San Francisco crime reporter Will Finch follows a murder case to a small Oregon town and immediately runs into a wall — a local sheriff who controls everything and everyone, and has zero interest in outside scrutiny. The victim’s fiancée is a senator’s daughter whose silence speaks volumes. Finch starts pulling threads, and what unravels is a web of corruption that reaches far beyond the wilderness. 🔍

D.F. Bailey writes procedural crime fiction with a journalist’s eye for detail — the investigative mechanics feel authentic because Finch operates the way a reporter actually does, through sources, pressure, and the slow accumulation of facts that don’t quite add up. The small-town setting adds a claustrophobic tension that big-city thrillers can’t replicate: everyone knows everyone, loyalties run deep, and an outsider asking questions is a threat by definition. 🌲

The sheriff-versus-reporter dynamic gives the novel a satisfying cat-and-mouse structure that operates in parallel with the murder investigation itself. Finch isn’t just trying to solve a crime — he’s trying to do it while someone with a badge and a grudge works actively to stop him. The senator’s daughter subplot adds political stakes that keep the story from feeling purely local. 🗞️

What makes this essential: A tightly plotted mystery thriller featuring a tenacious crime reporter, a corrupt small-town sheriff, and a murder case with political roots that go much deeper than anyone wants to admit. Free today — perfect for fans of John Sandford and C.J. Box who want their crime fiction set in the American West and built on the kind of institutional corruption that makes small towns dangerous places to ask questions.

A 1920s country house party. A shot fired. An attempt on the host’s life. And Evangeline “Evie” Parker, Countess of Woodridge, finds herself in the middle of it all — surrounded by guests who are equally convinced they’re next on the killer’s list. Someone in this house wants someone else dead, and the question of who stands to inherit is suddenly very relevant. 🎩

Sonia Parin sets her cozy debut in the golden age of the English country house mystery, and delivers exactly what the setting promises: a closed circle of suspects, a heroine with more wit than the situation seems to call for, and the delicious tension of a gathering that has gone catastrophically wrong. Evie is a Countess with a sharp mind and the good sense to recruit an unlikely ally — her new chauffeur — when the investigation requires more legwork than one person can manage. 🌹

The 1920s period detail gives the novel texture and atmosphere without overwhelming the plot, and Parin handles the cozy formula with enough wit to keep the pages turning. The Evie Parker series has all the ingredients for a long and satisfying run: a compelling heroine, a richly detailed era, and mysteries with just enough danger to keep the stakes feeling real. 🔎

Why this delights from page one: A sparkling 1920s historical cozy featuring a sharp-minded Countess, a house party gone very wrong, and an unlikely investigative partnership with her new chauffeur. Free today — perfect for fans of Rhys Bowen and Ashley Weaver who want their historical mysteries elegant, witty, and populated with the kind of aristocratic suspects who have everything to hide.

Jackson “Jax” Caruso inherited his ship from his parents. They’re dead, so they don’t need it. That’s the setup, and John Wilker delivers it with exactly the kind of deadpan efficiency that signals this is going to be a fun ride. Set in the aftermath of unification wars that Jax’s family backed and lost, the novel drops its hero into a galaxy where survival means taking whatever work comes — smuggling, bounty hunting, cargo runs. If it pays, Jax does it. 🚀

The job that kicks off the series is, as Jax should have anticipated, too good to be true. He takes it anyway. What follows is the kind of escalating chaos that space opera does best — Imperial entanglements, organized crime, a crew of friends who probably shouldn’t be in this situation but are committed now, and a protagonist who is competent enough to be interesting and unlucky enough to keep things entertaining. ⭐

Wilker writes with a light touch and a sharp sense of humor that keeps the action moving without sacrificing character. The Grand Human Empire setting has the lived-in, morally complicated texture of the best space opera universes — a place where the winning side of a war gets to write the rules, and everyone else figures out how to operate in the margins. 🌌

What makes this irresistible: A fast, funny space opera about a scrappy pilot with an inherited ship, a bad habit of taking questionable jobs, and a talent for getting in exactly as deep as he was warned not to go. Free today — perfect for fans of Nathan Lowell and Timothy Zahn who want their sci-fi adventure character-driven, galaxy-spanning, and impossible to put down.

