Mysteries
Monday’s Mystery eBooks
Pizza, Paws and a Kidnapped Dog
by Maria Grazia Swan
Rating: 5.0 #ad
No matter what she does, mysteries seem to dog her every step…
With her sexy millionaire boyfriend out of town, Monica Baker is sure she’ll have an uneventful week.
She doesn’t. Because it’s not long before she finds herself dragged into a dog kidnapping scandal the likes of which pet lovers in sunny Arizona have never known. And sadly, that mystery only leads to an even bigger – and deadlier – one.
Check out:
(Baker Girls Cozy Mysteries)
Outcast
by R.L. Caulder
Rating: 4.3 #ad
“The arrival of the Prophetess will bring both hope and destruction for the wolves of the world.
She alone will be able to save them–or damn them.” The dark prophecy that has been passed down since the first pack of shifters is coming to fruition– and I am at the center of it.
An orphaned human taken in by a pack of wolves. The fate of their existence in my hands. I’ve been treated as the dirt beneath the pack’s paws for years. Will they be able to accept my new role when my powers surface? Will I be able to forgive them enough to help them?
Check out:
(The Pack Prophecy Mysteries)
The Evidence
by K.L. Slater
Rating: 4.2 #ad
I can see her through the glass door. She’s smaller in real life than I expected. She looks the exact opposite of the type of woman that might murder her husband.
Everyone’s heard of Simone Fischer. The young mother accused of killing her husband in cold blood, one sunny afternoon, while their son played in the room next door.
So when journalist Esme secures an exclusive interview with her it feels like the opportunity of a lifetime. Simone has remained silent since her husband’s death but after a decade in prison, she is willing to talk to Esme. And Esme, recently freed from her own toxic marriage, is confident she can get Simone to open up.
Dead Men’s Hearts
by Aaron Elkins
Rating: 4.1 #ad
An ancient skeleton tossed in a garbage dump is the first conundrum to rattle Gideon Oliver when he arrives in Egypt. There to appear in a documentary film, he expects an undemanding week of movie star treatment and a luxurious cruise up the Nile with his wife, Julie. But when Gideon discovers a tantalizing secret in the discarded bones – and violence claims a famous Egyptologist’s life – he is thrust into a spotlight of a different kind. Plying his calipers as the world’s foremost forensic anthropologist, Gideon’s investigation of the goings‑on leads him through the back alleys and bazaars of Cairo and deep into the millennia‑old tombs of the Valley of the Kings.
Check out:
(The Gideon Oliver Mysteries)
Solomon’s Compass
by Carol Kilgore
Rating: 4.7 #ad
When Coast Guard Commander Taylor Campbell returns to Rock Harbor, Texas, to tend to her uncle’s estate, she meets a veteran Navy SEAL, Jake Solomon, and learns her uncle didn’t drown accidentally. His murder was one in a string of murders of a group of Vietnam veterans who called themselves the Compass Points.
Before her uncle died, he sent Taylor a message with the location of his buried treasure. Unearthing it will place her squarely in the killer’s crosshairs, but she’s determined to fulfill her uncle’s last wish.
Jake, sent to protect her and find the killer, has other plans.
Dark Rivers of the Heart
by Dean Koontz
Rating: 4.5 #ad
BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Dean Koontz’s The City.
A man and a woman meet by chance in a bar. Suddenly they are fleeing the long arm of a clandestine and increasingly powerful renegade government agency — the woman hunted for the information she possesses, the man mistaken as her comrade in a burgeoning resistance movement.
The architect of the chase is a man of uncommon madness and cruelty — ruthless, possibly psychotic, and equipped with a vast technological arsenal. He is the brazen face of an insidiously fascistic future. And he is virtually unstoppable. But he has never before come up against the likes of his current quarry. Both of them are survivors of singularly horrific pasts.
