Thursday’s Mystery eBooks
Broken Bone China
by Laura Childs
Rating: 4.7 #ad
It is Sunday afternoon, and Theodosia and Drayton are catering a formal tea at a hot-air balloon rally. The view aloft is not only stunning, they are also surrounded by a dozen other colorful hot-air balloons. But as the sky turns gray and the clouds start to boil up, a strange object zooms out of nowhere. It is a drone, and it appears to be buzzing around the balloons, checking them out.
As Theodosia and Drayton watch, the drone, hovering like some angry, mechanized insect, deliberately crashes into the balloon next to them. An enormous, fiery explosion erupts, and everyone watches in horror as the balloon plummets to the earth, killing all three of its passengers.
Inheritance
by Colleen Snyder
Rating: 4.7 #ad
Three hundred MILLION dollars. Your inheritance. Buy anything you want, go anywhere you want, do anything you want. All yours. Except…
You’re a social worker. How do you maintain “street cred” with the kids you’ve devoted your life to?
How will that kind of money affect the man you love?
And then there’s your birth family. The ones that abandoned you to die at fourteen. The ones you suspect even now are trying to have you killed over the money. How do you share with them? Or do you?
Check out:
(Collin Walker Mysteries)
V is for Vengeance
by Sue Grafton
Rating: 4.6 #ad
Private detective Kinsey Millhone feels a bit out of place in any department store’s lingerie section, but she’s entirely in her element when she puts a stop to a brazen shoplifting spree. For her trouble she nearly gets run over in the parking lot by one of the fleeing thieves – and later learns that the one who didn’t get away has been found dead in an apparent suicide. But Audrey Vance’s grieving fiance suspects murder and hires Kinsey to investigate a case that will reveal a big story behind a small crime and lead her into a web that connects a shadowy “private banker,” an angry trophy wife, a spoiled kid with a spiraling addiction, and a brutal killer without a conscience…
Bitter Falls
by Rachel Caine
Rating: 4.6 #ad
She’s investigating a cold case no one else could—by going places no else would dare.
In spite of a harrowing past still haunting her, Gwen Proctor is trying to move forward. Until a new assignment gives her purpose: the cold-case disappearance of a young man in Tennessee. Three years missing, no clues. Just Ruth Landry, a tortured mother in limbo. Gwen understands what it’s like to worry about your children.
Gwen’s investigation unearths new suspects…and victims. As she follows each sinister lead, the implications of the mystery grow more disturbing. Because the closer Gwen gets, the closer she is to a threat that looms back home.
Heretic of the Federation Complete Series Boxed Set
by Michael Anderle
Rating: 5.0 #ad
You cannot murder a person who never existed.
John Dunn fled into a radioactive wasteland, seeking death rather than work in the Regime.
What he learns changes humanity forever.
Get this complete series and learn who the Regime is trying to hide, for now, and will kill if she returns.
It is not impossible to rewrite history. In fact, when one computer runs the world, changing history happens faster.
Books of Horror
by Multiple Authors
Rating: 4.3 #ad
They say that third time’s a charm and for the third installment of the Books of Horror community Anthology, it’s a fact. With well over seventy stories submitted, there was just too much content for a single book. Volume 3 is being brought to you in two parts. You’ll find the book(s) you’re about to read filled with tales of horror that span the genre, crafted by veteran authors, as well as first time writers.
The Lost
by Simon Beckett
Rating: 4.3 #ad
A London detective makes a gruesome discovery that could solve the riddle of his son’s disappearance in this crime thriller series debut.
Det. Sgt. Jonah Colley of the Metropolitan firearms unit has been wracked with guilt for the past ten years, ever since his son went missing under his care. The tragedy broke up his marriage and left him estranged from his best friend, Det. Sgt. Gavin McKinney. But now Gavin calls him out of the blue. Desperate for help, he needs Jonah to meet him at Slaughter Quay.
Jonah arrives to a horrifying crime scene where Gavin was brutally attacked and left for dead. As the only survivor, he is also a person of interest.
Gemini Queen
by Laura Navarre
Rating: 4.5 #ad
I summon the lightning. I claim my power. The warlocks of Icarus Academy claim me.
