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.
Tuesday’s Mystery eBooks
Eyes
by Joanne Fluke
Rating: 3.8 #ad
A mild-mannered car salesman . . . A womanizing bartender . . . A beloved minister with a devoted family. Except for the fact that each of the murder victims is male, Minnesota police can’t find a connection between the crimes. But that’s because what links them can’t be seen with the naked eye . . .
Losing everything can make a person do crazy things. No one knows that better than Connie Wilson. The shock of suddenly losing her fiancé, Alan, in a car accident, is almost too much bear…
Deadly Scandal
by Kate Parker
Rating: 4.3 #ad
Autumn 1937 – Olivia Denis is the carefree young wife of a Foreign Office dignitary when her world is shattered. Police discover her husband fatally shot near the German embassy and declare it suicide.
Olivia knows better. When she learns a German embassy clerk was murdered the same night, she is certain her husband is not the traitor others claim. However, someone in the British government is.
Using her new position as a reporter for a powerful newspaper publisher, Olivia infiltrates London’s elegant society to hunt for the killer…
Four Months in Cuba
by Luana Ehrlich
Rating: 4.8 #ad
Titus thought it would be a simple rescue mission. He was wrong. It wasn’t simple . . .
Days after preventing a sarin gas attack on the nation’s capital, CIA operative, Titus Ray, arrives in Santiago de Cuba on a mission to rescue fellow operative, Ben Mitchell, from the hands of the Los Zetas drug cartel.
It wasn’t simple . . . After discovering Ben’s abduction was more than a simple kidnapping, Titus joins forces with an unconventional operative whose peculiar ideas threaten to destroy the mission. As the search for Ben reaches a critical stage, Titus is suddenly called back to Langley.
It wasn’t a rescue . . . When he arrives back in the States, not only does he learn his mission has changed, he also learns he has a rival for Nikki Saxon’s affections. Now, he must make a decision about their relationship. Do they have a future together, or would she be better off without him?
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(Titus Ray Thrillers)
After Gia
by R.M. Demeester
Rating: 5.0 #ad
Life as an escort for high-end clients and endless nights of partying was everything Gia Harris ever wanted. No rules, no money worries, and all the men she could ever want. She never wanted to settle down until she met Alex, a bodyguard for one of her clients. Who is this rough around the edge bad boy? Gia can’t wait to find out who he really is.
It’s Alexander Robert’s worst nightmare: his daughter’s illness is terminal, and he’ll do anything to pay for her treatments. That is, until tragedy strikes. Now he is ready to leave his criminal past behind, and bodyguarding was the only thing he was ever really good at.
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(After Dusk Mysteries)
How the Dead Speak
by Val McDermid
Rating: 5.0 #ad
With profiler Tony Hill behind bars and Carol Jordan no longer with the police, he’s finding unexpected outlets for his talents in jail and she’s joined forces with a group of lawyers and forensics experts looking into suspected miscarriages of justice. But they’re doing it without each other; being in the same room at visiting hour is too painful to contemplate.
Meanwhile, construction is suddenly halted on the redevelopment of an orphanage after dozens of skeletons are found buried at the site. Forensic examination reveals they date from between twenty and forty years ago, when the nuns were running their repressive regime. But then a different set of skeletons is discovered in a far corner—young men from as recent as ten years ago.
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(Tony Hill / Carol Jordan Mysteries)
Bad Memory
by Lisa Gray
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Quiet towns keep big secrets. Private investigator Jessica Shaw is leading a quiet life in a Californian desert community, where she spends her days working low-level cases. But when a former resident asks Jessica to help her sister, Rue Hunter—a convicted murderer whose execution is days away—Jessica can’t resist the offer.
Rue doesn’t remember what happened the night two high school students were killed thirty years ago, but everybody in town is certain she’s guilty. As Jessica looks for answers, she finds that local rumors point one way and evidence points another. And nobody wants to face the truth. Meanwhile, Jessica can’t shake the feeling that someone is stalking her—now more than ever, she knows she can’t trust anyone.
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(Jessica Shaw Mysteries)
Life at the Coffin Joint
by Ann Charles, Sam Lucky
Rating: 4.6 #ad
Deadwood (late 1876) …
A rowdy and reckless undertaker’s delight. What better place for a killer to blend in? Enter undertaker Clementine Johanssen, tall and deadly with a hot temper and short fuse, hired to clean up Deadwood’s dead … and the “other” problem. She’s hell-bent on poking, sticking, or stabbing anyone that steps out of line. But when a couple Santa Fe sidewinders ride into town searching for their missing uncle, they land neck deep in lethal gunplay, nasty cutthroats, and endless stinkin’ snow. Their search leads them to throw in with Clementine to hunt for a common enemy. What they find chills them all to the bone and sends them on an adventure they’ll never forget.
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(Deadwood Undertaker Mysteries)
Give unto Others
by Donna Leon
Rating: 4.5 #ad
BRAND NEW RELEASE at regular price
What role can or should loyalty play in the life of a police inspector? It’s a question Commissario Guido Brunetti must face and ultimately answer in Give Unto Others, Donna Leon’s splendid 31st installment of her acclaimed Venetian crime series.
Brunetti is approached for a favor by Elisabetta Foscarini, a woman he knows casually, but her mother was good to Brunetti’s mother, so he feels obliged to at least look into the matter privately, and not as official police business. Foscarini’s son-in-law, Enrico Fenzo, has alarmed his wife (her daughter) by confessing their family might be in danger because of something he’s involved with.
