Mysteries
Friday’s Mystery eBooks
A Body on the Beach
by Dee MacDonald
Rating: 4.3 #ad
Kate Palmer thought spending the day at Tinworthy’s annual summer party would involve sea air, sunshine and Cornish cream cake – how very wrong she was! When Kate goes for a cliff-top walk she is shocked to spot the body of Sienna Stone – Cornwall’s biggest gossip – on the sandy beach below.
Rumours swirl around the close-knit community and all eyes are on Kate. Half the village saw her arguing with Sienna at the party earlier that day. It was the usual bickering between neighbours, but when Kate finds herself in the frame can she – and her new husband Woody Forrest – solve the puzzling death and clear her name?
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(A Kate Palmer Mysteries)
Niergel Chronicles – Last Hope
by D. I. Hennessey
Rating: 4.8 #ad
An ancient mystery… A skeptical genius… Powerful evil ancestors… A dangerous underworld Crime Syndicate… A horde of disembodied offspring of fallen angels who threaten the entire world!
A renowned scientist was orphaned at age eight and has grown to adulthood with no knowledge of his own ancestry. When he is awakened by an unusual visitor with an extremely urgent message, it leads to events that topple everything he has believed about reality.
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(Niergel Chronicles Mysteries)
Fatally Flaky
by Diane Mott Davidson
Rating: 4.6 #ad
It’s been a long, rainy summer for Goldy Schulz, who is engaged in planning wedding receptions for what seems to be all of Aspen Meadow. It’s bad enough that Billie Attenborough, the bride from hell, has changed her menu six times and the event date twice. Now she wants to move the location to the Gold Gulch Spa just a scant two days before tying the knot to her doctor fiancé.
Then Doc Finn, beloved local physician and the best friend of Goldy’s godfather, Jack, is killed when his car tumbles into a ravine. At least that’s what appears to have happened. But Jack thinks Doc was murdered because of the research he was doing at the spa—allegations that are confirmed when Jack himself is attacked.
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(Goldy Schulz Mysteries)
Wicked Burn
by Rebecca Zanetti
Rating: 4.7 #ad
If you love the Dark Protectors, these wicked hot Realm Enforcers are for you!
Simone Brightston knows she can beat the rap her enemies are pinning on her. An Irish witch is nobody’s fool, and she didn’t get to her position on the high council without serious power. But her cousins want her to hide out–and they somehow convinced her arch nemesis to play getaway driver.
Of all the men she’s known, Nikolaj Veis is the hardest to intimidate. With his demon-dark eyes and his inscrutable beauty, he’s as desirable as he is dangerous.
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(Realm Enforcers Mysteries)
Classified
by Fern Michaels
Rating: 4.6 #ad
The riches that mean most to Teresa “Toots” Loudenberry are the loving friends and family she’s accumulated over the course of a life well lived. And now that her daughter, Abby, has married her beau Chris and settled down near Toots in Charleston, life is even more satisfying than the delicious pralines sold at Toots’s bakery, The Sweetest Thing.
Abby isn’t the only one enjoying a little romance. Toots’s friendship with Dr. Phil Becker has grown unexpectedly close . . . and that brings both joy and complications. As a distraction, Toots throws herself into helping Abby and Chris open an animal rescue shelter on their estate.
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(Godmothers Series)
The Family Remains
by Lisa Jewell
Rating: 4.3 #ad
Early one morning on the shore of the Thames, DCI Samuel Owusu is called to the scene of a gruesome discovery. When Owusu sends the evidence for examination, he learns the bones are connected to a cold case that left three people dead on the kitchen floor in a Chelsea mansion thirty years ago.
Rachel Rimmer has also received a shock—news that her husband, Michael, has been found dead in the cellar of his house in France. All signs point to an intruder, and the French police need her to come urgently to answer questions about Michael and his past that she very much doesn’t want to answer.
The White Tower
by Michael Wisehart
Rating: 4.5 #ad
They are feared, hated, hunted down, and destroyed… … and yet they are mankind’s last hope.