Darla has the biggest food truck event of her career on the horizon, a new hire who immediately complicates things, and a three-way lovers’ quarrel she did not sign up to mediate. Then a body turns up — or at least part of one — and suddenly the alligator lurking around the event grounds is the least of her problems. Susan Harper understands that the best cozy mysteries are built on spectacular timing, and this one delivers. 🐊

The food truck setting gives the Darla’s Delectables series a distinct personality that sets it apart from the cottage-and-cat-café end of the cozy spectrum — there’s a grittier, more mobile energy to Darla’s world, and the professional stakes of keeping a major event on track while simultaneously investigating a murder give the plot genuine momentum. Harper balances the comedy and the crime with a light hand. 🍔

For readers coming to the series with this second installment, the setup is accessible enough to enjoy as a standalone while clearly rewarding those who started at the beginning. Darla is the kind of protagonist who attracts chaos naturally and handles it with the resigned competence of someone who has learned that this is simply what her life is now. 🔍

Why this satisfies: A wildly entertaining cozy mystery featuring a food truck operator, a career-defining event, a body of ambiguous completeness, and an alligator whose role in proceedings is best discovered rather than spoiled. Free today — perfect for fans of Diane Mott Davidson and Cleo Coyle who want their culinary cozies funny, fast-moving, and flavored with genuine Southern chaos.

Jenna is a crime survivor trying to rebuild, and a house-sitting job in the Shropshire Hills sounds like exactly the quiet fresh start she needs. Three empty houses tied up in a legal dispute, an idyllic rural setting, nothing too complicated. Except the houses feel wrong in ways she can’t quite articulate — like they’re communicating with her — and the only other resident on the hill is a reclusive ex-soldier who clearly knows more than he’s letting on. 🌿

L.J. Hutton layers the supernatural elements into Jenna’s story with real care, never letting the fantasy overwhelm the emotional core of the novel, which is fundamentally about healing. The question of what the houses are trying to tell Jenna runs in parallel with her own internal process of recovering from trauma, and Hutton handles both strands with sensitivity and genuine warmth. 🏡

The Shropshire Hills setting is rendered with affectionate detail — this is English rural fiction that earns its landscape rather than merely decorating with it — and the supporting characters, including the mysterious soldier and the legal battle’s various combatants, give the novel texture beyond its central mystery. For readers who like their fantasy grounded in real emotional stakes, this delivers. 🌳

What makes this unforgettable: A quietly compelling historical fantasy about a trauma survivor, three houses with secrets, and a landscape that seems to have opinions about what happens next. Free today — perfect for readers of Susan Hill and Sarah Addison Allen who want their supernatural fiction warm, character-driven, and built on the kind of emotional authenticity that makes the impossible feel completely real.

Cornwall, 1779. Jenna Cartwright has spent her whole life trying to prove she’s nothing like her family — smugglers and thieves, the lot of them. She escapes a brutal marriage, takes a position as housekeeper to Jack Penhale, and allows herself to believe the worst is behind her. Then her brother lands in a debtor’s prison and asks for her help. She can’t say no. By night, Jenna is wading deeper into the dangerous world she spent years trying to leave. 🌊

Victoria Cornwall constructs her romance around a double-life premise that genuinely earns its tension — not because either character is villainous, but because both Jenna and Jack are concealing things that matter, and the discovery of those secrets will either destroy what’s growing between them or give it a foundation worth building on. Jack is in Cornwall to avenge his father’s death and expose a smuggling ring. His housekeeper may be more connected to it than he knows. ⚓

The Cornish coastline setting does exactly what good historical romance demands of its landscapes — it shapes character and plot rather than merely providing atmosphere. Cornwall’s wild, lawless geography in the 18th century was practically a character in its own right, and Cornwall (the author) uses it accordingly. The period detail is rich without being laborious. 🕯️

Why this captivates from page one: A richly atmospheric historical romance set on the Cornish coast, featuring a heroine caught between the family she escaped and the secrets she’s keeping from the man she’s falling for. Free today — perfect for fans of Nicola Cornick and Philippa Gregory who want their historical romance layered with danger, moral complexity, and the kind of slow-burn tension that makes every revelation land hard.

