Thursday’s Mystery eBooks
Deception, Denial & Murder
by Christa Nardi
Rating: 4.6 #ad
A domineering co-worker, a flirtatious neighbor, and a dead body make for many questions and awkward situations.
As HR Specialist and trauma counselor, Stacie Maroni is used to dealing with difficult situations. When her night out is derailed by the discovery of a body outside a local watering hole, she’s glad she’s not involved. But when the police investigate and close friends are cast as potential suspects, Stacie will do whatever it takes to identify the true culprit, even if it creates waves with the men in her life, her father included. The suspect list is slim and she’s grasping at straws.
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(A Stacie Maroni Mysteries)
Adam’s Witness
by J.C. Paulson
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Where does justice end and vengeance begin? When newspaper journalist Grace Rampling learns that the Pride Choir has been banned from performing in the cathedral, she rushes to the church to get some answers.
Instead, she literally stumbles onto a grisly crime scene: the bishop is lying in a pool of his own blood before the altar. Suddenly, Grace is no longer the observer and reporter. She finds herself central to the case — not only as the key witness, but a suspect and even potential victim.
Lead investigator Detective Sergeant Adam Davis is thrown by the fierce attraction he feels toward Grace that, if acted upon, could throw the entire case into jeopardy.
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(Adam and Grace Mysteries)
Magic Triumphs
by Ilona Andrews
Rating: 4.8 #ad
Kate has come a long way from her origins as a loner taking care of paranormal problems in post-Shift Atlanta. She’s made friends and enemies. She’s found love and started a family with Curran Lennart, the former Beast Lord. But her magic is too strong for the power players of the world to let her be.
Kate and her father, Roland, currently have an uneasy truce, but when he starts testing her defenses again, she knows that sooner or later, a confrontation is inevitable. The Witch Oracle has begun seeing visions of blood, fire, and human bones. And when a mysterious box is delivered to Kate’s doorstep, a threat of war from the ancient enemy who nearly destroyed her family, she knows their time is up.
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(Kate Daniels Mysteries)
The Eclipse Dancer
by Laura Koerber
Rating: 4.3 #ad
Andy thought of flying. She imagined the air under her arms, her hair lifting and floating. She felt her heartbeat separate from the faraway beat and form its own rhythm: light, quick, a dancing thrum. When she opened her eyes, her yard was dusky and her mood had lightened. She let her gaze drift across the darkening landscape. Andy’s heart filled with exultation. She raised her arms, fanned out her fingers, and arched her feet until she was on her toes. She was assaulted by memories.
Her mother was dying, and Danny had been dead for years. Her daughter was in Minneapolis, and Alana was up in the North Woods someplace. All of her childhood friends–the fairies, Hairy, Mr. Tolliver, and Kenshi–were gone. Is it true that childhood is never overcome?
Bloody Bones
by Laurell K. Hamilton
Rating: 4.8 #ad
For the first time in trade paperback: the fifth novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling series from Laurell K. Hamilton.
When Branson, Missouri, is hit with a death wave ‘four unsolved murders’ it doesn’t take an expert to realize that all is not well. But luckily for the locals, Anita Blake is an expert in the kinds of preternatural goings-on that have everyone spooked. And she’s got an ‘in’ with the creature that can make sense of the slayings-the sexy master vampire known as Jean-Claude.
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(Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Mysteries)
The Pine Barrens Stratagem
by Ken Harris
Rating: 4.8 #ad
Private Investigator Steve Rockfish needs cash, like yesterday. The bad news is that yesterday, a global pandemic raged, and Maryland was headed toward a lockdown that would ultimately lead to cheating spouses no longer “working late,” and hence a lack of new clients.
Rockfish’s luck changes when a Hollywood producer reaches out, but the job is two states away and involves digging up information on a child trafficking ring from the 1940s. What he uncovers will be used to support the launch of a true crime docuseries. He grabs a mask, hand sanitizer and heads for South Jersey…
From Beyond the Stars
by Dakota Ryder Hatch
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Would you trust an alien slime? Cassius was the first to witness it fall from the sky . . . but its crash landing wasn’t an accident. Novae was shot down. And now, the aliens that did it are searching for him. Their father, Overlord Cerebrum, hungers after the blob’s flesh and will stop at nothing to obtain the living slime.