For a thousand years magic has been banished throughout the Five Kingdoms, and those caught wielding it are rounded up and taken to the White Tower. They are never heard from again.
TY knows he’s different. And when the bounty hunters arrive in the quiet city of Easthaven, his family is forced to reveal the shocking truth about his magical bloodline, a secret that threatens not only his life, but the lives of everyone around him…including LYESSA. As the daughter of an overlord, and a skilled fighter, Lyessa will one day be expected to rule. However, when an Ahvari witch hires a tribe of Northmen to capture Ty, the two find themselves in the middle of a war they didn’t know existed…
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(The Aldoran Chronicles)
Thursday’s Mystery eBooks
Death by Hot Apple
by Alex Erickson
Rating: 4.6 #ad
With autumn in full swing and Thanksgiving on the way, Krissy’s supplying cider and her staff is manning the apple-bobbing booth at a town event. But then a patron dunks his head in – and doesn’t come back up.
It soon becomes clear that Krissy’s brew wasn’t to blame. But with her policeman boyfriend looking to make detective, she can’t help being drawn into the investigation. The victim was notorious for harassing not only her own bookstore but the library and the school for promoting supposedly scandalous literature – before someone censored him permanently. Now, Krissy will have to check out a stack of suspects to find a killer who’s rotten to the core . . .
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(A Bookstore Cafe Mysteries)
All That Lives
by James Oswald
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Two victims. Nothing connects them, except that someone buried them in the exact same way. Seven hundred years apart.
An archaeological dig at the old South Leith parish kirkyard has turned up a mysterious body dating from around seven hundred years ago. Some suspect that this gruesome discovery is a sacrifice, placed there for a specific purpose.
Then a second body is unearthed. This victim went missing only thirty years ago – but the similarities between her death and the ancient woman’s suggest something even more disturbing.
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(A Bookstore Cafe Mysteries)
A Second Helping of Crazy
by John D. Ottini
Rating: 4.0 #ad
A Second Helping of Crazy
In A Second Helping of Crazy, author John D. Ottini has collected thirteen of his most memorable stories in one volume. Three stories were previously chosen as Finalists in the annual Royal Palm Literary Awards competition, and the rest are a selection of the author’s personal favorites.
The Shadow of the Gods
by John Gwynne
Rating: 4.6 #ad
THE GREATEST SAGAS ARE WRITTEN IN BLOOD.
A century has passed since the gods fought and drove themselves to extinction. Now only their bones remain, promising great power to those brave enough to seek them out.
As whispers of war echo across the land of Vigrid, fate follows in the footsteps of three warriors: a huntress on a dangerous quest, a noblewoman pursuing battle fame, and a thrall seeking vengeance among the mercenaries known as the Bloodsworn.
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(The Bloodsworn Trilogy)
Into the Whirlwind
by Kat Martin
Rating: 4.6 #ad
Megan O’Brien is at her wit’s end. Her three-year-old son has been kidnapped. No police, says the ransom demand. Fearing for her son’s life, Meg has no choice but to turn to her former bodyguard, Dirk Reynolds, who’s now a PI with Brodie Operations Security Services, Inc.
Dirk’s never forgiven Meg for the way she left him after their brief affair. But with bounty hunter Luke Brodie on his side, Dirk knows he’s got to help Meg rescue her son.
Blowback
by L.T. Ryan
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Riley “Bear” Logan returns in Blowback, the latest installment in the Jack Noble thriller world.
While recuperating on the tranquil island of St. Lucia, Bear’s world is turned upside down when he is framed for murder. A nemesis returns offering immunity…
In exchange for a favor. Get in. Get the package. Get out. Easy as that. But nothing is ever that simple for Bear, and he soon finds himself in the center of a web of corruption and deceit as the operation threatens to suffocate him.
Lying in Ruins
by Jami Gray
Rating: 3.8 #ad
In a world gone to hell, better to choose the devil you know…
The world didn’t end in fire and explosions, instead after an intensifying panic of disease, food shortages, wild weather, and floundering economies, it collapsed like slow falling dominoes, until what remained of humanity battles for survival in a harsh new reality.
