Mysteries
Friday’s Mystery eBooks
Claws for Alarm
by Rita Mae Brown
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Pharamond “Fair” Haristeen is known throughout Crozet, Virginia, as a good horse vet and a better man. So when Benjamin Wagner, a new vet in town, is found dead in his unopened clinic, local police turn to Fair for help getting to the bottom of things.
Fair quickly realizes Ben’s clinic has been robbed of ketamine, used by doctors as a horse tranquilizer but also a popular recreational drug. Then Fair’s own ketamine goes missing from the back of his truck. Was Ben killed for his supply? Or was he mixed up in something bigger?
Some Can See
by J.R. Erickson
Rating: 4.6 #ad
The dead tell stories. Are you listening?
On a sunny August morning, in 1935, thirteen-year-old Sophia Gray finds her friend, Rosemary wandering in the woods. Rosemary’s yellow dress is tattered and stained, she walks with a strange lurch, and her eyes are vacant and glassy. She beckons to Sophia, desperate to show her something, and Sophia follows.In an abandoned cabin, beneath a tattered blanket, Sophia discovers Rosemary’s body.It was not Rosemary who led her there, but Rosemary’s ghost. Step into the Northern Michigan Asylum for the Insane
Twenty years after Sophia discovers Rosemary’s body, she finds herself trapped in the sprawling, and eerily beautiful, Northern Michigan Asylum for the Insane, in the hands of a malevolent doctor who preys on patients who exhibit paranormal abilities. Sometimes the dead don’t rest
The Rusted Lantern
by Bill Patterson
Rating: 5.0 #ad
Hold onto your surfboard! The Rusted Lantern is about to take you on a wild ride through time! Follow teenage surfer Jason Hanson as he embarks on an edge-of-your-seat adventure after stumbling upon an ancient boat dock lantern high up Sunset Cliffs. What starts as a simple discovery quickly turns into a heart-pumping journey through the past where he uncovers the fate of his long-lost mother.
But this is not your ordinary time-travel story – Jason faces off against a ruthless pirate lord, encounters seductive and deadly sirens, and receives help from a mysterious mermaid who claims to have known his mother. Written with vibrant descriptions and impeccable attention to detail, you will feel like you are right there alongside Jason as he fights menacing sea thugs, searches for truth, and finds unexpected romance in the most unexpected of ways.
Stealth Attack
by John Gilstrap
Rating: 4.5 #ad
El Paso, Texas, is a battleground. It’s an open market for Mexican drug cartels to sell their wares. It’s also a destination for teens looking for fun. Venice Alexander’s fourteen-year-old son Roman was there on a school trip. Now, he and a fellow student have vanished without a trace.
Assuming the kidnapping is retaliation for his past incursions against Mexico’s crime syndicates, Jonathan Grave leads his covert operatives to rescue their teammate’s son. But the trail Jonathan follows leads him down unexpected paths where he ends up in the crossfire of a deadly vendetta…
Big Monster Money
by Multiple Auhotrs
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Magical criminals require magical solutions. Who answers the call when the mundane police dial 911? Matt Bordelon—former Silver Griffin, wizard, and the Big Easy Bounty Hunter.
Matt has a good thing going. Deliver justice to magicals? Check. Keep the world safe from threats? Check. Make good money doing it? Cha-ching.
Unless his bounty ends up dead when the paperwork specifies alive, that is. Good thing he’s a pro at avoiding that. Then he stumbles across a dark witch embroiled in a vicious spell battle with a dark wizard and feels compelled to aid her. Is subtle magic at play to influence him? Or is it something else?
Concealed in Death
by J. D. Robb
Rating: 4.6 #ad
Leading the demolition of a long-empty New York building that once housed a makeshift shelter for troubled teenagers, Lieutenant Eve Dallas’s husband uncovers two skeletons wrapped in plastic. And by the time Eve’s done with the crime scene, there are twelve murders to be solved.
The victims are all young girls. A tattooed tough girl who dealt in illegal drugs. The runaway daughter of a pair of well-to-do doctors. They all had their stories. And they all lost their chance for a better life.
Finding Home
by Lorhainne Eckhart
Rating: 4.3 #ad
What happens when a family loses everything and has no place to go?
“This book features a family that is struggling to survive after financial ruin puts them on the streets. It is eye-opening, raw and gut-wrenching.” Rebmay
Terrance Mack has a wife and two young boys. Never in a million years did he expect to find his family living on the streets, with no home, no jobs, in a position where everything they owned has been taken from them in the cruelest of ways. As the family struggles to stay together, they encounter a hard and unfriendly way of life, having to move from town to town, being harassed by the police and by locals, and confronting danger each day. Living on the streets is nothing as he expected.
