Wednesday’s Mystery eBooks
Dangling by a Thread
by Lea Wait
Kindle $1.99 Rating: 4.5 #ad
The Mainely Needlepointers are about to learn that no man is an island—especially when greedy developers want his land . . .
Hermit Jesse Lockhart lives alone on King’s Island, three miles east of Haven Harbor, Maine, where he’s created a private sanctuary for the endangered Great Cormorants. But when a wealthy family wants to buy the island and Jesse’s cousin petitions for power of attorney to force him to sell, Jesse is the one who becomes endangered.
Mainely Needlepointer Dave Perry, who befriended Jesse in the VA hospital, rallies the group to his defense.
“D” is for Deadbeat
by Sue Grafton
Kindle $1.99 Rating: 4.3 #ad
He called himself Alvin Limardo, and the job he had for Kinsey was cut-and-dried: locate a kid who’d done him a favor and pass on a check for $25,000. It was only later, after he’d stiffed her for her retainer, that Kinsey found out his name was Daggett. John Daggett. Ex-con. Inveterate liar. Chronic drunk. And dead. The cops called it an accident—death by drowning. Kinsey wasn’t so sure.
Pulled into the detritus of a dead man’s life, Kinsey soon realizes that Daggett had an awful lot of enemies. There’s the daughter who grew up with a cheating drunk for a father, and the wife who’s become a religious nut in response to an intolerable marriage…
Avenue for an Assassin
by Steve Haberman
Kindle $0.99 Rating: 4.7 #ad
Jonas Shaw, ex New York detective, ex-Winston Churchill spy, gets a call from France at his Cotswold manor near London. An old World War II friend has a brother-in-law who is a cop in a tiny hamlet.
A routine traffic stop on a country road has turned out to be far from routine. Can Jonas fly out to investigate?
The answer will lead to one of the bloodiest events in the history of Paris that will echo for years.
Charade
by Sandra Brown
Kindle $1.99 Rating: 4.4 #ad
A medical miracle gives TV personality Cat Delaney more than just a new heart. With her second chance at life, Cat trades Hollywood for San Antonio, where she hosts a TV show for children with special needs and meets Alex Pierce, an ex-cop turned crime writer.
But her new world turns sinister when fatal “accidents” begin killing other heart transplant recipients, and a mysterious stalker starts shadowing her every move. Soon Cat realizes Alex may or may not be her most important ally—and that her new heart comes at a terrible price: a tangled web of secrets and someone determined to take her life.
Star Wars: Thrawn Ascendancy
by Timothy Zahn
Kindle $1.99 Rating: 4.7 #ad
Beyond the edge of the galaxy lies the Unknown Regions: chaotic, uncharted, and near impassable, with hidden secrets and dangers in equal measure. And nestled within its swirling chaos is the Ascendancy, home to the enigmatic Chiss and the Nine Ruling Families that lead them.
The peace of the Ascendancy, a beacon of calm and stability, is shattered after a daring attack on the Chiss capital that leaves no trace of the enemy. Baffled, the Ascendancy dispatches one of its brightest young military officers to root out the unseen assailants. A recruit born of no title, but adopted into the powerful family of the Mitth and given the name Thrawn.
Never Really Left
by Wendy Jordan Saffel
Kindle $0.99 Rating: 4.9 #ad
When Wendy Jordan Saffel lost her twenty-year-old son, Hugh, she discovered that grief is a well without a bottom. But even as she felt herself sinking into despair, she was offered an unexpected lifeline—one that changed her perception of the world forever.
A rational thinker, Wendy focused on the facts—the tangible and the measurable. That is, until she began experiencing profound spiritual connections with her son shortly after his passing. These initial moments of contact propelled her on a yearslong journey to understand what happens when we die, what comprises the afterlife, and how a relationship with our lost loved ones can persist in ways that are real, true, beautiful, and sacred.
The Dark Tower II
by Stephen King
Kindle $2.99 Rating: 4.6 #ad
The second volume in Stephen King’s #1 bestselling Dark Tower Series, The Drawing of the Three is an “epic in the making” (Kirkus Reviews) about a savage struggle against underworld evil and otherworldly enemies.
“Stephen King is a master at creating living, breathing, believable characters,” hails The Baltimore Sun. Beginning just less than seven hours after The Gunslinger ends, in the second installment to the thrilling Dark Tower Series, Roland encounters three mysterious doorways on a deserted beach along the Western Sea. Each one enters into a different person’s life in New York—here, he joins forces with the defiant young Eddie Dean, and with the beautiful, brilliant, and brave Odetta Holmes, to save the Dark Tower.
Chasing Castles
by Barbara File Marangon
Kindle $1.99 Rating: 5.0 #ad
Author Barbara File Marangon begins her incredible journey of self-discovery in her grandmother’s Bronx kitchen. With a glimpse of her Irish ancestry she makes a heartfelt promise to find her ancestral castle in Ireland someday.
After the poignant finale of a Hollywood show she choreographed, an appreciative cast presents her with a ticket to Italy. She is offered a job teaching ballet in Venice, but after a painful marriage to a Venetian comes to an end, she moves to a small Italian town with a castle. For nineteen years she lives there, and teaches ballet after opening her own school.
Barbara battles loneliness, bigotry, and corruption, even standing up to the Mafia. With courage and determination she prevails and finds love again.
