Friday’s Mystery eBooks
Bad Housekeeping
by Maia Chance
Rating: 3.9 #ad
Danger mounts, deadlines loom, ancient knob-and-tube wiring is explored—and the ladies of Stagecoach Inn learn a thing or two about the awful, wonderful mistake that is going back home.
When 28-year-old Agnes Blythe, the contented bifocals-wearing half of an academic power couple, is jilted by her professor boyfriend for the town Pilates instructor, her future is suddenly less than certain. So when her glamorous, eccentric Great Aunt Effie arrives in town and offers a job helping to salvage the condemned Stagecoach Inn, what does Agnes have to lose?
OFF GRID
by J. P. Redding
Rating: 4.5 #ad
How Long Can They Hide From The Surveillance State?
From the halls of D.C. to the remote shores of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, OFF GRID is a wild ride through a dystopian near future of mass surveillance.
In the wake of a global calamity, the economy collapses. The Feds respond by wielding every power of the Welfare State to control the populace. A key tool is PivPal, an indispensable smartphone used to track citizens. As civil liberties crumble, resistance is relegated to flyover country whose residents – derided as off-gridders – cling to the time – honored virtues of freedom, self-reliance, and charity…
Desert God
by Wilbur Smith
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Game of Thrones meets Ancient Egypt in this magnificent, action-packed epic. On the gleaming banks of the Nile, the brilliant Taita—slave and advisor to the Pharaoh—finds himself at the center of a vortex of passion, intrigue, and danger. His quest to destroy the Hyksos army and form an alliance with Crete takes him on an epic journey up the Nile, through Arabia and the magical city of Babylon, and across the open seas. With the future of Egypt itself on his shoulders, Taita enters a world where the line between loyalty and betrayal shifts like the desert sands, evil enemies await in the shadows, and death lingers on the edges of darkness.
Check out:
(The Egyptian Mysteries)
Within and Without Time
by D. I. Hennessey
Rating: 4.8 #ad
When a sixteen-year-old boy is suddenly caught up in a series of miraculous encounters, it heralds an adventure that will transform his life, rock his town, and trigger events that will ultimately change the world!
Befriended by a powerful angelic warrior, Jimmy finds himself in the center of God’s plan for Earth’s final Great Revival. The beginning of God’s amazing harvest at the End of the Age. Like an intense roller coaster, the journey he experiences is exciting and unpredictable. Heartwarming, as well as heart-rending. God prepares him for a mission more extraordinary than anything he could have imagined, placing him in the rare company of ancient prophets and apostles alike.
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(Within & Without Time Mysteries)
Snakebite
by Heather Ramsay
Rating: 4.5 #ad
The Alpha Squad—an elite United Nations military unit tasked with stopping the world’s most dangerous arms dealers. Their existence is shrouded in secrecy, hidden away in the New Mexico desert.
Phoenix is their newest recruit. Where she came from, nobody knows. Not even Phoenix herself. Amnesia has left her with no past, no identity. The squad is all she has. She wants to prove she belongs there – to the other soldiers, to herself, and to her commanding officer, the formidable General Cobra. Cobra is cold, hard, ruthless. And Phoenix knows he doesn’t trust her…
Check out:
(Alpha Squad Mysteries)
“J” is for Judgment
by Sue Grafton
Rating: 4.5 #ad
Five years ago, when Jaffe’s thirty-five-foot Fuji ketch was found drifting off the Baja coast, it seemed a sure thing he’d gone overboard. The note he left behind admitted he was flat broke, his business bankrupt, his real estate gambit nothing but a huge Ponzi scheme about to collapse, with criminal indictment certain to follow. When the authorities soon after descended on his banks and his books, there was nothing left: Jaffe had stripped the lot.
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(Kinsey Millhone Mysteries)
Trials of the Century
by Mark J. Phillips
Rating: 4.9 #ad
This book tells the story of each murder case and the dramatic trial-and media coverage-that followed. Starting with the murder of famed architect Stanford White in 1906 and ending with the O.J. Simpson trial of 1994, the authors recount ten compelling tales spanning the century.