In 1974, Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder created one of the greatest comedy films ever made — a loving parody that somehow managed to honor the Universal monster movies it was mocking while also being funnier than almost anything else in cinema history. This lavishly illustrated book is Brooks’ own account of how it all happened, told with the wit and candor you’d expect from the man himself, and packed with more than 225 behind-the-scenes photos, production stills, and captions written by Brooks. 🎬

The making-of genre lives or dies on access and voice, and this book has both in abundance. Brooks was present for everything — the casting decisions, the studio negotiations, the on-set chaos, the creative arguments — and his storytelling instincts are as sharp on the page as they are on screen. Interviews with director of photography Gerald Hirschfeld, producer Michael Gruskoff, and Academy Award-winning actress Cloris Leachman fill out the picture with perspectives Brooks couldn’t provide himself. 🎭

For fans of the film, this is the definitive record of a production that somehow worked despite — or because of — everything that could have gone wrong. For fans of film history more broadly, it’s a window into a specific and irreplaceable moment in American comedy, when a group of brilliantly funny people were given the resources and freedom to do exactly what they wanted. The schwanzstucker jokes were apparently non-negotiable. 🎞️

What makes this essential: Mel Brooks tells the complete inside story of Young Frankenstein’s creation — in his own words, with his own captions, and more than 225 photographs from the production. At $3.99, it’s an extraordinary bargain for anyone who loves the film, loves comedy, or loves cinema history told by someone who was genuinely there making it happen.

At a Cambridge tea party, a woman claims she can taste the difference between tea poured into milk and milk poured into tea. The scientists present scoff. Ronald Fisher — one of the founding fathers of modern statistics — proposes an experiment to test the claim scientifically. That moment, and Fisher’s elegant solution to it, is the origin point for one of the most important intellectual revolutions of the twentieth century. David Salsburg uses it as the entry point for a tour through the ideas and personalities that made statistics the backbone of modern science. 📊

What distinguishes this book from the typical popular science treatment is Salsburg’s gift for human narrative — he understands that statistical theory was not developed in the abstract but by specific, often eccentric, frequently feuding individuals who were trying to solve real problems. The rise and fall of Karl Pearson’s theories, the Guinness brewery study that launched a new branch of statistics, the methods that rebuilt postwar Japan’s manufacturing economy — each breakthrough has a story worth telling, and Salsburg tells them with genuine wit. 🔬

For readers intimidated by mathematics, this is the ideal way in — the emphasis throughout is on ideas, people, and consequences rather than equations, and the cumulative portrait of how statistical thinking reshaped medicine, agriculture, psychology, and manufacturing is genuinely illuminating. Salsburg has a gift for making the abstract feel urgent. 📈

Why this belongs on every curious reader’s shelf: A brilliantly accessible account of how statistical thinking transformed modern science — told through colorful characters, surprising experiments, and the kind of intellectual drama that makes the history of ideas genuinely thrilling. Perfect for readers of Simon Singh and Stephen Jay Gould who want their science history lively, human, and impossible to stop reading.

Their date night ends with a bomb blast. Nathan runs into the carnage to help survivors, promises Pippa he’ll be back soon, and then vanishes. Days become weeks. Pippa assumes the worst — until she spots him across a crowded bar, and in the blink of an eye, he’s gone again. He’s alive. He’s hiding. And everything she thought she knew about the man she loves is about to be dismantled, piece by piece. 💥

A.J. Wills constructs his thriller around one of the most psychologically destabilizing premises the genre offers — not a missing person, but a person who chooses to disappear, and the partner left to decide whether grief or betrayal is the more honest response. The terrorism backdrop gives the narrative an immediate urgency, but the real tension is intimate: how much do we actually know the people we love, and what do we do when the answer turns out to be less than we thought? 🔍

Pippa’s determination to find answers rather than accept loss drives the novel with genuine momentum, and Wills is careful to ensure that each answer she uncovers raises more questions than it resolves. The escalating suspicion — is Nathan a victim, a perpetrator, or something more complicated than either? — is managed with real skill, and the emotional stakes never slip below the thriller mechanics. 🌑

Why this grips from page one: A taut, psychologically rich thriller about a woman who refuses to accept her partner’s disappearance — and the shattering discoveries that await her when she starts looking for the truth. Perfect for fans of Lisa Jewell and Clare Mackintosh who want their domestic thrillers built on genuine emotional complexity and the terrifying question of how well we really know the people closest to us.

