Mysteries
Friday’s Mystery eBooks
Toucan Keep a Secret
by Donna Andrews
Rating: 4.6 #ad
Toucan keep a secret, if one of them is dead.
Meg Langslow is at Trinity Episcopal Church locking up after an event and checking on the toucan her friend Rev. Robyn Smith is fostering in her office. When she investigates the sound of hammering in the columbarium (the underground crypt where cremated remains are buried), Meg finds the murdered body of an elderly parishioner. Several niches have been chiseled open; several urns knocked out; and amid the spilled ashes is a gold ring with a huge red stone.
The curmudgeonly victim had become disgruntled with the church and ranted all over town about taking back his wife’s ashes. Did someone who had it in for him follow him to the columbarium?
North of the Killing Hand
by Joni M Fisher
Rating: 4.8 #ad
Years after witnessing the murder of her parents, Nefi Jenkins pursues a career in law enforcement, but later must choose between the rule of law and the temptation of revenge.
North of the Killing Hand is the second book in the Compass Crimes collection and a prequel to South of Justice. A finalist in the 2016 Royal Palm Literary Awards Competition, and a finalist in the 2017 National Indie Excellence Awards in the suspense category, this story has overlapping characters from South of Justice.
After Nefi Jenkins witnesses her parents’ murder in Brazil, she bonds with her American rescuers. They bring her to the U.S. to live with her relatives where she must adapt to a radically different lifestyle. She dedicates her life to law enforcement, in large part to impress Vincent Gunnerson, one of her rescuers. As an adult, Nefi will be forced to choose between the rule of law and the temptation of revenge.
Wizard Storm
by Dee Maltby
Rating: 4.4 #ad
A fatherless wizard is no match for royalty. So Beneban, shaken by loss, leaves his noble lady, Laraynia, for a dangerous quest. With the Grand Lar and Trog as his traveling companions, he journeys to the remote Ogdol homeland on the far western shore of Larlion. Magic sword in hand, he battles many perils along the way. It seems that the black wizard Ztavin’s evil magic is gone, but who is threatening the Ogdol throne?
Laraynia is left behind as the new Lady of the Great Shrine. Uprooted from her beloved Forest and seemingly deserted by Beneban, she struggles to defend the Shrine from danger on every side. Her wizard father Nigeran, Queen Varakin, and Vari’s fierce ice dragons fight by her side, as does the handsome Mergol king, who offers his friendship… and more. Laraynia still longs for Beneban’s return, but how long will she wait?
Five Years in Yemen
by Luana Ehrlich
Rating: 4.8 #ad
A CIA contractor goes missing in Iraq. Five years later, he turns up in Yemen. Now, it’s up to Titus to find out if he’s a traitor or a patriot.
After Titus accepts an assignment to bring rogue CIA contractor Jacob Levin back to the States, he learns the operation has been put on hold pending Presidential approval. That’s fine with him. He’s looking forward to spending time in Oklahoma with his fiancée, Nikki Saxon.
But then, his boss needs a favor. After that, everything changes.
It begins in Springfield, Missouri . . . Where he interviews a former CIA employee about the missing Jacob Levin.
It continues in Detroit, Michigan . . . Where he and Nikki spend Thanksgiving with his relatives.
It leads to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia . . . Where he encounters a killer.
It ends in Somahi, Yemen . . .
The Hunting Wives
by May Cobb
Rating: 3.8 #ad
Sophie O’Neill left behind an envy-inspiring career and the stressful, competitive life of big-city Chicago to settle down with her husband and young son in a small Texas town. It seems like the perfect life with a beautiful home in an idyllic rural community. But Sophie soon realizes that life is now too quiet, and she’s feeling bored and restless.
Then she meets Margot Banks, an alluring socialite who is part of an elite clique secretly known as the Hunting Wives. Sophie finds herself completely drawn to Margot and swept into her mysterious world of late-night target practice and dangerous partying.
So Long
by Blake Pierce
Rating: 4.5 #ad
SO LONG is Book #1 in a long-anticipated new series by #1 bestseller and USA Today bestselling author Blake Pierce, whose bestseller Once Gone (a free download) has received over 7,000 five star ratings and reviews.
FBI Special Agent Faith Bold, hospitalized and haunted by her encounter with a serial killer, is ready to retire—when Turk, a K9 German Shepherd, himself traumatized, comes into her life. When a new serial killer strikes, leaving his victims at the bottom of isolated wells, Faith, this time with Turk at her side, will stop at nothing to hunt him down and save the next victim before it is too late.
