Saturday’s Mystery eBooks
Beauty Expos Are Murder
by Libby Klein
Rating: 4.8 #ad
Gluten-free baker Poppy McAllister is about to see the ugly side of beauty expos . . .
Easter weekend on the Jersey Shore is hopping. Poppy’s Bed and Breakfast is busier than ever, but she needs to leave things in the hopefully capable hands of Aunt Ginny—and paws of Figaro the black smoke Persian. She’s selling her paleo muffins and keto cookies at the Health and Beauty Expo in Cape May’s Convention Hall. Normally sharing a booth with the love of her life would be a treat, but she’s recently discovered secrets that throw her new romance into chaos.
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(A Poppy McAllister Mysteries)
The Witch’s Lost Love
by Cathy A. Corn
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Did Stephanie Gray suffer great tragedy in a past life and could it be coming back to haunt her?
STEPHANIE PREFERS HER SIMPLE LIFE of waiting tables at a diner and living with her silly cat. Then she joins a Wiccan group of healer women to live in harmony with the earth, and her world begins to tilt and whirl when a circle member disappears into thin air.
THIS IS NO MAGIC TRICK and foul play is strongly suspected. Soon Stephanie’s life spirals into chaos and she’s facing more questions than answers: Who is or was the missing Flo, the witch that nobody liked? Could Stephanie have some strange connection with her disappearance? And can facing the past bring back the missing pieces of Stephanie’s present-day life?
Saving Sara
by Terry Toler
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Finalist for American Bookfest 2021 Best Book Award in the thriller/adventure category.
Sara is missing in the Cayman Islands. No one knows it. Except her abductors, of course.
Beloved CIA heroine, Jamie Austen, is sent to Tampico, Mexico, to rescue four girls, abducted on their senior class trips. Are the cases related?
All of Jamie’s skills are tested as she must overcome the powerful drug war lord, El Mata, his ruthless band of heavily armed killers, and a hurricane that’s bearing down on the Caribbean islands.
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(THE JAMIE AUSTEN THRILLERS)
Cruel Summer
by Wesley Southard
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Melissa Braun is a broken woman. Only wanting what’s best for her family, she’s willing to do whatever it takes to mend her fractured relationship with her abusive boyfriend. In a last ditch effort, she hopes the sun and sand of a much-needed Florida vacation will bring them and her son closer together.
Patrick Braun is a demoralized kid. Quiet and sullen, he only wants his mother to see her boyfriend’s torment as it cripples everything he loves. After years of silence, he refuses to stand by and let the abuse continue to tear them apart…
Chasing Freedom
by H. L. Wegley
Rating: 4.8 #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)
The Girl from Widow Hills
by Megan Miranda
Rating: 4.3 #ad
Everyone knows the story of “the girl from Widow Hills.”
Arden Maynor was just a child when she was swept away while sleepwalking during a terrifying rainstorm and went missing for days. Strangers and friends, neighbors and rescue workers, set up search parties and help vigils, praying for her safe return. Against all odds, she was found, alive, clinging to a storm drain. The girl from Widow Hills was a living miracle. Arden’s mother wrote a book. Fame followed. Fans and fan letters, creeps, and stalkers. And every year, the anniversary. It all became too much. As soon as she was old enough, Arden changed her name and disappeared from the public eye.
You Will Pay
by Lisa Jackson
Rating: 4.3 #ad
The deadly secrets of a long-ago summer lead to a reunion with a ruthless killer in the #1 New York Times bestselling author’s detective thriller.
It starts as a prank – a way for teenage counselors to blow off steam after a long summer at Camp Horseshoe on the Oregon coast. Jo-Beth Chancellor wants to give Monica O’Neal a little scare. Monica has it coming, and no one will get hurt – so what could go wrong? Everything.
Twenty years later, Lucas Dalton, a senior detective with the sheriff’s department, is investigating human remains discovered in a cavern on the former campgrounds…
Big Bluff
by Jackie Zack
Rating: 5.0 #ad
An Ordinary Day Turns Deadly. Katy Russell travels with Nick Hinchman to the wannabe art town of Big Bluff, Michigan. Their job—to report on the town’s second annual art festival. Mystery strikes when a down-on-his-luck painter witnesses a prominent artist tragically falling from the bluff. When the police arrive, the body has vanished. What devious plan has been set in motion? Is a murderer planning his next step? Artists and townspeople unwittingly hold fragments of clues. Can Katy and Nick piece it together before time runs out and another person falls victim?
Friday’s Mystery eBooks
Invitation Only Murder
by Leslie Meier
Rating: 4.6 #ad
With family tensions intensifying in Tinker’s Cove, part-time reporter Lucy Stone could really use some time off the grid—but disconnecting from reality comes at a deadly price . . .
