Sunday’s Mystery eBooks
A Brunch With Death
by Ellie Alexander
Rating: 4.3 #ad
Fall has painted Ashland, Oregon, with a brush of jewel tones. Everyone’s favorite artistic director, Lance, from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, is in a sparkling mood. Things are winding down at the theater, and he’s already planning a spectacular lineup for next season. There’s only one problem–cash. Lance’s lavish productions don’t come cheap. So when the dreaded Richard Lord, owner of the Merry Windsor Hotel, approaches Lance about partnering for an upcoming brunch show, Lance can’t turn him down.
Shakespearean kitsch and stale muffins aren’t exactly Lance’s forte, but he can’t pass up an offer to fill the coffers. It’s just brunch, after all. It can’t be that bad. Can it?
Explosive Eighteen
by Janet Evanovich
Rating: 4.6 #ad
BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg’s The Heist.
Bounty hunter Stephanie Plum’s life is set to blow sky high when international murder hits dangerously close to home, in this dynamite novel by Janet Evanovich.
Before Stephanie can even step foot off Flight 127 Hawaii to Newark, she’s knee deep in trouble. Her dream vacation turned into a nightmare, and she’s flying back to New Jersey solo. Worse still, her seatmate never returned to the plane after the L.A. layover. Now he’s dead, in a garbage can, waiting for curbside pickup. His killer could be anyone. And a ragtag collection of thugs and psychos, not to mention the FBI, are all looking for a photograph the dead man was supposed to be carrying.
Blink of an Eye
by Eric Wilder
Rating: 4.7 #ad
Paranormal investigator Buck McDivit deals with murder, creatures of darkness, and romance with an American Indian archaeologist who likes cowboys and fast ponies
Buck visits Oklahoma’s remote Kiamichi Mountains, searching for an archaeological relic once used in religious ceremonies. The Black Cup of Oklahoma has gone missing, and Buck must travel back 1000 years to retrieve it.
Buck’s trek leads him into a forbidden canyon where he discovers a lost civilization, Oklahoma’s elusive Bigfoot, and a psychotic killer who likes to scalp his victims after killing them. To succeed, he seeks the help of a mysterious spiritualist and the dark magic of an immortal mountain fairy. Will Buck survive and retrieve the stolen relic, or die a gory death and his scalp added to the killer’s trophy belt?
Wasted Years
by John Harvey
Rating: 4.4 #ad
A detective’s dark past meets his violent present in “[a] rich tapestry that lifts the police procedural into the realm of the mainstream novel” (Sue Grafton).
It starts with five professional thieves. At their first robbery, they press a sawed-off shotgun against a bank manager’s head, and leave with nearly forty thousand pounds. They repeat the trick three times, raking in nearly half a million in cash. They have yet to kill, but with each raid they come closer to taking their bounty in blood. The Nottingham police department charges the brilliant but troubled Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick with stopping the crime spree…
Dark Crossings: An Anthology
by Karen Harper, Marta Perry, Patricia Davids
Rating: 4.6 #ad
The Covered Bridge by Karen Harper: When Benjamin Kline returns to the fold after eight years, Abigail Baughman welcomes him with an open heart. But all is not well in their Amish village.
Fallen in Plain Sight by Marta Perry: Childhood friends Sarah Weaver and Jacob Mast see each other in a different light when violence shatters their peaceful society.
Outside the Circle by Patricia Davids: Isaac Bowman is an outsider, but Lena Troyer makes the widower and his daughter feel like part of the community. So when a deer-poaching ring divides the town, Isaac vows to keep this gentle woman safe from harm…
Brutal Alien
by Luna Kingsley
Rating: 4.4 #ad
I hate everyone but her.
Zuvath. It has been a year since the second transport of humans arrived and trust is in short supply. They keep to the settlement, determined to create their own community without the untrustworthy aliens who got them into this mess. All of them except for Ellen. She breaks the rules for me—sneaking out to hunt together, riding our komoth and even hiding away in secret caves where she lets me touch her secret places.
I want her but no one knows what we get up to when we’re alone. If we were discovered, it could ruin the fragile peace between our kind…
Regretting You
by Colleen Hoover
Rating: 4.5 #ad
From #1 New York Times bestselling author of It Ends with Us comes a novel about family, first love, grief, and betrayal that will touch the hearts of both mothers and daughters.
Morgan Grant and her sixteen-year-old daughter, Clara, would like nothing more than to be nothing alike.
Morgan is determined to prevent her daughter from making the same mistakes she did. By getting pregnant and married way too young, Morgan put her own dreams on hold. Clara doesn’t want to follow in her mother’s footsteps. Her predictable mother doesn’t have a spontaneous bone in her body.
Saturday’s Mystery eBooks
Cat Under Fire
by Shirley Rousseau Murphy
Rating: 4.7 #ad
A big, powerful, gray feline, Joe Grey is perfectly content with his remarkable ability to understand and communicate with humans — especially now that he has company. A mysterious accident similar to the one that enabled him to speak and read has transformed his friend Dulcie as well. The trouble is, the cute tabby female not only hears human words, she believes them.
