Mysteries
Tuesday’s Mystery eBooks
Vampires and Villains
by Elizabeth Pantley
Rating: 4.6 #ad
Paige and her joyful Aunt Glo have learned that the home they inherited comes with a magical library. They put together a book club group of loveable kooks to explore the magic. They’ve recovered from their first book journey, and they all agree on their next book which takes place on a cruise ship bound for Hawaii. Problem is, they were so excited about the cruising idea that they didn’t read the entire blurb on the back of the book. (“It was entirely too long,” explains Zell.) Once on the ship, they meet a charming and likeable man who blends seamlessly into their motley group. Too bad they don’t know why he’s so scarce during the day but shows up to join them every evening for dinner, drinks, and a show.
Check out:
(Magical Mystery Book Club)
A Stranger in the Kingdom
by Howard Frank Mosher
Rating: 4.4 #ad
This novel of murder and its aftermath in a small Vermont town in the 1950s is “reminiscent of To Kill a Mockingbird . . . Absorbing” (The New York Times).
In Kingdom County, Vermont, the town’s new Presbyterian minister is a black man, an unsettling fact for some of the locals. When a French-Canadian woman takes refuge in his parsonage—and is subsequently murdered—suspicion immediately falls on the clergyman. While his thirteen-year-old son struggles in the shadow of the town’s accusations, and his older son, a lawyer, fights to defend him, a father finds himself on trial more for who he is than for what he might have done.
JULIA PRIMA
by Alison Morton
Rating: 4.4 #ad
“You should have trusted me. You should have given me a choice.”
AD 370, Roman frontier province of Noricum. Staying faithful to the Roman gods in a Christian empire can be lethal. Half-divorced Julia Bacausa is condemned to an emotional desert and a forced marriage, Lucius Apulius barely clings onto his posting in a military backwater. Strongly drawn to each other, they are soon separated, but Julia is determined not to lose the only man she will love.
Neither wholly married nor wholly divorced, Julia is trapped in the power struggle between the Christian church and her pagan ruler father.
Tribune Lucius Apulius’s life is blighted by his determination not to convert to Christianity even to save his cherished career. Stripped of his command in Britannia, he’s demoted to the backwater of Noricum – and encounters Julia.
Check out:
(Roma Nova Thriller Series)
The Line
by Rachel Lynch
Rating: 4.4 #ad
The truth can have deadly consequences…
On a sunny morning, when the Mediterranean is dead calm, Captain Paul Thomas embarks on a dive to the wreck of the Zenobia, off the coast of Larnaca, Cyprus. Within hours, he has taken his final, gasping breath in an accident below the surface. A new Royal Military Police liaison is required to pick up on his work, and Major Helen Scott gets the assignment.
It turns out Paul Thomas had rattled cages during his current case – four serving soldiers are in custody accused of the leaking of state intelligence. If proven, the scandal would rock the foundation of the armed forces.
A Child Alone with Strangers
by Philip Fracassi
Rating: 4.7 #ad
When young Henry Thorne is kidnapped and held prisoner in a remote farmhouse surrounded by miles of forest, he finds himself connecting with a strange force living in the woods – using that bond to wreak havoc against his captors. Unknown to the boy, however, is that this ancient being has its own reasons for wanting the interlopers gone – there is something hidden beneath the house, tucked away in the dark, damp root cellar . . . waiting for its return.
The Line Between
by Tosca Lee
Rating: 4.6 #ad
When Wynter Roth finally escapes from New Earth, a self-contained doomsday cult on the American prairie, she emerges into a world poised on the brink of madness as a mysterious outbreak of rapid early onset dementia spreads across the nation.
As Wynter struggles to start over in a world she’s been taught to regard as evil, she finds herself face-to-face with the apocalypse she’s feared all her life—until the night her sister shows up at her doorstep with a set of medical samples. That night, Wynter learns there’s something far more sinister at play: that the prophet they once idolized has been toying with the fate of mankind, and that these samples are key to understanding the disease.
