Friday’s Mystery eBooks
The Body in the Lighthouse
by Katherine Hall Page
Rating: 4.2 #ad
Something was very wrong on Sanpere this summer . . .
To escape the misery of a sweltering August in Aleford, Massachusetts, caterer and minister’s wife Faith Fairchild and her family head for their cottage on Maine’s peaceful Sanpere Island in Penobscot Bay. But things have changed since their last visit. An aggressive developer is moving forward on plans that will destroy the unique ambience of the island, infuriating residents. Tensions are running dangerously high, and soon murder rears its hideous head. Faith discovers a corpse while exploring the grounds of Sanpere’s historic lighthouse.
Winter’s Black Christmas
by Mary Stone
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Jingle all the way…to murder. When FBI Special Agent Winter Black enters a luxurious Montana cabin two days before Christmas, she’s excited because all the people she loves will be joining her soon. Her joy is dashed when an unexpected blizzard hits the area, leaving her stranded and without any means of communication.
And she’s not alone. Instead of her friends and family arriving, a momma cat shows up at the cabin’s door, begging for help. Braving the snow, Winter finds more than just the feline’s litter.
She finds a dead body.
When I Know Your Name
by G.M. Lawrence
Rating: 4.6 #ad
They planned the perfect kidnap. Except for one thing – they chose Elena.
Elena Dumont appears to have it all: a charmed life, a handsome boyfriend and wealthy, successful parents. But when she is kidnapped, she is forced to confront the problems that lurk beneath her perfect facade.
Although she is terrified, Elena digs deep and shows resilience and courage. One of her captors notices her bravery and they develop an unlikely bond.
Elena is faced with a choice: should she trust this man who is supposed to be her enemy?
ASBO
by Iain Rob Wright
Rating: 4.3 #ad
Andrew Goodman has never been a victim. Until now. A local gang of youths has targeted him with their sadistic games, and there’s no escape.
With his wife and daughter in danger, Andrew must face the youths outside his door, because if he doesn’t fight back, they’ll ruin his life forever.
#1 Amazon Thriller inspired by real events. Visceral and Compelling, for lovers of Eden Lake and the Girl Next Door. A disturbing thrill-ride with hundreds of 5 star reviews and a plot that is a little too close to home.
The Oracle of Maracoor
by Gregory Maguire
Rating: 4.4 #ad
The Oracle of Maracoor, the second in the trilogy called Another Day, continues the story of Elphaba’s green-skinned granddaughter, Rain. That strange land, Maracoor – across the ocean from Oz – is beset by an invading army. In the mayhem, Rain and Cossy, a child felon, break out of prison. Helped by a few flying monkeys, they struggle to escape the city before it falls under siege. Their arresting officer, Lucikles, also retreats with his family to a highland redoubt. But safety eludes them all. Chaos thunders upon them in the form of warriors, refugees, and brigands. The very fabric of reality loosens, liberating creatures of myth and legend—huge blue wolves, harpies, and giants made of the very landscape.
Six Seconds
by Rick Mofina
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Three strangers scattered across the world become entangled in a terrorist plot of global proportions in “this well-crafted and timely thriller” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
An aid worker who lost her husband and child in a brutal attack saves the life of an American contractor in Iraq. Believing he can help her avenge her family’s deaths, she follows him back home to the United States . . .
Meanwhile, a California soccer mom arrives to pick up her son from school, only to discover that her husband has taken their child and vanished without a trace . . .
Cold Mountain
by Charles Frazier
Rating: 4.4 #ad
In 1997, Charles Frazier’s debut novel Cold Mountain made publishing history when it sailed to the top of The New York Times best-seller list for sixty-one weeks, won numerous literary awards, including the National Book Award, and went on to sell over three million copies. Now, the beloved American epic returns, reissued by Grove Press to coincide with the publication of Frazier’s eagerly-anticipated second novel, Thirteen Moons. Sorely wounded and fatally disillusioned in the fighting at Petersburg, a Confederate soldier named Inman decides to walk back to his home in the Blue Ridge mountains to Ada, the woman he loves.
Thursday’s Mystery eBooks
The Christmas Coroner
by Paul Austin Ardoin
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Buried secrets. A dead online celebrity. Just in time for Christmas.