As a ‘Hound, Charity puts the lethal survival skills learned at an early age to use by sniffing out pivotal secrets for one of the most powerful leaders on what remains of the west coast. Her work is deceptive, deadly, and best performed solo, but when her path crosses with a member of the notorious mercenary group known as Fate’s Vultures, she’s faced with a less than stellar choice – join the sexy as hell Ruin in a mockery of teamwork or waste her valuable time shaking him loose.
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(The Collapse Mysteries)
The Secrets She Buried
by Neil Turner
Rating: 4.8 #ad
Jill Clark is determined to hold a hospital accountable for the death of her mother, who died during the chaotic early days of the COVID pandemic. Her death was attributed to the virus. But was COVID the cause of death?
Adamant that hospital staff essentially murdered her mother through sheer negligence, Jill hires Tony Valenti and Penelope Brooks to sue the hospital. A fissure soon opens in Tony and Penelope’s relationship as the case plunges them into a bewildering maze of explosive secrets that hint at alternative explanations – revelations that unleash hidden dangers. Did Rose Clark succumb to COVID, or was a murder committed under cover of the pandemic?
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(The Tony Valenti Thrillers Mysteries)
Wednesday’s Mystery eBooks
Formals, Fortune Cookies & Fraud
by Catherine Bruns
Rating: 4.8 #ad
Ten years before Sally Muccio became the owner of a a novelty cookie shop in Western New York, she had other things on her mind…namely, the senior prom. With a lovely pink gown, the enchanting fortune theme and handsome beau Mike Donovan by her side, Sal’s got all the necessary ingredients for a perfect evening.
How did everything manage to go so wrong?
Small Town Danger Collection
by Multiple Authors
Rating: 5.0 #ad
10 Full-Length Romantic Suspense & Mystery Novels
More than lives are in danger when small town tranquility meets heart pounding suspense in this collection of ten brand-new novels from some of the genre’s most explosive romantic suspense authors!
Join Mary Alford, Liz Bradford, June Foster, Therese Heckenkamp, Cynthia Hickey, Gina Holder, Edie James, Ann Malley, Carol Nemeth and Colleen Snyder as mystery, suspense, and faith combine to keep you on the edge of your seat until the very end.
Wild Fire
by Ann Cleeves
Rating: 4.6 #ad
The betrayal of those closest burns most of all . . .
Hoping for a fresh start, an English family moves to the remote Shetland islands, eager to give their autistic son a better life.
But when a young nanny’s body is found hanging in the barn beside their home, rumors of her affair with the husband spread like wildfire. As suspicion and resentment of the family blazes in the community, Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez is called in to investigate. He knows it will mean his boss, Willow Reeves, returning to run the investigation, and confronting their complex relationship.
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(Shetland Island Mysteries)
Enemy
by K. Eason
Rating: 3.9 #ad
On the border of the Illhari Republic… Snowdenaelikk, conjuror and heretic, lives on the edge of the Republic–and the law–as a cartel enforcer. Then a smuggling deal goes bad, a village burns, and she finds herself on the wrong side of a legion patrol.
Veiko Nyrikki is an outlaw and an outlander, just trying to survive……until his sense of honor–and his ax–get between Snow and the legion. Now he’s got new enemies and new allies and survival’s gotten complicated. But Snow and Veiko soon discover the legion is the least of their problems.
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(On the Bones of Gods Mysteries)
Riverwoman’s Dragon
by Candace Robb
Rating: 4.5 #ad
When the wise woman Magda Digby is suspected of murder, Owen Archer sets out to prove her innocence in this intricately plotted medieval mystery.
May, 1375. Owen Archer returns from London to find York in chaos. While the citizens are living in terror of the pestilence which is spreading throughout the land, a new physician has arrived, whipping up fear and suspicion against traditional healers and midwives. With the backing of the new archbishop, he is especially hostile towards Magda Digby, the wise woman who has helped and healed the people of York for many years. At the same time, Magda is uneasy about the arrival of two long-lost kinsfolk. Though they say they are seeking her help, she senses a hidden agenda.
