Mysteries
Thursday’s Mystery eBooks
Dirty Martini
by Liliana Hart
Rating: 4.3 #ad
The next installment of the New York Times bestselling series by Liliana Hart…
J.J. Graves and Jack Lawson have to solve an unusual crime–a college student who was murdered in front of thousands of people. It seems like an open and shut case. Everyone saw the killer. But there’s more to this case than meets the eye, and Jack and J.J. wonder if they’ve finally met a case they can’t solve.
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(A J.J. Graves Mysteries)
Court of Bitter Thorn
by Kay L Moody
Rating: 4.3 #ad
Faerie wasn’t supposed to be real. Tricked by a fae prince, Elora is stuck in the Faerie realm far from her young sisters who depend on her for survival. Under the terms of her bargain, she can’t go home to the mortal world until Prince Brannick becomes the next High King.
Or until he’s taken out of the running… Sabotaging Brannick’s chance at the crown will be much faster than helping him win. The fae prince may be charming, powerful, and wickedly handsome, but that won’t stop Elora from selling his secrets to the highest bidder.
By day, she uses her master sword skills to train the prince. By night, she conspires with a rival king in a nearby court whose plans could destroy half of Faerie.
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(The Fae of Bitter Thorn Mysteries)
The Wrong Side
by Robert Bailey
Rating: 4.5 #ad
A battle-worn lawyer fights for a young man’s life in this criminally enthralling legal thriller.
Teen pop star Brittany Crutcher is found dead in small-town Tennessee. For attorney Bocephus Haynes, it’s just another night in Pulaski. Bo swore off criminal work after his last case, but the beloved singer’s murder demands answers.
The prime suspect is local high school football hero and the victim’s boyfriend, Odell Champagne. However, this fallen athlete is one of Bo’s son’s best friends. Bo knows this young man and does not believe him capable of the crime.
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(Legacy of Lies)
Sisters Behaving Badly
by Maddie Please
Rating: 4.6 #ad
Sisters Kitty and Jenny haven’t spoken since a very disappointing Carvery lunch. Kitty, sixty-two, thinks Jenny is turning grey. Jenny, sixty-six, thinks Kitty needs to grow up!
So when both sisters inherit a farmhouse in rural France, it gives them the perfect chance to heal the rift between them. Except the farmhouse is a wreck, the garden is terrorized by a flock of chickens, not to mention a donkey with a serious flatulence problem!
Escape to the French countryside for a laugh-out-loud feel-good adventure with the #1 bestselling author of The Old Ducks’ Club
One Hellbent Hawk
by William Black
Rating: 4.0 #ad
Rugged tracker and Civil War veteran Tristan Hawk is hellbent on accomplishing his mission to serve justice.
Railroad tycoons Ames Hathaway has enlisted Tristan Hawk to go after the Rip Bateman outlaws who have kidnapped the younger 15-year-old Baker Hathaway. Bateman and his lackeys had been working for Ames until they were fired for abusing Chinese railroad workers, and Bateman’s way of revenge is a kidnap-for-ransom. A lot is on the line for Tristan, including Baker’s life and the safety of anyone who gets too close to Bateman and the outlaws.
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(Post-Civil War Western Justice Mysteries)
Her Sister’s Secret
by S.E. Lynes
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Why would you pretend your life is a dream when you’re living a nightmare?
I thought my sister was happy. I thought what we all thought: that Annie and Dom led perfect lives in a lovely cottage in a quiet village by the sea, with flowers at the front gate and an apple tree in the garden. Everyone knew them: generous, loving Dom, creative, joyful Annie.
But I never saw Annie as she sat waiting for Dom well into the night. I didn’t see her smiling through her tears. I didn’t know what the perfect couple were hiding.
Wednesday’s Mystery eBooks
Special Agent Booker
by Mimi Barbour
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Suspense lights up in every page of this fast-paced blockbuster of thrills!
When Sloan Booker’s father dies tragically, he has no other option but to give up his job as an FBI agent and take over his family’s vehicle restoration business in Oahu, Hawaii. Giving up his badge is difficult but having Homeland Security and his old boss request the use of his house in a stakeout, spying on his Muslim neighbors who they suspect are terrorists, is just too damn much for a man already frazzled. It makes no difference that they’ve offered him a partner to be in charge of the surveillance… until he meets the gorgeous divorcee.