Storm Watch
by C. J. Box
Rating: 4.5 #ad
BRAND NEW RELEASE at REGULAR PRICE
Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett investigates a mysterious death at a secret remote high-tech facility in this riveting new novel from #1 New York Times bestseller C.J. Box.
When a prominent University of Wyoming professor goes missing, authorities are stumped. That is, until Joe Pickett makes two surprising discoveries while hunting down a wounded elk on his district as an epic spring storm descends upon him. First, he finds the professor’s vehicle parked on a remote mountainside. Then Joe finds the professor’s frozen and mutilated body. When he attempts to learn more, his investigation is obstructed by federal agents, extremists, and Governor Colter Allen.
Thursday’s Mystery eBooks
Miracles in Maggody
by Joan Hess
Rating: 4.3 #ad
Another outrageous Maggody mystery, starring police chief Arly Hanks alongside a smooth-talking televangelist and a whole town full of sinners.
Some days, police chief Arly Hanks can’t help but see Maggody, Arkansas, as little more than a cesspool of poverty, ignorance, and incest—the kind of glorified trailer park that gives the South a bad name. But hey, it’s home. So when silver-tongued televangelist Malachi Hope swoops into town, with a revivalist laser light show and plans to build a Christian theme park, Arly worries her beloved, if crazy, neighbors are about to be swindled. But it’s Malachi who should be terrified.
Brothers
by Jesse Storm
Rating: 4.7 #ad
Jameson Cooper has always been a law-abiding citizen in Blakemore. A few years ago, he was fortunate enough to get deputized. His brother, Holden Cooper, is the complete opposite. Holden could never keep down a job or hang on to a healthy relationship. For the most part, he is always getting himself in trouble.
One night, Holden Cooper is leaving a poker game after losing all of his money when he hears a gunshot. He turns around and runs toward the sound of trouble. When he gets there, Holden is shocked to discover a body. The man who won the poker game has been shot.
In the morning, the sheriff of Blakemore and all of the town’s citizens are quick to put the blame on Holden.
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The Favor
by Nicci French
Rating: 3.9 #ad
In this twisty new stand-alone novel from internationally bestselling author Nicci French, a young woman agrees to do a favor for her first love—but when things go horribly wrong, one small task turns into a murder investigation that completely upends her life, ensnaring her in a deadly web of secrets and lies. It’s a simple enough favor.
Jude hasn’t seen Liam in years, but when he shows up at her work asking for a favor, she finds she can’t refuse. All Jude has to do is pick Liam up at a country train station—without telling anyone. So what if she has to lie to her fiancé? Jude is still committed to him and their imminent wedding, even if she and Liam were in love once. She owes him.
Cities in Flight
by James Blish, Betty Ballantine
Rating: 4.4 #ad
They Shall Have Stars, humankind has thoroughly explored the solar system, yet the dream of going even farther seems to have died in all but one man. His battle to realize his dream results in two momentous discoveries: anti-gravity and the secret of immortality. In A Life for the Stars, it is centuries later and antigravity generations have enabled whole cities to lift off the surface of the earth to become galactic wanderers. In Earthman, Come Home, the nomadic cities revert to barbarism and marauding rogue cities begin to pose a threat to all civilized worlds.
The Killing of Polly Carter
by Robert Thorogood
Rating: 4.4 #ad
When Polly Carter is found dead at the foot of a cliff, it looks like suicide, but DI Richard Poole is not convinced. Famous for her looks and wild party-girl lifestyle, her friends are adamant she would never have killed herself.
Seconded from London to the Caribbean island of Saint Marie, DI Poole is already at his wit’s end with the blinding heat. Unpicking the conflicting motives of a number of suspects and their stream of alibis is infuriating enough; a visit from his mother is the cherry on the cake.
An absolutely gripping crime thriller, The Killing of Polly Carter is perfect for fans of Midsomer Murders and Agatha Christie.
Murder in Plain English
by Michael Arntfield
Rating: 3.9 #ad
The book also analyzes the written work of killers, using a combination of machine-based linguistic patterning, predictive modeling, and symbolic interpretation, to make sense of the screeds of everyone from the Son of Sam and the Zodiac Killer to the Columbine attackers, the Unabomber, and the recent spate of mass shooters using social media as their preferred narrative platform.
They present a theoretical perspective of murder that is based on both the criminological evidence and written works. In addition, the authors examine famous literature that has dealt ingeniously with murder and its relationship with real crime, from the Greek tragedians to Truman Capote to modern-day productions such as Making a Murderer.
Hunter’s Quest
by Lynnea Lee
Rating: 4.4 #ad
MORGAN There’s a Xarc’n warrior stalking my land. Rhaz’k claims I’m “his,” but I belong to no one, especially not to a bossy purple alien with massive horns, sharp fangs, and huge muscles. But when the deadly space bugs invading Earth start showing up around my home, the overprotective warrior tosses me over his shoulder and carries me to his shuttle. Who does he think he is?