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(An Owen Archer Mysteries)
My Heart Is a Chainsaw
by Stephen Graham Jones
Rating: 4.1 #ad
“Some girls just don’t know how to die…”
Shirley Jackson meets Friday the 13th in My Heart Is a Chainsaw, written by the New York Times bestselling author of The Only Good Indians Stephen Graham Jones, called “a literary master” by National Book Award winner Tananarive Due and “one of our most talented living writers” by Tommy Orange.
Alma Katsu calls My Heart Is a Chainsaw “a homage to slasher films that also manages to defy and transcend genre.” On the surface is a story of murder in small-town America. But beneath is its beating heart: a biting critique of American colonialism, Indigenous displacement, and gentrification, and a heartbreaking portrait of a broken young girl who uses horror movies to cope with the horror of her own life.
Adrift
by Brian Murphy
Rating: 4.3 #ad
A story of tragedy at sea where every desperate act meant life or death
The small ship making the Liverpool-to-New York trip in the early months of 1856 carried mail, crates of dry goods, and more than one hundred passengers, mostly Irish emigrants. Suddenly an iceberg tore the ship asunder and five lifeboats were lowered. As four lifeboats drifted into the fog and icy water, never to be heard from again, the last boat wrenched away from the sinking ship with a few blankets, some water and biscuits, and thirteen souls. Only one would survive. This is his story.
Using Nye’s firsthand descriptions and later newspaper accounts, ship’s logs, assorted diaries, and family archives, Brian Murphy chronicles the horrific nine days that thirteen people suffered adrift on the cold gray Atlantic.
The Mother-in-Law
by Kiersten Modglin
Rating: 4.3 #ad
There’s something strange about Loren’s new mother-in-law…
When Loren meets Jack, she’s sure he’s the man she’s been waiting for—a perfect husband and a father for her young daughter. Shortly after their wedding, their plans to start a life together are put on hold when the couple receives word that Jack’s father has died.
In an effort to appease her new husband, Loren invites her mother-in-law, Coralee, to stay with them while she grieves. When strange things begin to occur just after her arrival, Loren questions how much she knows about the woman she invited into her home.
Daddy Protector
by Jacqueline Diamond
Rating: 4.3 #ad
He’s a wild and crazy guy—but dead serious about saving a child’s life.
Detective Hale Crandall’s party lifestyle annoys Connie, his beautiful, prickly next-door neighbor, until he races into a burning building to rescue the little boy she’s trying to adopt. She’s grateful but cautious, he’s struggling against a newfound yearning for love and daddyhood… and then someone threatens her safety.
Is the stalker her ex-husband, a fellow police office who’s Hale’s buddy? Or someone neither of them suspects? Hale’s instinct to protect Connie and her new son draws them together. But can these opposites find a happily-ever-after?
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(Cops & Kids Mysteries)
Bridge Back
by Stephanie Parker McKean
Rating: 4.9 #ad
Finally, a wedding instead of a mystery! Detective writer Michal Allison Rice, better known as Miz Mike in her hometown of Three Prongs, Texas, arrives in Scotland to marry Reverend Alan Evan Kirkland. But on their first walk along the beach, Mike discovers a sinking boat…and a murder victim.
Mike left Egan Firewalker Quartz and his bossy teen daughter Flame behind in the Nevada desert when she flew to Scotland to marry her “traditional minister” in a “traditional Scottish wedding” and live the “traditionally happy-ever-after” life. But once in Scotland, Mike fears she made a mistake. She loves Flame as if the child were her own. Worse yet, she may still be in love with Flame’s father…
Tuesday’s Mystery eBooks
Dance of the Winnebagos
by Ann Charles
Rating: 4.3 #ad
When Claire’s grandfather and his army buddies converge in the Arizona desert, it’s her thankless job to keep them out of trouble with the opposite sex. But when she finds a human leg bone and partners with a reluctant geotechnician to dig up secrets from the past, trouble finds her. If she doesn’t stop digging, she could wind up dead.