The most noteworthy cases are here – including the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, the Sam Sheppard murder trial (“The Fugitive”), the “Helter Skelter” murders of Charles Manson, and the O.J. Simpson murder trial. But some cases that today are lesser known also provide fascinating glimpses into the tenor of the time: the media sensation created by yellow journalist William Randolph Hearst around the murder trial of 1920s movie star Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle; the murder of the Scarsdale Diet guru by an elite prep-school headmistress in the 1980s; and more.
The Phantom of Crowford Theatre
by Amy Cross
Rating: 4.4 #ad
The year is 2011, and Crowford Theatre is struggling for survival. Ambitious new manager Cassie Carter is determined to turn the theatre around, but the local council has other ideas and Cassie’s health is starting to fail. Meanwhile, strange noises at night hint at a mysterious presence lurking somewhere in the building, and every production seems cursed.
Cassie soon discovers that the theatre’s past is filled with tragedy, and that one particular tragedy has started leaking into the present day. As she prepares to stage a brand new production of a classic play by a local author, Cassie finds herself forced to confront the spirit of a vengeful, long-dead author. But a sinister discovery, hidden deep within the theatre itself, hints at an even darker and more shocked secret.
Check out:
(The Ghosts of Crowford Mysteries)
Thursday’s Mystery eBooks
Renewed for Murder
by Victoria Gilbert
Rating: 4.4 #ad
August in Taylorsford, Virginia finds library director Amy Webber and her new husband, dancer Richard Muir, settling into married life–and a new project. Richard and his dance partner, Karla, are choreographing a suite based on folk music and folk tales, while Amy scours the library’s resources to supply background information on the dance’s source material. But the mellifluous music comes to a jarring halt when an unknown woman’s body turns up in Zelda Shoemaker’s backyard gazebo.
Chief Deputy Brad Tucker puts Zelda at the top of his suspect list, thanks to a blackmail letter he finds in the dead woman’s pocket. Zelda’s best friend, Amy’s aunt Lydia Talbot, begs Amy to use her research skills to clear Zelda’s name. But the task is confounded by Zelda’s very out-of-character refusal to reveal why the victim might have blackmailed her.
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(A Blue Ridge Library Mysteries)
Dying Breath
by Liz Mistry
Rating: 4.7 #ad
The killer is closing in… can she find him before he finds her?
When Detective Nikki Parekh receives a set of threatening postcards, she knows it can only mean one thing… The man who escaped arrest after murdering her mother two years ago is back.
Each postcard has a similar message: You’re next Parekh.
As the post marks on the cards gradually get closer to Bradford, Nikki must do everything she can to protect her family and catch the killer before it’s too late.
Who Slays the Wicked
by C. S. Harris
Rating: 4.6 #ad
The death of a fiendish nobleman strikes close to home as Sebastian St. Cyr is tasked with finding the killer to save his young cousin from persecution in this riveting new historical mystery from the USA Today bestselling author of Why Kill the Innocent….
When the handsome but dissolute young gentleman Lord Ashworth is found brutally murdered, Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, is called in by Bow Street magistrate Sir Henry Lovejoy to help catch the killer. Just seven months before, Sebastian had suspected Ashworth of aiding one of his longtime friends and companions in the kidnapping and murder of a string of vulnerable street children. But Sebastian was never able to prove Ashworth’s complicity. Nor was he able to prevent his troubled, headstrong young niece Stephanie from entering into a disastrous marriage with the dangerous nobleman.
