Mysteries
Wednesday’s Mystery eBooks
Hypnosis Is for Hacks
by Tamara Berry
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Eleanor Wilde has traded a career as a sham medium for a (relatively) respectable life in a small English town, providing the locals with herbal remedies and elixirs. But on a trip to the seaside town of Brighton, her past comes calling—and so does a killer . . .
Though Eleanor is delighted that her brother, Liam, is visiting her in England, she must reluctantly agree that her quiet village lacks something when it comes to sightseeing—namely: sights. True, there’s nearby Castle Hartford, belonging to the family of Ellie’s boyfriend, Nicholas. But even Nicholas’s mother is eager to ditch sleepy, sweltering Sussex for a vacation in Brighton, taking Ellie and a relieved Liam with her. Yet hopes of a breezy seaside holiday quickly turn stormy, in every sense . . .
Beauty and the Scalpel
by Peter Ralph
Rating: 4.4 #ad
When young, New York plastic surgeon, Jack Donahue’s reputation is destroyed, he changes his name and makes a fresh start in Sydney.
Blessed with unique surgical skills and driven by greed and lust, it’s not long before Donahue is a multimillionaire, but he wants more – much more.
Handsome, narcissistic and cruel, when Donahue sees the opportunity to become super-wealthy, he seizes it. Will greed be his downfall?
Dark Water Rising
by Sharon Sala
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Sam and Haley Quaid buried their ten-year-old son and then ended their marriage, all in one week. It wasn’t a volatile divorce, but three years later, except for trading Christmas cards, Sam and Haley have completely lost touch . . . until a dramatic weather report sets their paths on a collision course once more.
Tropical Storm Gladys is heading straight toward coastal Texas, and locals are anxious as they prepare for potential devastation. Haley, a Realtor, has an appointment to show a property and is determined to keep it, but a hurricane isn’t the only looming danger: news reports talk of two prisoners who’ve escaped from a nearby penitentiary only a few miles from the house Haley’s headed for.
Chronicles of a Supernatural Bounty Hunter: Books 1-4
by Alex Fox
Rating: 5.0 #ad
I hunt bad guys. I don’t work for them. Ready for a fast, fun urban fantasy adventure with a snarky heroine who doesn’t pull punches? This one’s for you.
My talent for tracking has made me a damn good bounty hunter for the past decade, but it’s also gotten me solidly on the sh*t list of some seriously heavy hitters. When a dangerous con artist escapes to Louisiana, I find myself face-to-face with his boss―the Vampire Master of New Orleans.
It’s one hell of a leap to go from bail bonds and bounties to dragging supernaturals back to Texas on the back of a chain, but I’m up for it. My back may be against the wall, but I’m the kind of girl who comes out swinging.
The Ghostway
by Tony Hillerman
Rating: 4.6 #ad
Old Joseph Joe sees it all. Two strangers spill blood at the Shiprock Wash-O-Mat. One dies. The other drives off into the dry lands of the Big Reservation, but not before he shows the old Navajo a photo of the man he seeks.
This is all Tribal Policeman Jim Chee needs to set him off on an odyssey that moves from a trapped ghost in an Indian hogan to the seedy underbelly of L.A. to an ancient healing ceremony where death is the cure, and into the dark heart of murder and revenge.
999: New Stories Of Horror And Suspense
by Multiple Authors
Rating: 4.6 #ad
Winner of the Bram Stoker Award for Best Anthology
“One of the best anthologies of horror and suspense of all time.”—Rocky Mountain News
From award-winning author and “master anthologist”* Al Sarrantonio, 999: Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense is a specially curated collection of evocative fiction that probes the depth of human fears and frailties. From otherworldly entities stalking prey to psychological terrors borne of trauma, these stories exemplify the limitless possibilities inherent in the genre, revealing that darkness can be found anywhere the imagination dares to look for it.
Her Brand of Justice
by B.J. Daniels
Rating: 4.7 #ad
Exploring her hidden past. May rob her of her future
Ansley Brookshire’s search for her birth mother takes her from the gated estate where she grew up to Lonesome, Montana. This is where she meets Buck Crawford. Determined to help, the gorgeous rancher introduces her to Colt Brothers Investigations. But someone wants the secrets surrounding her adoption to stay buried—and they’ll do anything to keep her from uncovering the truth…
The Blacksmith Queen
by G.A. Aiken
Rating: 4.6 #ad
When a prophecy brings war to the Hill Lands, Keeley Smythe must join forces with a clan of mountain warriors in a thrilling new fantasy romance series from New York Times bestselling author G.A. Aiken.