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(Undercover FBI Mysteries)
One for the Money
by D. B. Borton
Rating: 4.3 #ad
“Suspicion is second nature to any woman who’s raised three kids.”
#1 Best Seller in the Kindle Store’s list of Top 100 Free Books, January 2021.
Meet Cincinnati’s newest, oldest, funniest detective-in-training. After decades of marriage, motherhood, and grandmotherhood, Cat Caliban is looking for a new career. Detective work seems a logical choice. So, she sells her suburban house, buys an apartment building in a “transitional” neighborhood, and begins her training, only to discover a dead body in an upstairs apartment. What’s the connection between a murdered homeless woman and the Golden Age of Hollywood silent movies?
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(The Cat Caliban Mysteries)
The Traveler
by D. I. Hennessey
Rating: 4.6 #ad
The Light Grows in Darkness…
The story of Jimmy’s supernatural adventure intensifies as he is drawn more deeply into God’s amazing plans for the world at the end of the age.
A firestorm of revival has been ignited by an unprecedented move of God’s Spirit that is sweeping the world. However, not everyone is happy about it, and powerful enemies are at work trying to stop what God is doing. Jimmy finds himself at the center of this epic conflict, suffering a tragic loss and receiving help from an unexpected source.
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(Within & Without Time Mysteries)
Twice a Daughter
by Julie Ryan McGue
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Julie is adopted. She is also a twin. Because their adoption was closed, she and her sister lack both a health history and their adoption papers—which becomes an issue for Julie when, at forty-eight years old, she finds herself facing several serious health issues.
To launch the probe into her closed adoption, Julie first needs the support of her sister. The twins talk things over, and make a pact: Julie will approach their adoptive parents for the adoption paperwork and investigate search options, and the sisters will split the costs involved in locating their birth relatives. But their adoptive parents aren’t happy that their daughters want to locate their birth parents—and that is only the first of many obstacles Julie will come up against as she digs into her background.
Targeting the Deputy
by Delores Fossen
Rating: 4.7 #ad
A Texas deputy will do anything to save his son. Even work with his ex…
After narrowly escaping an attempt on his life, Deputy Leo Logan is stunned to learn that his ex Olivia Nash may have been set up to take the blame. She’s fighting him for custody of their son, but would someone go that far and put his little boy in the crosshairs? To catch a killer, he’ll have to keep them close—and risk falling for Olivia all over again.
From Harlequin Intrigue: Seek thrills. Solve crimes. Justice served.
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(Mercy Ridge Lawmen Mysteries)
The Lost Bones
by Kendra Elliot
Rating: 4.5 #ad
When former FBI agent Cate Wilde moves back to Widow’s Island, she envisions a simpler life than the one she had in law enforcement. But Cate’s past has a habit of catching up with her. When she receives a mysterious package containing a child’s mandible, she finds herself thrust back into action.
The mandible leads Cate to an unsolved case she worked seven years ago—the kidnapping of a three-year-old girl. At the time, Cate suspected the girl was kidnapped by her overprotective father. But after they both vanished, the case went cold.
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(Widow’s Island Novella Mysteries)
A Time of Dread
by John Gwynne
Rating: 4.5 #ad
A race of warrior angels, the Ben-Elim, once vanquished a mighty demon horde. Now they rule the Banished lands, but their peace is brutally enforced.
In the south, hotheaded Riv is desperate to join the Ben-Elim’s peacekeeping force, until she unearths a deadly secret. In the west, the giantess Sig investigates demon sightings and discovers signs of an uprising and black magic. And in the snowbound north, Drem, a trapper, finds mutilated corpses in the forests. The work of a predator, or something far darker?
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(Of Blood & Bone Mysteries)
Tuesday’s Mystery eBooks
A Catered St. Patrick’s Day
by Isis Crawford
Rating: 4.3 #ad
To most of the people of Longely, New York, St. Paddy’s Day means good food, great music, and plenty of Guinness. But when the lifeless body of Mike Sweeney floats to the top of a vat of green beer, it looks like the luck o’ the Irish has just run out. Unfortunately for the Simmons sisters, Bernie and Libby, the number one suspect is related to one of their very best catering customers, the pampered and powerful Bree Nottingham. When Bree visits A Little Taste of Heaven to beseech them to clear her nephew’s name, they just can’t say no.