Days before the town’s annual Christmas Parade, an up-and-coming celebrity chef is found dead in a mountain cabin. As Coroner Fenway Stevenson investigates, she uncovers the chef’s dark past, a war brewing between local farms, and a hidden identity that could blow the town apart. Can Fenway unmask the murderer before she becomes the next victim?
The Enthronement
by Charity Mae
Rating: 4.3 #ad
Five-hundred years bloody of civil war ends in massacre or redemption based on the heart of one actress who never wanted this power.
Kascia is shattered when they ask her to join the Enthronement. She wants to stop the horrific suffering of her people, but is it worth the cost of her heart and soul? She’s left broken and unsure of her existence when the men in her life, who should have loved her, pressure her to join the Enthronement – a contest to prove one girl a true princess and marry the crown prince – so she can let her father’s rebels in to assassinate the royal family.
Her confidence is further shattered when the truths she once held dear are challenged upon entering the palace. The royal family is not what she’d expected them to be.
Race Against Time
by Sharon Sala
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Sometimes fate brings you together—only to tear you apart . . .
Growing up in the foster system, Quinn O’Meara made a point of never getting involved. But when she discovers a crying baby amid a fiery crime scene, she knows she has no choice. Suddenly in way over her head, Quinn turns to the police, unintentionally positioning herself in the crosshairs of a deadly human-trafficking ring.
The last time homicide detective Nick Saldano saw Quinn, she was still the young girl he’d shared a foster home with. The girl who’d loved and cared for him when no one else had. Now here she was, gorgeously all grown-up—and in terrible danger.
Oath of Loyalty
by Vince Flynn, Kyle Mills
Rating: 4.6 #ad
With President Anthony Cook convinced that Mitch Rapp poses a mortal threat to him, CIA Director Irene Kennedy is forced to construct a truce between the two men. The terms are simple: Rapp agrees to leave the country and stay in plain sight for as long as Cook controls the White House. In exchange, the administration agrees not to make any moves against him.
This fragile détente holds until Cook’s power-hungry security adviser convinces him that Rapp has no intention of honoring their agreement. To put him on the defensive, they leak the identity of his partner, Claudia Gould. As Rapp races to neutralize the enemies organizing against her, he discovers that a new type of assassin is on her trail.
Learning to Kill: Stories
by Ed McBain
Rating: 4.4 #ad
A “gripping” collection of crime stories from the author of the acclaimed 87th Precinct novels (People).
Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct is “perhaps the finest police procedural series of all time” (Publishers Weekly). But before he turned to novels, McBain wrote short crime fiction under various names, for pulp magazines including Manhunt and Argosy. Collected in this anthology are twenty-five of these early stories, organized under headings such as “Women in Jeopardy,” “Private Eyes,” “Loose Cannons,” and “Gangs.”
Vows and Vendettas
by Multiple Authors
Rating: 5.0 #ad
Our underworld is filled with bloodshed and malice, and darkness dominates our lives. It’s our world… where limits are built of smoke, and their rules have no power.
And when we find the object of our deepest desires, we are ruthless. Nothing, not even their defiance, will stand in our way.
We cast our shadows on them, and they give our corruption a purpose. Before, we were breaking the rules for ourselves. Now, we are breaking every rule for them.
Kidnapped by a Client
by Sharon R. Muse
Rating: 4.2 #ad
“He promised to kill me when he got out. I believed him. If I wanted justice, I had to fight both him and the courts…maybe kill him first. If I didn’t do something, I was going to die.”
This is not a manufactured dialogue from a thriller but the words of attorney Sharon Muse. They came after she survived an attempted kidnapping, rape, and murder at the hands of Larry Morrison, a former client. On April 7, 2006, Muse miraculously escaped from the sociopathic Morrison, only to find that the threat to her life was just beginning. Ineptitude in the justice system threatened to release Morrison and allow him the opportunity to finish the job, which he adamantly pledged to do. Muse would have to fight at every step to ensure her safety.
Wednesday’s Mystery eBooks
Code Red
by Ian Loome
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Bob is just another homeless guy. So why is he being hunted by a crack team of assassins? Bob Singleton used to be a top CIA assassin. Now, scarred by his terrible past, he lives in a refrigerator box behind a dumpster in downtown Chicago.
