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.
Thursday’s Mystery eBooks
Pride, Prejudice and Poison
by Elizabeth Blake
Rating: 4.2 #ad
This charmingly bookish cozy mystery sees an antiquarian bookstore proprietor use her sense and sensibility to deduce who killed the president of the local Jane Austen Society
Erin Coleridge’s used bookstore in Kirkbymoorside, North Yorkshire, England is a meeting place for the villagers and, in particular, for the local Jane Austen Society. At the Society’s monthly meeting, matters come to a head between the old guard and its young turks. After the meeting breaks for tea, persuasion gives way to murder—with extreme prejudice—when president Sylvia Pemberthy falls dead to the floor. Poisoned? Presumably . . . but by whom? And was Sylvia the only target?
The Third Nanny
by Michele PW
Rating: 3.9 #ad
Welcome to Redemption, Wisconsin, a town with a troubling past, where nothing is as it seems. Everyone has something to hide. Including the nanny.
Janey hadn’t heard from her sister Kelly since she ran away from home eight years ago. Until the day the letter arrived. A disturbing letter. But before Janey could make contact, Kelly disappeared again. And the only clue they had to work with was in Redemption, Wisconsin, where Kelly had worked as a nanny.
So, Janey decided to follow in her sister’s footsteps … by taking over her job. The family has secrets, and the more Janey digs, the more twisted the story becomes. And the more Janey realizes she might be the next to disappear.
Demon
by Matt Wesolowski
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Scott King’s podcast investigates the 1995 cold case of a demon possession in a rural Yorkshire village, where a 12-year-old boy was murdered in cold blood by two children. Book six in the chilling, award-winning Six Stories series.
Twelve-year-old Sidney Parsons was savagely murdered by two boys his own age. No reason was ever given for this terrible crime, and the ‘Demonic Duo’ who killed him were imprisoned until their release in 2002, when they were given new identities and lifetime anonymity.
Elusive online journalist Scott King investigates the lead-up and aftermath of the killing, uncovering dark and fanciful stories of demonic possession, and encountering a village torn apart by this unspeakable act.
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(Six Stories Mysteries)
The Foreigner’s Confession
by Lya Badgley
Rating: 4.6 #ad
An unexpected, mysterious discovery in Cambodia leads Emily Mclean on a journey through the country’s painful history and toward personal redemption.
After a horrific accident shatters her world and leaves her an amputee, American attorney Emily Mclean moves to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, to work with landmine survivors. She hopes to reinvent herself in this new land, leaving behind her sense of culpability in the death of her husband and the loss of her unborn child.
While visiting the Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide, Emily discovers that she shares an eerie resemblance to a portrait of a former prison inmate, Milijana Petrova, a Yugoslavian communist revolutionary who, in the 1970s, became fatally enmeshed with the brutal Khmer Rouge regime…
The Less People Know About Us
by Axton Betz-Hamilton
Rating: 4.4 #ad
In this powerful true crime memoir, an award-winning identity theft expert tells the shocking story of the duplicity and betrayal that inspired her career and nearly destroyed her family.
Axton Betz-Hamilton grew up in small-town Indiana in the early ’90s. When she was 11 years old, her parents both had their identities stolen. Their credit ratings were ruined, and they were constantly fighting over money. This was before the age of the Internet, when identity theft became more commonplace, so authorities and banks were clueless and reluctant to help Axton’s parents.
Axton’s family changed all of their personal information and moved to different addresses, but the identity thief followed them wherever they went…
A Drink Before the War
by Dennis Lehane
Rating: 4.2 #ad
The mesmerizing, darkly original novel that heralded the arrival of now New York Times bestselling author Dennis Lehane, the master of the new noir—and introduced Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, his smart and tough private investigators weaned on the blue-collar streets of Dorchester.
A cabal of powerful Boston politicians is willing to pay Kenzie and Gennaro big money for a seemingly small job: to find a missing cleaning woman who stole some secret documents. As Kenzie and Gennaro learn, however, this crime is no ordinary theft. It’s about justice, about right and wrong. But in Boston, finding the truth isn’t just a dirty business . . . it’s deadly.
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(Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro Mysteries)
Into the Chaos
by James Rosone, TC Manning
Rating: 4.5 #ad
A terrible massacre was discovered… …Did the same fate befall Sumer?
Captain Brian Royce brings Hadad to his home planet, which shows obvious signs of battle. Did any of his family survive? Where are all the children…did the Zodarks take them?
Admiral Miles Hunt finds himself appointed to a new position beyond his current skillset. He now has to become more than just a ship captain and fleet commander… …He must become the Viceroy of the Milky Way Galaxy.