Tuesday’s Mystery eBooks
Smokin’ Seventeen
by Janet Evanovich
Kindle $2.99 Rating: 4.5 #ad
Dead bodies are showing up in shallow graves on the empty construction lot of Vincent Plum Bail Bonds. No one is sure who the killer is, or why the victims have been offed, but what is clearis that Stephanie’s name is on the killer’s list.
Short on time to find evidence proving the killer’s identity, Stephanie faces further complications when her family and friends decide that it’s time for her to choose between her longtime off-again-on-again boyfriend, Trenton cop Joe Morelli, and the bad boy in her life, security expert Ranger. Stephanie’s mom is encouraging Stephanie to dump them both and choose a former high school football star who’s just returned to town.
Five Hours
by E.K. Mercer
Kindle $0.99 Rating: 4.1 #ad
At 12:42 p.m. on a Tuesday, 9.23% of the human race vanished — and the planet started healing.
Maren Weekes is a data journalist who sees the world in spreadsheets. When the blackout takes her fourteen-year-old son Jonah, all she finds is his backpack and a notebook full of maps to countries that don’t exist — the last line of ink trailing into nothing, mid-stroke. She will burn down every institution on Earth to understand why.
In a church in Bend, Oregon, Pastor Levi Soto wakes on the cold marble floor and discovers his wife Carmen is gone. Her tea is still warm. Her reading glasses sit folded on the desk. When his terrified congregation begs him to explain what happened, he does what any desperate man would do: he lies. He calls it the Sacred Sacrifice. He calls the missing holy. And the lie works so well it terrifies him.
DRAWN APART
by Lisette Brodey
Kindle $0.99 Rating: 5.0 #ad
When Avalon Martelli and Stephanie Lambert meet at the start of their junior year at Mystekal High, they form an instant connection. Stephanie is from South Jersey and Avalon from North Jersey, and they both feel out of place in the Southern California desert.
Aside from having a home state in common, they each possess a talent for art and the heartbreak of a broken family. Avalon has the gift of sight, where the future is sometimes revealed in her paintings, while Stephanie’s drawings are all about forever love. As Stephanie, a self-described poetry geek and hopeless romantic, talks about past lives and eternal happiness, Avalon denies she’s in love with her best guy friend, River Dalworth, who is attending art school in Los Angeles…
An Audience with the King
by Kat Caldwell
Kindle $1.99 Rating: 4.2 #ad
She sees what others hide—envy, shame, evil. But even a gift like that couldn’t save her family.
Now, with a heart full of sorrow and a soul clinging to a promise of purpose, Nelia embarks on a final journey to the king’s court.
If he cannot explain why she was given this power, she may surrender to the despair that stalks her like a shadow.
A haunting historical tale about grief, purpose, and a woman’s last chance to believe in something bigger than her pain.
Don’t Forget Me, Little Bessie
by James Lee Burke
Kindle $1.99 Rating: 4.6 #ad
At the beginning of the twentieth century, as America grapples with forces of human and natural violence more powerful than humanity has ever seen, Bessie Holland yearns for the love that she has never known. She finds a soulmate and mentor in a brilliant but tormented suffragette English teacher, who inspires Bessie to fight the forces of evil that permeate her world.
Watching the vast Texas countryside being destroyed by an oil company and a menacing figure with a violent past, Bessie is prepared to defend her home and her family…
The Jaded Warrior
by Jennifer Youngblood
Kindle $0.99 Rating: 4.7 #ad
In a place built on secrets, trust is the deadliest risk of all. She doesn’t do rules. He lives by them.
From the moment sassy Alabama travel writer Nikki Sterling meets retired Navy SEAL Luke Ellis, sparks fly hot and fast. Nikki knew getting involved with a complicated man would come with challenges, but his controlling nature is suffocating.
Luke is disciplined … a man who’s fought his way back from addiction. Control isn’t just who he is—it’s how he keeps going.
Nikki has never stayed around long enough to answer to anyone. After walking away from a prince—and a future that felt more like a gilded cage than a dream—she’s not about to trade her freedom for someone else’s expectations.
Visions of Sugar Plums
by Janet Evanovich
Kindle $3.99 Rating: 4.3 #ad
Sure, this has happened to Stephanie Plum before. Strangers, weirdos, felons, creeps, and lunatics are always finding their way to her front door. But this guy is different. This guy is mysterious, sexy—and he has his own agenda. His name is Diesel and he is a man on a mission. And Diesel is unlike anyone Stephanie has ever met before in her life.
The question is, what does he want with her? Can he help her find a little old toy maker who has skipped out on his bail right before Christmas? Can he survive the Plum family holiday dinner?
Sting
by Sandra Brown
Kindle $1.99 Rating: 4.3 #ad
When Jordie Bennet and Shaw Kinnard lock eyes across a disreputable backwater bar, something sparks. Shaw is a man who gives off a dangerous vibe that makes other men stand back and women take notice. No one feels this more strongly than Jordie, a woman who doesn’t belong in a seedy dive on the banks of a bayou. But here she is … and Shaw Kinnard is here to kill her.
As Shaw takes aim, Jordie is certain her time has come. Instead, Shaw has other plans. He abducts Jordie, hoping to get his hands on the $30 million her brother has stolen…