A Poisonous Page
by Kitt Crowe
Rating: 4.3 #ad
It’s summer festival time in Confection, Oregon, and that means a barrage of tourists making cash registers ring at Sweet Fiction Bookshop. But what should be bookseller Lexi’s most lucrative time of year turns disturbing when a member of the chamber of commerce suddenly dies of a heart attack. Not entirely unexpected—considering her family history—but it’s a different story when another chamber member dies just one week later…also, presumably, of natural causes.
Something about this doesn’t read right to Lexi. And it gets more unfathomable when her friend Dash—who dated both women—stands accused of murder!
Death of a Charming Man
by M. C. Beaton
Rating: 4.6 #ad
From the author of the Agatha Raisin television series…DEATH OF A CHARMING MAN: A Hamish Macbeth MysteryAll Sergeant Hamish Macbeth wants to do is fish and drink coffee with his fiance. Then a mysterious stranger moves into the neighboring village–a rich, unmarried heartbreaker, causing rivalry among the local women. It is amusing until death threats, assault and murder shatter the tranquil countryside. Hamish must investigate the darker side of love and desire.
Sunday’s Mystery eBooks
Blackmoore Sisters Cozy Mysteries Box-Set
by Leighann Dobbs
Rating: 4.5 #ad
This box set of 5 full length books includes Dead Wrong, the winner of the Best Mystery Romance – Indie Romance Convention Awards.
These four magical sisters and their eerily intelligent cat are about to discover a secret that will change their lives forever. As the Blackmoore sisters discover their paranormal powers, they find themselves solving one twisty mystery after another while they battle a crooked Sheriff, planted evidence, and a long list of suspects that all had a reason to kill.
Capture the Crown
by Jennifer Estep
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Bestselling author Jennifer Estep returns to her Crown of Shards world with an all-new trilogy and a bold new heroine who protects her kingdom from magic, murder, and mayhem by moonlighting as a spy.
Gemma Ripley has a reputation for being a pampered princess who is more interested in pretty gowns, sparkling jewelry, and other frivolous things than learning how to rule the kingdom of Andvari. But her carefully crafted persona is just an act to hide the fact that Gemma is a powerful mind magier—and a spy.
Gemma is undercover, trying to figure out who is stealing large amounts of tearstone from one of the Ripley royal mines when she encounters Prince Leonidas Morricone of Morta—her mortal enemy…
Check out:
(A Gargoyle Queen Mysteries)
The Royal Secret
by Andrew Taylor
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Two young girls plot a murder by witchcraft. Soon afterwards a government clerk dies painfully in mysterious circumstances. His colleague James Marwood is asked to investigate – but the task brings unexpected dangers.
Meanwhile, architect Cat Hakesby is working for a merchant who lives on Slaughter Street, where the air smells of blood and a captive Barbary lion prowls the stables. Then a prestigious new commission arrives. Cat must design a Poultry House for the woman that the King loves most in all the world.
Check out:
(A Gargoyle Queen Mysteries)
Murder at the Creek
by S M Spencer
Rating: 4.4 #ad
There’s been a murder in Willows, and the victim was someone’s Valentine.
For the first time in his life Rob Andersen has plans for Valentine’s Day, but when two young boys find a young woman’s body down by the creek, the small town cop must shift his focus from the living to the dead.
Carol Phillips has been nervously anticipating her romantic getaway with the handsome Sergeant, but when he cancels at the last minute she struggles with lingering doubt.
Check out:
(Copperhead Creek Mysteries)
Hidden Thrones: The Rise of Darkness
by Russ Scalzo
Rating: 4.7 #ad
As current as this morning’s newspaper, this series will challenge the reader’s belief system, introduce him or her to the invisible world of spiritual warfare, and ensure that the reader will never look at the world in quite the same light ever again.
The spirit world is astir as the coming of the Lord draws near. The mystery swirling around the rise in supernatural activity has attracted much attention. A powerful secret society desperately seeks to harness this mystical power.