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(Jackrabbit Junction Humorous Mysteries)
The Protector: The Complete Series
by Laura Domino
Rating: 4.7 #ad
Perfection in Sharla’s life comes to an end when sudden deaths in the family change everything. Sharla’s search for truth gets her very few answers. Wishing she knew who was behind the deception and why doesn’t help her. When Sharla’s world turns upside down, who can she rely on? Should she trust the billionaire or the bodyguard?
In book two, Dorian needs Max to assist, but will he be helpful enough? Are they safe or are they sitting ducks?
In book three, Max gets his chance to be a hero. When he’s lied to about the reason he was hired, how will he save the lives of those at the party – especially Penny?
The White-Luck Warrior
by R. Scott Bakker
Rating: 4.5 #ad
The Aspect-Emperor trilogy follows on from the acclaimed Prince of Nothing saga, and The White-Luck Warrior is the chilling second book in the new series. Ruler Anasurimbor Kellhus and his Great Ordeal march ever farther into the Ancient North, as his consort Esmenet finds herself at war. Exiled wizard Achamian, meanwhile, leads his own ragtag mission to the legendary ruins of Sauglish. Into this tumult walks the White-Luck Warrior, assassin and messiah both . . . . . . In this ambitious volume, Bakker delves even further into his richly imagined universe of myth, violence, and sorcery.
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(The Aspect-Emperor Trilogy)
The Waxing Moon
by Elli Morgan
Rating: 5.0 #ad
Lilah Neumann has longed for something beyond the mundane for as long as she can remember. A chance meeting with a mysterious and sexy vampire turns her dreams into a reality filled with adventure and excitement. She has no plans to return to her previous dull life.
After spending 400 years as a lone mercenary, Cain finds more than a companion in 19-year-old Lilah. Yet he can’t shake his past and struggles to suppress his feelings to protect her from the dangers and temptations his kind offers.
When Cain abandons her to keep her safe, Lilah finds herself on a journey through Europe to overcome her human limits and fight for a place by his side. But can a human survive in a vampire’s world?
The Creeper
by A.M. Shine
Rating: 4.2 #ad
The Creeper is a masterful tale of horror and suspense from one of Ireland’s most talented emerging authors. Superstitions only survive if people believe in them…
Renowned academic Dr Sparling seeks help with his project on a remote Irish village. Historical researchers Ben and Chloe are thrilled to be chosen – until they arrive.
The village is isolated and forgotten. There is no record of its history, its stories. There is no friendliness from the locals, only wary looks and whispers. The villagers lock down their homes at sundown…
THE WAITING HOUSE
by Lisette Brodey
Rating: 4.9 #ad
Once an opulent hotel for lovers of the Hollywood lifestyle, today the imposing building survives, somewhere, as an apartment house for those who wait. Not all know what they’re waiting for, but the residents live in flawed concert with those of undetermined existence, among relics of the past, as they wait for answers, for lost loved ones, and for purpose.
While the stories feature different characters, many of whom are recurring, each tale couples with its own unique reality … and is narrated by Conrad, the “grand master.” There is an overall story arc: part literary fiction, part Twilight Zone … both with a healthy dose of dark humor.
Deadline
by Fern Michaels
Rating: 4.5 #ad
No sooner have Toots Loudenberry and her three best friends–Sophie, Ida, and Mavis–returned from Sacramento, where Sophie provided some much-needed psychic advice to the First Lady of California, than another situation demands their attention. . .
Laura Leigh, a Hollywood starlet whose main talent seems to be landing in trouble, is missing. Toots’ daughter, Abby, has both a personal and professional stake in the story. Not only is she editor-in-chief at gossip magazine The Informer, but entertainment attorney Chris Clay, Abby’s would-be beau, was the last person seen with Laura. And now he’s missing, too.
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(Godmothers Mysteries)
The Melody of the Mulberries
by Tonya Jewel Blessing
Rating: 4.3 #ad
As local merchants unite to attract tourists for a much anticipated weekend quilting event, business is sure to spill over into eateries like Daisy’s Tea Garden. Gorgeous craftwork is hanging everywhere – but among the quilts, potholders, and placemats, one gallery owner is wrapped up in some dangerous affairs . . .