The House of Wolves
by James Patterson, Mike Lupica
Rating: 4.9 #ad
BRAND NEW RELEASE at REGULAR PRICE
James Patterson and Mike Lupica are the thriller dream team! Jenny Wolf’s murdered father leaves her in charge of a billion-dollar empire—and a family more ruthless than Succession’s Roys and Yellowstone’s Duttons.
The Wolfs, the most powerful family in California, have a new head–thirty-six-year-old former high school teacher Jenny Wolf.
That means Jenny now runs the prestigious San Francisco Tribune. She also controls the legendary pro football team, the Wolves. And she has a murdered father to avenge—if she can survive the killers all around her. An unforgettable family drama by two writers at the top of their craft.
Monday’s Mystery eBooks
Holly Holmes Cozy Culinary Collection
by K.E. O’Connor
Rating: 4.5 #ad
With its stunning turrets and beautiful rose gardens, I always thought Audley Castle was perfect, set in the idyllic English village of Audley St. Mary. It’s a place I love to call home. But behind the trimmed hedgerows, stately gardens, and birdsong, a killer is waiting…
Book 1 – Cream Caramel & Murder
Book 2 – Chocolate Swirls & Murder
Book 3 – Vanilla Whip & Murder
Book 4 – Cherry Cream & Murder
World Without End
by Ken Follett
Rating: 4.7 #ad
World Without End takes place in the same town of Kingsbridge, two centuries after the townspeople finished building the exquisite Gothic cathedral that was at the heart of The Pillars of the Earth. The cathedral and the priory are again at the center of a web of love and hate, greed and pride, ambition and revenge, but this sequel stands on its own. This time the men and women of an extraordinary cast of characters find themselves at a crossroads of new ideas—about medicine, commerce, architecture, and justice. In a world where proponents of the old ways fiercely battle those with progressive minds, the intrigue and tension quickly reach a boiling point against the devastating backdrop of the greatest natural disaster ever to strike the human race—the Black Death.
Red Mist
by Patricia Cornwell
Rating: 4.4 #ad
On her quest to find out exactly what happened to her former deputy chief, Jack Fielding, murdered six months before, Scarpetta drives to the Georgia Prison for Women to meet a convicted sex offender and the mother of a vicious and diabolically brilliant killer. Against the advice of her FBI criminal intelligence agent husband, Benton Wesley, Scarpetta is determined to hear this woman out.
Scarpetta has both personal and professional reasons to learn more about a string of grisly killings: the murder of a Savannah family years earlier, a young woman on death row, and then other inexplicable deaths that begin to occur at a breathtaking pace..
The Jamie Austen Thrillers Boxset
by Terry Toler
Rating: 4.6 #ad
Award Winning Series. The addictive page turning saga of Jamie Austen and Alex Halee spy thrillers are available in boxset for the first time ever. (Books 1-5 in one collection.)
Action packed. Suspenseful. Fast paced. From Beginning to End. They must be good. They’ve been number #1 Amazon international best sellers in 10 different countries.
Book One: Save The Girls
Book Two: The Ingenue
Book Three: Saving Sara (Finalist 2021 Best Book Award Thriller/Suspense)
Book Four: Save The Queen
Book Five: No Girl Left Behind
Mastermind
by Andrew Mayne
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Dr. Theo Cray and FBI agent Jessica Blackwood confront a cataclysmic conspiracy in a pulse-quickening thriller by the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Naturalist.
A mysterious electrical storm plunges Manhattan into darkness. As a strange, smothering fog rolls in, all communication crashes. In the blink of an eye, the island seems to vanish into a void…
Daughter of the Morning Star
by Craig Johnson
Rating: 4.7 #ad
A new novel in the beloved New York Times bestselling Longmire series.