I start my night as a cat burglar in Singapore and I end up queen of the witching world. Too bad this rags-to-riches fairytale’s a gig I never applied for and won’t accept. My witchcraft is wild and lethal, so I’ve renounced my power. I’m a fish out of water at Icarus Academy.
But these four sexy warlocks who rule the school just won’t take no for an answer.
High Stakes
by Iris Johansen
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Logan Tanner lives the exhilarating life of a professional gambler, taking risks with nerves of steel. From casinos in Macau to Monte Carlo to Milan, he’s racked up a fortune and become a living legend. But all the glitz and glamor hide a dark and violent past as an extractor – a world that comes rushing back to him when the beautiful and innocent Lara Balkon enters his life.
Soon Logan is drawn into the conflict between two Russian mafia bosses over Lara, whose life now hangs in the balance. Logan has been offered something more valuable to him than money—information he desperately needs—in exchange for getting Lara out of Russia and to safety.
Wednesday’s Mystery eBooks
A Game of Fear
by Charles Todd
Rating: 4.6 #ad
In this newest installment of the acclaimed New York Times bestselling series, Scotland Yard’s Ian Rutledge is faced with his most perplexing case yet: a murder with no body, and a killer who can only be a ghost.
Spring, 1921. Scotland Yard sends Inspector Ian Rutledge to the sea-battered village of Walmer on the coast of Essex, where amongst the salt flats and a military airfield lies Benton Abbey, a grand manor with a storied past. The lady of the house may prove his most bewildering witness yet. She claims she saw a violent murder—but there is no body, no blood. She also insists she recognized the killer: Captain Nelson. Only it could not have been Nelson because he died during the war.
Special Agent Storm
by Mimi Barbour
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Agent Storm is way too gorgeous for a mere mortal. Considering his looks mean nothing to him, that detail has hindered him all his life. For Kurt, it’s all about his ability to be a good Navy Seal and eventually the FBI agent that works undercover and gets the bad guys.
Therefore, when a stranger gives him a hard time in a bar, and then kisses him crazy before she’s done, the aftereffects of that meeting change his whole life. From then on, her problems become his focus, and she leads him on a merry chase… especially when she informs him in no uncertain terms to back off because she’s married.
Check out:
(Undercover FBI Mysteries)
Bleeding Heart Yard
by Elly Griffiths
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Is it possible to forget that you’ve committed a murder?
When Cassie Fitzgerald was at school in the late 90s, she and her friends killed a fellow student. Almost twenty years later, Cassie is a happily married mother who loves her job—as a police officer. She closely guards the secret she has all but erased from her memory.
One day her husband finally persuades her to go to a school reunion. Cassie catches up with her high-achieving old friends from the Manor Park School—among them two politicians, a rock star, and a famous actress. But then, shockingly, one of them, Garfield Rice, is found dead in the school bathroom, supposedly from a drug overdose.
Chaos
by Patricia Cornwell
Rating: 4.2 #ad
A vast chasm or void. Anarchy. The science of unpredictability.
On a late summer evening in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Dr. Kay Scarpetta and her investigative partner, Pete Marino, respond to a call about a dead bicyclist near the Kennedy School of Government. It appears that a young woman has been attacked with almost superhuman force.
Even before Scarpetta’s headquarters has been officially notified about the case, Marino and Scarpetta’s FBI agent husband, Benton Wesley, receive suspicious calls, allegedly from someone at Interpol. But it makes no sense.
What Awakens Within
by Jewel Gray, Aaren Light
Rating: 4.8 #ad
A bloodthirsty Dangere killed Wintry’s loved one. She wished all the beasts were dead, wiped off the earth. Too bad she discovered she’s one of them.
Blaize vowed never to take a mate. Wintry loathes all Dangere. Yet, neither can break the bond of being intended mates that fate has woven for them. With humans and Dangere being mortal enemies, can love flourish between a girl and Dangere?
Wintry Oryx, a seventeen-year-old with albinism is relegated to a life as a Recessive within the dome. As a nurse, she’s dedicated her life to saving those who have fallen prey to the Dangere wolves. Living in the dome has spared Wintry from ever encountering them. That is until an Alpha, in human form, arrives for her.
