Monday’s Mystery eBooks
A Highland Christmas
by M. C. Beaton
Rating: 4.4 #ad
In the dark, wintry highlands of Lochdubh, Scotland, where the local Calvinist element resists the secular trimmings of Christmas, the spirit of Old St. Nick is about as welcome as a flat tire on a deserted road. Nor is crime taking a holiday, as Constable Hamish Macbeth soon finds himself protecting an unhappy girl, unlocking the secrets of a frightened old woman, and retrieving some stolen holiday goods. Now the lanky lawman must use all his Highland charm and detective skills to make things right.
The Knife Slipped
by Erle Stanley Gardner
Rating: 4.3 #ad
Lost for more than 75 years, The Knife Slipped was meant to be the second book in the series, but shelved when Gardner’s publisher objected to (among other things) Bertha Cool’s tendency to “talk tough, swear, smoke cigarettes, and try to gyp people.” But this tale of adultery and corruption, of double-crosses and triple identities—however shocking for 1939—shines today as a glorious present from the past, a return to the heyday of private eyes and shady dames, of powerful criminals, crooked cops, blazing dialogue, and delicious plot twists.
OFFENBUNKER
by A.G. Russo
Rating: 4.2 #ad
A top secret bunker deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains. A silo housing a ballistic missile.
Cold War super powers the United States and the Soviet Union are engaged in an intense “arms race” build up of nuclear weapons and face off for control as the fate of the free world hangs in the balance.
The CIA, U.S. military intelligence, spies, double agents, the KGB, Stasi secret police, and assassins engage in a dangerous contest of espionage as Russia wants to spread communism and take control of Europe, and the United States wants to stop them.
What is the personal cost to those who devote their lives to preventing nuclear war?
There Came Both Mist and Snow
by Michael Innes
Rating: 3.8 #ad
A Scotland Yard detective investigates when gunfire disrupts an aristocratic family’s Christmas celebrations in this classic British mystery.
The relatives of Sir Basil Roper are gathering to celebrate Christmas at the family’s ancestral home in Yorkshire. While the ancient estate has remained unchanged for centuries, the surrounding area now features neon signs, a textile mill, and a brewery…
Picasso’s Motorcycle
by Marc Sercomb
Rating: 4.4 #ad
France, 1940.
An unexpected gift of an old motorcycle with a tragically romantic past hurls a young orphan into the thick of things as war breaks out and his life changes forever. Half-French/half-German Daniel must find a way to survive in a world that mercy seems to have abandoned. This book transports the reader to Nazi-occupied France, where Daniel unwittingly and unexpectedly finds himself working for the Resistance, and ultimately to the Russian Front in a twist of fate so startling that no one can see it coming. In turn quirky, heartwarming, beguiling and uncompromising, author Marc Sercomb weaves together many moods and colors to tell young Daniel’s story. Beyond engaging, Picasso’s Motorcycle has been hailed as a genuine “page-turner” by those who have so far encountered it.
The Pantomime Murders
by Fiona Veitch Smith
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Someone is killing fairy godmothers in Cinderella… Can Miss Clara Vale crack the case before the clock strikes twelve?
1929, December: Snow is falling, and Miss Clara Vale is wrapped up against the cold as she braves the icy streets of Newcastle in her latest investigation.
When a young actress from the touring pantomime of Cinderella arrives at her door, Clara isn’t sure what to make of her request. Sybil Langford, the legendary fairy godmother in their production, has mysteriously vanished. Could Clara help track her down?
The Hollow Place
by Rick Mofina
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Book #2 THE HOLLOW PLACE: While driving to Canada with her boyfriend to start a new life, Samantha Moore, a college student from New York City, vanishes from a lonely, low-rent motel in Vermont.
Ray Wyatt, a veteran reporter grappling with the tragic loss of his wife and son, is assigned to delve into the mystery enveloping the young woman’s disappearance.
The Street
by Susi Holliday
Rating: 3.6 #ad
Their neighbours welcomed them with open arms. Now they’ve vanished without a trace.
Anna and Peter desperately need to escape London for a fresh start. And they’ve found just the place: a perfect house on a perfect street in a perfect new development on the Scottish coast. But before they’ve even unpacked, they discover that the community they’ve moved into might be keeping secrets of its own…
Eager to fit in, Anna and Peter spend their first evening with their new neighbours, a couple who turn up on their doorstep to welcome them with open arms.
