Mysteries
Monday’s Mystery eBooks
Murder at the Bingo Hall
by Linda Pohl
Rating: 4.3 #ad
Sunday night bingo at St. Angela’s Church in the little village of Kenmore, New York, can be deadly. The stakes are high and the crowd is large. Priscilla Hatfield needs just one number to win! Bursting with excitement when I 17 is called, Priscilla suddenly grabs her chest and slumps over dead with her two lucky trolls, Jasper and Seymour, and her rosary beads by her side. But her two best friends and bingo buddies have good reason to believe she’s been murdered.
Fearing the police investigation is going no-where, Ethel Dinwiddie and Nellie Pearce take matters into their own hands and vow to solve the case…
The 17th Suspect
by James Patterson, Maxine Paetro
Rating: 4.7 #ad
When a series of shootings exposes San Francisco to a mysterious killer, a reluctant woman decides to put her trust in Sergeant Lindsay Boxer. The confidential informant’s tip leads Lindsay to a disturbing conclusion: something has gone horribly wrong inside the police department.
The hunt for the killer lures Lindsay out of her jurisdiction and impacts her in dangerous ways. She suffers unsettling medical symptoms, and her friends in the Women’s Murder Club warn her against taking the crimes to heart. But with lives at stake, the detective can’t help but follow the case into terrifying terrain.
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(Women’s Murder Club Mysteries)
Tales from the Gas Station
by Jack Townsend
Rating: 4.8 #ad
An army of monsters walks among us. A war wages between petty gods. The end of the world draws ever closer. And worst of all, Jack can’t find anybody to help cover the night shift.
Coming as a surprise to absolutely no one, Jack is once again neck-deep in the middle of a deadly nightmare-come-true. And this time around, it’s going to be a lot harder to tell who’s a friend, who’s an enemy… and who’s a monster…
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(Tales from the Gas Station)
Kaleidoscope
by Dean Koontz
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Nameless is wrestling with more violent visions of the future when his next mission comes with the assurance, This one will be easy. It’s a promise that leaves Nameless dangerously unprepared.
It seems straightforward enough: Get a foot in the door by posing as a potential investor in a lucrative underground business—then bring the place down from the inside. There’s more here than meets the eye. What it triggers in Nameless is uncontrollable rage and brutal retribution. What it reveals is a clue to his forgotten past. Is it a breach on his handler’s part? Or a test? Either way, something’s not right.
A Mountain of Evidence
by Amy O. Lewis
Rating: 4.7 #ad
Kim Jackson told herself to stay out of it. She didn’t listen.
All Kim Jackson wants to do is live under the radar in a town where no one knows she was once an accounting manager at a Fortune 500 company—or that she’s been framed for corporate fraud and murder. Instead, she gets involved in a homicide investigation.
High school senior Emily Riley made no secret of her desire to escape her hometown in the shadow of the San Juan Mountains. Locals thought she had left, until Emily’s murdered body is discovered at the base of Red Mountain. Kim Jackson steps in when she senses the investigation going cold.
Golden in Death
by J. D. Robb
Rating: 4.8 #ad
Pediatrician Kent Abner received the package on a beautiful April morning. Inside was a cheap trinket, a golden egg that could be opened into two halves. When he pried it apart, highly toxic airborne fumes entered his body—and killed him.
After Eve Dallas calls the hazmat team—and undergoes testing to reassure both her and her husband that she hasn’t been exposed—it’s time to look into Dr. Abner’s past and relationships. Not every victim Eve encounters is an angel, but it seems that Abner came pretty close—though he did ruffle some feathers over the years by taking stands for the weak and defenseless.
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(In Death Mysteries)
The Sleeper
by Saul Herzog
Rating: 4.6 #ad
Narvik, Norway A remote NATO seismic array in the far north of Norway detects the largest nuclear detonation since the days of the Soviet Union.
Svalbard Archipelago, Norway The largest icebreaker in the Norwegian Navy, and one of the most high tech vessels operating in the Arctic, disappears without trace.
Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia In the chaos following the explosion, the lead scientist on a top secret Russian military research program goes missing with his daughter. There are rumors of sabotage…
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(Spy Thriller)
Seventh Realm
by Michael Chatfield
Rating: 4.7 #ad
War has come to the Willful Institute. It has come to the first realm.
For years Alva has trained, developed weapons and tactics never seen in the ten realms. Now Alva moves in the background, supporting the Adventurer’s Guild. No band of fighters, no sect looking to gain individual honors.
The armies of Alva were forged together in Alva dungeon. Tempered in body, in mind, in mana. Supported by Alvan traders, crafters, they reclaimed the lost floors of their home. They captured Vuzgal and defended it in the vicious battlefield realm.
Now Alva is going to war. Their abilities, their skills tested head on.
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(In Death Mysteries)
Sunday’s Mystery eBooks
A Brunch With Death
by Ellie Alexander
Rating: 4.3 #ad
Fall has painted Ashland, Oregon, with a brush of jewel tones. Everyone’s favorite artistic director, Lance, from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, is in a sparkling mood. Things are winding down at the theater, and he’s already planning a spectacular lineup for next season. There’s only one problem–cash. Lance’s lavish productions don’t come cheap. So when the dreaded Richard Lord, owner of the Merry Windsor Hotel, approaches Lance about partnering for an upcoming brunch show, Lance can’t turn him down.
Shakespearean kitsch and stale muffins aren’t exactly Lance’s forte, but he can’t pass up an offer to fill the coffers. It’s just brunch, after all. It can’t be that bad. Can it?
Explosive Eighteen
by Janet Evanovich
Rating: 4.6 #ad
BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg’s The Heist.
Bounty hunter Stephanie Plum’s life is set to blow sky high when international murder hits dangerously close to home, in this dynamite novel by Janet Evanovich.
Before Stephanie can even step foot off Flight 127 Hawaii to Newark, she’s knee deep in trouble. Her dream vacation turned into a nightmare, and she’s flying back to New Jersey solo. Worse still, her seatmate never returned to the plane after the L.A. layover. Now he’s dead, in a garbage can, waiting for curbside pickup. His killer could be anyone. And a ragtag collection of thugs and psychos, not to mention the FBI, are all looking for a photograph the dead man was supposed to be carrying.
Blink of an Eye
by Eric Wilder
Rating: 4.7 #ad
Paranormal investigator Buck McDivit deals with murder, creatures of darkness, and romance with an American Indian archaeologist who likes cowboys and fast ponies
Buck visits Oklahoma’s remote Kiamichi Mountains, searching for an archaeological relic once used in religious ceremonies. The Black Cup of Oklahoma has gone missing, and Buck must travel back 1000 years to retrieve it.
Buck’s trek leads him into a forbidden canyon where he discovers a lost civilization, Oklahoma’s elusive Bigfoot, and a psychotic killer who likes to scalp his victims after killing them. To succeed, he seeks the help of a mysterious spiritualist and the dark magic of an immortal mountain fairy. Will Buck survive and retrieve the stolen relic, or die a gory death and his scalp added to the killer’s trophy belt?
Wasted Years
by John Harvey
Rating: 4.4 #ad
A detective’s dark past meets his violent present in “[a] rich tapestry that lifts the police procedural into the realm of the mainstream novel” (Sue Grafton).
It starts with five professional thieves. At their first robbery, they press a sawed-off shotgun against a bank manager’s head, and leave with nearly forty thousand pounds. They repeat the trick three times, raking in nearly half a million in cash. They have yet to kill, but with each raid they come closer to taking their bounty in blood. The Nottingham police department charges the brilliant but troubled Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick with stopping the crime spree…
Dark Crossings: An Anthology
by Karen Harper, Marta Perry, Patricia Davids
Rating: 4.6 #ad
The Covered Bridge by Karen Harper: When Benjamin Kline returns to the fold after eight years, Abigail Baughman welcomes him with an open heart. But all is not well in their Amish village.
