Barbara Seranella tops today’s Buffet with her debut novel, the mystery No Human Involved. It first appeared as a St. Martin’s hardcover in 1997, and was republished to the Kindle last November. As one reviewer put it, the story features “smart plotting, taut suspense, and a highly original heroine.”
Barbara was born in Santa Monica, California, and grew up in Pacific Palisades. After a restless childhood that included running away from home at the age of 14, joining a hippie commune in the Haight, and riding with outlaw motorcycle clubs, she decided to settle down and do something normal–she became an auto mechanic. Barbara retired from wrenching in 1993. She is the author of Deadman’s Switch, No Offense Intended, Unwanted Company, Unfinished Business, No Man Standing, Unpaid Dues, and Unwilling Accomplice.
As usual, each book listed here has gone FREE within the past 24 hours (except for the “Bargain Books” at the bottom of this page). Warning: Kindle book promotions can end without notice, so before downloading click the link “See Kindle price at Amazon” to verify that the book is still free. (Prices and availability may differ outside USA.)
No Human Involved
Mystery > Women Sleuths
Author: Barbara Seranella
Munch Mancini is trying to get clean and get her act together, but when she becomes the prime suspect in a murder case, sobriety may be what gets her killed.
A former junkie-turned-auto mechanic, Miranda “Munch” Mancini just wants to make an honest living. But nothing in life is easy, and Munch’s hopes for a new life are dashed when her abusive father turns up murdered, and Munch is the main suspect. Staying clean is one thing, but staying off Detective Mace St. John’s radar, especially when a series of gruesome murders all point to Munch as the culprit, may prove impossible. Her only hope is to cut a deal with the detective, putting her own life on the line to catch a killer. But trust doesn’t come easily for ex-junkies, or for cops. The impulse to betray this precarious alliance may be too strong for either to resist – and may get both of them killed.
The Scourge (Brilliant Darkness)
Science Fiction > Dystopian
Author: A.G. Henley
Seventeen-year-old Groundling, Fennel, is Sightless. She’s never been able to see her lush forest home, but she knows its secrets. She knows how the shadows shift when she passes under a canopy of trees. She knows how to hide in the cool, damp caves when the Scourge comes. She knows how devious and arrogant the Groundlings’ tree-dwelling neighbors, the Lofties, can be.
And she’s always known this day would come–the day she faces the Scourge alone.
The Sightless, like Fenn, are mysteriously protected from the Scourge, the gruesome creatures roaming the forests, reeking of festering flesh and consuming anything–and anyone–living. A Sightless Groundling must brave the Scourge and bring fresh water to the people of the forest. Today, that task becomes Fenn’s.
Fenn will have a Lofty Keeper, Peree, as her companion. Everyone knows the Lofties wouldn’t hesitate to shoot an arrow through the back of an unsuspecting Groundling like Fenn, but Peree seems different. A boy with warm, rough hands who smells like summer, he is surprisingly kind and thoughtful. Although Fenn knows his people are treacherous, she finds herself wanting to trust him.
They Shall Expel Demons: What You Need to Know about Demons–Your Invisible Enemies
Angelology & Demonology
Author: Derek Prince
This practical guide to deliverance from demons discusses seven commonly asked questions (including ”Do Christians ever need deliverance? ”) and how to receive and minister deliverance.
Dreamlander
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Author: K.M. Weiland
What if it were possible to live two very different lives in two separate worlds?
What if the dreams you awaken from are the fading memories of that second life?
What if one day you woke up in the wrong world?
Only one person in a generation may cross the barrier of dreams to reach the other world—a world of war-scarred countries and fallen faiths. When a Chicago-born journalist finds himself on the far side of his dreams, he must hurl himself into battle to save a princess from her own people, two worlds from annihilation, and himself from a dream come way too true.
Welcome to Fred (The Fred Books)
Genre Fiction > Coming of Age
Author: Brad Whittington
Can you keep a secret? Mark Cloud isn’t sure he buys the whole God thing anymore. The problem is, he can’t really tell anyone. Especially not his dad, the Baptist preacher.
As the last of the modern nomads, a preacher’s family is always on the move, and Mark has learned to cope with life as the new kid in town. At least he’s in a town.
Until he is whisked away behind the Pine Curtain of East Texas to the microscopic community of Fred. There, his urban coping skills fall flat as he fumbles every attempt to fit in. And the girl of his dreams is immune to his Sixties counterculture charm.
But these frustrations fade in comparison to the crisis prompted by a dusty book he finds lodged between the stacks on the library. Before it’s over, Mark will have to face his doubts. And his father.
A.I. Apocalypse (Singularity Series)
Technothrillers
Author: William Hertling
Leon Tsarev is a high school student set on getting into a great college program, until his uncle, a member of the Russian mob, coerces him into developing a new computer virus for the mob’s botnet – the slave army of computers they used to commit digital crimes.
The evolutionary virus Leon creates, based on biological principles, is successful — too successful. All the world’s computers are infected. Everything from cars to payment systems and, of course, computers and smart phones stop functioning, and with them go essential functions including emergency services, transportation, and the food supply. Billions may die.