When Lolo Long’s niece Jaya begins receiving death threats, Tribal Police Chief Long calls on Absaroka County Sheriff Walt Longmire along with Henry Standing Bear as lethal backup. Jaya “Longshot” Long is the phenom of the Lame Deer Lady Stars High School basketball team and is following in the steps of her older sister, who disappeared a year previously, a victim of the scourge of missing Native Woman in Indian Country. Lolo hopes that having Longmire involved might draw some public attention to the girl’s plight, but with this maneuver she also inadvertently places the good sheriff in a one-on-one with the deadliest adversary he has ever faced in both this world and the next.
The Village
by Caroline Mitchell
Rating: 4.2 #ad
Ten years ago, the Harper family disappeared. Their deserted cottage was left with the water running, the television playing cartoons, the oven ready for baking. The doors were locked from the inside.
Overnight, the sleepy village of Nighbrook became notorious as the scene of the unsolved mystery of the decade, an epicentre for ghoulish media speculation.
For crime journalist Naomi, solving the case has turned into an obsession. So now, with Ivy Cottage finally listed for sale, it’s her chance to mount an investigation like no other. And her husband and stepdaughter don’t really need to know what happened in their new home… do they?
Revived and Rutted
by V.T. Bonds
Rating: 4.9 #ad
Stolen away from my idyllic life, I face horrors no living creature should ever have to suffer. At the hands of evil scientists, I find hell on Mai’CuS… as well as in the afterlife. If only they’d let me stay dead. Instead, they brought me back a completely different person.
One who won’t relent, not even when a gigantic, alien alpha with determined eyes and insistent claws demands my submission.
Will he break through my mania, or will my new fury destroy our chance at happily ever after?
Check out:
(Warrior Elite Mysteries)
Brightness Reef
by David Brin
Rating: 4.2 #ad
Centuries ago, the Buyur race abandoned Jijo. Now off-limits to settlers, it’s warded by guardian machines who will protect the planet until the Institutes of the Five Galaxies declare Jijo ready – in another million years – for new civilization.
But mere laws and guardians can’t keep out the desperate. Clandestine bands of “sooners” have sneaked down to the lonely planet. Six intelligent races—all refugees—have bickered . . . then built a new society in the wilds of Jijo, hidden beneath forest canopies. Together they live in harmony—and in fear of the day their illegal colony will be discovered and judgment from the Five Galaxies will rain down upon them.
Sunday’s Mystery eBooks
Twisted Twenty-Six
by Janet Evanovich
Rating: 4.7 #ad
Grandma Mazur has decided to get married again – this time to a local gangster named Jimmy Rosolli. If Stephanie has her doubts about this marriage, she doesn’t have to worry for long, because the groom drops dead of a heart attack 45 minutes after saying, “I do.”
A sad day for Grandma Mazur turns into something far more dangerous when Jimmy’s former “business partners” are convinced that his new widow is keeping the keys to a financial windfall all to herself. But the one thing these wise guys didn’t count on was the widow’s bounty hunter granddaughter, who’ll do anything to save her.
Check out:
(Stephanie Plum Mysteries)
The 6:20 Man
by David Baldacci
Rating: 4.4 #ad
A cryptic murder pulls a former soldier turned financial analyst deep into the corruption and menace that prowl beneath the opulent world of finance, in this #1 New York Times bestselling thriller from David Baldacci.
Every day without fail, Travis Devine puts on a cheap suit, grabs his faux-leather briefcase, and boards the 6:20 commuter train to Manhattan, where he works as an entry-level analyst at the city’s most prestigious investment firm. In the mornings, he gazes out the train window at the lavish homes of the uberwealthy, dreaming about joining their ranks. In the evenings, he listens to the fiscal news on his phone, already preparing for the next grueling day in the cutthroat realm of finance. Then one morning Devine’s tedious routine is shattered by an anonymous email: She is dead.