Fallen in Plain Sight by Marta Perry: Childhood friends Sarah Weaver and Jacob Mast see each other in a different light when violence shatters their peaceful society.
Outside the Circle by Patricia Davids: Isaac Bowman is an outsider, but Lena Troyer makes the widower and his daughter feel like part of the community. So when a deer-poaching ring divides the town, Isaac vows to keep this gentle woman safe from harm…
Brutal Alien
by Luna Kingsley
Rating: 4.4 #ad
I hate everyone but her.
Zuvath. It has been a year since the second transport of humans arrived and trust is in short supply. They keep to the settlement, determined to create their own community without the untrustworthy aliens who got them into this mess. All of them except for Ellen. She breaks the rules for me—sneaking out to hunt together, riding our komoth and even hiding away in secret caves where she lets me touch her secret places.
I want her but no one knows what we get up to when we’re alone. If we were discovered, it could ruin the fragile peace between our kind…
Regretting You
by Colleen Hoover
Rating: 4.5 #ad
From #1 New York Times bestselling author of It Ends with Us comes a novel about family, first love, grief, and betrayal that will touch the hearts of both mothers and daughters.
Morgan Grant and her sixteen-year-old daughter, Clara, would like nothing more than to be nothing alike.
Morgan is determined to prevent her daughter from making the same mistakes she did. By getting pregnant and married way too young, Morgan put her own dreams on hold. Clara doesn’t want to follow in her mother’s footsteps. Her predictable mother doesn’t have a spontaneous bone in her body.
Saturday’s Mystery eBooks
Cat Under Fire
by Shirley Rousseau Murphy
Rating: 4.7 #ad
A big, powerful, gray feline, Joe Grey is perfectly content with his remarkable ability to understand and communicate with humans — especially now that he has company. A mysterious accident similar to the one that enabled him to speak and read has transformed his friend Dulcie as well. The trouble is, the cute tabby female not only hears human words, she believes them.
Now she’s convinced the man who was jailed for murdering a famous local artist and burning down her studio is innocent — simply because he says so — and she’s willing to do whatever it takes to dig up the evidence that will exonerate the accused.
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(A Joe Grey Mysteries)
Signed to Death
by Stephanie Parker McKean
Rating: 4.5 #ad
“Look out!” Maj yelled as the huge orange gulf gasoline sign with blue letters lumbered toward me down the slopped driveway. The warning came too late. The metal frame hit me. My feet came off the ground. I fell. So did the dead guy inside the sign.
A murder mystery falling at her feet is just the first shock to electrify antique shop owner Zoey Thunderbird.
Zoey is seriously DWM – Done With Men – but her heart forgets at every mention of junk sculptor Dave Durham. When a claspy-grabby stranger comes to town with outrageous stories and “flutterings” for Dave, Zoey’s best friend and sole employee at Treasure Trove takes the stranger’s side…
Blowout
by Catherine Coulter
Rating: 4.6 #ad
A long weekend in the Poconos is interrupted by murder, and FBI agents Savich and Sherlock must look thirty years into the past to stop the killing.
POCONO MOUNTAINS NEAR BLESSED CREEK, PENNSYLVANIA FRIDAY EVENING
IT WAS DARKER than Savich was used to, what with no city lights within fifty miles. The moon was a sharp sickle, cutting in and out of bloated black clouds. He rolled down the window and sniffed the air. Snow was coming, he thought, lots of it, more than enough to build a snowman with Sherlock and Sean in the morning; then the three of them could tramp through the beautiful woods filled with spruce and pine to Lake Klister.