The Old King Is Dead
With the demise of the Old King, there’s a prophecy that a queen will ascend to the throne of the Hill Lands. Bad news for the king’s sons, who are prepared to defend their birthright against all comers.
Tuesday’s Mystery eBooks
Peril In Paradise
by Deb Graham
Rating: 4.2 #ad
“My necklace is gone! I left it right here, I know I did!” Jerria’s heart pounded. Not another theft. Depressed over her youngest son leaving two years early for college– across the country no less!– Jerria takes up her husband Will’s offer of a relaxing Hawaiian cruise. But a series of ominous events onboard the Ocean Haven squashes any idea of a calm tropical vacation. Soon Jerria’s very life is in danger, and she can’t blame the mythical Pele for this one. Warm characters and rich descriptions of beautiful Hawaii bring this cozy mystery to life.
Check out:
(Jerria Danson Mysteries)
The Vengeance of Samuel Val
by Elyse Hoffman
Rating: 4.7 #ad
Samuel Val is blessed with a loving family and a tight-knit community in his Jewish village of Khruvina. He dreams of becoming Khruvina’s Rabbi, but his dreams are crushed when his family is slaughtered by Nazi Officer Viktor Naden, the Beast of Belorussia.
With Samuel left as Khruvina’s only survivor, he joins the anti-Nazi resistance group known as the Black Foxes. Determined to avenge his family, he swears to hunt down and destroy Viktor Naden. Samuel’s mission of vengeance, however, is put on hold when he is forced to escort a Jewish refugee to a safehouse operated by Black Fox Ten, a high-ranked member of the resistance.
The Perfect Date
by Iris Baxter
Rating: 4.1 #ad
You’ll never want to date again.
When Melissa goes out on a date with Sean, she’s immediately drawn to his charming personality. Thinking she’s hit a jackpot, she dismisses her initial reservations and agrees to go to his place after dinner.
As the night unfolds, it becomes apparent that Sean is hiding something. A door she’s not supposed to open, a hushed call she wasn’t meant to hear, a camera she shouldn’t touch. Each clue points to an increasingly terrifying conclusion about Sean’s secret.
By the time Melissa realizes the disturbing truth, she’s trapped in Sean’s house, just another victim in his elaborate ploy. Can she make it out before she ends up like the other girls?
Unraveled
by Jennifer Estep
Rating: 4.1 #ad
What could go wrong when you’re trying to unravel a decades-old conspiracy?
As the current queen of the Ashland underworld, you would think that I, Gin Blanco, would know all about some secret society controlling things from behind the scenes.
I might be the Spider, the city’s most fearsome assassin, but all my Ice and Stone elemental magic hasn’t done me a lick of good in learning more about “the Circle”. Despite my continued investigations, the trail’s gone as cold as the coming winter.
Little Darlings
by Melanie Golding
Rating: 4.0 #ad
The anxieties of motherhood take center stage in this “atmospheric and very creepy” debut psychological thriller that reinvents the changeling myth with the flair of Angela Carter (Guardian).
Everyone says Lauren Tranter is exhausted, that she needs rest. And they’re right; with newborn twins, Morgan and Riley, she’s never been more tired in her life. But she knows what she saw: that night, in her hospital room, a woman tried to take her babies and replace them with her own…creatures. Yet when the police arrived, they saw no one. Everyone, from her doctor to her husband, thinks she’s imagining things.
Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six
by Lisa Unger
Rating: 4.0 #ad
Three couples rent a luxury cabin in the woods for a weekend getaway to die for in this chilling locked-room thriller.
What could be more restful than a weekend getaway with family and friends? An isolated luxury cabin in the woods, spectacular views, a hot tub and a personal chef. Hannah’s generous brother found the listing online. The reviews are stellar. It’ll be three couples on this trip with good food, good company and lots of R & R.
But the dreamy weekend is about to turn into a nightmare.
Payback in Death: An Eve Dallas Novel
by J. D. Robb
Rating: 5.0 #ad
BRAND NEW RELEASE
A retired colleague’s suspicious death puts Lt. Eve Dallas on the case in Payback in Death, the electrifying new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author J.D. Robb.
Lt. Eve Dallas is just home from a long overdue vacation when she responds to a call of an unattended death. The victim is Martin Greenleaf, retired Internal Affairs Captain. At first glance, the scene appears to be suicide, but the closer Eve examines the body, the more suspicious she becomes.
An unlocked open window, a loving wife and family, a too-perfect suicide note—Eve’s gut says it’s a homicide.