Check out:
(A Mystery With Recipes)
Parallel Roads
by Dennis Higgins
Rating: 4.3 #ad
When the spring of 1946 comes, Katherine Callahan decides to leave her loving husband and newborn baby so that she may embark upon an unknowingly tragic journey across the famous American highway from Chicago to her sister’s home in Burbank. She never does arrive.
Fast forward into the present, Kevin Callahan, Katherine’s grandson, along with his best friend Cheryl Bachman, traces his grandmother’s steps along the now decommissioned road to uncover the mystery surrounding her disappearance. They are armed with only a handful of postcards from Katherine and a Victorian secret code involving postage stamps surrounding a mysterious man from her past.
The King’s Sword
by Rebekah Simmers
Rating: 4.9 #ad
An irresistible blend of historical fiction, adventure and romance, The King’s Sword is the first novel of the Metzlingen Saga.
1479: Matthias is no hero. He’s no one. Simply another mud-spattered baseborn face among thousands, until an act of kindness aligns him with an extraordinary opportunity. His prince fallen in battle, Matthias is entrusted to retrieve a foreign princess as a bride for his king, in exchange for a second chance at a promised reward. Given the honor of wearing his sword in his king’s name, Matthias is hellbent to keep his word. His king — his brothers — are counting on him. And soon, so will she…
Under the Wicked Moon
by Abe Moss
Rating: 4.3 #ad
When Maria Jenkins awakens late one night in her family’s motel room and witnesses her younger brother, Michael, sleepwalking out into the desert moonlight, her family trip is plunged into a gruesome nightmare…
…because the sprawling wasteland outside their door isn’t nearly as lifeless as it seems…
Deep in the desert hills of Nevada, a forgotten evil emerges with a lust for sacrifice. Beneath their black-hooded robes, cackling under the veil of night, they’re on the hunt for new blood—for old rituals. Until the perfect, most unsuspecting morsel catches their eye.
Out of Bounds
by Val McDermid
Rating: 4.5 #ad
When a teenage joyrider crashes a stolen car and ends up in a coma, a routine DNA test reveals a connection to an unsolved murder from twenty-two years before. Finding the answer to the cold case should be straightforward. But it’s as twisted as the DNA helix itself.
Meanwhile, Inspector Karen Pirie finds herself irresistibly drawn to another mystery that she has no business investigating, a mystery that has its roots in a terrorist bombing two decades ago. And again, she finds that nothing is as it seems.
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(Karen Pirie Mysteries)
The Drowning
by Jennifer McMahon
Rating: 4.2 #ad
Be careful what you wish for.
When Jax receives nine missed calls from her older sister, Lexie, she assumes that it’s just another one of her sister’s episodes. Manic and increasingly out of touch with reality, Lexie has pushed Jax away for over a year. But the next day, Lexie is dead: drowned in the pool at their grandmother’s estate. When Jax arrives at the house to go through her sister’s things, she learns that Lexie was researching the history of their family and the property. And as she dives deeper into the research herself, she discovers that the land holds a far darker past than she could have ever imagined…
Jinxed
by Carol Higgins Clark
Rating: 4.4 #ad
In Jinxed, smart, saucy sleuth Regan Reilly faces a new challenge—the case of the missing wedding guest. Regan, an L.A.-based private detective, returns to her office after a vacation with her beau, Jack “no relation” Reilly. Their tour of the wineries in Napa Valley and Santa Barbara County is cut short when Jack has to fly back to New York City, where he is the head of the Major Case Squad of the NYPD. Their last stop had been at Altered States, a run-down winery owned by three siblings who are all former hippies—Lilac, Earl, and Leon Weldon. Not knowing how soon it would be put to use, Regan leaves her business card behind.
Monday’s Mystery eBooks
A Death in the Flower Garden
by Gin Jones, Elizabeth Ashby
Rating: 4.2 #ad
From USA Today bestselling authors Gin Jones and Elizabeth Ashby comes a brand new mystery…
It’s Independence Day weekend, and Maria Dolores, the descendant of Danger Cove’s first lighthouse keeper, is the new manager of the Lighthouse Farmers’ Market. While she may be a bit uncertain about her career change—trading financial planning for flower stalls and farm fresh produce—she’s still determined to get the market into shape and onto one of the region’s “best of” lists.