Second Lives
by P.D. Cacek
Rating: 4.8 #ad
When four patients unexpectedly wake after being declared dead, their families are ecstatic and the word “miracle” begins to be whispered throughout the hospital. But the jubilation is short lived when the patients don’t respond to their names and insist they are different people. It is suggested all four are suffering from fugue states until one of the doctors recognizes a name and verifies that he not only knew the girl but was there when she died in 1992. It soon becomes obvious that the bodies of the four patients are now inhabited by the souls of people long dead.
Notes on an Execution
by Danya Kukafka
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Ansel Packer is scheduled to die in twelve hours. He knows what he’s done, and now awaits execution, the same chilling fate he forced on those girls, years ago. But Ansel doesn’t want to die; he wants to be celebrated, understood.
Through a kaleidoscope of women—a mother, a sister, a homicide detective—we learn the story of Ansel’s life. We meet his mother, Lavender, a seventeen-year-old girl pushed to desperation; Hazel, twin sister to Ansel’s wife, inseparable since birth, forced to watch helplessly as her sister’s relationship threatens to devour them all; and finally, Saffy, the detective hot on his trail, who has devoted herself to bringing bad men to justice but struggles to see her own life clearly. As the clock ticks down, these three women sift through the choices that culminate in tragedy, exploring the rippling fissures that such destruction inevitably leaves in its wake.
Why is Nothing Ever Simple?
by Jodi Taylor
Rating: 4.8 #ad
It’s Christmas at St Mary’s and time for the traditional illicit jump. Except this one is perfectly legal. It’s Major Guthrie’s last jump. To the Battle of Bannockburn, no less. An important moment in History for two nations – one that warrants everyone’s full attention.
But Max soon finds herself grappling with a near-lethal game of pooh sticks, another avian incursion and two turbulent teenagers intent on piloting their own illegal jump. And that’s all before they even get near fourteenth-century Scotland.
For this is St Mary’s and nothing is ever simple . . .
Used: Not a Memoir
by Sloane Ellis
Rating: 5.0 #ad
When you always live an authentic life, you never have to keep your story straight.
When Sloane woke up with searing pain and half the skin on his left foot shorn off, he could not remember why. As a pathological liar with a short memory inflicted by drug and alcohol abuse, keeping his story straight was like navigating the terror and thrills of the roller coaster he had been on most of his life.
This is not a memoir about the disease of addiction and its fallout. This is not an autobiography of a man who gave up everything for just one thing nor is it an account of love and loss and the refusal to see what is right in front of you until it is too late.
Tuesday’s Mystery eBooks
The Vatican Secret
by David Leadbeater
Rating: 4.2 #ad
You’ve cracked the Da Vinci code, now uncover the Vatican secret…
The deepest secrets are kept in the darkest places. When ex-MI5 operative Joe Mason is sent to Rome to guard an elderly professor and his daughter, he thinks he’s in for an easy ride.
But on their first day in the Vatican secret archives, a masked assassin gains entry, shoots Joe’s client in cold blood and steals an ancient manuscript. Giving chase, Joe can’t imagine what could lie within those pages that would make someone willing to kill.
The Knowledge
by Martha Grimes
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Robbie Parsons is one of London’s finest, a black cab driver who knows every street, every theater, every landmark in the city by heart. In his backseat is a man with a gun in his hand—a man who brazenly committed a crime in front of the Artemis Club, a rarefied art gallery-cum-casino, then jumped in and ordered Parsons to drive. As the criminal eventually escapes to Nairobi, Detective Superintendent Richard Jury comes across the case in the Saturday paper.
Two days previously, Jury had met and instantly connected with one of the victims of the crime, a professor of astrophysics at Columbia and an expert gambler. Feeling personally affronted, Jury soon enlists Melrose Plant, Marshall Trueblood, and his whole gang of merry characters to contend with a case that takes unexpected turns into Tanzanian gem mines…
The Resentment
by T. O. Paine
Rating: 3.8 #ad
Would you forgive your son’s kidnapper? Lauren Kaine has everything she ever wanted — a fabulous home, a shiny Lexus, a bright sixteen-year-old son, and a loving husband with a lucrative internet career. Tonight, she walks hand-in-hand with William beneath the lustrous Seattle sky, celebrating twenty-two years of marriage.
