Saturday’s Mystery eBooks
There’s A Murder Afoot
by Vicki Delany
Rating: 4.7 #ad
The 6th of January is Sherlock Holmes’s birthday, and lucky for Gemma Doyle, January is also the slowest time of the year at both the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium, and Mrs. Hudson’s Tea Room. It’s a good time for Gemma and her friends to travel to England for a Holmes Convention. For Gemma, the trip provides an opportunity to visit her parents, Jayne Wilson is excited about seeing all the sites London has to offer, and Ryan Ashburton just wants to spend some time with Gemma. But the trip is immediately derailed when Gemma’s father Henry recognizes his brother-in-law Randolph Denhaugh, who disappeared more than thirty years ago on the night he stole a valuable painting from his own parents.
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(A Sherlock Holmes Bookshop Mysteries)
Ruthless
by Lisa Jackson
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Attorney Jake McGowan couldn’t feel much sympathy for the woman who’d married his wealthy, despicable, sworn enemy. But now that she was embroiled in a child custody battle, he would help her. And getting revenge against her ex is even sweeter when it leads to love.
Superstardom hasn’t helped world-class skier Gavin Doel get over his first love, or the way she inexplicably left him. When he returns to Taylor’s Crossing, and finds himself facing her, his bitterness is impossible to hide. But as he tries to uncover the buried truth of their past, he’s surprised to discover a second chance at the love he never forgot.
The Forever Stone
by Gloria Repp
Rating: 4.5 #ad
A new home, new love, new fears . . . and a mystery. How will she face the challenge? And what does God have in mind?
Madeleine, a young widow, is determined to break free from her paralyzing memories and controlling family. The paperweight, a gift from her father, spurs her to declare independence, and she joins her aunt’s house-restoration project in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. Two men enter her life, bringing joy, conflict, and danger. She’ll need courage to fight the treachery she discovers, and faith to step into a new life of promise. Can she do it?
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(The Dumont Chronicles Mysteries)
Hitler’s Monsters
by Eric Kurlander
Rating: 4.5 #ad
The Nazi fascination with the occult is legendary, yet today it is often dismissed as Himmler’s personal obsession or wildly overstated for its novelty. Preposterous though it was, however, supernatural thinking was inextricable from the Nazi project. The regime enlisted astrology and the paranormal, paganism, Indo-Aryan mythology, witchcraft, miracle weapons, and the lost kingdom of Atlantis in reimagining German politics and society and recasting German science and religion.
In this eye-opening history, Eric Kurlander reveals how the Third Reich’s relationship to the supernatural was far from straightforward…
From Daylight To Madness
by Jennifer Anne Gordon
Rating: 4.8 #ad
On an almost uninhabitable rocky island off the coast of Maine, a Hotel looms over the shore, an ever-present gray lady that stands strong like a guard, keeping watch. For many who come here, this island is a sanctuary and a betrayal.
This is a place where memories linger like ghosts, and the ephemeral nature of time begins to peel away …like the sanity of all who have been unlucky enough to step foot on its shore.
In the late spring of 1873, Isabelle gave birth to her son Oscar, he cried for three startling minutes, and then went silent. During the months that follow, Isabelle is drugged and lulled into an almost hallucinatory world of grief and fear. Her life begins to feel as though it exists in a terrifying new reality separated from those around her…
The Vanishing Box
by Elly Griffiths
Rating: 4.8 #ad
Brighton, England, 1953. Over the holiday season, Max Mephisto and his daughter Ruby are headlining a variety show at the Brighton Hippodrome. Landing a gig at the city’s biggest theater is a major achievement, and only slightly marred by the less-than-savory supporting act: a tableau show of naked “living statues.” But when one of the girls goes missing and turns up dead not long after, Max and Ruby realize there’s something far more sinister than obscenity afoot in the theater.
Max’s good friend DI Edgar Stephens is on the case. As he searches for the killer, he begins to suspect that the girl’s fatal vanishing act may be related to another case—the death of a local florist.
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(The Magic Men Mysteries)
DISPATCHES
by Steven Konkoly
Rating: 4.6 #ad
With the United States crippled, belligerent powers rise to fill the void overseas, catapulting already volatile regions into chaos and war–hastening a worldwide collapse.
On the home front, most citizens continue to struggle with the loss of power and critical infrastructure, exhausting their thin supplies and turning to the mercy of an overwhelmed government to survive the winter.
As spring arrives, Alex Fletcher faces a difficult choice. With their food supplies running low, Alex questions the feasibility of staying with the Thorntons and Walkers at their isolated lake community. While searching northern Maine for a solution to his dilemma–he stumbles on a secret with the potential to destabilize the entire region.
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(Alex Fletcher Mysteries)
Those Children Are Ours
by David Burnett
Rating: 4.4
A good mother would never desert her children. But it was exactly what Jennie had done. She had growled at her daughters, cursed her husband, and slammed the door as she stomped away. Twelve years later, she asks a judge for another chance to be a mother, a good one this time.
In court, she lists all of the reasons and all of her excuses: the demons of her bipolar disorder, the alcohol that flowed too freely at the bar where she had worked, the guys who came on to her. Now, sober, chaste, and on meds, she is a different person from the one who walked out. Nevertheless, her request for visitation meets a stone wall. Her former husband does not want to share his children with the woman who deserted them…
HOTEL OBSCURE: A Collection of Short Stories
by Lisette Brodey
Rating: 4.5
In a run-down neighborhood in an unnamed city, people live and die in “the Obscure.” Whether anyone remembers the real name of the derelict establishment is a mystery. In this six-story building, most who occupy the rooms are long-term residents, though some stay for as little as an hour.
The patronage is an eclectic group: musicians, writers, addicts, hookers, lonely people, poor people, rich people, once-well-off people, and those who have reason to hide from their former lives or to escape the demands of a disapproving and punishing society. Hotel Obscure is a collection of seventeen short stories that all take place in or around the “the Obscure.” While the stories stand alone, they are to be read in order. Some characters appear in multiple stories, and sometimes, a story will continue in an unexpected way.
Riven
by H. L. Wegley
Rating: 4.4 #ad
America Holds Its Collective Breath Awaiting A Twenty-First-Century Fort Sumpter.
As America fractures along geopolitical boundaries—left against right, blue against red—the nation has become a powder keg. The tiniest spark might light the fuse detonating Civil War 2. Zach Tanner, Constitutionalist and radio host, has a growing radio network until Oregon’s progressive governor, Sandra Harper, shuts him down. Zach encourages Oregonian Constitutionalists to flee with him to Eastern Oregon to defend families and friends from the coming war. He envisions a powerful radio station broadcasting hope to America.
Kate Alexander, a new Christian and a fan of Zach’s radio show, wants to escape to Eastern Oregon, leaving lawless Salem, where her aunt, Governor Sandra Harper, has declared martial law, activated the State Guard, and ordered the police and military to find her beloved niece so Sandra can “fix” Kate and restore her to the most powerful political family in the state…
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(Riven Republic: Resisting)