Thursday’s Mystery eBooks
Death by Hot Apple
by Alex Erickson
Rating: 4.6 #ad
With autumn in full swing and Thanksgiving on the way, Krissy’s supplying cider and her staff is manning the apple-bobbing booth at a town event. But then a patron dunks his head in – and doesn’t come back up.
It soon becomes clear that Krissy’s brew wasn’t to blame. But with her policeman boyfriend looking to make detective, she can’t help being drawn into the investigation. The victim was notorious for harassing not only her own bookstore but the library and the school for promoting supposedly scandalous literature – before someone censored him permanently. Now, Krissy will have to check out a stack of suspects to find a killer who’s rotten to the core . . .
Check out:
(A Bookstore Cafe Mysteries)
All That Lives
by James Oswald
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Two victims. Nothing connects them, except that someone buried them in the exact same way. Seven hundred years apart.
An archaeological dig at the old South Leith parish kirkyard has turned up a mysterious body dating from around seven hundred years ago. Some suspect that this gruesome discovery is a sacrifice, placed there for a specific purpose.
Then a second body is unearthed. This victim went missing only thirty years ago – but the similarities between her death and the ancient woman’s suggest something even more disturbing.
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(A Bookstore Cafe Mysteries)
A Second Helping of Crazy
by John D. Ottini
Rating: 4.0 #ad
A Second Helping of Crazy
In A Second Helping of Crazy, author John D. Ottini has collected thirteen of his most memorable stories in one volume. Three stories were previously chosen as Finalists in the annual Royal Palm Literary Awards competition, and the rest are a selection of the author’s personal favorites.
The Shadow of the Gods
by John Gwynne
Rating: 4.6 #ad
THE GREATEST SAGAS ARE WRITTEN IN BLOOD.
A century has passed since the gods fought and drove themselves to extinction. Now only their bones remain, promising great power to those brave enough to seek them out.
As whispers of war echo across the land of Vigrid, fate follows in the footsteps of three warriors: a huntress on a dangerous quest, a noblewoman pursuing battle fame, and a thrall seeking vengeance among the mercenaries known as the Bloodsworn.
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(The Bloodsworn Trilogy)
Into the Whirlwind
by Kat Martin
Rating: 4.6 #ad
Megan O’Brien is at her wit’s end. Her three-year-old son has been kidnapped. No police, says the ransom demand. Fearing for her son’s life, Meg has no choice but to turn to her former bodyguard, Dirk Reynolds, who’s now a PI with Brodie Operations Security Services, Inc.
Dirk’s never forgiven Meg for the way she left him after their brief affair. But with bounty hunter Luke Brodie on his side, Dirk knows he’s got to help Meg rescue her son.
Blowback
by L.T. Ryan
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Riley “Bear” Logan returns in Blowback, the latest installment in the Jack Noble thriller world.
While recuperating on the tranquil island of St. Lucia, Bear’s world is turned upside down when he is framed for murder. A nemesis returns offering immunity…
In exchange for a favor. Get in. Get the package. Get out. Easy as that. But nothing is ever that simple for Bear, and he soon finds himself in the center of a web of corruption and deceit as the operation threatens to suffocate him.
Lying in Ruins
by Jami Gray
Rating: 3.8 #ad
In a world gone to hell, better to choose the devil you know…
The world didn’t end in fire and explosions, instead after an intensifying panic of disease, food shortages, wild weather, and floundering economies, it collapsed like slow falling dominoes, until what remained of humanity battles for survival in a harsh new reality.
As a ‘Hound, Charity puts the lethal survival skills learned at an early age to use by sniffing out pivotal secrets for one of the most powerful leaders on what remains of the west coast. Her work is deceptive, deadly, and best performed solo, but when her path crosses with a member of the notorious mercenary group known as Fate’s Vultures, she’s faced with a less than stellar choice – join the sexy as hell Ruin in a mockery of teamwork or waste her valuable time shaking him loose.
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(The Collapse Mysteries)
The Secrets She Buried
by Neil Turner
Rating: 4.8 #ad
Jill Clark is determined to hold a hospital accountable for the death of her mother, who died during the chaotic early days of the COVID pandemic. Her death was attributed to the virus. But was COVID the cause of death?
Adamant that hospital staff essentially murdered her mother through sheer negligence, Jill hires Tony Valenti and Penelope Brooks to sue the hospital. A fissure soon opens in Tony and Penelope’s relationship as the case plunges them into a bewildering maze of explosive secrets that hint at alternative explanations – revelations that unleash hidden dangers. Did Rose Clark succumb to COVID, or was a murder committed under cover of the pandemic?
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(The Tony Valenti Thrillers Mysteries)
Wednesday’s Mystery eBooks
Formals, Fortune Cookies & Fraud
by Catherine Bruns
Rating: 4.8 #ad
Ten years before Sally Muccio became the owner of a a novelty cookie shop in Western New York, she had other things on her mind…namely, the senior prom. With a lovely pink gown, the enchanting fortune theme and handsome beau Mike Donovan by her side, Sal’s got all the necessary ingredients for a perfect evening.
How did everything manage to go so wrong?
Small Town Danger Collection
by Multiple Authors
Rating: 5.0 #ad
10 Full-Length Romantic Suspense & Mystery Novels
More than lives are in danger when small town tranquility meets heart pounding suspense in this collection of ten brand-new novels from some of the genre’s most explosive romantic suspense authors!