But they’re not alone. A mysterious black Audi comes out of nowhere and chases William onto a bridge. He shouts, “They’re here for the card,” and falls to his death. Enraged, Lauren attacks the car, but the tinted windows hide the driver’s face, and it speeds away.
Boy in the Box
by Marc E. Fitch
Rating: 4.1 #ad
Ten years ago a mysterious and tragic hunting accident deep in the Adirondack Mountains left a boy buried in a storied piece of land known as Coombs’ Gulch and four friends with a terrible secret.
Now, Jonathan Hollis and brothers Michael and Conner Braddick must return to the place that changed their lives forever in order to keep their secret buried. What they don’t realize is that they are walking into a trap – one set decades earlier by a supernatural being who is not confined by time or place: a demon that demands a sacrifice.
A Painted Goddess
by Victor Gischler
Rating: 4.4 #ad
When the gods go to war, who will stand against their divine fury?
In the thrilling conclusion to the A Fire Beneath the Skin trilogy, the enchanted kingdom of Helva faces a nightmarish future of endless bloodshed, and Rina Veraiin—a young warrior-duchess armed with mysterious, magical tattoos—must use her fantastic powers to save her home from eternal war.
As her far-flung friends scour Helva for additional tattoos to increase her formidable abilities, Rina reckons with an enigmatic death priest…the one whose contract grants her extraordinary magic but demands an awful price. When her debt comes due, can Rina make the ultimate sacrifice?
Defy The Stars
by Cathrina Constantine
Rating: 3.8 #ad
Circus grunt. Charmer. Fire wrangler
Growing up within the grind of the enchanted Circus Faire, Crew’s unique talents have blossomed. Though, he’s been warned that the King of Hawkswing is determined to eradicate a certain species, and for his own sake Crew must keep his formidable gifts under wraps.
Relations between interspecies caused an imbalance of power and now are strictly forbidden. Dolorans, like Sage and her sister, are being hunted and persecuted because of their intense powers, leaving them no choice but to run, escaping the genocide of their kind…
November Road
by Lou Berney
Rating: 4.3 #ad
Set against the assassination of JFK, a poignant and evocative crime novel that centers on a desperate cat-and-mouse chase across 1960s America—a story of unexpected connections, daring possibilities, and the hope of second chances from the Edgar Award-winning author of The Long and Faraway Gone.
Frank Guidry’s luck has finally run out.
A loyal street lieutenant to New Orleans’ mob boss Carlos Marcello, Guidry has learned that everybody is expendable. But now it’s his turn—he knows too much about the crime of the century: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Monday’s Mystery eBooks
Secret Sleuth Box Set
by Patricia McLinn
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Book 1: Death on the Diversion: Sheila Mackey has a secret. To the world, she’s author of a blockbuster book. Her wily great-aunt, the actual author, orchestrated this mutually beneficial masquerade. Now the aunt’s retiring and Sheila must draft Act Two of her own life. This cruise is supposed to be the perfect time to do that…
Book 2: Death on Torrid Avenue: Sheila turns her back on a Manhattan lifestyle and the publishing world that once defined her to put down roots near the Ohio River in North Bend County, Kentucky. Here, she finds a new life, a new home and a new love: Gracie, the rescue collie. Then Gracie discovers a body at the dog park, a ticklish situation for an amateur sleuth with a big secret of her own…
Unleashing Magic
by D. J. Dalton
Rating: 5.0 #ad
She changed the fate of the land. Can she survive the terrifying consequences?
Keren Stewart’s fight has just begun. With the elf that kidnapped her best friends still on the run, she devises a daring rescue. But they aren’t the only ones in need of saving. When a mysterious illness befalls her fire-breathing friends, she rebels against the elder sorcerer to fight for the dragon races’ very existence.