Wizard Wind
by Dee Maltby
Rating: 4.2 #ad
Commanded to the far north to capture his friend, the rebel Lar Tor, he longs instead to be in Larlingarde. There, his Forest Lady love, Laraynia, has become heir to the Grand Lar, using all her powers to thwart the evil wizard who strives to kill her uncle and take her prisoner. Beneban, his magic sword and his troops fight many foes in his quest to rejoin her, but even their combined magics may fall short. In her darkest hour, Laraynia finds a possible ally in an enemy enchantress. Can she win the aid of the mysterious vardraken queen and her winged, ice-breathing beasts?
Check out:
(The Magic of Larlion Mysteries)
The Raven Song
by Luanne G. Smith
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Forever untangling the branches of her strange family tree, Edwina Blackwood is at a turning point. Her parents’ disappearances still strike her as unaccountably odd. Her sister’s questionable life and untimely death have left her shaken. Spellfire has transformed her home and livelihood to ash. And now a devious stalker is on her trail. With supernatural detective Ian Cameron by her side, Edwina can’t get out of London fast enough.
Gaining safe passage, she finds refuge with Sir Henry Elvanfoot, famed wizard of the north, and is promised protection from ill-aimed curses. But in this unfamiliar city of fair folk and witches, where the veil between Earth and the Otherworld is about to be lifted, something is amiss. How else to explain Edwina’s sudden prophetic visions?
The Wife Before
by Shanora Williams
Rating: 4.1 #ad
Samira Wilder has never had it easy, and when her latest lousy job goes south, things only promise to get harder. Until she unexpectedly meets a man who will change her life forever. Renowned pro golfer Roland Graham is wealthy, handsome, and caring, and Samira is dazzled. Best of all, he seems to understand her better than anyone ever has. And though their relationship moves a bit fast, when Roland proposes, Samira accepts. She even agrees to relocate to his secluded Colorado mansion. After all, there’s nothing to keep her in Miami, and the mansion clearly makes him happy. Soon, they are married amid a media firestorm, and Samira can’t wait to make a fresh start—as the second Mrs. Graham . . .
Triptych
by Karin Slaughter
Rating: 4.5 #ad
“Crime fiction at its finest.” – Michael Connelly
From Atlanta’s wealthiest suburbs to its stark inner-city housing projects, a killer has crossed the boundaries of wealth and race. And the people who are chasing him must cross those boundaries, too. Among them is Michael Ormewood, a veteran detective whose marriage is hanging by a thread—and whose arrogance and explosive temper are threatening his career. And Angie Polaski, a beautiful vice cop who was once Michael’ s lover before she became his enemy. But unbeknownst to both of them, another player has entered the game: a loser ex-con who has stumbled upon the killer’s trail in the most coincidental of ways – and who may be the key to breaking the case wide open.
A Truth to Lie For
by Anne Perry
Rating: 4.5 #ad
“A novel that is at times unbearably suspenseful . . . pushes the envelope and succeeds on nearly every level.” – Bookreporter
It is the summer of 1934, and Hitler is nearing the summit of supreme power in Germany, his eyes set on European domination. When Britain’s MI6 gets word that a pair of German scientists have made breakthroughs in germ warfare, they send Elena Standish on a dangerous mission to get one of them out of Germany before he’s forced to share his knowledge and its devastating power with Hitler’s elite.
Body from the Scottish Castle Murder
by Stephanie Parker McKean
Rating: 4.0 #ad
Comedy and chaos ensue when Rik Patience—who has no patience—takes a ghost hunting trip to Scotland with her colorful friend, Hooter. Rik doesn’t believe in ghosts. Hooter probably doesn’t either—but she wants to be sure. When Rik witnesses a murder, she is stalked by the killer, who can’t take the chance that she will recognize him.
Hooter’s ghost hunting friends resent Rik and her disbelief in paranormal events. She can survive their dislike, but can she survive the constant attempts on her life? Meanwhile, Hooter – who is unaware of the animosity between Rik and her ghost hunting friends – proves that no one is too old for love when she falls for a Scottish pastor.
