Saturday’s Mystery eBooks
A Baffling Absence
by D.S. Lang
Rating: 4.7 #ad
A missing teacher. Old grudges. Disappearing suspects.
What happens when a teacher from a girls’ boarding school near Ballantyne Resort does not return for the new term? Arabella Stewart is asked to substitute, but she finds the position involves more than lesson planning. Her sleuthing skills are needed, especially after the secretary also goes missing. Soon, Constable Jax Hastings is on the case. The pair deals with multiple suspects and motives as they uncover details about faculty members, former students, and local residents.
Solving the case is first and foremost, but secrets from the war arise, and Jax is forced to reveal why he has kept Bella at a distance for so long.
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(Arabella Stewart Historical Mysteries)
Pines: Wayward Pines
by Blake Crouch
Rating: 4.7 #ad
Secret Service agent Ethan Burke arrives in Wayward Pines, Idaho, with a mission: locate two federal agents who went missing in the bucolic town one month earlier. But within minutes of his arrival, Ethan is involved in a violent accident. He comes to in a hospital, with no ID, no cell phone, and no briefcase.
As the days pass, Ethan’s investigation turns up more questions than answers: Why can’t he get any phone calls through to his wife and son in the outside world? Why doesn’t anyone believe he is who he says he is? And what is the purpose of the electrified fences surrounding the town? Are they meant to keep the residents in? Or something else out?
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(The Wayward Pines Mysteries)
The Curse of Naram-Sin
by Peter Gibbons
Rating: 3.8 #ad
If you like R F Kuang, David Gemmell, Simon Scarrow and John Gwynne, you will love this epic adventure set in the ancient world, packed with battles, magic, and a war across time.
530 BC. The Persian Emperor Cyrus the Great is at war with Queen Tomyris of the Massagetae on the Scythian steppe. On either side of that epic conflict, are immortal forces locked in a battle between good and evil which stretches back to the dawn of time.
Xantho, slave to a Persian Satrap… bereft at the death of his wife and ashamed of his status… caught in the eye of a war between gods and magic wielding warriors.
No Parm No Foul
by Linda Reilly
Rating: 4.5 #ad
After a long hot summer in Balsam Dell, Carly Hale is ready for crisp Vermont weather and gourmet grilled cheeses at her Grilled Cheese Eatery. And the upcoming Halloween food competition is the perfect way to impress the locals.
But Ferris Menard, the owner of Sub-a-Dub-Sub, is nursing a serious grudge against Carly. Two days before the competition, one of Carly’s employees quit his part-time gig at Menard’s sub shop, sending Menard into a serious snit. In a confrontation at the Eatery, Menard accused Carly of sabotage and vowed to bring her down.
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(Grilled Cheese Mysteries)
The Exorcist’s House
by Nick Roberts
Rating: 4.3 #ad
This psychological thriller follows a family to their Appalachian farmhouse, where they encounter an unimaginable horror.
In the summer of 1994, psychologist Daniel Hill buys a rustic farmhouse nestled in the rolling hills of West Virginia.
Along with his wife and teenage daughter, the family uproots their lives in Ohio and moves south. They are initially seduced by the natural beauty of the country setting. That soon changes when they discover a hidden room in the basement with a well, boarded shut and adorned with crucifixes.
My MacArthur
by Cindy Fazzi
Rating: 4.2 #ad
The year is 1930. The place: Manila. Douglas MacArthur is the most powerful man in the Philippines, a United States colony. He’s fifty years old, divorced, and he falls in love at first sight with a ravishing young Filipino woman. He writes her a love note on the spot. Her name is Isabel Rosario Cooper, an aspiring movie actress. One glance at his note and she thinks of him as my MacArthur.
MacArthur pursues his romantic obsession even though he’s breaking numerous taboos. She reciprocates his affection because he could open doors for her financially struggling family. That MacArthur happens to be handsome compensates for the fact that he’s as old as her father.
The Mammoth Book of Folk Horror
by Stephen Jones
Rating: 4.3 #ad
Welcome to a landscape of ancient evil . . . with stories by masters of horror Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, H. P. Lovecraft, M. R. James, Ramsey Campbell, Storm Constantine, Christopher Fowler, Alison Littlewood, Kim Newman, Reggie Oliver, Michael Marshall Smith, Karl Edward Wagner, and more!
The darkness that endures beneath the earth . . . the disquiet that lingers in the woodland surrounding a forgotten path . . . those ancient traditions and practices that still cling to standing stone circles, earthworks, and abandoned buildings; elaborate rituals that invoke elder gods or nature deities; the restless spirits and legendary creatures that remain connected to a place or object, or exist in deep wells and lonely pools of water, waiting to ensnare the unwary traveler . . .
These concepts have been the archetypes of horror fiction for decades, but in recent years they have been given a name: Folk Horror.
Reckoning
by Catherine Coulter
Rating: 4.7 #ad
Agents Savich and Sherlock are back in the latest installment in Catherine Coulter’s #1 New York Times bestselling FBI Thriller series, and this time both are enlisted to help women with traumatic pasts who are in mortal danger.
When she was twelve years old, Kirra Mandarian’s parents were murdered and she barely escaped with her life. Fourteen years later Kirra is a commonwealth attorney back home in Porte Franklin, Virginia, and her goal is to find out who killed her parents and why. She assumes the identity of E.N.—Eliot Ness—and gathers proof to bring down the man she believes was behind her parents’ deaths.
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(An FBI Thrillers)