Sunday’s Mystery eBooks
Top Secret Twenty-One
by Janet Evanovich
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Trenton, New Jersey’s favorite used-car dealer, Jimmy Poletti, was caught selling a lot more than used cars out of his dealerships. Now he’s out on bail and has missed his date in court, and bounty hunter Stephanie Plum is looking to bring him in. Leads are quickly turning into dead ends, and all too frequently into dead bodies. Even Joe Morelli, the city’s hottest cop, is struggling to find a clue to the suspected killer’s whereabouts. These are desperate times, and they call for desperate measures. So Stephanie is going to have to do something she really doesn’t want to do: protect former hospital security guard and general pain in her behind Randy Briggs. Briggs was picking up quick cash as Poletti’s bookkeeper and knows all his boss’s dirty secrets. Now Briggs is next on Poletti’s list of people to put six feet under.
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(Stephanie Plum Mysteries)
Four Steps Missed
by Luana Ehrlich
Rating: 4.7 #ad
CIA covert operative Titus Ray is used to keeping secrets. This time, it’s different.
This time, he’s keeping secrets from his boss, his handler, and his wife.
Operation False Flag is the secret Titus is keeping from his boss . . . While his boss, Deputy Director of Operations, Robert Ira, would ordinarily be aware of any operation being run out of the Agency, this mission concerns the DDO himself, a mission that could cost him his job.
The whistleblower behind the operation is the secret Titus is keeping from his handler . . . Even though his handler, Douglas Carlton, has been tasked with directing Operation False Flag, he has no idea Titus knows the identity of the whistleblower who gave the Inspector General the files that set the operation in motion.
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(A Titus Ray Mysteries)
The Relic Murders
by Paul Doherty
Rating: 4.4 #ad
In his sixth journal, The Relic Murders, Roger Shallot must race against time to find the Orb of Charlemagne… and to save his own neck. Paul Doherty’s Tudor mysteries are perfect for fans of Ellis Peters and C.J. Sansom.
In the autumn of 1523, Roger Shallot, self-proclaimed physician, rogue, charlatan and secret emissary of King Henry VIII, has nothing to do. His master, Benjamin Daunbey, has been sent to Italy on a diplomatic mission, leaving him in charge of their manor outside Ipswich. Shallot, forbidden both to practise the art of medicine and to approach the beautiful Miranda, takes to reading. Discovering the potential wealth which can be accrued by the finding and selling of true relics, he goes in search of his own. Almost immediately he is in trouble – and in prison.
Triple Cross
by James Patterson
Rating: 4.5 #ad
A precise killer, he always moves under the cover of darkness, flawlessly triggering no alarms, leaving no physical evidence.
Cross and Sampson aren’t the only ones investigating. Also in on this most intriguing case is the world’s bestselling true-crime author, who sees patterns everyone else misses. The writer, Thomas Tull, calls the Family Man murders the perfect crime story. He believes the killer may never be caught.
The Secret Room
by Sandra Block
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Her patients are dying. Some are apparent suicides and others possible accidents, but rumors are flying that Dr. Zoe Goldman is an angel of death- intentionally helping hopeless cases go to a “better place”- or, worse yet, a dangerously incompetent doctor.
As a new psychiatry fellow at the local correctional facility, Zoe is still learning the ropes while watching her back to avoid some dangerous prisoners. As the deaths mount up, Zoe is wracked with horror and guilt, feverishly trying to figure out what is going wrong and even questioning her own sanity.
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(A Zoe Goldman Mysteries)
IN A GLASS DARKLY COLLECTION
by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
Rating: 4.4 #ad
From the predatory same-sex desire in “Carmilla” to the ghostly hallucinations in “Green Tea,” the five supernatural stories in In a Glass Darkly reflect a profound and deeply disturbing uncertainty about the nature of humanity. Originally published separately in magazines, the stories are framed and linked in this collection as cases in the papers of the fictional Dr. Hesselius. Sheridan Le Fanu’s approach to the supernatural re-works traditional Irish oral storytelling and combines it with nineteenth-century adaptations of the eighteenth-century Gothic novel.
Appendices include Le Fanu’s correspondence about the stories, posthumous assessments of his life and work, and twentieth-century critical commentaries by M.R. James and Elizabeth Bowen. Engravings from the original serial publications of several stories are also included.
The Thief
by J.R. Ward
Rating: 4.8 #ad
Sola Morte, former cat burglar and safecracker, has given up her old life on the wrong side of the law. On the run from a drug lord’s family, she is lying low far from Caldwell, keeping her nose clean and her beloved grandmother safe. Her heart, though, is back up north, with the only man who has ever gotten through her defenses: Assail, son of Assail, who never meant to fall in love—and certainly not with a human woman. But they have no future, and not just because she doesn’t know he is a vampire, but because he is not about to stop dealing arms to the Black Dagger Brotherhood. Fate, however, has other plans for them. When Assail falls into a coma and lingers on the verge of death, his cousins seek out Sola and beg her to give him a reason to live. The last thing she wants is a return to her past, but how can she leave him to die?