Now she’s convinced the man who was jailed for murdering a famous local artist and burning down her studio is innocent — simply because he says so — and she’s willing to do whatever it takes to dig up the evidence that will exonerate the accused.
Check out:
(A Joe Grey Mysteries)
Signed to Death
by Stephanie Parker McKean
Rating: 4.5 #ad
“Look out!” Maj yelled as the huge orange gulf gasoline sign with blue letters lumbered toward me down the slopped driveway. The warning came too late. The metal frame hit me. My feet came off the ground. I fell. So did the dead guy inside the sign.
A murder mystery falling at her feet is just the first shock to electrify antique shop owner Zoey Thunderbird.
Zoey is seriously DWM – Done With Men – but her heart forgets at every mention of junk sculptor Dave Durham. When a claspy-grabby stranger comes to town with outrageous stories and “flutterings” for Dave, Zoey’s best friend and sole employee at Treasure Trove takes the stranger’s side…
Blowout
by Catherine Coulter
Rating: 4.6 #ad
A long weekend in the Poconos is interrupted by murder, and FBI agents Savich and Sherlock must look thirty years into the past to stop the killing.
POCONO MOUNTAINS NEAR BLESSED CREEK, PENNSYLVANIA FRIDAY EVENING
IT WAS DARKER than Savich was used to, what with no city lights within fifty miles. The moon was a sharp sickle, cutting in and out of bloated black clouds. He rolled down the window and sniffed the air. Snow was coming, he thought, lots of it, more than enough to build a snowman with Sherlock and Sean in the morning; then the three of them could tramp through the beautiful woods filled with spruce and pine to Lake Klister.
Savich started singing one of his favorite country-western songs, written by his friend James Quinlan, as he drove the straight road with snowcapped boulders and stands of thick trees on his left and a guardrail on his right. “A blameless life ain’t no fun at all. I robbed that bank, laughin’ till my belly hurt, till I-”
Check out:
(An FBI Thriller)
Rowdy: Wild and Mean, Sharp and Keen
by Chris Mullen
Rating: 4.3 #ad
Thrust to the mercy of the Mississippi river, thirteen-year-old Rowdy floats safely away as he watches the smoke rise from his burning farmhouse. His father, dead. His brother, dead. Both gunned down in front of him by a murderous gang of bandits.
Now alone in the world, his perilous journey of survival begins, challenging and shaping him into the young man his father would want him to become. Pulled from the waters, he is given a chance by a lone river Captain and his mate. Working the trade routes between St. Louis and New Orleans, he learns to navigate safe passage. Rowdy has grown strong working the river but must use his wit as well as his strength to confront a bullying crewman and survive a surprise attack by river pirates.
Hostage
by Clare Mackintosh
Rating: 4.2 #ad
Mina is trying to focus on her job as a flight attendant, not the problems with her five-year-old daughter back home, or the fissures in her marriage. But the plane has barely taken off when Mina receives a chilling note from an anonymous passenger, someone intent on ensuring the plane never reaches its destination: “The following instructions will save your daughter’s life…”
Someone needs Mina’s assistance and knows exactly how to make her comply.
Suicide Forest
by Jeremy Bates
Rating: 4.4 #ad
Just outside of Tokyo lies Aokigahara, a vast forest and one of the most beautiful wilderness areas in Japan…and also the most infamous spot to commit suicide in the world. Legend has it that the spirits of those many suicides are still roaming, haunting deep in the ancient woods.
When bad weather prevents a group of friends from climbing neighboring Mt. Fuji, they decide to spend the night camping in Aokigahara. But they get more than they bargained for when one of them is found hanged in the morning—and they realize there might be some truth to the legends after all.
Check out:
(World’s Scariest Places)
Chasing Freedom
by H. L. Wegley
Rating: 4.4 #ad
How far would you be willing to go if you were chasing freedom?
When Allie Santiago, international scholar at Oregon State University, and her family are captured and labor trafficked by the same drug cartel that drove her father from Mexico, she learns the cartel thugs plan to sell her to human traffickers. Allie escapes, running a marathon through the mountains of Northern California, and collapses in the arms of Jeff Jacobs, a disgraced Olympic decathlete who wants to regain both his honor and his former glory. When Jeff’s actions engage the FBI and US Marshals to protect Allie and free her family from the cartel, a war breaks out in the mountains along the Oregon-California border.
Check out:
(Against All Enemies Mysteries)
We Must Save Jepson!
by Mark Petersen
Rating: 3.7 #ad
Britain’s Greatest Bumbler and His Extraordinary African Expedition: Suspense! Murder! Tea breaks! In this hilarious historical thriller, H. R. Huxtable sets out to rescue a beleaguered British outpost. Despite oppressive jungle, cannibals, an oversexed female, and his own unhinged troops, he will succeed. Er … won’t he?
We Must Save Jepson! is a satirical romp through the Victorian era of exploration and expansion, wherein our hero discovers hitherto unknown depths of character despite the self-satisfied arrogance of his age.