The Eight Reindeer of the Apocalypse
by Tom Holt
Rating: 4.3 #ad
The team of commercial sorcerers at Dawson, Ahriman & Dawson can help with any metaphysical engineering project, large or small (though by definition they all tend to be pretty large).
They can also create massive great puddles of chaos that might one day swallow up the entire universe.
Take, for example, the decision to recruit a certain bearded fellow whose previous work experience mainly involves reindeer and jingle bells. It might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but is he really the best person to save the world from Tiamat the Destroyer, who has literally gone ballistic?
Sunday’s Mystery eBooks
Miss Riddell’s Cozy Mystery Boxset
by P.C. James
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Boxset: Over 2,300 pages of clues, conundrums, and canny investigating!
Northern England. Miss Pauline Riddell can’t abide injustice. So when she gets tangled up in a suspicious homicide, she sets her sharp mind to unraveling the messy murder. And after unmasking the killer, the eagle-eyed accountant realizes she has a flair for investigation that could change her entire life.
This collection contains all ten volumes in the Miss Riddell series, with adventures spanning from 1953 to 1988. While away the hours immersed in delightfully deft prose, vivid historical details, and humorous-yet-believable plots.
ONCE UPON A MURDEROUS DELUSION
by A.G. Russo
Rating: 4.2 #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?
Murder at the Merton Library
by Andrea Penrose
Rating: 4.5 #ad
For fans of Miss Scarlet and the Duke and Bridgerton—a masterfully plotted mystery that combines engaging protagonists with rich historical detail and “an unusually rich look at Regency life,” (Publishers Weekly), plus a touch of romance that readers of Amanda Quick and Deanna Raybourn will savor.
Responding to an urgent plea from a troubled family friend, the Earl of Wrexford journeys to Oxford only to find the reclusive university librarian has been murdered and a rare manuscript has gone missing. The only clue is that someone overheard an argument in which Wrexford’s name was mentioned.
Even Steven
by John Gilstrap
Rating: 4.1 #ad
When Bobby and Susan Martin come across a dirty, shivering child at their campsite, the last thing the childless couple expects is to be drawn into an unthinkable crime. But when one of the boy’s kidnappers comes out of the brush waving a gun, Bobby is forced to react. In one chaotic, explosive moment, the predator is brutally murdered. But was he a criminal – or a cop?
With a vicious crime ring closing in on them, and unsure of whom to trust, Bobby and Susan desperately plunge into the heart of danger to save the boy – and themselves.
The Nurses
by Dennis Higgins
Rating: 4.7 #ad
A third-year nursing student, Emma Wilson was excellent in her field. Working rotations in the Chicago Southside hospital, she became fascinated with eight student nurses of the past whose black and white photos were on display in the hospital’s cafeteria. She cared too much for her patients, however, and passion overtook her when she lost one of them. As tears and distress overwhelmed her emotions, she gazed at the photos on the wall and lost consciousness.
When she came to, she was looking up at the faces of two of the nurses from the wall. She had somehow entered the body of a beautiful nursing student named Joanne Walsh back in 1966. Now as Joanne, she had to learn how to deal with life and the lack of medical advances in the past, as well as coming face to face with a mysterious madman.
Fragments of Fear
by Carrie Stuart Parks
Rating: 4.6 #ad
FBI-certified forensic artist Carrie Stuart Parks infuses her real-life expertise into her award-winning suspense novels.
Evelyn McTavish’s world came crashing down with the suicide of her fiancé. As she struggles to put her life back together and make a living from her art, she receives a call that her dog is about to be destroyed at the pound. Except she doesn’t own a dog. The shelter is adamant that the microchip embedded in the canine with her name and address makes it hers.
Courting Betsy
by Judy Ann Davis
Rating: 4.7 #ad
When Betsy Ashmore, adopted sister to a family of four brothers, discovers U.S. Marshal Luke Ashmore is lying wounded in a renegade Indian camp, she can’t refuse to help a brother in peril – especially one she has loved all her life. With the help of a wily Ute Indian, the spunky shopkeeper saddles up to rescue him.
Marshal Luke Ashmore never expected to be bushwhacked while escorting the young boy of a murdered army scout northward to Fort Collins in the Colorado Territory. Outlaws want the boy and believe he knows the location of a hidden treasure.