Thursday’s Mystery eBooks
Renewed for Murder
by Victoria Gilbert
Rating: 4.4 #ad
August in Taylorsford, Virginia finds library director Amy Webber and her new husband, dancer Richard Muir, settling into married life–and a new project. Richard and his dance partner, Karla, are choreographing a suite based on folk music and folk tales, while Amy scours the library’s resources to supply background information on the dance’s source material. But the mellifluous music comes to a jarring halt when an unknown woman’s body turns up in Zelda Shoemaker’s backyard gazebo.
Chief Deputy Brad Tucker puts Zelda at the top of his suspect list, thanks to a blackmail letter he finds in the dead woman’s pocket. Zelda’s best friend, Amy’s aunt Lydia Talbot, begs Amy to use her research skills to clear Zelda’s name. But the task is confounded by Zelda’s very out-of-character refusal to reveal why the victim might have blackmailed her.
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(A Blue Ridge Library Mysteries)
Dying Breath
by Liz Mistry
Rating: 4.7 #ad
The killer is closing in… can she find him before he finds her?
When Detective Nikki Parekh receives a set of threatening postcards, she knows it can only mean one thing… The man who escaped arrest after murdering her mother two years ago is back.
Each postcard has a similar message: You’re next Parekh.
As the post marks on the cards gradually get closer to Bradford, Nikki must do everything she can to protect her family and catch the killer before it’s too late.
Who Slays the Wicked
by C. S. Harris
Rating: 4.6 #ad
The death of a fiendish nobleman strikes close to home as Sebastian St. Cyr is tasked with finding the killer to save his young cousin from persecution in this riveting new historical mystery from the USA Today bestselling author of Why Kill the Innocent….
When the handsome but dissolute young gentleman Lord Ashworth is found brutally murdered, Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, is called in by Bow Street magistrate Sir Henry Lovejoy to help catch the killer. Just seven months before, Sebastian had suspected Ashworth of aiding one of his longtime friends and companions in the kidnapping and murder of a string of vulnerable street children. But Sebastian was never able to prove Ashworth’s complicity. Nor was he able to prevent his troubled, headstrong young niece Stephanie from entering into a disastrous marriage with the dangerous nobleman.
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(Sebastian St. Cyr Mysteries)
Bridge to Brigadoon
by Stephanie Parker McKean
Rating: 4.7 #ad
In one of the wackiest Miz Mike adventures ever, successful writer Michal Allison Rice is packed off to Scotland by her son and daughter-in-law for a vacation. They believe the trip will heal her broken heart—and hope that it will teach her to mind her own business. Mike does not want to go to Scotland. It is COLD there. And once in Scotland, she doesn’t want to stay. Hotdogs come in cans, dill pickles are non-existent and driving on the wrong side of the road terrifies her. However, when elderly Ross Granger is killed, Mike feels responsible and sets out in search of the killer.
Nearly killed herself, Mike is faced with a dilemma: no one believes her. She is viewed as “an American stushie-maker.” But the gravest danger of all proves to be the Reverend Alan Evan Kirkland, a Scottish widower who befriends her, then demands the one thing in repayment that she is unwilling to give – her heart.
Rosemarked
by Livia Blackburne
Rating: 4.4 #ad
A terminally ill healer… Zivah was once her village’s most promising young healer, mastering potions that altered both body and mind. But when she’s conscripted to treat a battalion of grievously ill soldiers, Zivah contracts the deadly rose plague. Now she’s doomed to a slow, solitary death, cut off from everyone she loves.
A broken warrior… Dineas grew up fighting to free his people from the Amparan empire, but capture and torture have left him shattered. Though he’s now escaped from the emperor’s dungeons, he cannot outrun the lingering effects of his trauma…
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(Umbertouched)
Afraid to Die
by Lisa Jackson
Rating: 4.6 #ad
The town of Grizzly Falls, Montana, is still on edge in the wake of a serial killer’s capture. Thanks to Detectives Selena Alvarez and Regan Pescoli, the nightmare is over. But a new one is about to unfold. There are two victims so far—their bodies found frozen solid and deliberately displayed. Both are women Selena knew. And each wears a piece of her jewelry.
Selena, Regan, and the entire department are on the case, as is P.I. Dylan O’Keefe—a man Selena got too close to once before. But this killer already knows too much about Selena’s secret terror, her flaws, and the past she’s tried to outrun. And soon he’ll show her that she has every reason to be afraid.
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(An Alvarez & Pescoli Mysteries)
Wastelands
by Multiple Authors
Rating: 4.6 #ad
In WASTELANDS: THE NEW APOCALYPSE, veteran anthology editor John Joseph Adams is once again our guide through the wastelands using his genre and editorial expertise to curate his finest collection of post-apocalyptic short fiction yet. Whether the end comes via nuclear war, pandemic, climate change, or cosmological disaster, these stories explore the extraordinary trials and tribulations of those who survive.
Featuring never-before-published tales by: Veronica Roth, Hugh Howey, Jonathan Maberry, Seanan McGuire, Tananarive Due, Richard Kadrey, Scott Sigler, Elizabeth Bear, Tobias S. Buckell, Meg Elison, Greg van Eekhout, Wendy N. Wagner, Jeremiah Tolbert, and Violet Allen–plus, recent reprints by: Carmen Maria Machado, Carrie Vaughn, Ken Liu, Paolo Bacigalupi, Kami Garcia, Charlie Jane Anders, Catherynne M. Valente, Jack Skillingstead, Sofia Samatar, Maureen F. McHugh, Nisi Shawl, Adam-Troy Castro, Dale Bailey, Susan Jane Bigelow, Corinne Duyvis, Shaenon K. Garrity, Nicole Kornher-Stace, Darcie Little Badger, Timothy Mudie, and Emma Osborne.
Essential Grief
by Kathleen Flynn
Rating: 5.0 #ad
This book’s stories are focused on grieving losses from the death of humans and pets. There is a myriad of losses such as loss of: a job; dreams; aging; relationships; and many more
What Kathleen Flynn shares here can be applied toward many types of loss.
As a chaplain, minister, and grief counselor, Flynn chooses to focus on death, as it seems to be that loss, perhaps the finality of it, paralyzes us from taking action to mediate our grief. It is the finality of death, often with related trauma and with suddenness, that can immobilize us. All losses have contributed to the author’s understanding of the essentials of grief.