Sadie September finds her mother murdered and the killer already running. He’s fled into the mountains of West Virginia and taken refuge with the Hells Angels. Sadie is eighteen, headstrong, and completely unprepared for what a manhunt actually requires — but completely unwilling to let someone else handle it. A kind police detective and a wily bounty hunter sign on to keep her from getting herself killed, and an unusual trio heads into the mountains after a very dangerous man. 🏔️

Alan Lee writes crime fiction with a distinctive voice — part thriller, part character study, and thoroughly committed to the idea that the most compelling protagonists are the ones who shouldn’t be doing what they’re doing but can’t be talked out of it. Sadie is a heroine in the oldest sense: someone operating entirely outside their competence zone, sustained by grief and determination and the refusal to accept that justice belongs to professionals. 🔦

The West Virginia setting gives the manhunt a specific, rugged texture, and the trio dynamic — a teenager, a cop, and a bounty hunter with their own complicated relationship to the law — generates friction that drives the novel as much as the pursuit itself. Lee has a gift for pacing and for the kind of dark humor that keeps tense narratives from collapsing under their own weight. 🌲

What makes this irresistible: A raw, propulsive crime thriller about a daughter who refuses to let her mother’s killer disappear into the mountains — and the unlikely partners who join her hunt into Hells Angels territory. Perfect for fans of Joe Lansdale and Daniel Woodrell who want their crime fiction gritty, character-driven, and fueled by the kind of righteous fury that makes impossible pursuits feel inevitable.

Why did the world get rich? The standard answers — accumulated capital, the right institutions, geography — don’t satisfy Deirdre McCloskey, and in this concluding volume of her celebrated trilogy she makes a powerful and contrarian case: the Great Enrichment since 1800 was driven primarily by ideas. Specifically, by the radical and historically unprecedented notion that ordinary people deserved dignity, freedom, and the right to have a go at improving their circumstances. Capital was necessary, McCloskey argues, the way oxygen is necessary for fire — but it wasn’t the cause. 💡

McCloskey is one of the most intellectually formidable and stylistically distinctive economists writing today, and Bourgeois Equality crackles with the energy of a scholar who has spent decades developing an argument she genuinely believes matters. Her engagement with Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and Thomas Piketty is adversarial in the best sense — she takes their arguments seriously enough to dismantle them carefully. The theological and political history of northwest Europe, she contends, created something unprecedented: a culture that respected the merchant, the innovator, and the improver. 📚

The scope is genuinely breathtaking — from the commercial revolution of medieval Europe to postwar Japan to the ongoing enrichment of the developing world — and McCloskey wears her extraordinary erudition lightly enough that the argument remains accessible without being simplified. This is intellectual history as argument, and it’s a genuinely important one. 🌍

Why this belongs in every thinking reader’s library: A sweeping, brilliantly argued economic history making the case that ideas — not capital or institutions — created the modern world’s prosperity. Perfect for readers of Yuval Noah Harari and Steven Pinker who want their big-picture history rigorously argued, elegantly written, and genuinely willing to challenge everything you thought you knew.

In December 2016, Carrie Fisher died. Twenty-four hours later, her mother Debbie Reynolds was gone too. The world was stunned. The only person left to speak for both of them was Todd Fisher — son of Debbie, brother of Carrie, the quiet member of one of Hollywood’s most extraordinary families — who somehow held himself together in front of the cameras while privately navigating a grief that was, by any measure, incomprehensible. This is his account of what it was like to love them both, written from the inside. ⭐

Todd grew up in the long shadow of his parents’ marriage — Eddie Fisher’s affair with Elizabeth Taylor was one of the great Hollywood scandals of its era — and his memoir is as much a portrait of what that environment does to a family as it is a celebration of two remarkable women. Debbie Reynolds, he makes clear, was the anchor: funny, no-nonsense, fiercely devoted, and entirely responsible for the fact that Todd and Carrie grew up grounded despite everything working against it. 🎭

The thirty-two pages of never-before-seen photographs and family memorabilia give the book a tangible intimacy that purely narrative memoirs can’t replicate, and Todd’s voice throughout is the voice of someone who genuinely loved these women rather than someone managing their legacy. The final chapters, covering those last impossible days, are as moving as anything in recent celebrity memoir. 🌹

What makes this essential: A deeply personal, beautifully written love letter to Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds from the son and brother who knew them best — complete with rare family photographs and the kind of intimate detail that only an insider could provide. Perfect for fans of both women and anyone who has ever wondered what it was actually like inside one of Hollywood’s most legendary families.