Tuesday’s Mystery eBooks
British Manor Murder
by Leslie Meier
Rating: 4.2 #ad
Though the earl and his sister are surprisingly accommodating to their jetlagged guests, Lucy feels uneasy after a fallen portrait sparks talk of a deadly family omen. The bad vibes come quickly – snobby Aunt Millicent and her handmaiden Harrison unexpectedly drop by for the exhibition, and meals with the family are consistently tense. But real trouble begins when a body, bludgeoned by the chapel’s gold-plated reliquary, is found in a hidden, sealed off room. Stranger still, the corpse is identified as Harrison’s son, Cyril.
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(A Lucy Stone Mysteries)
The Amber Secret
by David Leadbeater
Rating: 4.3 #ad
A vanished relic. A deadly prize. The half-mad explorer Dante Caruso swears he’s found a fabled Russian relic called the Amber Room, and he’s attracting the wrong kind of attention. A ruthless team of Ukrainian relic hunters called R24 has kidnapped him and his family; they want to know where the Amber Room is—and they’ll spill blood to find it.
Nobody knows treasure hunting like Guy Bodie and his crew. But abduction is the last thing they expect. The R24 forces Guy, his treasure hunters, and Caruso at gunpoint to traverse the vast, unforgiving Tatra Mountains and find the Amber Room. If they fail, the R24 will end them. And if they run, the hunters will become the hunted.
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(The Relic Hunters Mysteries)
The Sculthorpe Murder
by Karen Charlton
Rating: 4.6 #ad
Northamptonshire, 1810: As a new canal network snakes across the landscape, a vicious mob stakes its claim to the county. Every local constable is out on the hunt for the ruthless Panther Gang. When an elderly man is robbed and murdered in sleepy Middleton, the beleaguered magistrates send for help from London’s Bow Street Police Office.
Detective Stephen Lavender and Constable Ned Woods soon discover there’s more to William Sculthorpe’s demise than meets the eye. Mystery surrounds the old man and his family, and the stench of revenge hangs heavy in the air. Are the Panther Gang really responsible or is something more sinister afoot?
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(The Detective Lavender Mysteries)
We Must Save Jepson!
by Mark Petersen
Rating: 3.7 #ad
Cannibals and lions and murder – oh my!
Intrepid librarian H. R. Huxtable and his column of misfits are out to save Jepson’s beleaguered British outpost in central Africa—battling rock-strewn rivers, bloody jungle, hungry cannibals, and each other. His toad-witted captains are slaves to drink. The only female member of the expedition is on a personal crusade to stamp out celibacy. And while none of them seem to respect his authority, one of them has gone so far as to ventilate his tent with bullets, which is a bit much.
Undaunted, Huxtable perseveres. But storm clouds are gathering.
Devolution
by Max Brooks
Rating: 4.4 #ad
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As the ash and chaos from Mount Rainier’s eruption swirled and finally settled, the story of the Greenloop massacre has passed unnoticed, unexamined . . . until now. The journals of resident Kate Holland, recovered from the town’s bloody wreckage, capture a tale too harrowing—and too earth-shattering in its implications—to be forgotten. In these pages, Max Brooks brings Kate’s extraordinary account to light for the first time, faithfully reproducing her words alongside his own extensive investigations into the massacre and the legendary beasts behind it. Kate’s is a tale of unexpected strength and resilience, of humanity’s defiance in the face of a terrible predator’s gaze, and, inevitably, of savagery and death.
Rolling Thunder
by John Varley
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Navy lieutenant Podkayne, daughter of Ray Garcia-Strickland, is tired of her job as Martian consul in California—and Earth’s oppressive gravity. So she’s OK with getting called back to Mars even if it’s because her great-grandmother is sick and being put into suspended animation.
After a family reunion, Podkayne’s next port of call is Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, where she can finally realize her dream of being a singer. But just when her life seems to be improving for the better, disaster strikes and Podkayne is put into her own state of suspension. Awakened ten years later, she will discover a solar system in turmoil—where the very survival of humanity is at risk . . .
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(The Thunder and Lightning Mysteries)
Down a Dark Road
by Linda Castillo
Rating: 4.4 #ad
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Two years ago, Joseph King was convicted of murdering his wife and sentenced to life in prison. He was a “fallen” Amish man and a known drug user with a violent temper. Now King has escaped, and he’s headed for Painters Mill.
News of a murderer on the loose travels like wildfire, putting Chief of Police Kate Burkholder and her team of officers on edge. But this is personal for Kate. She grew up with Joseph King. As a thirteen year old Amish girl, she’d worshipped the ground he walked on.
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(A Kate Burkholder Mysteries)
Winter’s Malice
by Belinda G. Buchanan
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Three bodies in the span of twenty-four hours … In Weeping Rock, South Dakota–a small town crippled by racism, drugs, and violence–Sheriff’s Deputy Liam Matthews has his work cut out for him when he steps in to take over the duties of sheriff from his father, who for far too long has turned a blind eye to certain crimes for what he says is the overall good of the town.
Coming under scrutiny for hiring a Lakota to fill his position as deputy, things quickly go from bad to worse for Liam when the body of retired pro-baseball player Hector Ramirez, who had recently returned home to coach ball at his high school alma mater, is found floating in Crow’s Foot Lake. Hector’s bludgeoned corpse is no sooner on its way to the M.E.’s office in Rapid City, however, when the partially clothed body of a young girl is discovered in a clearing in the snow…