mother, his sibling, and himself barely old enough to walk with a group of refugees traveling through a forest toward a mountain village, where they hoped to find safety. Su Kimchi – Paul’s birth name – recalls hunger, danger, and fear were always present.

Eighteen years later, Paul (Kimchi) is a paramedic with a local fire department. He also has a fourth-degree Black Belt in Judo, a discipline that relaxes his body and mind, calming the stresses of infernos, the smell of burned flesh, death, and his company’s racist Fire Chief, Bart Salsman, who lost a buddy in the war and hates Koreans with a passion.

This Is How I Lied
by Heather Gudenkauf
Rating: 4.4 #ad

KINDLE NOOK KOBO APPLE

Everyone has a secret they’ll do anything to hide… Twenty-five years ago, the body of sixteen-year-old Eve Knox was found in the caves near her home in small-town Grotto, Iowa – discovered by her best friend, Maggie, and her sister, Nola. There were a handful of suspects, including her boyfriend, Nick, but without sufficient evidence the case ultimately went cold.

For decades Maggie was haunted by Eve’s death and that horrible night. Now a detective in Grotto, and seven months pregnant, she is thrust back into the past when a new piece of evidence surfaces and the case is reopened.

Will o’ the Wisp
by Patricia Wentworth
Rating: 3.9 #ad

Love and deception intertwine as a man searches for a woman believed to have drowned five years earlier

Seven years ago, childhood friends and distant cousins Eleanor and David Fordyce fell in love and became engaged. But their families, thinking them too young for marriage, conspired to keep them apart. David was sent to America to study architecture; Eleanor left for India, where she married Cosmo Rayne. Now a widow, Eleanor returns to England, more ravishing than ever. But rumors—of a husband’s infidelity and nightly beatings—have followed her home.

Temple of the Winds
by Terry Goodkind
Rating: 4.7 #ad