If Cassius doesn’t get Novae off the planet and back to his home above, the world will become a warzone. People will die – his friends will perish – and any survivors will have their brains hijacked and become slaves to the faceless tyrant looming over the planet…
Thawed to Death
by Stephanie Parker McKean
Rating: 4.2 #ad
There’s non-stop laughter and suspense as 60-year-old antique “picker” Zoey Thunderbird explores the local ghost house and discovers a body in a freezer. She knows it was murder – no one deliberately thaws themselves to death – but she doesn’t know that her search for truth will endanger her life. Killers don’t want to get caught.
Her quest to catch a killer introduces Zoey to strange crime motifs – everything connected with the murder has a tendency to vanish, and the apparent killer seems to have an affinity for sitting in her lap…
He Started It
by Samantha Downing
Rating: 3.9 #ad
Beth, Portia, and Eddie Morgan haven’t all been together in years. And for very good reasons – we’ll get to those later. But when their wealthy grandfather dies and leaves a cryptic final message in his wake, the siblings and their respective partners must come together for a cross-country road trip to fulfill his final wish and – more importantly – secure their inheritance.
But time with your family can be tough. It is for everyone…
Wednesday’s Mystery eBooks
Murder at Beechwood
by Alyssa Maxwell
Rating: 4.5 #ad
For Newport, Rhode Island’s high society, the summer of 1896 brings lawn parties, sailboat races…and murder.
Having turned down the proposal of Derrick Andrews, Emma Cross has no imminent plans for matrimony—let alone motherhood. But when she discovers an infant left on her doorstep, she naturally takes the child into her care. Using her influence as a cousin to the Vanderbilts and a society page reporter for the Newport Observer, Emma launches a discreet search for the baby’s mother.
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(A Gilded Newport Mysteries)
The Heroes
by Joe Abercrombie
Rating: 4.6 #ad
They say Black Dow’s killed more men than winter, and clawed his way to the throne of the North up a hill of skulls. The King of the Union, ever a jealous neighbor, is not about to stand smiling by while he claws his way any higher. The orders have been given and the armies are toiling through the northern mud. Thousands of men are converging on a forgotten ring of stones, on a worthless hill, in an unimportant valley, and they’ve brought a lot of sharpened metal with them.
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(First Law Standalones Mysteries)
If I Die Before I Wake
by Multiplea UAuthors
Rating: 4.3 #ad
TDon’t deny it. Your mind has dwelled for hours on the things you would do if your name was Karma. Malevolence towards those that wronged you festers and there is no relief—until now. Plunge headfirst into these sinister tales where karma finally takes control and vengeance is a dish that is best served hot.
The Better Off Dead series delves into the farthest corners of your mind, where your deepest, darkest fears lurk. These masters of horror will haunt your dreams and stalk your nightmares, taking you to the edge of sanity before pushing you to the brink of madness!
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(The Better Off Dead Mysteries)
Shadow Dance
by Julie Garwood
Rating: 4.7 #ad
Jordan Buchanan is thrilled that her brother and best friend are tying the knot. The wedding is a lavish affair–for the marriage of Dylan Buchanan and Kate MacKenna is no ordinary occasion. It represents the joining of two family dynasties. The ceremony and reception proceed without a hitch–until a crasher appears claiming to be a MacKenna guest. The disheveled and eccentric professor of medieval history warns that there’s “bad blood” between the couple’s clans, stemming from an ancient feud that originated in Scotland, and involving the Buchanan theft of a coveted MacKenna treasure.
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(Buchanan / Renard / MacKenna Mysteries)
Sleeping Dogs Lie
by Samantha Downing
Rating: 4.0 #ad
From the internationally bestselling author of My Lovely Wife and For Your Own Good comes a twisted, entertaining novella about a dog walker swept into a criminal investigation when her client winds up dead.
Shelby works as a dog walker in northern California, and she’s just finished up her bi-weekly trip to the park with a husky named Pluto. When she brings him back to his house, she finds his owner—Todd Burke, a well-known local businessman and founder of an organic supplements company—lying on the bathroom floor, dead…
Broken
by t.g. brown
Rating: 4.5 #ad
At first glance, the figure could have been construed as a large cocoon hanging from the church rafters. But as one moved closer, the outline of a man came into focus, his body strung upside down . . . his thick torso squirming against his restraints as though he was about to be reborn.