RHAZ’K Morgan calls me bossy, but her body scents of lust every time I’m near. I’ve been patient all season, giving her time to accept that she’s mine. She might scream at me now, but soon she’ll be screaming my name. Nothing will stop me from claiming my mate.
Guilty Knowledge
by Linda Griffin
Rating: 3.8 #ad
Detective Jesse Aaron has no leads in the murder of Rosa Logan when pretty blonde Sariah Brennan claims to have seen the killer – in a vision. Unfortunately the man she identifies is dead – or is he?Sariah is an unsophisticated small town girl, but her background and her motives are mysterious, and she seems to be hiding something. Jesse is increasingly convinced she has guilty knowledge of the crime, even as he finds himself more and more attracted to her. How can he unravel the web of secrets, without putting Sariah at risk, before the killer strikes again?
Wednesday’s Mystery eBooks
Rack, Ruin and Murder
by Ann Granger
Rating: 4.2 #ad
When old Monty Bickerstaffe discovers a dead body in his drawing room, it’s up to Inspector Jess Campbell to get to the bottom of the mystery.
Monty is a recluse, holed up in his crumbling manor house being generally unpleasant to everyone, even those relatives he actually likes. When his family and locals claim they’ve never seen the murder victim before, Campbell smells a lie.
From the Corner of His Eye
by Dean Koontz
Rating: 4.6 #ad
His birth was marked by wonder and tragedy. He sees beauty and terror beyond our deepest dreams. His story will change the way you see the world.
Bartholomew Lampion is born on a day of tragedy and terror that will mark his family forever. All agree that his unusual eyes are the most beautiful they have ever seen. On this same day, a thousand miles away, a ruthless man learns that he has a mortal enemy named Bartholomew. He embarks on a relentless search to find this enemy, a search that will consume his life. And a girl is born from a brutal rape, her destiny mysteriously linked to Barty and the man who stalks him.
Dwarvish Dirty Dozen Boxed Set
by Aaron D. Schneider, Michael Anderle
Rating: 5.0 #ad
War is a messy business and anyone who claims otherwise is trying to sell you something.
This is a tale of war and desperation, of grit and heroism. See what a batch of desperate dwarves can do when the chips are down.
The dwarvish legions, the Holt’Dwan, are familiar with this but these are strange times. The dead are rising from the earth in the freshly settled Ysgand Vale and the war just got a lot messier…
Fallout
by Carrie Stuart Parks
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Her carefully crafted life is about to be demolished.
After a difficult childhood, Samantha Williams craves simplicity: jigsaw puzzles, lectures at the library, and the students she adores in her role as an elementary school art teacher in the dusty farming community of LaCrosse, Washington.
But when an SUV crashes into the building where she teaches, her entire world is upended. Samantha manages to keep the children safe, but her car isn’t so lucky. Oddly, her purse—with her driver’s license, credit cards, and other identification—is missing from the wreckage.
The Darkest Sin
by D. V. Bishop
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Florence. Spring, 1537.
When Cesare Aldo investigates a report of intruders at a convent in the Renaissance city’s northern quarter, he enters a community divided by bitter rivalries and harbouring dark secrets.
When a man’s body is found deep inside the convent, stabbed more than two dozen times, the case becomes even more complicated. Unthinkable as it seems, all the evidence suggests one of the nuns must be the killer…
The Dying Party
by Jeff Kelland
Rating: 4.7 #ad
The former story line, starting a few years earlier in the prequel, focuses on two main characters. It is late in the 2040s, and Lizzie and Donnie are two of only six people left alive in a residential complex that had been built into the side of Newfoundland’s Gros Morne mountain in the 2030s, now the only piece of habitable land left above water in all of what was once eastern Canada. In the second story line we follow a group of humanity’s richest and most powerful, the super-elite, as they try to establish an off-Earth colony for themselves.
My Little Girl
by Shalini Boland
Rating: 4.2 #ad
Your daughter is missing. Did someone close to you take her?
She was meant to be with your husband. He didn’t tell you about the change of plans. Your mother-in-law says she never took her eyes off her. But the moment little Bea disappeared, she was on the phone to your husband’s ex-wife.
Things like this happen to other people. Careless people. Not you. But now you have to ask: your husband, your mother-in-law, the ex-wife – could one of them have taken your little girl?
BARRIE HILL REUNION
by Lisette Brodey
Rating: 4.1 #ad
Eight people. One weekend. Eight lives forever changed.