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(Commissario Brunetti Mysteries)
Monday’s Mystery eBooks
LITTLE DID SHE KNOW
by Willow Rose
Rating: 4.6 #ad
It was supposed to be the happiest day of her life when her kidnapped daughter returned, but it wasn’t.
Fourteen years ago, Clarissa Smalls was born, and a few hours later, she was taken from the hospital. Kidnapped. Her mother searched desperately for her for years, but she never found her. Until now.
When Clarissa Smalls is suddenly found in the swamps of central Florida, badly bruised and confused, it causes much joy and celebration in her family, especially with her mother, who has waited fourteen years to see her baby girl again. Little did she know that this day would end up being the worst in her life. Because Clarissa doesn’t want to know about her mother, she refuses to talk to anyone and won’t tell the police what happened to her.
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(Eva Rae Thomas Mysteries)
The Virus
by Damien Lee
Rating: 4.3 #ad
The end of the world usually signals the end of life. But for convicted murderer Frank Lee, it was only the beginning. With his newfound freedom, Frank suddenly has the world at his feet. The only downside: all the damn cannibals!
Amy was working in Sunnymoor Hospital when the virus struck. Now, with her patients craving flesh, the only person she can save is herself. But as more of the townsfolk fall victim to the wave of infection, Amy’s chances of survival quickly begin to diminish.
Walking on Her Grave
by Melinda Leigh
Rating: 4.5 #ad
The electrifying conclusion of the romantic suspense novella series from Melinda Leigh and Kendra Elliot.
The sleepy town of Solitude, Oregon, has turned into ground zero for a turf war between the manufacturers and distributors of a lethal new drug. When a teenage witness disappears, social worker Carly Taylor must find him before he’s silenced permanently.
Rogue County investigator Seth Harding wants to keep Carly, his estranged wife, out of harm’s way, but she refuses to let his concern keep her from doing her job. When one of her young charges vanishes, Carly gets pulled even deeper into the deadly case, and Seth knows he must help her…even if it leads them right into the criminals’ crosshairs.
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(Rogue River Mysteries)
Warrior’s Ransom
by Jeff Wheeler
Rating: 4.7 #ad
A loyal knight is on a quest to save a dynasty from itself in the thrilling sequel to Knight’s Ransom by Wall Street Journal bestselling author Jeff Wheeler.
After a pilgrimage to the East Kingdoms seeking a blessing from the Fountain, source of the land’s magic, Sir Ransom Barton returns home in search of two dreams: Claire de Murrow, the heiress he loves, and a patron for his warrior skills. Unexpectedly, Ransom finds himself in the favor of Devon, the notorious Elder King. Brought into the ruler’s mesnie and given two wards of his own, Ransom is devoted to his privileged new position. He’s also privy to the running of the realm and to all its courtly intrigues—notably, the machinations of the king’s three remaining sons, all engaged in a manipulative battle to become heir to the throne.
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(The First Argentines Mysteries)
The Wonder Test
by Michelle Richmond
Rating: 4.3 #ad
Lina is on leave from her job in New York at the FBI in order to clean out her father’s home in Silicon Valley. As though letting go of her father isn’t hard enough, Lina has also recently lost her husband in a freak traffic accident. Still reeling, she and her teenage son Rory must make their way through this strange new town and the high school around which it all seems to revolve. Rory soon starts coming home with reports of the upcoming “Wonder Test,” a general aptitude assessment that appears increasingly inane, and Lina is shaken out of her grief by a sense that something is amiss in Greenfield.
Darkness Falls
by Robert Bryndza
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Kate Marshall’s investigation into a journalist’s disappearance sends her down an unexpectedly twisted path in a riveting thriller by the author of Shadow Sands.
Kate Marshall’s fledgling PI agency takes off when she and her partner, Tristan Harper, are hired for their first big case. It’s a cold one. Twelve years before, journalist Joanna Duncan disappeared after exposing a political scandal. Most people have moved on. Joanna’s mother refuses to let go.
When Kate and Tristan gain access to the original case files, they revisit the same suspects and follow the same leads—but not to the same dead ends.
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(Kate Marshall Mysteries)
Shatter the Roses
by Shawn Luther
Rating: 5.0 #ad
All day benders, promiscuous nights, and endless student loans: the world seems a strange and unusual place for both Tom and Erika, but then college makes everyone feel like a fish out of water. With their own unique brand of wit, they write the world around them in their own terms. But beneath the surface is a searing, truthful look at the lives of two college students way beyond their years, but still bound by the painful memories of the past. A poignant love story as well as an intimate coming-of-age drama, Shatter the Roses examines what it means to be drawn to other people, to search desperately for understanding, and to find company even in the most unlikely of places.
GWEN SLADE, BOUNTY HUNTER
by Sandra Cox
Rating: 4.7 #ad
Bounty hunter Gwen Slade always gets her man. Until she meets charming outlaw Jordie Kidd. After Jordie saves her family, she finds she can’t in good conscience turn him in, even if he is worth a thousand dollars dead or alive. Instead she sets her sights on the meanest, most-wanted gang in Kansas. Gwen always works alone until she goes after the gang then finds herself partnering with an unlikely source. This time around, not only her life, but her heart is on the line.