Samantha Watson lives her life by one principle: do the right thing. Adam is a man she meets by chance—and the two of them, separately and then together, find themselves in the path of a ruthless gangster who is trafficking women with promises of a better life. Solomon Carter opens with a timely, action-driven crime thriller that runs its central romance through the specific tension of two people discovering their values and their chemistry simultaneously while a dangerous criminal operation closes in around them. The Essex setting—drawn from Carter’s own decades in Southend-on-Sea—gives the story its specific gritty texture. 🔫
The dual storyline builds toward the collision that gives the novel its momentum: Sam and Adam, each drawn into the trafficking network through different routes, eventually combining forces to thwart shipments of women and take aim at the gangster’s operation. Carter writes with the fast-paced, propulsive energy that has built his readership across 100+ crime thrillers—short chapters, tight action, and the specific authenticity of a writer who spent seven years working at a foodbank before turning to fiction, giving his characters and their circumstances a grounded social reality that elevates the genre action. 💙
Carter is the prolific author of the DI Hogarth detective series, the Roberts & Bradley mysteries, the DI Zennor Cornwall series, and many more—a writer with a massive catalog and a consistent reputation for page-turning plots that reward readers who like their crime fiction with genuine momentum. The Don’t Look Back series continues across three books. ⭐
Why this grips you: Two strangers doing the right thing, a ruthless gangster trafficking women across Eastern Europe, and a romance born in the middle of a fight against organized crime—free.
Father Francis is a young, accident-prone English Catholic priest who has worn out his welcome at his London parish and is nicely but firmly encouraged to take his first posting in America. He doesn’t know quite what to expect, but Florida turns out to be a particular kind of culture shock—jalapenos, fire ants, church politics, and a language barrier that his English vocabulary renders hilarious at every turn. Having unwittingly alienated his parish’s most important benefactor in short order, Frank finds himself in hot water with his Diocese. Then he stumbles across suspicious goings-on deep in the Florida orange groves, and the stakes escalate considerably. Rob Wyatt opens the Father Frank series with the humorous mystery that earns its specific comedy from the fish-out-of-water priest who keeps landing himself in one crisis while trying to navigate another. 😂
The specific comedy mechanics are well deployed: a deeply principled man with no social filter navigating American church politics, a wealthy local who runs both the town and wants to run the parish, a work mother figure who looks after Frank despite himself, and the mystery in the orange groves that gradually escalates from odd to genuinely dangerous. Wyatt writes with the Hitchcockian instinct—described by one reviewer as “part noir mystery, part sci-fi, part social commentary”—that keeps the humor from overwhelming the plot and the plot from getting too dark for the comedy. 🔍
Reviewers consistently praise the balance: “The story is funny, we watch Frank grow up and make friends.” The Father Frank series has sold over 10,000 copies and the character has earned genuine affection from readers who find the religious setting handled with warmth rather than preachiness. ⭐
Why this entertains: An English priest in Florida stumbling from cultural catastrophe to genuine danger in the orange groves—Rob Wyatt’s Father Frank series opener, free.
His best friend betrayed him. His girl broke his heart and killed his spirit—on the same day. Jesse Coltharp wasn’t a man who ran from trouble, but he rode as far and as fast as he could to put distance between himself and the only life he’d known in Missouri. Looking for nothing more than miles, he stumbled across a dying man on the rolling plains of southeastern Colorado Territory—and pulled him back from death’s edge. As much as Jesse saved Marshal John Dunning from his physical death, the old marshal would save Jesse from the spiritual death coming to claim him. Greg Bower opens the Jesse Coltharp Western with the coming-of-age frontier story built on the exchange of salvations between a broken young man and the weathered lawman who becomes his unlikely anchor. 🤠
The journey that follows covers more than just miles—Indians, gunmen, outlaws, and the slow forging of Jesse into someone capable of bearing all of it. Bower develops the character depth that gives the novel its heart alongside the frontier action: Jesse’s grief over betrayal, his need for genuine brotherhood, and the gradual rebuilding of a man’s capacity for trust and love. The woman who will eventually tame him is Jenny Dunning—and the road to that meeting is as much internal as external. 🔍
The Sulphur Springs News Telegram praised Bower for “deftly leading readers through the emotions of loyalty, friendship, betrayal, and love while making them feel as though they are a part of the main character’s tragedies and triumphs.” Reviewers consistently compare the spirit of the book to Zane Grey—a Western that takes the genre seriously as a vehicle for exploring what it costs a man to become himself. ⭐
Why this endures: A young Missouri cowboy broken by betrayal, a dying marshal on the Colorado plains, and the improbable friendship that saves them both—free.