Check out:
(Hidden Thrones Mysteries)
The Orphan Collector
by Ellen Marie Wiseman
Rating: 4.5 #ad
In the fall of 1918, thirteen-year-old German immigrant Pia Lange longs to be far from Philadelphia’s overcrowded slums and the anti-immigrant sentiment that compelled her father to enlist in the U.S. Army. But as her city celebrates the end of war, an even more urgent threat arrives: the Spanish flu. Funeral crepe and quarantine signs appear on doors as victims drop dead in the streets and desperate survivors wear white masks to ward off illness. When food runs out in the cramped tenement she calls home, Pia must venture alone into the quarantined city in search of supplies, leaving her baby brothers behind.
Bernice Groves has become lost in grief and bitterness since her baby died from the Spanish flu. Watching Pia leave her brothers alone, Bernice makes a shocking, life-altering decision.
Little Heaven
by Nick Cutter
Rating: 4.4 #ad
A trio of mismatched mercenaries—Micah Shughrue, Minerva Atwater, and Ebenzer Elkins, colloquially known as “the Englishman”—is hired by young Ellen Bellhaven for a deceptively simple task: check in on her nephew, who may have been taken against his will to a remote New Mexico backwoods settlement called Little Heaven, where a clandestine religious cult holds sway. But shortly after they arrive, things begin to turn ominous. There are stirrings in the woods and over the treetops—and above all else, the brooding shape of a monolith known as the Black Rock casts its terrible pall. Paranoia and distrust soon grip the settlement. Escape routes are gradually cut off as events spiral toward madness.
A Speck in the Sea
by John Aldridge, Anthony Sosinski
Rating: 4.5 #ad
I am floating in the middle of the night, and nobody in the world even knows I am missing. Nobody is looking for me. You can’t get more alone than that. You can’t be more lost.
I’ve got too many people who love me. There’s no way I’m dying like this.
In the dead of night on July 24, 2013, John Aldridge was thrown off the back of the Anna Mary while his fishing partner, Anthony Sosinski, slept below. As desperate hours ticked by, Sosinski, the families, the local fishing community, and the U.S. Coast Guard in three states mobilized in an unprecedented search effort that culminated in a rare and exhilarating success.
Saturday’s Mystery eBooks
Dolphin Bay Cozy Mysteries Boxed Set
by Leena Clover
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Recently widowed Anna Butler is busy testing cupcake recipes, trying to cope with the loss of her beloved husband. When the license for her dream cafe is rejected, Anna realizes the local mayor will never stop making her life difficult. The formidable woman has already turned half the town against her, all because she has a silly notion that Anna killed her husband.
Aided by her quirky friends, the Firecrackers, and her daughter, a has-been Hollywood star, Anna will move heaven and earth to solve the mystery behind her husband’s death. The debonair ex-police chief is a big help and it doesn’t hurt that he has a soft spot for her.
Check out:
(Dolphin Bay Cozy Mysteries Boxed Set 2)
Witch Hunt
by Ian Rankin
Rating: 4.2 #ad
She is an ingenious assassin, with as many methods as identities, a master of disguise with an instinct for escape…. She is Witch, and she makes for alluring prey, teasing her pursuers as she eludes them, hunting her victims with breathtaking creativity, beguiling the most powerful men in the world with her dark beauty and cunning.
Witch is wanted by the world’s most elite police agencies, doggedly pursued by three very different detectives – one woman and two men. Two are at the beginning of their careers, one is staking a lifetime’s experience on tracking Witch down, and all three display a professional determination that veers dangerously close to obsession. Working with and against one another, crossing paths and crossing swords, the detectives on her trail must stop her before she pulls off her most daring and ingenious assignment yet, a killing whose repercussions will reverberate throughout the world.
Portrait of an Unknown Woman
by Daniel Silva
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Legendary spy and art restorer Gabriel Allon has at long last severed ties with Israeli intelligence and settled quietly in Venice, the only place where he has ever truly known peace. His beautiful wife, Chiara, has taken over the day-to-day management of the Tiepolo Restoration Company, and their two young children are discreetly enrolled in a neighborhood scuola elementare. For his part, Gabriel spends his days wandering the streets and canals of the watery city, bidding farewell to the demons of his tragic, violent past.