Something to Hide
by Elizabeth George
Rating: 4.4 #ad
When a police detective is taken off life support after falling into a coma, only an autopsy reveals the murderous act that precipitated her death. She’d been working on a special task force within North London’s Nigerian community, and Acting Detective Superintendent Thomas Lynley is assigned to the case, which has far-reaching cultural associations that have nothing to do with life as he knows it. In his pursuit of a killer determined to remain hidden, he’s assisted by Detective Sergeants Barbara Havers and Winston Nkata.
Check out:
(Inspector Lynley Mysteries)
Fortune’s Call
by Frank Nissen
Rating: 4.5 #ad
What begins as a high-spirited jaunt west to claim easy riches becomes a grim race for survival. Pegg is only 13 when he and his father set off for the gold fields of California. But by the standards of the 1840’s, he’s on the verge of manhood. Unfortunately, the third person in their party, Fred Hoyt, is a city slicker who is of little help on the trail. Worse, he proves to be unreliable, with a dangerous habit of making rash decisions.
Even as Pegg struggles to fulfill his father’s dream of a better life for their family, Hoyt’s every move jeopardizes his chances. Can Pegg muster the courage and perseverance to not just survive, but to succeed in the lawless frontier?
Memory’s Legion Collection
by James S. A. Corey
Rating: 4.7 #ad
On Mars, a scientist experiments with a new engine that will one day become the drive that fuels humanity’s journey into the stars. On an asteroid station, a group of prisoners are oblivious to the catastrophe that awaits them. On a future Earth beset by overpopulation, pollution, and poverty, a crime boss desperately seeks to find a way off planet. On an alien world, a human family struggles to establish a colony and make a new home.
All these stories and more are featured in this unmissable collection of short fiction set in the hardscrabble world of The Expanse.
Chaos
by Tom O’Neill
Rating: 4.7 #ad
A journalist’s twenty-year fascination with the Manson murders leads to shocking new revelations about the FBI’s involvement in this riveting reassessment of an infamous case in American history.
Over two grim nights in Los Angeles, the young followers of Charles Manson murdered seven people, including the actress Sharon Tate, then eight months pregnant. With no mercy and seemingly no motive, the Manson Family followed their leader’s every order — their crimes lit a flame of paranoia across the nation, spelling the end of the sixties. Manson became one of history’s most infamous criminals, his name forever attached to an era when charlatans mixed with prodigies, free love was as possible as brainwashing, and utopia — or dystopia — was just an acid trip away.
Fingerprints of the Gods
by Graham Hancock
Rating: 4.7 #ad
“A fancy piece of historical sleuthing . . . intriguing and entertaining and sturdy enough to give a long pause for thought.”—Kirkus Reviews
In Fingerprints of the Gods, Hancock embarks on a worldwide quest to put together all the pieces of the vast and fascinating jigsaw of mankind’s hidden past. In ancient monuments as far apart as Egypt’s Great Sphinx, the strange Andean ruins of Tihuanaco, and Mexico’s awe-inspiring Temples of the Sun and Moon, he reveals not only the clear fingerprints of an as-yet-unidentified civilization of remote antiquity, but also startling evidence of its vast sophistication, technological advancement, and evolved scientific knowledge.
Saturday’s Mystery eBooks
Christmas Card Murder
by Leslie Meier
Rating: 4.6 #ad
It’s time to deck the halls – with a murder mystery . . .
In the midst of holiday home renovations, part-time reporter Lucy Stone unwraps a murder mystery decades in the making when she discovers an old Christmas card with a nasty message inside . . .
The case may be colder than a New England Christmas, but Lucy’s determined to sort it out before Santa comes to town.