Embarking on a doomed adventure, she refuses to give up on family, friends, and the ailing hatchlings fighting for their lives. But with traitors on her team and deadly clifftop battles, Keren’s rescue quest feels destined for disaster.
Check out:
(Twisted Curse Series)
House of Skin
by Jonathan Janz
Rating: 4.2 #ad
“Fans of ghost stories like The Haunting of Hill House and Hell House will love this book.” – Horror Maiden
Myles Carver is dead. But his estate, Watermere, lives on, waiting for a new Carver to move in. Myles’s wife, Annabel, is dead too, but she is also waiting, lying in her grave in the woods. For nearly half a century she was responsible for a nightmarish reign of terror, and she’s not prepared to stop now. She is hungry to live again…and her unsuspecting nephew, Paul, will be the key…
The Prime Minister’s Secret Agent
by Susan Elia Macneal
Rating: 4.4 #ad
World War II rages on across Europe, but Maggie Hope has finally found a moment of rest on the pastoral coast of western Scotland. Home from an undercover mission in Berlin, she settles down to teach at her old spy training camp, and to heal from scars on both her body and heart. Yet instead of enjoying the quieter pace of life, Maggie is quickly drawn into another web of danger and intrigue. When three ballerinas fall strangely ill in Glasgow – including one of Maggie’s dearest friends – Maggie partners with MI-5 to uncover the truth behind their unusual symptoms. What she finds points to a series of poisonings that may expose shocking government secrets and put countless British lives at stake.
The Luck of Han’anga
by Thomas Watson
Rating: 4.3 #ad
An age of peaceful exploration has ended.
The centuries old dream of meeting an intelligent, nonhuman species has finally come true, in the form of the people known as the Leyra’an. But the dream soon becomes something darker when the Leyra’an prove to be more than just humanoid. They are like us to a degree that cannot be explained by chance alone. The search for the answer to this mystery will reveal a universe stranger and more dangerous than the crew of the probeship William Bartram could have imagined, and expose both Humanity and the Leyra’an to the threat of extinction.
Check out:
(War of the Second Iteration Mysteries)
Death on Gokumon Island
by Seishi Yokomizo
Rating: 4.3 #ad
Loosely inspired by Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, the brilliant Gokumon Island is perhaps the most highly regarded of all the great Seishi Yokomizo’s classic Japanese mysteries.
Detective Kosuke Kindaichi arrives on the remote Gokumon Island bearing tragic news–the son of one of the island’s most important families has died, on a troop transport ship bringing him back home after the Second World War. But Kindaichi has not come merely as a messenger–with his last words, the dying man warned that his three step-sisters’ lives would now be in danger. The scruffy detective is determined to get to the bottom of this mysterious prophecy, and to protect the three women if he can.
Ripple
by Jim Cosgrove
Rating: 4.5 #ad
A chilling investigation into the unsolved “boy in the woods” murder; journalist Jim Cosgrove chronicles his decades-long struggle to uncover the truth of a family friend’s disappearance and death — perfect for fans of I’ll be Gone in the Dark and Memorial Drive.
For nine years, South Carolina officials struggled to identify “the boy in the woods,” a young man whose body had been discovered just south of Myrtle Beach in a fishing village called Murrells Inlet.
Meanwhile, 1,200 miles away in Kansas City, Missouri, Frank McGonigle’s family searched for him at Grateful Dead concerts and in the face of every long-haired hitchhiker they passed.
Highland Secrets
by Elizabeth Rose
Rating: 4.3 #ad
Will her secret start or stop a war?
The Lady Captive Being a daughter of one of the Legendary Bastards of the Crown proves to be a blessing as well as a curse for Fia Douglas. Having both English and Scottish blood, she is being fostered in England along with her sister and cousins, having been chosen by the late queen to be in her secret society of strong women.
When a war breaks out between the English and the Scots, Fia finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time. While visiting the queen’s secret garden, she comes across a wounded Highland spy. Fia helps him, but he ends up kidnapping her in return. As a prisoner in her own homeland, she uses her skill of reading people to help her escape, as well as to find out how Alastair really feels about her.
Check out:
(Secrets of the Heart Series)