Join Mary Alford, Liz Bradford, June Foster, Therese Heckenkamp, Cynthia Hickey, Gina Holder, Edie James, Ann Malley, Carol Nemeth and Colleen Snyder as mystery, suspense, and faith combine to keep you on the edge of your seat until the very end.
Wild Fire
by Ann Cleeves
Rating: 4.6 #ad
The betrayal of those closest burns most of all . . .
Hoping for a fresh start, an English family moves to the remote Shetland islands, eager to give their autistic son a better life.
But when a young nanny’s body is found hanging in the barn beside their home, rumors of her affair with the husband spread like wildfire. As suspicion and resentment of the family blazes in the community, Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez is called in to investigate. He knows it will mean his boss, Willow Reeves, returning to run the investigation, and confronting their complex relationship.
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(Shetland Island Mysteries)
Enemy
by K. Eason
Rating: 3.9 #ad
On the border of the Illhari Republic… Snowdenaelikk, conjuror and heretic, lives on the edge of the Republic–and the law–as a cartel enforcer. Then a smuggling deal goes bad, a village burns, and she finds herself on the wrong side of a legion patrol.
Veiko Nyrikki is an outlaw and an outlander, just trying to survive……until his sense of honor–and his ax–get between Snow and the legion. Now he’s got new enemies and new allies and survival’s gotten complicated. But Snow and Veiko soon discover the legion is the least of their problems.
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(On the Bones of Gods Mysteries)
Riverwoman’s Dragon
by Candace Robb
Rating: 4.5 #ad
When the wise woman Magda Digby is suspected of murder, Owen Archer sets out to prove her innocence in this intricately plotted medieval mystery.
May, 1375. Owen Archer returns from London to find York in chaos. While the citizens are living in terror of the pestilence which is spreading throughout the land, a new physician has arrived, whipping up fear and suspicion against traditional healers and midwives. With the backing of the new archbishop, he is especially hostile towards Magda Digby, the wise woman who has helped and healed the people of York for many years. At the same time, Magda is uneasy about the arrival of two long-lost kinsfolk. Though they say they are seeking her help, she senses a hidden agenda.
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(An Owen Archer Mysteries)
My Heart Is a Chainsaw
by Stephen Graham Jones
Rating: 4.1 #ad
“Some girls just don’t know how to die…”
Shirley Jackson meets Friday the 13th in My Heart Is a Chainsaw, written by the New York Times bestselling author of The Only Good Indians Stephen Graham Jones, called “a literary master” by National Book Award winner Tananarive Due and “one of our most talented living writers” by Tommy Orange.
Alma Katsu calls My Heart Is a Chainsaw “a homage to slasher films that also manages to defy and transcend genre.” On the surface is a story of murder in small-town America. But beneath is its beating heart: a biting critique of American colonialism, Indigenous displacement, and gentrification, and a heartbreaking portrait of a broken young girl who uses horror movies to cope with the horror of her own life.
Adrift
by Brian Murphy
Rating: 4.3 #ad
A story of tragedy at sea where every desperate act meant life or death
The small ship making the Liverpool-to-New York trip in the early months of 1856 carried mail, crates of dry goods, and more than one hundred passengers, mostly Irish emigrants. Suddenly an iceberg tore the ship asunder and five lifeboats were lowered. As four lifeboats drifted into the fog and icy water, never to be heard from again, the last boat wrenched away from the sinking ship with a few blankets, some water and biscuits, and thirteen souls. Only one would survive. This is his story.
Using Nye’s firsthand descriptions and later newspaper accounts, ship’s logs, assorted diaries, and family archives, Brian Murphy chronicles the horrific nine days that thirteen people suffered adrift on the cold gray Atlantic.
The Mother-in-Law
by Kiersten Modglin
Rating: 4.3 #ad
There’s something strange about Loren’s new mother-in-law…
When Loren meets Jack, she’s sure he’s the man she’s been waiting for—a perfect husband and a father for her young daughter. Shortly after their wedding, their plans to start a life together are put on hold when the couple receives word that Jack’s father has died.
In an effort to appease her new husband, Loren invites her mother-in-law, Coralee, to stay with them while she grieves. When strange things begin to occur just after her arrival, Loren questions how much she knows about the woman she invited into her home.
Daddy Protector
by Jacqueline Diamond
Rating: 4.3 #ad
He’s a wild and crazy guy—but dead serious about saving a child’s life.
Detective Hale Crandall’s party lifestyle annoys Connie, his beautiful, prickly next-door neighbor, until he races into a burning building to rescue the little boy she’s trying to adopt. She’s grateful but cautious, he’s struggling against a newfound yearning for love and daddyhood… and then someone threatens her safety.
Is the stalker her ex-husband, a fellow police office who’s Hale’s buddy? Or someone neither of them suspects? Hale’s instinct to protect Connie and her new son draws them together. But can these opposites find a happily-ever-after?
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(Cops & Kids Mysteries)
Bridge Back
by Stephanie Parker McKean
Rating: 4.9 #ad
Finally, a wedding instead of a mystery! Detective writer Michal Allison Rice, better known as Miz Mike in her hometown of Three Prongs, Texas, arrives in Scotland to marry Reverend Alan Evan Kirkland. But on their first walk along the beach, Mike discovers a sinking boat…and a murder victim.
Mike left Egan Firewalker Quartz and his bossy teen daughter Flame behind in the Nevada desert when she flew to Scotland to marry her “traditional minister” in a “traditional Scottish wedding” and live the “traditionally happy-ever-after” life. But once in Scotland, Mike fears she made a mistake. She loves Flame as if the child were her own. Worse yet, she may still be in love with Flame’s father…