Thursday’s Mystery eBooks
Miracles in Maggody
by Joan Hess
Rating: 4.3 #ad
Another outrageous Maggody mystery, starring police chief Arly Hanks alongside a smooth-talking televangelist and a whole town full of sinners.
Some days, police chief Arly Hanks can’t help but see Maggody, Arkansas, as little more than a cesspool of poverty, ignorance, and incest—the kind of glorified trailer park that gives the South a bad name. But hey, it’s home. So when silver-tongued televangelist Malachi Hope swoops into town, with a revivalist laser light show and plans to build a Christian theme park, Arly worries her beloved, if crazy, neighbors are about to be swindled. But it’s Malachi who should be terrified.
Brothers
by Jesse Storm
Rating: 4.7 #ad
Jameson Cooper has always been a law-abiding citizen in Blakemore. A few years ago, he was fortunate enough to get deputized. His brother, Holden Cooper, is the complete opposite. Holden could never keep down a job or hang on to a healthy relationship. For the most part, he is always getting himself in trouble.
One night, Holden Cooper is leaving a poker game after losing all of his money when he hears a gunshot. He turns around and runs toward the sound of trouble. When he gets there, Holden is shocked to discover a body. The man who won the poker game has been shot.
In the morning, the sheriff of Blakemore and all of the town’s citizens are quick to put the blame on Holden.
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The Favor
by Nicci French
Rating: 3.9 #ad
In this twisty new stand-alone novel from internationally bestselling author Nicci French, a young woman agrees to do a favor for her first love—but when things go horribly wrong, one small task turns into a murder investigation that completely upends her life, ensnaring her in a deadly web of secrets and lies. It’s a simple enough favor.
Jude hasn’t seen Liam in years, but when he shows up at her work asking for a favor, she finds she can’t refuse. All Jude has to do is pick Liam up at a country train station—without telling anyone. So what if she has to lie to her fiancé? Jude is still committed to him and their imminent wedding, even if she and Liam were in love once. She owes him.
Cities in Flight
by James Blish, Betty Ballantine
Rating: 4.4 #ad
They Shall Have Stars, humankind has thoroughly explored the solar system, yet the dream of going even farther seems to have died in all but one man. His battle to realize his dream results in two momentous discoveries: anti-gravity and the secret of immortality. In A Life for the Stars, it is centuries later and antigravity generations have enabled whole cities to lift off the surface of the earth to become galactic wanderers. In Earthman, Come Home, the nomadic cities revert to barbarism and marauding rogue cities begin to pose a threat to all civilized worlds.
The Killing of Polly Carter
by Robert Thorogood
Rating: 4.4 #ad
When Polly Carter is found dead at the foot of a cliff, it looks like suicide, but DI Richard Poole is not convinced. Famous for her looks and wild party-girl lifestyle, her friends are adamant she would never have killed herself.
Seconded from London to the Caribbean island of Saint Marie, DI Poole is already at his wit’s end with the blinding heat. Unpicking the conflicting motives of a number of suspects and their stream of alibis is infuriating enough; a visit from his mother is the cherry on the cake.
An absolutely gripping crime thriller, The Killing of Polly Carter is perfect for fans of Midsomer Murders and Agatha Christie.
Murder in Plain English
by Michael Arntfield
Rating: 3.9 #ad
The book also analyzes the written work of killers, using a combination of machine-based linguistic patterning, predictive modeling, and symbolic interpretation, to make sense of the screeds of everyone from the Son of Sam and the Zodiac Killer to the Columbine attackers, the Unabomber, and the recent spate of mass shooters using social media as their preferred narrative platform.
They present a theoretical perspective of murder that is based on both the criminological evidence and written works. In addition, the authors examine famous literature that has dealt ingeniously with murder and its relationship with real crime, from the Greek tragedians to Truman Capote to modern-day productions such as Making a Murderer.
Hunter’s Quest
by Lynnea Lee
Rating: 4.4 #ad
MORGAN There’s a Xarc’n warrior stalking my land. Rhaz’k claims I’m “his,” but I belong to no one, especially not to a bossy purple alien with massive horns, sharp fangs, and huge muscles. But when the deadly space bugs invading Earth start showing up around my home, the overprotective warrior tosses me over his shoulder and carries me to his shuttle. Who does he think he is?
RHAZ’K Morgan calls me bossy, but her body scents of lust every time I’m near. I’ve been patient all season, giving her time to accept that she’s mine. She might scream at me now, but soon she’ll be screaming my name. Nothing will stop me from claiming my mate.