In the mid-1960s, at an elite college in the quaint town of Barrie Hill, Connecticut, a group of literary-minded students met regularly off-campus at the Vanessa Grand Hotel. Often late into the night, they would discuss the day’s news, analyze literature, philosophize, trade barbs, and socialize.
Twenty years after graduation, in 1986, the group’s founder, Clare Dreyser, organizes a weekend reunion. Seven former Barrie Hillers and one guest get together, eager to re-create an extraordinary time in their lives and reunite with old friends.
Tuesday’s Mystery eBooks
Read Herring Riddle
by C.K. Fyfe
Rating: 4.1 #ad
For Laura, house-sitting at an old Victorian mansion seems the perfect job. However, little does she know that the house holds an abundance of secrets, including a mysterious book that’s much more than it seems. When the owners’ cat goes missing, Laura accepts help from an unlikely source to find the feline. But in doing so, has she crossed the line between fantasy and reality?
Fallen
by Linda Castillo
Rating: 4.7 #ad
When a young woman is found murdered in a Painters Mill motel, Chief of Police Kate Burkholder is shocked to discover she once knew the victim. Rachael Schwartz was a charming but troubled Amish girl who left the fold years ago and fled Painters Mill. Why was she back in town? And who would kill her so brutally?
Kate remembers Rachael as the only girl who was as bad at being Amish as Kate was—and those parallels dog her. But the more Kate learns about Rachael’s life, the more she’s convinced that her dubious reputation was deserved…
Turbo Twenty-Three
by Janet Evanovich
Rating: 4.6 #ad
Larry Virgil skipped out on his latest court date after he was arrested for hijacking an eighteen-wheeler full of premium bourbon. Fortunately for bounty hunter Stephanie Plum, Larry is just stupid enough to attempt almost the exact same crime again. Only this time he flees the scene, leaving behind a freezer truck loaded with Bogart ice cream and a dead body – frozen solid and covered in chocolate and chopped pecans.
As fate would have it, Stephanie’s mentor and occasional employer, Ranger, needs her to go undercover at the Bogart factory to find out who’s putting their employees on ice and sabotaging the business…
The Jack Eldridge Story
by Dennis Higgins
Rating: 5.0 #ad
Retrofuturism is the past’s vision of the future. It’s what the people of yesterday thought today would look like.
The Chicago Cultural Center building was once the main branch of the Chicago Public Library. During major renovations, eight mysterious books were found behind a wall on the lower level. Nobody took much interest in the old books until they ended up on the desk of Dorothy Burnett, the Center’s main historian. She discovered that the books were written in the 1930s by an unfamiliar author named Jack Eldridge who penned detailed, retrofuturistic visions of what life would be like in the future.
The Nun’s Tale
by Candace Robb
Rating: 4.3 #ad
When young nun Joanna Calverley dies of a fever in the town of Beverley in the summer of 1365, she is buried quickly for fear of the plague. But a year later, Archbishop Thoresby learns of a woman who has arrived in York claiming to be the resurrected nun, talking of relic-trading and miracles. And death seems to ride in her wake.
The archbishop sends Owen Archer to retrace the woman’s journey, an investigation that leads him across the north from Leeds to Beverley to Scarborough. Along the way he encounters Geoffrey Chaucer, a spy for the king of England, who believes there is a connection between the nun’s troubles, renegade mercenaries, and the powerful Percy family.
A Special Kind of Evil
by Blaine L. Pardoe, Victoria R. Hester
Rating: 4.3 #ad
The New York Times bestselling coauthors uncover new information in the Colonial Parkway Murders of 1980s Virginia in this true crime investigation.
For four years a killer, or killers, stalked Virginia’s Tidewater region, carefully selecting victims and terrorizing the local community. Again and again, young people in the prime of their lives were targeted. But the pattern that stitched these killings together was more like a spider web of theory, intrigue, and mathematics. Then, mysteriously, the killing spree stopped. The unknown predator, or predators, who stalked the Colonial Parkway seemingly disappeared.
Cursed Prince
by C.N. Crawford
Rating: 4.3 #ad
My heart hasn’t beat in a thousand years. I haven’t uttered a word in prison, and the guards keep their distance. If they get too close, they die–until at last, my magic binds my soul to another. Unfortunately, the person destined to save me is a Night Elf–the enemy of my kind. And yet, when I see her in the cell across from mine, an ember starts to burn in my chest.
When we escape together down the palace walls, it’s almost like I can feel again…
Serpent’s Point
by Kate Ellis
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Serpent’s Point in South Devon is the focus of local legends. The large house on the headland is shrouded in an ancient tale of evil, and when a woman is found strangled on the coastal path, DI Wesley Peterson is called to investigate.
The woman had been house-sitting at Serpent’s Point and Wesley is surprised to discover that she was conducting an investigation into unsolved missing person cases. Could these enquires have led to her murder?