House Beside the River
by David Burnett
Rating: 4.4 #ad
A coming-of-age novel with a strong heroine, a sweet love story, and a suspenseful struggle between good and evil
Running from vile rumors and merciless ridicule, thirteen-year-old Nicole Beaumont flees her home in Parsons Valley, Georgia. In the farming community where she lived, almost any transgression could be tolerated, excused, or overlooked, any transgression, save one that smacked of sex, and, according to rumor, that was exactly what she had done while lying with Chris Miller on the bank of Parsons Pond. It was a lie, the worst part at any rate, but Chris̶ refused to deny the rumor. Chris, the boy who had been her best-friend-for-life, her soul mate, the one with whom she was supposed to spend her life, he allowed everyone to believe the rumor to be true…
“This is one of those books that you never want it to end! It had me hooked right from the first page and I spent all day reading it because I just couldn’t put it down! I will definitely be reading all of this author’s books!” by Amazon Customer
The End of October
by Lawrence Wright
Rating: 4.3 #ad
At an internment camp in Indonesia, forty-seven people are pronounced dead with acute hemorrhagic fever. When epidemiologist Henry Parsons travels there on behalf of the World Health Organization to investigate, what he finds will have staggering repercussions. Halfway across the globe, the deputy director of U.S. Homeland Security scrambles to mount a response to the rapidly spreading pandemic leapfrogging around the world, which she believes may be the result of an act of biowarfare. And a rogue experimenter in man-made diseases is preparing his own terrifying solution…
The Patient’s Secret
by Loreth Anne White
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Secrets worth dying – and killing—for, in a novel of suspense inspired by a horrific true crime by Washington Post and Amazon Charts bestselling author Loreth Anne White.
When the battered body of a female jogger is found beneath the cliffs of an idyllic coastal community, these perfect neighbors suddenly don’t seem so perfect…
Lily Bradley is a respected psychotherapist married to a distinguished professor. They live in a dream house with their two children in close-knit Story Cove. Lily lives a well-ordered life. Or so it seems. As a therapist, she knows everyone keeps things hidden. Even her.
The Theodora Duology
by james Conroyd Martin
Rating: 5.0 #ad
Theodora: actress, prostitute, mistress, feminist. And Byzantine Empress of the sixth-century Roman world. Stephen: handsome Syrian boy, wizard’s apprentice, palace eunuch. And Secretary to the Empress. How does this unlikely pair become such allies that one day Empress Theodora asks Stephen to write her biography?
Fortune’s Child is “a meticulously researched historical account presented in the form of a thrilling political drama.” – Kirkus Reviews Too Soon the Night is “a gorgeous tapestry of impeccable research and intricate world-building. A must-have for any fan of ancient-world historical fiction.” –Kate Quinn, bestselling author
Conversations with Rabbi Small
by Harry Kemelman
Rating: 4.3 #ad
As he counsels a woman considering conversion to Judaism, Rabbi Small takes a break from murder mysteries to discuss the mysteries of his religion.
In Conversations with Rabbi Small, the rabbi finds himself taking a well-deserved vacation at a Jewish retreat in the mountains, where he reads, plays cards, and furthers his studies, which have been languishing for too long. When the rabbi’s wife is called back to the city to deal with an illness in the family, the rabbi meets a curious young woman in the midst of a life-changing moment.
Fire From the Sky
by N.C. Reed
Rating: 4.7 #ad
Clay Sanders and company have not had the easiest time since the lights went out. Granted, much of their troubles are self-inflicted, but a lot of them were brought straight to their door by crooks and strongarm types in equal measure.
Things are peaceful for a change around the Sanders’ Farms, however, and Clay barely knows what to do with himself. There are new trainees being brought up to standard, young women who have already been victimized once and have sworn to never have it happen again. There are gardens and greenhouses bearing fruit, which means as many hands as possible gathering that bounty and socking it away for winter. It will soon be harvest, which means gathering silage and hay from over two thousand acres of land. So while things may be peaceful at the moment, there is plenty to actually do. But nothing lasts forever.