Mommy Don’t: From Mother to Murderer
On January 29, 2008, residents of Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, watched with breaking hearts as a young mother appeared on the supper-hour news pleading for help finding her missing twelve-year-old daughter. For thirteen days the country searched for Karissa Boudreau. When frozen toes were finally found poking from a snowbank and police confirmed Karissa was dead, the grief turned to shock—and then to fury—when her mother, Penny Boudreau, was arrested for the murder of her only child. It was one of the most disturbing crimes in recent Canadian history: a mother who strangled her own daughter. Sherri Aikenhead heard Penny confess in open court and knew immediately she would write this story. 😮
Aikenhead was uniquely positioned to tell it—she was the communications director at the Nova Scotia Department of Justice in 2008 when Karissa was murdered, giving her extraordinary access to the investigation and the community’s response. Through interviews with Karissa’s family and friends, and a first-hand account from the undercover RCMP officer who ran the Mr. Big operation that extracted Penny’s confession, Aikenhead builds the full picture: the crime, the cover-up, the investigation, the trial, and the community that was shattered by both the murder and the betrayal. 🔍
Aikenhead is an award-winning journalist and communications professional, a recipient of a Canadian Progress Club Women of Excellence Award, and a mother of three—all of which inform the specific moral weight she brings to a case that asks one of true crime’s most disturbing questions: how does a mother kill her own child? Fifteen photographs from Karissa’s own family are included. At $1.99 this is exceptional value. ⭐
Why this compels: The unimaginable true story of Penny and Karissa Boudreau, told by an award-winning journalist who was inside the Nova Scotia justice system when it happened—for $1.99.
After storming the beaches on D-Day, the US First Army faced one of the most grinding and costly campaigns of the entire Normandy operation: the battle through the Norman bocage country, where dense hedgerows turned every cramped field and narrow lane into a potential killing ground. The Germans had prepared their positions in the high hedgerows with lethal precision—snipers, mines, machine guns, and artillery that made every yard of advance cost appalling casualties. Simon Forty’s photographic history is a vivid introduction to this often-overlooked but defining episode of the Normandy campaign. 🎖️
The book’s strength is its archive of over 150 carefully chosen and meticulously captioned wartime photographs that bring the conditions, the terrain, and the experience of the troops to life with the documentary immediacy that no prose account can fully replicate. Forty traces the arc of the battle from the initial stalemate to the American adaptation—bringing in bulldozers and tanks fitted with hedgerow cutters—through to the hard-won advance to Saint-Lô that finally broke the German lines. The captions carry the specific historical knowledge of a writer who has spent decades on military history. 🔍
Forty is a London University history graduate and the son of RAC Tank Museum curator George Forty—his family background in military publishing gives the research its depth and the presentation its authority. He has produced a range of highly illustrated books on the Normandy battlefields, the Atlantic Wall, and the liberation of the Low Countries. The Images of War series is one of military photography’s most respected imprints. ⭐
Why this matters: Over 150 wartime archive photographs documenting the brutal American battle through the Norman hedgerows after D-Day—a defining episode of the Normandy campaign, for $1.99.
When Genevieve Kingston was seven years old, her mother revealed that the cancer she’d been managing had become terminal. Four years later, her mother died—but not before filling a chest with gifts and letters for Gwen to open at every birthday and major milestone through age thirty. The day she got her driver’s license. High school graduation. Her first period. College departure. Each envelope and package was a message from a woman who would not be there—anticipating what her daughter would need before her daughter knew it herself. When the memoir opens, just three packages remain: engagement, marriage, and first baby. 💙
The chest becomes the memoir’s structural engine and its emotional heart—each opening reveals not just a gift but a new dimension of the mother Gwen thought she knew, including professional achievements, family history, and the surprising depth of a woman who prepared this treasure hunt for her child across years of illness. Kingston traces her coming-of-age through grief as the shape of that grief changes with age, and when additional tragedy strikes after she leaves for college, the letters become essential anchors to a mother’s voice she cannot otherwise access. 🔍
Good Morning America called it “an unforgettable memoir about the power of love.” Oprah Daily named it one of the most anticipated books of 2024. Booklist gave it a starred review, calling it “profound” and describing the mother’s gifts as “a trail of breadcrumbs providing direction, affirmation, and affection.” Publishers Weekly praised it as “a knockout debut” and “a gorgeous, openhearted meditation on grief and family.” In the tradition of Crying in H Mart and The Last Lecture, it will stay with you. ⭐
Why this moves you: A mother who filled a chest with gifts and letters for every milestone through her daughter’s thirtieth birthday—and the daughter who spent twenty years opening them—for $1.99.
… See the rest of today ‘s Book Picks here on page 3Page 3