Lucy doesn’t know what to expect as she arrives on a private Maine island owned by eccentric billionaire Scott Newman, only that the exclusive experience should make for a very intriguing feature story. An avid environmentalist, Scott has stripped the getaway of modern conveniences in favor of an extreme eco-friendly lifestyle. A trip to Holiday Island is like traveling back to the nineteenth century—much to the dismay of the island’s other residents . . .
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(A Lucy Stone Mysteries)
Stolen from Her Mother
by Rachel Wesson
Rating: 4.8 #ad
With a broken heart, she sinks to the ground. Tears run down her face as the truth hits her. “You can’t do this. She’s my daughter, my flesh and blood. I’ll never stop looking for her. Never. No matter what you say or do, I’ll find her.”
Ireland, 1941: While war rages across the world, Kate struggles on her family farm by the wild Atlantic Ocean. Living off rations and looking after her sick father, she doesn’t dare dream of falling in love.
But when she meets American airman, Tony, whose blue eyes are as stormy as the sea, her life collides with the war in ways she never imagined… They fall madly in love, stealing kisses in the rolling fields, and Tony vows to make her his wife.
Nate Gore
by Jesse Storm
Rating: 3.6 #ad
Natasha Goering removed the knife from its sheath. In one fell swoop she cut her braid at the nape of her neck and let it fall to the ground like it meant nothing to her. She slashed at the straggling hair that remained until she could feel with her fingers that it was fairly close to the scalp.
Satisfied, she put the knife away, and faced Pete Brewster. “We should get you proper clothes,” Brewster said. “And a hat.”
Natasha nodded and climbed into her saddle. “You got a name to go with that haircut?” Brewster asked.
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(Classic Western Justice)
The Pelican Trees
by Patrick Higgins
Rating: 4.6 #ad
When was the last time you went on a great and daring adventure? In this time of great uncertainty and social distancing, since you can’t embark on a great adventure in the real world, why not go on one by reading this book? The story it tells will greatly lift your spirits and bless your life immeasurably, making it the perfect next read!
Chock full of mystery, suspense and intrigue, The Pelican Trees allows each reader to do just that, each step carefully orchestrated by a loving grandfather (already in Heaven) trying to rescue his precious granddaughter and the rest of his family from eternal condemnation.
Shocking… Left out of her grandfather’s will for no apparent reason, Shelby McKinney mysteriously receives a post-dated letter a few days later, stating that he hadn’t forgotten about her after all. But if she wants her inheritance, she must find it buried six-feet beneath the sand somewhere in the state of Florida. Exciting…
The Hecatomb
by J Edward Neill
Rating: 4.5 #ad
In a drowned village, on a dark shore, in a city of white stones, one person vanishes every single night.
A little girl, a soldier, a hunter, and the survivor of a vast flood must face the stark reality. Unless they find a way to escape, each night could be their last.
For themselves. For every living soul. The Hecatomb is a collection of four stories, each taking place in the same doomed world. Read them in any order…and decide which story takes place first…and which happens last.
Green World
by B. V. Larson
Rating: 4.6 #ad
Rebels build a secret base on Green World. Their plan is to attack Earth and retake all the planets the Humans have conquered. Hegemony starships gather to strike the Rebels first, but where is their base? As the fleets search, Earth warships trespass into Skay space igniting a fresh border conflict between rival Galactics.
When James McGill stumbles onto the rebel camp, they’re forced to step up their plans. The world goes up in flames. Friends are permed and cities are destroyed as everything spins out of control.
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(Undying Mercenaries)
The Queen’s Gambit
by Walter Tevis
Rating: 4.7 #ad
When eight-year-old Beth Harmon’s parents are killed in an automobile accident, she’s placed in an orphanage in Mount Sterling, Kentucky. Plain and shy, Beth learns to play chess from the janitor in the basement and discovers she is a prodigy. Though penniless, she is desperate to learn more—and steals a chess magazine and enough money to enter a tournament. Beth also steals some of her foster mother’s tranquilizers to which she is becoming addicted.
At thirteen, Beth wins the chess tournament. By the age of sixteen she is competing in the US Open Championship and, like Fast Eddie in The Hustler, she hates to lose. By eighteen she is the US champion—and Russia awaits . . .
Thursday’s Mystery eBooks
A Devious Death
by Alyssa Maxwell
Rating: 4.5 #ad
In the sobering yet hopeful years following the First World War, Lady Phoebe Renshaw and her lady’s maid, Eva Huntford, find their summer plans marred by an instance of murder . . .