From the very beginning, though, events conspire against her. Her mentor and attractive local farmer, Merle Curtis, fails to show up to introduce her to the vendors, the stalls are all in the wrong place, and an earthquake shakes up everyone in the market! In its aftermath
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(Danger Cove Mysteries)
Lonesome Road
by Patricia Wentworth
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Governess-turned-sleuth Miss Silver must follow a trail of poison-pen letters to save an heiress from murder.
Rachel Treherne has always had a steady head on her shoulders; it’s why her late father named her the sole trustee of his considerable fortune. But the decision galled a number of Rachel’s relatives, including her married older sister, her socialist nephew, and her father’s ambitious young cousin.
Rachel fears she may be overreacting to the anonymous letters she’s received threatening her life, but then someone tampers with the chocolates she bought herself. If her cousin hadn’t partaken first and noticed an unwholesome taste, who knows what may have happened?
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(The Miss Silver Mysteries)
Lost in the Land of the Midnight Sun
by Christina Cattane
Rating: 4.7 #ad
The last Bible torn in two. A people bound by law. A girl in need of grace.
Angelica longs for redemption. Her mother has vanished and Angelica believes it’s her fault. But no matter how many sacrifices she brings to the altar, it seems God refuses to forgive her. Just when Angelica despairs of ever getting it right; God chooses her to go and find the lost New Testament. Is this finally the penance she seeks?
Angelica must journey across the Alaskan wilderness, battle the forces of evil, and venture into the dark city to find absolution. Or she, and her people will be lost forever.
Ski Weekend
by Rektok Ross
Rating: 4.4 #ad
*Named a Best Book of 2021 by Cosmopolitan, Entertainment Weekly, Yahoo!Life, Parade, The Strand, Brit + Co., Book Riot, SheKnows, BookTrib, Women.com, SheReads, Ms. Career Girl, and more!
*2021 American Fiction Awards Award-Winning Finalist in Young Adult, Readers’ Favorite Book Awards Winner in Young Adult, IAN Book of the Year Awards Finalist in Young Adult, and Firebird Award Winner in Young Adult Fiction
The Breakfast Club meets Alive in this gripping tale of survival, impossible choices, and the harrowing balance between life and death.
Six teens, one dog, a ski trip gone wrong . . .
Sam is dreading senior ski weekend and having to watch after her brother and his best friend, Gavin, to make sure they don’t do anything stupid. Again. Gavin may be gorgeous, but he and Sam have never gotten along. Now they’re crammed into an SUV with three other classmates and Gavin’s dog, heading on a road trip that can’t go by fast enough.
Blind Spot
by Nancy Bush
Rating: 4.2 #ad
What you don’t see . . . The crime scene at an Oregon rest stop is brutal beyond belief—a young man’s lifeless body cut to ribbons, and his pregnant girlfriend left alive but comatose . . .
What you don’t know . . . Psychologist Claire Norris is assigned to treat the survivor at a private mental hospital. But there are no clues to the identity of the catatonic “Jane Doe.” A difficult job only becomes more complicated with the arrival of ex-homicide detective Langdon Stone, who questions Claire’s every move.
Cryptic Magic
by Lily Skyy
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Anomalies are dangerous—Zaid is fully ready to eliminate Kinza if she’s a threat. Kinza won’t go down without a fight—and now she’s discovered she has magic. He’s out to stop her from becoming the prophecy that destroys his people. But her magic might be stronger than his…
Kinza thinks she might be getting sick. Either that, or she’s going crazy. Not much else could account for the odd things happening to her. What she doesn’t know is that she’s the nightmare of a hidden civilization or that she’s magical, and if she doesn’t learn to control her wild gifts, she’ll destroy the world. When Zaid stalks into her life, she’s given an ultimatum. One she can’t accept.
Winner Take All
by Barry Eisler
Rating: 4.4 #ad
John Rain has disappeared in Brazil to escape the killing business and the enemies encircling him in Japan. But the CIA isn’t willing to lose its premier “natural causes” contract killer, and they force Rain to take on a high-risk assignment: eliminate a ruthless arms dealer operating in Southeast Asia.
The upside? Financial, of course, along with the possibility of moral redemption. But first, Rain will have to survive the downside: a second assassin zeroing in on the target; an alluring and dangerous woman with an agenda of her own; the possibility that the entire mission is nothing but an elaborate setup.