But when the eccentric London art dealer Julian Isherwood asks Gabriel to investigate the circumstances surrounding the rediscovery and lucrative sale of a centuries-old painting, he is drawn into a deadly game of cat and mouse where nothing is as it seems.
Check out:
(Gabriel Allon Mysteries)
Murder in Mesopotamia
by Agatha Christie
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Suspicious events at a Middle Eastern archaeological excavation site intrigue the great Hercule Poirot as he investigates Murder in Mesopotamia, a classic murder mystery from Agatha Christie.
Amy Leatheram has never felt the lure of the mysterious East, but when she travels to an ancient site deep in the Iraqi desert to nurse the wife of a celebrated archaeologist, events prove stranger than she could ever have imagined. Her patient’s bizarre visions and nervous terror seem unfounded, but as the oppressive tension in the air thickens, events come to a terrible climax–in murder.
Check out:
(Hercule Poirot Mysteries)
The Night Whispers
by Caroline Mitchell
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Don’t miss the new Slayton thriller from million-copy bestseller Caroline Mitchell.
It began with the whispers. In the woods, in the park, and always at night. Then they came into town, down dark alleys, and in the shadows. Before long, the black-eyed children were moving closer, until finally there was a knock on the door. When the couple were found dead with their faces frozen in horror, the children were nowhere to be seen. Until it happened again.
Join Detective Sarah Noble as she investigates another dark case in the town of Slayton.
Beardstown
by Sam Foster
Rating: 4.5 #ad
When Americans created civilization from wilderness, there were those who followed the rules and those who created their own—an enduring conflict between liberty and virtue that formed a new land.
Five years have passed since the death of the Shawnee leader Tecumseh. The native peoples of the Midwest have been defeated, and the fertile soil of Illinois is up for grabs by a steady stream of opportunistic dreamers. The ones who get there first will shape this new America as it suits them—or so they intend.
When two young adventurers, Thomas Beard and Murray McConnel, find their way to Mascouten Bay in 1818, the land is full of promise. There, Beard envisions a town built on the bank of the Illinois River, a bustling place of commerce. With McConnel’s gift for political strategy, the two manipulate the land, and the laws, to work in their favor.
Knight in the Nighttime
by J.S. Morin
Rating: 4.3 #ad
Kyrus dreams of being a knight. Fate has so much more planned for him.
As an apprentice scribe, Kyrus has always dreamed of becoming a master and opening his own shop.
Developing magical powers and becoming a wizard? Not so much. After all, wizards are the stuff of his dreams. Dreams where Kyrus is Brannis Solaran, a powerful knight who wields an ancient sword crafted from the essence of magic and who’s responsible for defending a city from an army of goblins led by their fierce dragon goddess.
Kyrus’s dream world is a world of magic, mystery, and wonder. A place of goblins and their dragon gods. Of evil necromancers, immortal sorcerers, and deadly intrigue.
Check out:
(Twinborn Chronicles)
Friday’s Mystery eBooks
Bad Housekeeping
by Maia Chance
Rating: 3.9 #ad
Danger mounts, deadlines loom, ancient knob-and-tube wiring is explored—and the ladies of Stagecoach Inn learn a thing or two about the awful, wonderful mistake that is going back home.
When 28-year-old Agnes Blythe, the contented bifocals-wearing half of an academic power couple, is jilted by her professor boyfriend for the town Pilates instructor, her future is suddenly less than certain. So when her glamorous, eccentric Great Aunt Effie arrives in town and offers a job helping to salvage the condemned Stagecoach Inn, what does Agnes have to lose?
OFF GRID
by J. P. Redding
Rating: 4.5 #ad
How Long Can They Hide From The Surveillance State?
From the halls of D.C. to the remote shores of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, OFF GRID is a wild ride through a dystopian near future of mass surveillance.