Thursday’s Mystery eBooks
A Fatal Booking
by Victoria Gilbert
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Booklover Charlotte is delighted to welcome an eclectic group of guests to Chapters Bed and Breakfast for a book club retreat focused on fairy tales and classic children’s literature. But when one of the guests is poisoned at a Mad Hatter tea party, Charlotte realizes she’s fallen down a rather unpleasant rabbit hole
The victim – an opinionated busybody whose jewelry store sold original designs, along with some possibly “hot” merchandise – had plenty of enemies, spurring Charlotte and Ellen to offer their well-honed investigative skills to assist the local police.
The Teaching
by T. O. Paine
Rating: 3.8 #ad
Based on the author’s true-life experience living in a cult. Someone wanted her gone in the worst way.
Raine Harkins believes everything the Teaching tells her – forgiveness is freedom, there are no dead, and there is no dying. She has lived her entire life in the Haven, a small religious community buried in the hills of northern Nevada, and it’s been a good life.
But when she discovers a frightened teenage girl hiding in the forest, everything changes. Raine offers to help the girl, but gunshots ring out, and the girl runs away, never to be seen again.
Bridge to Desert Desire
by Stephanie Parker McKean
Rating: 5.0 #ad
Texas Miz Mike regrets the shattered romances scattered through her life like wind-thrashed flower petals. She resolves to end dystopian relationships by outdistancing the mysteries that seem to stalk her even when she is busy minding her own business. Little can she afford another mystery to sweep into her life and separate her from her new love, Scottish Reverend Alan Evan Kirkland, who is already separated from her by the ocean until she receives her United Kingdom Visa. She flees to the Nevada desert to visit an artsy friend, expecting the empty desert to shield her from murder, mystery, and mayhem.
The desert proves far from empty and the secrets it guards are deadly. Mike must not only save her own life, but also that of a rebellious teen who hates her, does not believe in God, and is determined to engineer the same level of dystopia that Mike fled to the desert to avoid.
River of Fallen Angels
by Laura Joh Rowland
Rating: 4.4 #ad
London, April 1891. When the severed torso of a woman washes up on the bank of the river Thames, London believes a serial killer from the past has struck again. Crime photographer and investigator Sarah Bain Barrett is on the scene with her friends Mick O’Reilly and Lord Hugh Staunton. This is their chance to solve a grisly cold case and deliver a monster to belated justice, with help from Sarah’s husband Detective Sergeant Thomas Barrett; her sister Sally Albert, an intrepid newspaper reporter; and Hugh’s psychologist, Dr. Joshua Lewes, who’s a pioneer in the new science of criminal profiling.
DIRT
by Wendy Potocki
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Dirt. A plot of ground in Prescott Park is messing with Cal Hart’s head. Ever since hearing the rumor of what happened on the land now covered by a toolshed, he’s become obsessed with the urban legend. Children don’t just disappear after being pushed into barren soil, not even when that soil is nicknamed ‘the place where nothing grows’. But one did, and so he turns to the local sheriff’s office for assistance.
The authorities are adamant that nothing supernatural was at work, and that it was a transient with a long record of arrests that got hold of the diminutive second-grader and lured her away from home. But a town historian disputes the sanitized version of the incident and hints that more sinister forces are to blame – sinister forces that are yet to be named. Because of the confusion and his own need to know, Cal launches his own investigation.
Below the Bones
by Kendra Elliot
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Former FBI special agent Cate Wilde is a new bakery and bookstore owner—and retirement is now complete with a doctor boyfriend. Although she struggles with PTSD, the sweet life she’s living is a far cry from the gruesome work she left behind six months ago.
But when skeletal remains turn up on Widow’s Island—and the MO of the killer is too familiar to Cate—the dream comes to an abrupt end. What if the case she solved eight years ago isn’t as closed as she thought? Her hometown needs her, and despite her mental health and her boyfriend’s protests, she has no choice but to return to her dangerous past life.
Stalkers
by Eileen Ormsby
Rating: 4.2 #ad
Deluded narcissists. Obsessed fans. Sinister internet trolls. Stalkers who turned deadly
A Hollywood starlet on a smash-hit sitcom enjoys rising fame, unaware that her greatest fan is hell-bent on meeting his crush. When she films a love scene, his adoration turns into a quest to see her punished
A gameshow winner turns to writing books. When one is given a scathing review, he tracks down the reviewer with bloody results
A teenage boy enjoys online chatrooms. When he meets a sexy Secret Service operative, she convinces him he has been chosen to be a spy with a licence to kill… and his first target is his own best friend.