He just wants to be left alone. But his past is coming back to haunt him, in the shape of a nurse and a teenage boy who desperately need his help. They are being pursued by trained killers because they stumbled on a long-buried conspiracy, a secret that is tied to a failed mission in Bob’s military past.
Buried Ranch Secrets
by Lisa Childs
Rating: 4.5 #ad
The closer they get to the truth The deadlier it becomes…
When a body is found on his family ranch, single dad Cody Shepard will do anything to help find the murderer, even work with FBI agent Bethany Snow, the woman who broke his heart. But the shocking identity of the victim reveals painful secrets about Cody’s past and sets off a deadly chain of discoveries…and a new threat.
Never Turn Back
by Christopher Swann
Rating: 4.3 #ad
Linwood Barclay meets Michael Farris Smith in this Southern-set domestic thriller about family, vengeance, and atonement from critically acclaimed Southern mystery novelist Christopher Swann.
The bonds of family never truly let go. In fact, its grip only tightens the further you try to run: crushing and crippling.
Ethan Faulkner is a precocious child with a brilliant but troublesome sister, a war vet for a father, and a weary mother trying to manage their family. One night a young woman rings their doorbell, desperate to hide from two men who are pursuing her, when one of the two barges in after her. The struggle leaves both of Ethan’s parents dead.
The Harry Bosch Novels: Volume 2
by Michael Connelly
Rating: 4.6 #ad
The Last Coyote: LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch is suspended from the force for attacking his commanding officer. Unable to remain idle, he investigates the long-unsolved murder of a Hollywood prostitute. Trunk Music: Harry returns to the force to investigate the murder of a movie producer with Mafia ties. Up against both the LAPD’s organized crime unit and the mob, Harry follows the money trail to Las Vegas, where the case becomes personal. Angels Flight: The murder of a prominent African-American attorney who made his career suing the police for racism and brutality means that Harry’s friends and associates have become suspects; and he must work closely with longtime enemies suspicious of his maverick ways to investigate them.
The Root Witch
by Debra Castaneda
Rating: 4.2 #ad
A beautiful forest. A terrifying legend.
It’s 1986. Two strangers, hundreds of miles apart, grapple with disturbing incidents in a one-of-a-kind quaking aspen forest.
Knox is a new Forest Service ranger assigned to a vast, remote territory in Utah. Sandy is a producer fighting for her place in a tough TV newsroom. Both have heard about the shadowy figure believed to menace visitors to the forest. When a man disappears and reports of the Root Witch begin coming in, Knox and Sandy are plunged into a living nightmare.
The Pale Horse
by Agatha Christie
Rating: 4.4 #ad
In the classic mystery by Queen of Mystery Agatha Christie, an elderly priest is murdered, quite possibly doomed by a woman’s deathbed confession and by the secrets kept safely locked behind closed doors of a mysterious local pub.
When an elderly priest is murdered, the killer searches the victim so roughly that his already ragged cassock is torn in the process. What was the killer looking for? And what had a dying woman confided to the priest on her deathbed only hours earlier?
The Secret Place
by Tana French
Rating: 4.0 #ad
A year ago a boy was found murdered at a girlsʼ boarding school, and the case was never solved. Detective Stephen Moran has been waiting for his chance to join Dublin’s Murder Squad when sixteen-year-old Holly Mackey arrives in his office with a photo of the boy with the caption: “I KNOW WHO KILLED HIM.” Stephen joins with Detective Antoinette Conway to reopen the case—beneath the watchful eye of Holly’s father, fellow detective Frank Mackey.
The Jack Eldridge Story
by Dennis Higgins
Rating: 5.0 #ad
Retrofuturism is the past’s vision of the future. It’s what the people of yesterday thought today would look like.
The Chicago Cultural Center building was once the main branch of the Chicago Public Library. During major renovations, eight mysterious books were found behind a wall on the lower level. Nobody took much interest in the old books until they ended up on the desk of Dorothy Burnett, the Center’s main historian. She discovered that the books were written in the 1930s by an unfamiliar author named Jack Eldridge who penned detailed, retrofuturistic visions of what life would be like in the future. Most interesting were his last two volumes which predicted life in the year 2000 and beyond. Dorothy was so entranced with the books, she wished Jack Eldridge would step out of time and walk through her door. As fate would have it, Jack ended up in the 21st century to witness the world as it had really become.