Guilty Knowledge
by Linda Griffin
Rating: 3.8 #ad
Detective Jesse Aaron has no leads in the murder of Rosa Logan when pretty blonde Sariah Brennan claims to have seen the killer – in a vision. Unfortunately the man she identifies is dead – or is he?Sariah is an unsophisticated small town girl, but her background and her motives are mysterious, and she seems to be hiding something. Jesse is increasingly convinced she has guilty knowledge of the crime, even as he finds himself more and more attracted to her. How can he unravel the web of secrets, without putting Sariah at risk, before the killer strikes again?
Wednesday’s Mystery eBooks
Rack, Ruin and Murder
by Ann Granger
Rating: 4.2 #ad
When old Monty Bickerstaffe discovers a dead body in his drawing room, it’s up to Inspector Jess Campbell to get to the bottom of the mystery.
Monty is a recluse, holed up in his crumbling manor house being generally unpleasant to everyone, even those relatives he actually likes. When his family and locals claim they’ve never seen the murder victim before, Campbell smells a lie.
From the Corner of His Eye
by Dean Koontz
Rating: 4.6 #ad
His birth was marked by wonder and tragedy. He sees beauty and terror beyond our deepest dreams. His story will change the way you see the world.
Bartholomew Lampion is born on a day of tragedy and terror that will mark his family forever. All agree that his unusual eyes are the most beautiful they have ever seen. On this same day, a thousand miles away, a ruthless man learns that he has a mortal enemy named Bartholomew. He embarks on a relentless search to find this enemy, a search that will consume his life. And a girl is born from a brutal rape, her destiny mysteriously linked to Barty and the man who stalks him.
Dwarvish Dirty Dozen Boxed Set
by Aaron D. Schneider, Michael Anderle
Rating: 5.0 #ad
War is a messy business and anyone who claims otherwise is trying to sell you something.
This is a tale of war and desperation, of grit and heroism. See what a batch of desperate dwarves can do when the chips are down.
The dwarvish legions, the Holt’Dwan, are familiar with this but these are strange times. The dead are rising from the earth in the freshly settled Ysgand Vale and the war just got a lot messier…
Fallout
by Carrie Stuart Parks
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Her carefully crafted life is about to be demolished.
After a difficult childhood, Samantha Williams craves simplicity: jigsaw puzzles, lectures at the library, and the students she adores in her role as an elementary school art teacher in the dusty farming community of LaCrosse, Washington.
But when an SUV crashes into the building where she teaches, her entire world is upended. Samantha manages to keep the children safe, but her car isn’t so lucky. Oddly, her purse—with her driver’s license, credit cards, and other identification—is missing from the wreckage.
The Darkest Sin
by D. V. Bishop
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Florence. Spring, 1537.
When Cesare Aldo investigates a report of intruders at a convent in the Renaissance city’s northern quarter, he enters a community divided by bitter rivalries and harbouring dark secrets.
When a man’s body is found deep inside the convent, stabbed more than two dozen times, the case becomes even more complicated. Unthinkable as it seems, all the evidence suggests one of the nuns must be the killer…
The Dying Party
by Jeff Kelland
Rating: 4.7 #ad
The former story line, starting a few years earlier in the prequel, focuses on two main characters. It is late in the 2040s, and Lizzie and Donnie are two of only six people left alive in a residential complex that had been built into the side of Newfoundland’s Gros Morne mountain in the 2030s, now the only piece of habitable land left above water in all of what was once eastern Canada. In the second story line we follow a group of humanity’s richest and most powerful, the super-elite, as they try to establish an off-Earth colony for themselves.
My Little Girl
by Shalini Boland
Rating: 4.2 #ad
Your daughter is missing. Did someone close to you take her?
She was meant to be with your husband. He didn’t tell you about the change of plans. Your mother-in-law says she never took her eyes off her. But the moment little Bea disappeared, she was on the phone to your husband’s ex-wife.
Things like this happen to other people. Careless people. Not you. But now you have to ask: your husband, your mother-in-law, the ex-wife – could one of them have taken your little girl?
BARRIE HILL REUNION
by Lisette Brodey
Rating: 4.1 #ad
Eight people. One weekend. Eight lives forever changed.
In the mid-1960s, at an elite college in the quaint town of Barrie Hill, Connecticut, a group of literary-minded students met regularly off-campus at the Vanessa Grand Hotel. Often late into the night, they would discuss the day’s news, analyze literature, philosophize, trade barbs, and socialize.
Twenty years after graduation, in 1986, the group’s founder, Clare Dreyser, organizes a weekend reunion. Seven former Barrie Hillers and one guest get together, eager to re-create an extraordinary time in their lives and reunite with old friends.