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(Sebastian St. Cyr Mysteries)
Bridge to Brigadoon
by Stephanie Parker McKean
Rating: 4.7 #ad
In one of the wackiest Miz Mike adventures ever, successful writer Michal Allison Rice is packed off to Scotland by her son and daughter-in-law for a vacation. They believe the trip will heal her broken heart—and hope that it will teach her to mind her own business. Mike does not want to go to Scotland. It is COLD there. And once in Scotland, she doesn’t want to stay. Hotdogs come in cans, dill pickles are non-existent and driving on the wrong side of the road terrifies her. However, when elderly Ross Granger is killed, Mike feels responsible and sets out in search of the killer.
Nearly killed herself, Mike is faced with a dilemma: no one believes her. She is viewed as “an American stushie-maker.” But the gravest danger of all proves to be the Reverend Alan Evan Kirkland, a Scottish widower who befriends her, then demands the one thing in repayment that she is unwilling to give – her heart.
Rosemarked
by Livia Blackburne
Rating: 4.4 #ad
A terminally ill healer… Zivah was once her village’s most promising young healer, mastering potions that altered both body and mind. But when she’s conscripted to treat a battalion of grievously ill soldiers, Zivah contracts the deadly rose plague. Now she’s doomed to a slow, solitary death, cut off from everyone she loves.
A broken warrior… Dineas grew up fighting to free his people from the Amparan empire, but capture and torture have left him shattered. Though he’s now escaped from the emperor’s dungeons, he cannot outrun the lingering effects of his trauma…
Check out:
(Umbertouched)
Afraid to Die
by Lisa Jackson
Rating: 4.6 #ad
The town of Grizzly Falls, Montana, is still on edge in the wake of a serial killer’s capture. Thanks to Detectives Selena Alvarez and Regan Pescoli, the nightmare is over. But a new one is about to unfold. There are two victims so far—their bodies found frozen solid and deliberately displayed. Both are women Selena knew. And each wears a piece of her jewelry.
Selena, Regan, and the entire department are on the case, as is P.I. Dylan O’Keefe—a man Selena got too close to once before. But this killer already knows too much about Selena’s secret terror, her flaws, and the past she’s tried to outrun. And soon he’ll show her that she has every reason to be afraid.
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(An Alvarez & Pescoli Mysteries)
Wastelands
by Multiple Authors
Rating: 4.6 #ad
In WASTELANDS: THE NEW APOCALYPSE, veteran anthology editor John Joseph Adams is once again our guide through the wastelands using his genre and editorial expertise to curate his finest collection of post-apocalyptic short fiction yet. Whether the end comes via nuclear war, pandemic, climate change, or cosmological disaster, these stories explore the extraordinary trials and tribulations of those who survive.
Featuring never-before-published tales by: Veronica Roth, Hugh Howey, Jonathan Maberry, Seanan McGuire, Tananarive Due, Richard Kadrey, Scott Sigler, Elizabeth Bear, Tobias S. Buckell, Meg Elison, Greg van Eekhout, Wendy N. Wagner, Jeremiah Tolbert, and Violet Allen–plus, recent reprints by: Carmen Maria Machado, Carrie Vaughn, Ken Liu, Paolo Bacigalupi, Kami Garcia, Charlie Jane Anders, Catherynne M. Valente, Jack Skillingstead, Sofia Samatar, Maureen F. McHugh, Nisi Shawl, Adam-Troy Castro, Dale Bailey, Susan Jane Bigelow, Corinne Duyvis, Shaenon K. Garrity, Nicole Kornher-Stace, Darcie Little Badger, Timothy Mudie, and Emma Osborne.
Essential Grief
by Kathleen Flynn
Rating: 5.0 #ad
This book’s stories are focused on grieving losses from the death of humans and pets. There is a myriad of losses such as loss of: a job; dreams; aging; relationships; and many more
What Kathleen Flynn shares here can be applied toward many types of loss.
As a chaplain, minister, and grief counselor, Flynn chooses to focus on death, as it seems to be that loss, perhaps the finality of it, paralyzes us from taking action to mediate our grief. It is the finality of death, often with related trauma and with suddenness, that can immobilize us. All losses have contributed to the author’s understanding of the essentials of grief.