Monday’s Mystery eBooks
Chapter and Curse
by Elizabeth Penney
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Librarian Molly Kimball and her mother, Nina, need a change. So when a letter arrives from Nina’s Aunt Violet in Cambridge, England requesting their help running the family bookshop, they jump at the chance.
Thomas Marlowe – Manuscripts and Folios, is one of the oldest bookshops in Cambridge, and – unfortunately – customers can tell. When Molly and Nina arrive, spring has come to Cambridge and the famed Cambridge Literary Festival is underway. Determined to bring much-needed revenue to the bookstore, Molly invites Aunt Violet’s college classmate and famed poet Persephone Brightwell to hold a poetry reading in the shop.
Breakneck
by Marc Cameron
Rating: 4.7 #ad
Off the northeast coast of Russia, the captain and crew of a small crabbing vessel are brutally murdered by members of Bratva, the Russian mafia—their bodies stuffed into crab pots and thrown overboard. The killers scuttle the vessel off the coast of Alaska and slip ashore.
In Washington, DC, Supreme Court Justice Charlotte Morehouse prepares for a trip to Alaska, unaware that a killer is waiting to take his revenge—by livestreaming her death to the world.
The Latina President
by Joe Rothstein
Rating: 4.4 #ad
What happens when a fun-loving, charismatic, reform-minded Mexican-American billionairess becomes president of the United States and strikes fear in the pocketbooks of a cabal of the rich and powerful? Conspiracy. Impeachment. Murder. Assassination. It’s all here. The world knows President Tennyson as “Tenny.” And once you meet her, you will never forget her. Kirkus Reviews says she’s “An enthralling protagonist at the heart of a gripping tale.” Another reviewer writes, “If Grisham wrote political thrillers, they’d feel like this!” “A great escapist gem!”
Killing Kelly
by Heather Graham
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Playing a malicious diva on a popular daytime soap, actress Kelly Trent has garnered more than her fair share of hate mail. She doesn’t believe anyone would really confuse her with her character, but when an accident on the set hits too close for the producers’ comfort, Kelly is unceremoniously put on hiatus.
At her agent’s suggestion, she agrees to appear in a music video, thinking the time away filming in the Florida Keys might be just the thing to put her life in perspective. But with two left feet, Kelly only hopes dance instructor Doug O’Casey can work miracles.
In Shadows
by Sharon Sala
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Jack McCann has been in love with Shelly since they were teens. They married just out of college and right before he went to work as an undercover agent for the FBI. When he can, he slips away from his assignments to see her.
Jack has been undercover on his latest case for months, investigating a weapons-smuggling business. But just as the FBI is set to make the bust, Jack’s cover is blown. The last thing he feels as he crashes through a warehouse window and into the open water is a bullet piercing his back. The last thing he hears is Adam Ito promising to destroy everyone Jack loves.
Dangerous Secrets Collection
by Alexa Verde
Rating: 4.5 #ad
A small-town cop becomes fish-out-water when she poses as her missing glamorous twin; a former thief finds danger—and love—at Christmas; and a tough cowgirl searches for a runaway teen and finds peril. Three riveting, unputdownable romances filled with love, faith, and danger to warm your heart and set it racing! Sparks and bullets fly as couples join forces to survive, solve mysteries, and find love along the way, too. Plus a bonus Christmas mystery/suspense novella!
Book 1: SCENT OF DANGER
Book 2: DANGER UNDER THE MISTLETOE
Book 3: MISSING AND IN DANGER
All The Pretty People
by Barbara Freethy
Rating: 4.3 #ad
Ten years ago, I was seventeen, spending summers with my wealthy family and friends on Hawk Island. One terrible night, I blacked out. The next morning, my best friend, Melanie, was gone – vanished without a trace.
Today, I go back. To the island. To my sister’s wedding. To a group of privileged people with whom I’ve never belonged. To my best friend’s brother, a man who hates us all. To secrets that someone will kill to keep.
A storm is coming. A storm that will cut off the island from all hope of help. A storm that could allow a kidnapper to escape or a killer to murder again. A storm that will wash away all the lies and deception and reveal the true faces of All the Pretty People.
The Things We Cannot Say
by Kelly Rimmer
Rating: 4.7 #ad
In 1942, Europe remains in the relentless grip of war. Just beyond the tents of the refugee camp she calls home, a young woman speaks her wedding vows. It’s a decision that will alter her destiny…and it’s a lie that will remain buried until the next century.