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(Rise of the Republic Mysteries)
Wednesday’s Mystery eBooks
Murder on the Pier
by Merryn Allingham
Rating: 4.3 #ad
Convinced the death was not an accident, Flora persuades attractive local crime writer Jack Carrington to help her find out what really happened to poor Polly Dakers, a popular young woman with a complicated love life, who’d been at the heart of village life in Abbeymead.
Jack is reluctant to get involved in another murder case at first but even he can’t deny that Polly’s fall seems fishy. An argument at a party, a missed hairdresser’s appointment and a red woollen bobble found on the wooden boards where Polly last stood provide a trail of clues…
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(A Flora Steele Mysteries)
Rise: The Complete Newsflesh Collection
by Mira Grant
Rating: 4.7 #ad
Collected here for the first time is every piece of short fiction from New York Times Bestseller Mira Grant’s acclaimed Newsflesh series, with two new never-before published novellas and all eight short works available for the first time in print.
We had cured cancer. We had beaten the common cold. But in doing so we created something new, something terrible that no one could stop. The infection spread, a man-made virus taking over bodies and minds, filling them with one, unstoppable command. . . FEED.
Hour of the Assassin
by Matthew Quirk
Rating: 4.3 #ad
Framed and on the run for his life, a former Secret Service agent discovers how far some men will go to grasp the highest office in the land in this electrifying tale from the author of The Night Agent—a propulsive political thriller reminiscent of the best early Baldacci and Grisham novels.
As a Secret Service agent, Nick Averose spent a decade protecting the most powerful men and women in America and developed a unique gift: the ability to think like an assassin. Now, he uses that skill in a little-known but crucial job. As a “red teamer,” he poses as a threat, testing the security around our highest officials to find vulnerabilities—before our enemies can. He is a mock killer, capable of slipping past even the best defenses.
The Chaos Kind
by Barry Eisler
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Assistant US Attorney Alondra Diaz hates traffickers. And she’s determined to put one of America’s most powerful financiers, Andrew Schrader, in prison forever for his crimes against children.
But Schrader has videos implicating some of the most powerful members of the US national security state. To eliminate Diaz, the powers that be bring in a contractor: Marvin Manus, an implacable assassin whose skills have been forged in intelligence, the military, and the hardest prisons…
Strange Loyalties
by William McIlvanney
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Strange Loyalties begins with Jack Laidlaw’s despair and anger at his brother’s death in a banal road accident. But his nagging doubts about the dynamics of the incident lead to larger questions about the nature of pain and injustice and the greater meaning of his own life. He becomes convinced there is more to his brother’s death. His investigations will lead to a confrontation with his own past and a harrowing journey into the dark Glasgow underworld.
The Laidlaw books are widely considered to be among the greatest achievements of Scottish crime writing and the founding novels of what has since become known as the school of Tartan Noir that includes authors like Val McDermid, Denise Mina, and Ian Rankin.
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(The Laidlaw Investigation Mysteries)
Run Faster Collection
by Multiple Authors
Rating: 5.0 #ad
From corporate America to overseas intrigue, from small towns to Urban sprawl, from farms to raging rivers these romantic suspenses will keep you on the edge of your seat, breathless, far into the night.
Nine gripping stories full of faith, danger, and a dash of romance.
With the success of volume one and volume two, RUN and RUN AGAIN, the authors banded together for a volume three. Get yours while you can!
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(Tales of Suspense)
Enchanted Pilgrimage
by Clifford D. Simak
Rating: 4.0 #ad
A scholar, a goblin, and a gnome, among others, pursue the secrets of a vanished ancient race through a wasteland of dark magic in this enthralling fantasy quest adventure
On an Earth that is different from ours, the young scholar Mark Cornwall becomes a target of the Inquisition, and specifically its most evil and obsessed agent, Beckett. Damned for asking questions, Mark is forced to escape over the border into the Wastelands, a magical realm that is home to all manner of flesh-devouring monsters. Luckily he will not have to make his journey alone. He is accompanied by a cadre of stalwart companions, including the rafter goblin Oliver, Snively the gnome, and secretive Mary from one of three parallel planes.
Justice for Hattie Mayfair
by Irene Onorato
Rating: 4.7 #ad
Lexi Mallard saw what happened in the woods. But if she tells…
Ten years is a long time to keep a secret. Eat, sleep, work. Stay busy. A social life seems impossible until Corbin Taylor, Lexi’s policeman next-door-neighbor, reaches out in friendship that quickly becomes much more serious.
Lexi’s budding relationship with a cop doesn’t go unnoticed by her evil brother. She quickly learns that putting the past behind is not always an option. Sometimes it will chase, overtake, and try to kill you.