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…
Desert God
by Wilbur Smith
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Game of Thrones meets Ancient Egypt in this magnificent, action-packed epic. On the gleaming banks of the Nile, the brilliant Taita—slave and advisor to the Pharaoh—finds himself at the center of a vortex of passion, intrigue, and danger. His quest to destroy the Hyksos army and form an alliance with Crete takes him on an epic journey up the Nile, through Arabia and the magical city of Babylon, and across the open seas. With the future of Egypt itself on his shoulders, Taita enters a world where the line between loyalty and betrayal shifts like the desert sands, evil enemies await in the shadows, and death lingers on the edges of darkness.
Check out:
(The Egyptian Mysteries)
Within and Without Time
by D. I. Hennessey
Rating: 4.8 #ad
When a sixteen-year-old boy is suddenly caught up in a series of miraculous encounters, it heralds an adventure that will transform his life, rock his town, and trigger events that will ultimately change the world!
Befriended by a powerful angelic warrior, Jimmy finds himself in the center of God’s plan for Earth’s final Great Revival. The beginning of God’s amazing harvest at the End of the Age. Like an intense roller coaster, the journey he experiences is exciting and unpredictable. Heartwarming, as well as heart-rending. God prepares him for a mission more extraordinary than anything he could have imagined, placing him in the rare company of ancient prophets and apostles alike.
Check out:
(Within & Without Time Mysteries)
Snakebite
by Heather Ramsay
Rating: 4.5 #ad
The Alpha Squad—an elite United Nations military unit tasked with stopping the world’s most dangerous arms dealers. Their existence is shrouded in secrecy, hidden away in the New Mexico desert.
Phoenix is their newest recruit. Where she came from, nobody knows. Not even Phoenix herself. Amnesia has left her with no past, no identity. The squad is all she has. She wants to prove she belongs there – to the other soldiers, to herself, and to her commanding officer, the formidable General Cobra. Cobra is cold, hard, ruthless. And Phoenix knows he doesn’t trust her…
Check out:
(Alpha Squad Mysteries)
“J” is for Judgment
by Sue Grafton
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Five years ago, when Jaffe’s thirty-five-foot Fuji ketch was found drifting off the Baja coast, it seemed a sure thing he’d gone overboard. The note he left behind admitted he was flat broke, his business bankrupt, his real estate gambit nothing but a huge Ponzi scheme about to collapse, with criminal indictment certain to follow. When the authorities soon after descended on his banks and his books, there was nothing left: Jaffe had stripped the lot.
Check out:
(Kinsey Millhone Mysteries)
Trials of the Century
by Mark J. Phillips
Rating: 4.9 #ad
This book tells the story of each murder case and the dramatic trial-and media coverage-that followed. Starting with the murder of famed architect Stanford White in 1906 and ending with the O.J. Simpson trial of 1994, the authors recount ten compelling tales spanning the century.
The most noteworthy cases are here – including the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, the Sam Sheppard murder trial (“The Fugitive”), the “Helter Skelter” murders of Charles Manson, and the O.J. Simpson murder trial. But some cases that today are lesser known also provide fascinating glimpses into the tenor of the time: the media sensation created by yellow journalist William Randolph Hearst around the murder trial of 1920s movie star Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle; the murder of the Scarsdale Diet guru by an elite prep-school headmistress in the 1980s; and more.
The Phantom of Crowford Theatre
by Amy Cross
Rating: 4.4 #ad
The year is 2011, and Crowford Theatre is struggling for survival. Ambitious new manager Cassie Carter is determined to turn the theatre around, but the local council has other ideas and Cassie’s health is starting to fail. Meanwhile, strange noises at night hint at a mysterious presence lurking somewhere in the building, and every production seems cursed.
Cassie soon discovers that the theatre’s past is filled with tragedy, and that one particular tragedy has started leaking into the present day. As she prepares to stage a brand new production of a classic play by a local author, Cassie finds herself forced to confront the spirit of a vengeful, long-dead author. But a sinister discovery, hidden deep within the theatre itself, hints at an even darker and more shocked secret.
Check out:
(The Ghosts of Crowford Mysteries)