Since she was nine years old, Alina Dziak knew she would marry her best friend, Tomasz. Now fifteen and engaged, Alina is unconcerned by reports of Nazi soldiers at the Polish border, believing her neighbors that they pose no real threat, and dreams instead of the day Tomasz returns from college in Warsaw so they can be married. But little by little, injustice by brutal injustice, the Nazi occupation takes hold, and Alina’s tiny rural village, its families, are divided by fear and hate.
Sunday’s Mystery eBooks
A Going Concern
by Catherine Aird
Rating: 4.2 #ad
It was an odd request, but when Octavia Garamond passed away, she left explicit instructions in her will: The police must be present at her funeral, and the coroner should be exceptionally thorough when examining her body.
Amelia Kennerly is perplexed to find herself the sole executor of her great-aunt’s will, as she barely knew her. Further questions arise when the local parson, Mr. Fournier, is anything but happy to conduct Octavia’s service. Then someone breaks into Octavia’s home and tears the house apart. It seems the old lady’s words may have been eerily prescient: “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.”
The Nice Guy
by Sarah A. Denzil
Rating: 4.1 #ad
Laura thought she’d found the one nice guy in New York City.
When Ethan saves her from a crushing crowd on Brooklyn Bridge, their connection is dazzling. Worthy of a heat-filled passionate night.
Laura falls pregnant from their one-night stand—a miracle considering her past fertility issues. Ethan is attentive and wonderful at first. She hopes he will be the kind of father she’d always wanted for herself.
Until his attentiveness turns to obsession. His questions become demands. Why didn’t she answer her phone or respond to his messages? Why won’t she move in with him and his rich mother?
People of Darkness
by Tony Hillerman
Rating: 4.6 #ad
A dying man is murdered. A rich man’s wife agrees to pay three thousand dollars for the return of a stolen box of rocks. A series of odd, inexplicable events is haunting Sergeant Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police and drawing him alone into the Bad Country of the merciless Southwest, where everything good struggles to survive, including Chee. Because an assassin waits for him there, protecting a thirty-year-old vision that greed has sired and blood has nourished. And only one man will walk away.
OFF GRID
by J. P. Redding
Rating: 4.5 #ad
In the wake of a global calamity, the economy collapses. The Feds respond by wielding every power of the Welfare State to control the populace. A key tool is PivPal, an indispensable smartphone used to track citizens. As civil liberties crumble, resistance is relegated to flyover country whose residents – derided as off-gridders – cling to the time-honored virtues of freedom, self-reliance, and charity. Against this backdrop, Jenny Hernandez struggles to keep her rural church community nourished and safe. Hiding from the Feds, a team of inventors, and Jenny’s ex, arrive to complete the amazing plasma drive. They bring hope, but also the watchful eye of Big Brother. With the authorities closing in, local law enforcement must choose sides.
Swine Not?
by Jimmy Buffett
Rating: 4.3 #ad
Bestselling writer Jimmy Buffett weaves an irresistible tale filled with colorful characters, wry humor, and the pursuit of a very clever pig.
When Southern belle Ellie McBride moves her twins from Vertigo, to New York City, they wouldn’t dream of leaving behind the family pig Rumpy. But the posh hotel where Ellie has found work (and living space) has “No Pets” writ large on its portal. So hiding Rumpy from the hotel staff – especially the ultra-carnivorous hotel chef, who would like nothing better than to transform their pet into pork roast – becomes imperative.
13 Hours
by Mitchell Zuckoff with the Annex Security Team
Rating: 4.6 #ad
The harrowing, true account from the brave men on the ground who fought back during the Battle of Benghazi.
13 Hours presents, for the first time ever, the true account of the events of September 11, 2012, when terrorists attacked the US State Department Special Mission Compound and a nearby CIA station called the Annex in Benghazi, Libya. A team of six American security operators fought to repel the attackers and protect the Americans stationed there. Those men went beyond the call of duty, performing extraordinary acts of courage and heroism, to avert tragedy on a much larger scale. This is their personal account, never before told, of what happened during the thirteen hours of that now-infamous attack.
By Two and Two
by Jim Schutze
Rating: 4.3 #ad
In “a solid account of what appears to be a shocking injustice” an award-winning journalist uncovers the bias that led to a woman’s conviction for murder (The New York Times).
When a prominent Alabama doctor is brutally killed, his wife and her twin sister are charged with conspiracy to murder. But while her twin was acquitted of the crime, Betty Wilson was charged with killing her husband.
Probing into a trial that deliberated on Betty’s promiscuity, her alcoholism and her adulterous affair with a black man rather than any physical evidence against her, critically acclaimed journalist