Saturday’s Mystery eBooks
The Sacred Bridge
by Anne Hillerman
Rating: 4.5 #ad
An ancient mystery resurfaces with ramifications for the present day in this gripping chapter in the Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito series from New York Times bestselling author Anne Hillerman.
Sergeant Jim Chee’s vacation to beautiful Antelope Canyon and Lake Powell has a deeper purpose. He’s on a quest to unravel a sacred mystery his mentor, the Legendary Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, stumbled across decades earlier.
Chee’s journey takes a deadly turn when, after a prayerful visit to the sacred Rainbow Bridge, he spots a body floating in the lake.
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(A Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito Mysteries)
Missing Pieces
by Joy Fielding
Rating: 4.4 #ad
How far will a mother go to protect her family from a madman?
An unrivaled master of psychological suspense, Joy Fielding has written her most chilling and intricate novel yet–a compulsively readable look at the razor-thin line between daily domesticity and nerve-shattering terror.
It had to end in blood. Family therapist Kate Sinclair, healer of lost souls, perfect wife and mother, has suddenly become trapped in a nightmare of her own…
The Forever Stone
by Gloria Repp
Rating: 4.6 #ad
The paperweight—a summons to courage . . . A new home, new love, new fears . . . and a mystery. How will she face the challenge? And what does God have in mind? ~ Madeleine, a young widow, is determined to break free from her paralyzing memories and controlling family. The paperweight, a gift from her father, spurs her to declare independence, and she joins her aunt’s house-restoration project in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. Two men enter her life, bringing joy, conflict, and danger. She’ll need courage to fight the treachery she discovers, and faith to step into a new life of promise. Can she do it?
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(The Dumont Chronicles)
Murder at the Bingo Hall
by Linda Pohl
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Sunday night bingo at St. Angela’s Church in the little village of Kenmore, New York, can be deadly. The stakes are high and the crowd is large. Priscilla Hatfield needs just one number to win! Bursting with excitement when I 17 is called, Priscilla suddenly grabs her chest and slumps over dead with her two lucky trolls, Jasper and Seymour, and her rosary beads by her side. But her two best friends and bingo buddies have good reason to believe she’s been murdered. Fearing the police investigation is going no-where, Ethel Dinwiddie and Nellie Pearce take matters into their own hands and vow to solve the case.
Blackout
by Erin Flanagan
Rating: 3.9 #ad
Seven hard-won months into her sobriety, sociology professor Maris Heilman has her first blackout. She chalks it up to exhaustion, though she fears that her husband and daughter will suspect she’s drinking again. Whatever their cause, the glitches start becoming more frequent. Sometimes minutes, sometimes longer, but always leaving Maris with the same disorienting question: Where have I been?
Then another blackout lands Maris in the ER, where she makes an alarming discovery. A network of women is battling the same inexplicable malady. Is it a bizarre coincidence or something more sinister? What do all the women have in common besides missing time? Or is it who they have in common?
My MacArthur
by Cindy Fazzi
Rating: 4.2 #ad
The year is 1930. The place: Manila. Douglas MacArthur is the most powerful man in the Philippines, a United States colony. He’s fifty years old, divorced, and he falls in love at first sight with a ravishing young Filipino woman. He writes her a love note on the spot. Her name is Isabel Rosario Cooper, an aspiring movie actress. One glance at his note and she thinks of him as my MacArthur.
MacArthur pursues his romantic obsession even though he’s breaking numerous taboos. She reciprocates his affection because he could open doors for her financially struggling family. That MacArthur happens to be handsome compensates for the fact that he’s as old as her father.
When MacArthur is appointed the U.S. Army chief of staff, he becomes the youngest four-star general and one of America’s most powerful men. Out of hubris, he takes Isabel with him to America without marrying her.
King
by Ben Kane
Rating: 4.6 #ad
Warleader Autumn 1192. With Jerusalem still in the Saracens’ hands, and a peace treaty agreed with their leader Saladin, Richard the Lionheart is free at last to travel back to his strife-ridden kingdom. By his side at every turn is the loyal knight Ferdia, also known as Rufus. Together they will face not just Richard’s archenemy Philippe Capet of France, but also the king’s treacherous younger brother, John.
Captive Shipwrecked on the Italian coast, the king and his small group of companions are forced into a perilous journey through lands controlled by their enemies. Shortly before Christmas 1192, Richard is taken prisoner near Vienna by Duke Leopold of Austria. Kept prisoner for several months, the king is then handed over to Henry VI, the Holy Roman Emperor. His captivity lasts for another year, fanning the flames of unrest in his territories in England and beyond.
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(Richard the Lionheart Mysteries)