Thursday’s Mystery eBooks
The Christmas Coroner
by Paul Austin Ardoin
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Buried secrets. A dead online celebrity. Just in time for Christmas.
Days before the town’s annual Christmas Parade, an up-and-coming celebrity chef is found dead in a mountain cabin. As Coroner Fenway Stevenson investigates, she uncovers the chef’s dark past, a war brewing between local farms, and a hidden identity that could blow the town apart. Can Fenway unmask the murderer before she becomes the next victim?
The Enthronement
by Charity Mae
Rating: 4.3 #ad
Five-hundred years bloody of civil war ends in massacre or redemption based on the heart of one actress who never wanted this power.
Kascia is shattered when they ask her to join the Enthronement. She wants to stop the horrific suffering of her people, but is it worth the cost of her heart and soul? She’s left broken and unsure of her existence when the men in her life, who should have loved her, pressure her to join the Enthronement – a contest to prove one girl a true princess and marry the crown prince – so she can let her father’s rebels in to assassinate the royal family.
Her confidence is further shattered when the truths she once held dear are challenged upon entering the palace. The royal family is not what she’d expected them to be.
Race Against Time
by Sharon Sala
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Sometimes fate brings you together—only to tear you apart . . .
Growing up in the foster system, Quinn O’Meara made a point of never getting involved. But when she discovers a crying baby amid a fiery crime scene, she knows she has no choice. Suddenly in way over her head, Quinn turns to the police, unintentionally positioning herself in the crosshairs of a deadly human-trafficking ring.
The last time homicide detective Nick Saldano saw Quinn, she was still the young girl he’d shared a foster home with. The girl who’d loved and cared for him when no one else had. Now here she was, gorgeously all grown-up—and in terrible danger.
Oath of Loyalty
by Vince Flynn, Kyle Mills
Rating: 4.6 #ad
With President Anthony Cook convinced that Mitch Rapp poses a mortal threat to him, CIA Director Irene Kennedy is forced to construct a truce between the two men. The terms are simple: Rapp agrees to leave the country and stay in plain sight for as long as Cook controls the White House. In exchange, the administration agrees not to make any moves against him.
This fragile détente holds until Cook’s power-hungry security adviser convinces him that Rapp has no intention of honoring their agreement. To put him on the defensive, they leak the identity of his partner, Claudia Gould. As Rapp races to neutralize the enemies organizing against her, he discovers that a new type of assassin is on her trail.
Learning to Kill: Stories
by Ed McBain
Rating: 4.4 #ad
A “gripping” collection of crime stories from the author of the acclaimed 87th Precinct novels (People).
Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct is “perhaps the finest police procedural series of all time” (Publishers Weekly). But before he turned to novels, McBain wrote short crime fiction under various names, for pulp magazines including Manhunt and Argosy. Collected in this anthology are twenty-five of these early stories, organized under headings such as “Women in Jeopardy,” “Private Eyes,” “Loose Cannons,” and “Gangs.”
Vows and Vendettas
by Multiple Authors
Rating: 5.0 #ad
Our underworld is filled with bloodshed and malice, and darkness dominates our lives. It’s our world… where limits are built of smoke, and their rules have no power.
And when we find the object of our deepest desires, we are ruthless. Nothing, not even their defiance, will stand in our way.
We cast our shadows on them, and they give our corruption a purpose. Before, we were breaking the rules for ourselves. Now, we are breaking every rule for them.
Kidnapped by a Client
by Sharon R. Muse
Rating: 4.2 #ad
“He promised to kill me when he got out. I believed him. If I wanted justice, I had to fight both him and the courts…maybe kill him first. If I didn’t do something, I was going to die.”
This is not a manufactured dialogue from a thriller but the words of attorney Sharon Muse. They came after she survived an attempted kidnapping, rape, and murder at the hands of Larry Morrison, a former client. On April 7, 2006, Muse miraculously escaped from the sociopathic Morrison, only to find that the threat to her life was just beginning. Ineptitude in the justice system threatened to release Morrison and allow him the opportunity to finish the job, which he adamantly pledged to do. Muse would have to fight at every step to ensure her safety.