Savich started singing one of his favorite country-western songs, written by his friend James Quinlan, as he drove the straight road with snowcapped boulders and stands of thick trees on his left and a guardrail on his right. “A blameless life ain’t no fun at all. I robbed that bank, laughin’ till my belly hurt, till I-”
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(An FBI Thriller)
Rowdy: Wild and Mean, Sharp and Keen
by Chris Mullen
Rating: 4.3 #ad
Thrust to the mercy of the Mississippi river, thirteen-year-old Rowdy floats safely away as he watches the smoke rise from his burning farmhouse. His father, dead. His brother, dead. Both gunned down in front of him by a murderous gang of bandits.
Now alone in the world, his perilous journey of survival begins, challenging and shaping him into the young man his father would want him to become. Pulled from the waters, he is given a chance by a lone river Captain and his mate. Working the trade routes between St. Louis and New Orleans, he learns to navigate safe passage. Rowdy has grown strong working the river but must use his wit as well as his strength to confront a bullying crewman and survive a surprise attack by river pirates.
Hostage
by Clare Mackintosh
Rating: 4.2 #ad
Mina is trying to focus on her job as a flight attendant, not the problems with her five-year-old daughter back home, or the fissures in her marriage. But the plane has barely taken off when Mina receives a chilling note from an anonymous passenger, someone intent on ensuring the plane never reaches its destination: “The following instructions will save your daughter’s life…”
Someone needs Mina’s assistance and knows exactly how to make her comply.
Suicide Forest
by Jeremy Bates
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Just outside of Tokyo lies Aokigahara, a vast forest and one of the most beautiful wilderness areas in Japan…and also the most infamous spot to commit suicide in the world. Legend has it that the spirits of those many suicides are still roaming, haunting deep in the ancient woods.
When bad weather prevents a group of friends from climbing neighboring Mt. Fuji, they decide to spend the night camping in Aokigahara. But they get more than they bargained for when one of them is found hanged in the morning—and they realize there might be some truth to the legends after all.
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(World’s Scariest Places)
Chasing Freedom
by H. L. Wegley
Rating: 4.4 #ad
How far would you be willing to go if you were chasing freedom?
When Allie Santiago, international scholar at Oregon State University, and her family are captured and labor trafficked by the same drug cartel that drove her father from Mexico, she learns the cartel thugs plan to sell her to human traffickers. Allie escapes, running a marathon through the mountains of Northern California, and collapses in the arms of Jeff Jacobs, a disgraced Olympic decathlete who wants to regain both his honor and his former glory. When Jeff’s actions engage the FBI and US Marshals to protect Allie and free her family from the cartel, a war breaks out in the mountains along the Oregon-California border.
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(Against All Enemies Mysteries)
We Must Save Jepson!
by Mark Petersen
Rating: 3.7 #ad
Britain’s Greatest Bumbler and His Extraordinary African Expedition: Suspense! Murder! Tea breaks! In this hilarious historical thriller, H. R. Huxtable sets out to rescue a beleaguered British outpost. Despite oppressive jungle, cannibals, an oversexed female, and his own unhinged troops, he will succeed. Er … won’t he?
We Must Save Jepson! is a satirical romp through the Victorian era of exploration and expansion, wherein our hero discovers hitherto unknown depths of character despite the self-satisfied arrogance of his age.
Friday’s Mystery eBooks
Teaberry Baking Contest
by R. A. Wallace
Rating: 4.2 #ad
When a popular regional Baking Contest takes over the town of Teaberry, Megan has contest judges as guests at the B&B. As temperatures rise, mayhem and murder soon follow. Megan adds a measure of sleuthing. If only Lauren could win a blue ribbon, it would be the icing on the cake. This mild cozy mystery offers a clean read with a female amateur sleuth and friends in a small-town setting.
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(A Teaberry Farm Bed & Breakfast Mysteries)
A Blue So Dark
by Holly Schindler
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Holly Schindler’s Award-Winning Debut Novel – The 2022 Re-Release
Fifteen-year-old Aura Ambrose has been hiding a secret. Her mother, a talented artist and art teacher, is slowly being consumed by schizophrenia, and Aura has been her primary caretaker ever since Aura’s dad left them. Convinced that creative expression is behind her mother’s deteriorating condition, Aura shuns her own artistic talent. But as her mother sinks still deeper into the darkness of her disorder, the hunger for a creative outlet draws Aura toward the depths of her imagination. Just as desperation threatens to swallow her whole, Aura discovers that art, love, and family are profoundly linked—and together may offer an escape from her fears.