While bullfrog hunting on a cloud-covered night in the Louisiana Bayou JOSH INGRAM had no way of knowing the cogs of a grisly nightmare had already begun to turn. A nightmare that takes root with the murder of a priest in Northern Ireland only to find its way to a schoolyard in Louisiana.
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(Josh Ingram Mysteries)
Tuesday’s Mystery eBooks
Murder in Connemara
by Carlene O’Connor
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Former New Yorker and interior designer Tara Meehan is eagerly anticipating the grand opening of her architectural salvage shop Renewals in her newly adopted home of Galway. She’s in the midst of preparations when heiress Veronica O’Farrell bursts in to announce she’s ready for some renewal of her own. To celebrate one year of sobriety, she’s invited seven people she wronged in her drinking days to historic Ballynahinch Castle Hotel in neighboring Connemara to make amends in style.
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(Murder in Galway)
Even Odds
by Fiona Quinn
Rating: 4.6 #ad
If she’s not careful, she’ll lose more than her heart on this mission…
Someone wants the men of Delta Force out of the way. Permanently. Defense intelligence officer Raine Meyers will do whatever it takes to neutralize the threat. But the job would be a lot simpler if she didn’t have to go undercover with her ex-fiancé—the only man she’s ever loved. The man she pushed out of her life seven years ago…
FBI special agent Damian Prescott lost Raine once. It’s not a mistake he plans to repeat. So, he’ll help her take down the terrorist threat against Delta Force, and keep her safe in the process. Then he’ll do everything he can to turn their fake, undercover relationship into a real one. The kind that ends in happily ever after…
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(FBI Joint Task Force Mysteries)
The Father Hunt
by Rex Stout
Rating: 4.6 #ad
All pretty Amy Denovo wants to find the father she has never seen, but she can’t afford Nero Wolfe’s outlandish fees . . . or can she? Suddenly she’s knocking on the oversized detective’s door with a parcel full of bills in hand—and a quarter of a million hidden in her closet. It’s all part of a nest egg left by her unknown father. But when Wolfe and his able assistant, Archie Goodwin, begin to trace the money to the man, they make a startling discovery: Amy’s father murdered her mother—and now he may be after her.
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(A Nero Wolfe Mysteries)
The Longest Echo
by Eoin Dempsey
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Against the backdrop of WWII-ravaged Italy comes a powerful and emotional novel of love, survival, justice, and second chances by the bestselling author of White Rose, Black Forest.
Occupied Italy, 1944. In the mountain regions south of Bologna, Liliana Nicoletti’s family finds escaped POW James Foley behind German lines. Committed to the anti-Fascist cause, they deliver him to a powerful band of local partisans. But when the SS launches a brutal attack against the Resistance, Liliana’s peaceful community is destroyed. Alone and thrown together by tragedy, James and Liliana fight together as Monte Sole burns. Forging an unbreakable bond, they know their only hope of survival is to make it to the Allied lines.
Sidney Sheldon’s Chasing Tomorrow
by Sidney Sheldon, Tilly Bagshawe
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Tracy Whitney never thought she wanted to settle down. With her suave and handsome partner, Jeff Stevens, she’d been responsible for some of the world’s most astounding heists, relishing the danger and intensity of life on the wild side. But there is still one thing missing from Tracy’s perfect life: a baby.
At first “going straight” feels like a new adventure. But as the months pass and Tracy’s longed for pregnancy doesn’t happen, she finds herself yearning for the adrenaline rush of the old days. When a mysterious and beautiful stranger enters their lives, Tracy and Jeff’s once unbreakable partnership is suddenly blown wide open. Jeff wakes one morning to find Tracy gone, vanished without a trace.
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(Tracy Whitney Mysteries)
Sphere
by Michael Crichton
Rating: 4.4 #ad
In the middle of the South Pacific, a thousand feet below the surface, a huge vessel is unearthed. Rushed to the scene is a team of American scientists who descend together into the depths to investigate the astonishing discovery. What they find defies their imaginations and mocks their attempts at logical explanation. It is a spaceship, but apparently it is undamaged by its fall from the sky. And, most startling, it appears to be at least three hundred years old, containing a terrifying and destructive force that must be controlled at all costs.
Restitution
by Chris Lofts
Rating: 5.0 #ad
When technology expert Mo Archer’s father Roland goes missing he is unwittingly dragged into a Nazi art swindle 80 years in the making.