Phoebe and her sister Julia are eager for a summer getaway at High Head Lodge, the newly purchased estate of their cousin Regina. But they are not the only houseguests. Regina’s odd friend, Olive, is far from friendly, and Regina’s mother and brother—bitter over the unequal distribution of her father’s inheritance – have descended on the house to confront Regina.
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(A Lady and Lady’s Mai Mysteries)
The Outcast Royal Complete Boxed Set
by Michael Anderle, Aaron D. Schneider
Rating: 5.0 #ad
A fell-handed warrior treads a bloody road across the sea from the bloody adventures of Skharr DeathEater
Can Ax-Wed truly leave her people’s crumbling decadence behind her? Or will it haunt her as she wanders a savage world, determined to carve her future one ax stroke at a time?
Find out! Pick up this 3-book complete series boxed set to join Ax-Wed on her adventures!
When she is kidnapped by sinister forces and trapped in the horrors in the deepest dungeons, will she fall or dig deep to overcome the nightmares incarnate?
Darkness is patient and evil is cunning, and it is hungry for the sorcerous power bequeathed to her by her family.
Dolphin Junction: Stories
by Mick Herron
Rating: 4.3 #ad
CWA Gold and Steel Dagger-winner Mick Herron’s short fiction, collected for the first time.
Mick Herron, author of the Slough House novels, is on his way to becoming one of the most critically acclaimed and culturally important crime fiction writers of the twenty-first century. He has been awarded both the Gold and Steel Daggers by the Crime Writers’ Association and has been called “the John Le Carré of the future” (BBC). But Mick Herron does more than “just” write flawlessly suspenseful spy thrillers. He is a craftist of the highest order, irrepressibly versatile in form (novels, novellas, short fiction) and mood (witty, taut, spooky, laugh-out-loud funny), whose “efficient, darkly witty, tipped-with-imagery sentences . . . feel purpose-built to perforate [our] private daze of illiteracy” (The Atlantic).
ONCE UPON A MURDEROUS DELUSION
by A.G. Russo
Rating: 4.4 #ad
The year is 1980 in a small, sleepy New England town. Out of nowhere, a series of devastating murders threaten the safety and well-being of the community. A serial killer has begun a deadly game of catch-me-if-you-can with local police, who have dubbed the carnage, “The Mommy Murders.”
Frightened residents are certain the violent rape/murders are in some way connected to the psychiatric unit of Parkhirst General Hospital. Nella, a nurse angst-ridden by her service during the Vietnam War, is new to the area and the hospital. She joins the tight-knit group of nurses on the evening shift. Val, the leader of the group, with her own history of trauma, believes it stems from the prejudice their patients suffer from a community unsympathetic to mental illness. Or is evil closer to home than they think?
Lonely Hearts
by Lisa Gray
Rating: 4.5 #ad
She found love on Death Row with her prison pen pal. She’s been missing ever since. Can Jessica Shaw track her down?
A missing persons case should be pretty straightforward for private investigator Jessica Shaw. After all, it’s what she does best. But this latest case proves to be anything but straightforward.
Christine Ryan is desperate to find her childhood friend Veronica Lowe. Veronica disappeared more than fifteen years ago, not long after having a child with a Death Row inmate, notorious serial killer Travis Dean Ford. When Ford’s widow, Jordana, is murdered in the same way as his victims, Christine fears Veronica and her daughter will be next. If they’re even still alive…
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(Jessica Shaw Mysteries)
Cursed: An Anthology
by Multiple Authors
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Twenty curses, old and new, from bestselling fantasy authors such as Neil Gaiman, Karen Joy Fowler, Christina Henry, M.R. Carey and Charlie Jane Anders.
ALL THE BETTER TO READ YOU WITH
It’s a prick of blood, the bite of an apple, the evil eye, a wedding ring or a pair of red shoes. Curses come in all shapes and sizes, and they can happen to anyone, not just those of us with unpopular stepparents…
Here you’ll find unique twists on curses, from fairy tale classics to brand-new hexes of the modern world – expect new monsters and mythologies as well as twists on well-loved fables. Stories to shock and stories of warning, stories of monsters and stories of magic.
Animal Spirit Guides
by Mari Silva
Rating: 4.3 #ad
Everything you ever wanted to know about Animal Spirit Guides all in one book!
Are you new to Shamanism and the world of Animal Spirit Guides? Do you want to grasp a deeper understanding of the various core Shamanic beliefs? Are you struggling to connect with your Animal Spirit Guide? Do you desperately want to meet your Power Animal?