Rise of Magic Complete 2-ARC Omnibus
by CM Raymond, LE Barbant, Michael Anderle
Rating: 4.6 #ad
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic…” Arthur C. Clarke
Accused of using illegal magic, and sentenced to a cruel death at the hands of the Arcadian Guards, Hannah has no choice but to trust in the aid of a strange old wizard who offers her the gift of unimaginable power.
But power has consequences, and soon Hannah is at the center of a city-wide war to take back the future that was stolen from them. Can she control the power that courses through her? Can she unite a team of heroes from different walks of life? Can she bring justice to Arcadia?
The Rise of Magic is an epic fantasy, set in the far future, where magic and monsters ravage the land of Irth and only the strong survive.
Cutout
by Arnold Eslava-Grünwaldt
Rating: 4.0 #ad
Detectives from the Yonkers, New York Police Department suspect the faux Butcher is back in town after one of the survivors of the Tattoo case is attacked by a knife-wielding man. Unfortunately, if their suspicions are correct, Yonkersonians are in for a carnage-filled summer. To compound the problem, someone with an apparent agenda has started to kill off men in the city—and has left behind a unique set of clues. Can Detective Sergeant Ham Hitchcock and his general assignment squad catch the killer before he completes his goal and disappears? Or, will the skeletons of their last major whodunit divert their efforts?
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(The Cut Mysteries)
Sir Gawain And The Green Knight, Pearl, And Sir Orfeo
by Christopher Tolkien
Rating: 4.8 #ad
SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT, PEARL, AND SIR ORFEO
THREE MEDIEVAL ENGLISH POEMS, WITH TRANSLATION AND COMMENTARY BY J.R.R. TOLKIEN
It’s Christmas at Camelot and King Arthur won’t begin to feast until he has witnessed a marvel of chivalry. A mysterious knight, green from head to toe, rides in and brings the court’s wait to an end with an implausible challenge to the Round Table: he will allow any of the knights to strike him once, with a battle-axe no less, on the condition that he is allowed to return the blow a year hence. Arthur’s brave favorite for the challenge is Sir Gawain…
Accompanying Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in this book are Sir Orfeo, a medieval version of the story of Orpheus and Euridice, a love so strong that it overcame death, and Pearl, the moving tale of a man in a graveyard mourning his baby daughter, lost like a pearl that slipped through his fingers. Worn out by grief, he falls asleep and dreams of meeting her in a bejewelled fantasy world.
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(Select Tolkien titles for $3.99 or less)
Unhinged
by Thomas Enger, Jørn Lier Horst
Rating: 4.2 #ad
When police investigator Sofia Kovic uncovers a startling connection between several Oslo murder cases, she attempts to contact her closest superior, Alexander Blix before involving anyone else in the department. But before Blix has time to return her call, Kovic is shot and killed in her own home – execution style. And in the apartment below, Blix’s daughter Iselin narrowly escapes becoming the killer’s next victim.
Four days later, Blix and online crime journalist Emma Ramm are locked inside an interrogation room, facing the National Criminal Investigation Service. Blix has shot and killed a man, and Ramm saw it all happen.
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(Alexander Blix Mysteries)
A Prisoner of Birth
by Jeffrey Archer
Rating: 4.6 #ad
Danny Cartwright and Spencer Craig never should have met. One evening, Danny, an East End cockney who works as a garage mechanic, takes his fianceé up to the West End to celebrate their engagement. He crosses the path of Spencer Craig, a West End barrister posed to be the youngest Queen’s Counsel of his generation.
A few hours later Danny is arrested for murder and later is sentenced to twenty-two years in prison, thanks to irrefutable testimony from Spencer, the prosecution’s main witness.