Mo tracks the last known location of the retired art lecturer’s phone to a place that makes no sense. When an old family friend calls, equally desperate to find his father, Mo is drawn in deeper. Emilia Carducci unfolds a decades-old family feud linked to a rediscovered masterpiece that has set the London art world and media abuzz.
Mo refuses to see the link between Roland’s disappearance and the painting until he uncovers what his father left behind. Fuelled by fear and armed with his discovery he turns to the only other person he can trust, his assistant Sapph…
Monday’s Mystery eBooks
Death of an Irish Mummy
by Catie Murphy
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Squiring a self-proclaimed heiress around Dublin has got limo driver Megan Malone’s Irish up—until she finds the woman dead . . .
American-born Cherise Williams believes herself to be heir to an old Irish earldom, and she’s come to Dublin to claim her heritage. Under the circumstances, Megan’s boss Olga at Leprechaun Limos has no qualms about overcharging the brash Texas transplant for their services. Megan chauffeurs Cherise to the ancient St. Michan’s Church, where the woman intends to get a wee little DNA sample from the mummified earls—much to the horror of the priest…
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(The Dublin Driver Mysteries)
Restitution
by Chris Lofts
Rating: 5.0 #ad
When technology expert Mo Archer’s father Roland goes missing he is unwittingly dragged into a Nazi art swindle 80 years in the making.
Mo tracks the last known location of the retired art lecturer’s phone to a place that makes no sense. When an old family friend calls, equally desperate to find his father, Mo is drawn in deeper. Emilia Carducci unfolds a decades-old family feud linked to a rediscovered masterpiece that has set the London art world and media abuzz.
Mo refuses to see the link between Roland’s disappearance and the painting until he uncovers what his father left behind. Fuelled by fear and armed with his discovery he turns to the only other person he can trust, his assistant Sapph…
The Verdant Passage
by Troy Denning
Rating: 4.3 #ad
Return to the apocalyptic deserts of the Dark Sun world as unlikely heroes spark a revolution against an evil sorcerer-king
For thousands of years, the devil sorcerer King Kalak has used vile magic to drain Athas of its precious life-force. Now, his reign is coming to an end—though the city of Tyr, like the rest of the world, is nothing more than a magic-blasted ruin and a desolate place of dust, blood, and fear. All that’s left is desperation—and revolution. Leading this revolution against Kalak are a maverick statesman, a winsome half-elf slave girl, and a man-dwarf gladiator bred for the arenas…
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(Prism Pentad Mysteries)
Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade
by Diana Gabaldon
Rating: 4.6 #ad
It’s been seventeen years since Lord John’s father, the Duke of Pardloe, was found dead, a pistol in his hand and accusations of his role as a Jacobite agent staining forever a family’s honor. Now unlaid ghosts from the past are stirring. Lord John’s brother has mysteriously received a page of their late father’s missing diary—and John is convinced that someone is taunting the Grey family with secrets from the grave. So he turns to the only man he can trust: the Scottish Jacobite James Fraser. But war, a forbidden affair, and Fraser’s own secrets will complicate Lord John’s quest—until James Fraser yields the missing piece of an astounding puzzle and Lord John must decide whether his family’s honor is worth his life.
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(Lord John Grey Mysteries)
Cold Cruel Kiss
by Toni Anderson
Rating: 4.6 #ad
When the daughter of the US Ambassador to Argentina is kidnapped in broad daylight on Christmas Eve, the FBI sends one of its best negotiators to investigate.
Supervisory Special Agent Max Hawthorne arrives at an embassy thrown into chaos as US and local law enforcement hustle to track the young woman. Is this a simple kidnap for ransom, or part of a political agenda? Could it be something more sinister?
Lucy Aston has something to hide. Preferring to stay in the shadows, the lowly, fashion-challenged office assistant resents being assigned to help Max…
The Whispering Dead
by Darcy Coates
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Homeless, hunted, and desperate to escape a bitter storm, Keira takes refuge in an abandoned groundskeeper’s cottage. Her new home is tucked away at the edge of a cemetery, surrounded on all sides by gravestones: some recent, some hundreds of years old, all suffering from neglect.
And in the darkness, she can hear the unquiet dead whispering.
The cemetery is alive with faint, spectral shapes, led by a woman who died before her time…and Keira, the only person who can see her, has become her new target. Determined to help put the ghost to rest, Keira digs into the spirit’s past life with the help of unlikely new friends, and discovers a history of deception, ill-fated love, and murder.