This book is an extensive guide to Shamanic Totems, Power Animals in Shamanism, and Animal Magic and Medicine. The chances are that it contains answers to every question you have about the concept of Animism in Shamanism. The book includes historical references that illustrate the importance of various animals in Shamanic cultures and practical techniques and methods showing you how you can discover your Spirit/Power Animals.
Wednesday’s Mystery eBooks
Myrtle Grove Garden Club Box Set
by Loulou Harrington
Rating: 4.6 #ad
Welcome to Myrtle Grove, a small town nestled in the lake country of Oklahoma, where life revolves around friendship, family and Sunday dinner, and no one seems to have noticed the recent rise in the local murder rate. The founding members of the Myrtle Grove Garden Club are Jesse Camden and her mother, Sophia, who are co-owners of the Gilded Lily Tea Room and Coffee House, along with Vivian Windsor, who is Myrtle Grove’s resident oil heiress and a lifelong friend of the Camden ladies.
Bonus: Recipes included in each book.
Spin
by Patricia Cornwell
Rating: 4.1 #ad
Captain Calli Chase races against time to thwart a plot that leaves the fate of humanity hanging in the balance in this new thriller from international bestselling author Patricia Cornwell.
In the aftermath of a NASA rocket launch gone terribly wrong, Captain Calli Chase comes face-to-face with her missing twin sister—as well as the startling truth of who they really are. Now, a top secret program put in motion years ago has spun out of control, and only Calli can redirect its course.
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(Quantum)
Hart Manus
by James Leonard
Rating: 5.0 #ad
When Hart Manus got the message about his brother’s “accidental” death, he knew it was strange. The Enright Mining Co. seems more intent on keeping their secrets than on figuring out what went wrong. And they’ve got Cuddy Raines there pulling the strings – by any means necessary.
But Georgetown is about as honest as it is safe. Men are getting hurt left and right. First Hart’s brother. Then the marshal. When the deputy resigns under suspicious circumstances, it’s too much to take. Hart’s determined to get to the bottom of things, even if he has to risk his life doing it.
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(Western Justice)
A Spool of Blue Thread
by Anne Tyler
Rating: 3.7 #ad
“It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon …” This is how Abby Whitshank always describes the day she fell in love with Red in July 1959.
From Red’s parents, newly arrived in Baltimore in the 1920s, to the grandchildren carrying the Whitshank legacy boisterously into the twenty-first century, the Whitshanks are one of those families that radiate an indefinable kind of specialness, but like all families, their stories reveal only part of the picture: Abby and Red and their four grown children have accumulated not only tender moments, laughter, and celebrations, but also jealousies, disappointments, and carefully guarded secrets.
Death Sentence
by Jerry Bledsoe
Rating: 4.4 #ad
In this “true story that reads like a novel,” the #1 New York Times–bestselling author reveals the facts behind a notorious Southern murder case (Library Journal).
When North Carolina farmer Stuart Taylor died after a sudden illness, his forty-six-year-old fiancée, Velma Barfield, was overcome with grief. Taylor’s family grieved with her—until the autopsy revealed traces of arsenic poisoning. Turned over to the authorities by her own son, Velma stunned her family with more revelations. This wasn’t the first time she had committed cold-blooded murder, and she would eventually be tried by the “world’s deadliest prosecutor” and sentenced to death.
No Escape
by Mary Burton
Rating: 4.6 #ad
HE WAS TAUGHT HOW TO KILL Even behind bars, serial killer Harvey Lee Smith exudes menace. Psychologist Jolene Granger has agreed to hear his dying confession, vowing not to let the monster inside her head. And Harvey has secrets to share—about bodies that were never found, and about the apprentice who is continuing his grisly work . . .
AND NOW HE’LL TEACH THEM He buries his victims alive the way his mentor Harvey did, relishing their final screams as the earth rains down. And as one last gift to the only father he knew, he’ll make the most perfect kill of all.
HOW TO DIE
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(Texas Rangers Mysteries)
Murder Most Fair
by Anna Lee Huber
Rating: 4.5 #ad
All is far from quiet on the home front in USA Today bestselling author Anna Lee Huber’s captivating mystery series, in which former Secret Service agent Verity Kent receives a visitor—who is being trailed by a killer . . .
November 1919.A relaxing few weeks by the seaside with her husband, Sidney, could almost convince Verity Kent that life has returned to the pleasant rhythm of pre-war days. Then Verity’s beloved Great-Aunt Ilse lands on their doorstep. After years in war-ravaged Germany, Ilse has returned to England to repair her fragile health—and to escape trouble. Someone has been sending her anonymous threats, and Verity’s Secret Service contacts can only provide unsettling answers.
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(A Verity Kent Mysteries)