Tuesday’s Mystery eBooks
A Pocket Full of Pie
by Leena Clover
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Meet Meera Patel – college dropout and soon to be amateur sleuth
Fall term is almost over and Thanksgiving is around the corner. Meera has been ordered to stop her tomfoolery and think about her future.
All good intentions are foiled when Meera runs into a dead man in the park. The local diner owners are implicated in the young rancher’s death. Meera and her grandma face off against the Patel men and insist on sticking by their friends.
Shame on You
by Amy Heydenrych
Rating: 3.9 #ad
SURELY WE ALL LIE A LITTLE BIT ONLINE . . . DON’T WE?
The gripping psychological thriller that explores the darker side of social media, perfect for fans of THE GIRL BEFORE and FRIEND REQUEST.
Have you ever wanted to reinvent yourself? Have you ever lied about who you are to get more likes? Have you ever followed someone online who you think is perfect?
Atlanta Extreme
by Randy Wayne White
Rating: 4.0 #ad
From the jungles of Belize to the streets of Atlanta, Hawker’s war rages on.
The CIA wants James Hawker dead. For years, his one-man campaign against organized crime has struck fear into America’s most corrupt politicians, and now they’re striking back. Hawker escaped the United States by the skin of his teeth, and has spent the last months living the life of a glamorous expatriate in Latin America: fast cars, lovely women, and all the champagne his Swiss bank account can buy him. For some men, it would be paradise. For Hawker, a life without action is a living hell.
Strange Weather: Four Short Novels
by Joe Hill
Rating: 4.4 #ad
A collection of four chilling novels, ingeniously wrought gems of terror from the brilliantly imaginative, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Fireman, Joe Hill.
Snapshot
Loaded
Aloft
Rain
Steeped to Death
by Gretchen Rue
Rating: 4.7 #ad
For fans of Laura Childs and Amanda Flowers, it’s teatime in Raven Creek – but a murder at the The Earl’s Study sets the stage for an intoxicating brew of small-town chicanery with a hint of the supernatural.
Phoebe Winchester’s beloved aunt Eudora has a taste for adventure – and a knack for making magical tea. It’s even rumored that she just might be a witch. So when Eudora passes away and leaves everything to her niece – her Victorian mansion, her bookshop/tea store, The Earl’s Study, and one very chubby orange cat named Bob – Phoebe gets more than she bargained for. And she knows she’s in deep when a dead man is found on the shop’s back step, apparently killed while trying to break in.
Smoke Bellew
by Jack London
Rating: 4.4 #ad
A sweeping adventure saga in the tradition of White Fang and The Call of the Wild, bringing to vivid life the cold, bleak, unforgiving Alaskan wilderness and the colorful, desperately uncertain lives of both natives and intruders. On a lark, the novel’s hero, Christopher Bellew, a San Francisco newspaperman and dandy, sets off on what he believes will be a brief trek into the Klondike to cover the latest gold rush. The lark turns into a rough, raw adventure that transforms the young chekako (tenderfoot) into a tough, hardened survivor.
Spells for Forgetting
by Adrienne Young
Rating: 4.3 #ad
Emery Blackwood’s life changed forever the night her best friend was found dead and the love of her life, August Salt, was accused of murdering her. Years later, she is doing what her teenage self swore she never would: living a quiet existence on the misty, remote shores of Saoirse Island and running the family’s business, Blackwood’s Tea Shoppe Herbal Tonics & Tea Leaf Readings. But when the island, rooted in folklore and magic, begins to show signs of strange happenings, Emery knows that something is coming. The morning she wakes to find that every single tree on Saoirse has turned color in a single night, August returns for the first time in fourteen years and unearths the past that the town has tried desperately to forget.
EMBRACE THE WIND
by Susan Denning
Rating: 4.4 #ad
What is the cost of living life on your own terms? For a young woman on the American Frontier, the price can be high. Aislynn Maher trusted the wrong man. To conceal her disgrace, she abandons her job, her home, her family and friends. She turns to the raw, contentious US marshal of the Wyoming Territory, Orrin Sage, who is hiding a guilty secret of his own. Setting out alone, Aislynn brings her optimism and determination to Cheyenne. But in this rough town, with its prejudice, violence and lawlessness, it’s not just difficult to do what you believe is right─ it’s potentially deadly.
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.”