But evolution never stops. The virus continues to evolve, developing intelligence, communication, and finally an entire civilization.
Some may be friendly to humans, but others are not.
Leon and his companions must race against time and the military to find a way to either befriend or eliminate the virus race and restore the world’s computer infrastructure.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Vol 1 (Escaping the Dead)
Genre Fiction > War
Author: W. J. Lundy, Monique Happy
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is a introduction into the apocalyptic world of Staff Sergeant Brad Thompson.
The radio goes quiet while on convoy in Afghanistan, a lost patrol alone in the desert. With his unit and his home base destroyed, Staff Sergeant Brad Thompson suddenly finds himself isolated and in command of a small group of men trying to survive in the Afghan wasteland. The local population has been afflicted with an illness that turns them into rabid animals. They pursue him and his men at every corner and stop. Struggling to hold his team together and unite survivors, he must fight and evade his way to safety.
TODAY’S BARGAINS……………What’s this?
Shadow’s Edge (A Night Prowler Novel)
Romance > Paranormal
Author: J.T. Geissinger
Regularly $3.99, Today $1.99
Deep within the primeval forests of southern England, a race of beautiful, savage shape-shifters lives hidden from the everyday world. Bound together by ancient bloodlines and a ruthless code of secrecy that punishes traitors with death, the Ikati send their leader Leander on a mission to capture one raised outside the tribe before she can expose their secret. When Leander tracks the unsuspecting outsider to Southern California, the hardened warrior is prepared for a fight—but not for the effect the sensual young beauty has on his heart.
Jenna spent her childhood in hiding, on the run from someone—or something—her parents refused to discuss. She trusts no one, not since her father’s mysterious disappearance, not since her mother’s sudden death, and definitely not since she began exhibiting strange, superhuman abilities. When handsome, enigmatic Leander appears, promising answers to the mysteries that shroud her past, she knows she shouldn’t trust him either. But their connection is undeniable, and as powerful as the enemy hell-bent on destroying every one of their kind…
Mornings in Jenin
Contemporary Fiction > Literary
Author: Susan Abulhawa, Samia Shanan
Regularly $11.99, Today $1.99
Mornings in Jenin is a multi-generational story about a Palestinian family. Forcibly removed from the olive-farming village of Ein Hod by the newly formed state of Israel in 1948, the Abulhejos are displaced to live in canvas tents in the Jenin refugee camp. We follow the Abulhejo family as they live through a half century of violent history. Amidst the loss and fear, hatred and pain, as their tents are replaced by more forebodingly permanent cinderblock huts, there is always the waiting, waiting to return to a lost home.
The novel’s voice is that of Amal, the granddaughter of the old village patriarch, a bright, sensitive girl who makes it out of the camps, only to return years later, to marry and bear a child. Through her eyes, with her evolving vision, we get the story of her brothers, one who is kidnapped to be raised Jewish, one who will end with bombs strapped to his middle. But of the many interwoven stories, stretching backward and forward in time, none is more important than Amal’s own.
All Through the Night
Historical Romance > Regency
Author: Connie Brockway
Regularly $3.99, Today $2.00
A woman compelled. A man obsessed. A love that defies king and country.In the glittering world of Regency England, Anne Wilder plays a dangerous game. A widowed lady by day, by night she becomes a masked thief preying on society’s elite. She roves high above London’s black rooftops, compelled by phantoms from her past to take ever greater risks. Until her restless spirit led her into Colonel Jack Seward’s trap…where seduction may be her only way out.
She’d played him for a fool, taking advantage of his hungry response to escape from his clutches. But as Jack hunts for the thief, his heart falls captive to a self-possessed widow. Torn between illicit passion and tender love, Jack is duty-bound to capture the audacious criminal, even if it means ripping society apart to do so. Now, he stalked her through the ton, never realizing the lovely widow who captured his heart was the same woman who roused his most violent passions.
Adé: A Love Story
Literary Fiction > Romance
Author: Rebecca Walker
Regularly $5.99, Today $2.00
In this stunning debut novella, Rebecca Walker turns her attention to the power of love and the limitations of the human heart. When Farida, a sophisticated college student, falls in love with Adé, a young Swahili man living on an idyllic island off the coast of Kenya, the two plan to marry and envision a simple life together—free of worldly possessions and concerns. But when Farida contracts malaria and finds herself caught in the middle of a civil war, reality crashes in around them. The lovers’ solitude is interrupted by a world in the throes of massive upheaval that threatens to tear them apart, along with all they cherish.Haunting, exquisite, and certain to become a classic, Adé will stay with you long after you put it down. This is a timeless love story set perfectly, heartbreakingly, in our time.
A Dark Mind (The Lizzy Gardner Series #3)
Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
Author: T. R. Ragan
Regularly $4.99, Today $1.99
A serial killer is terrorizing Sacramento, preying on happily married couples and unleashing unspeakable cruelties upon his victims. The ordeal rekindles disturbing memories for private investigator Lizzy Gardner, who barely escaped a serial killer’s clutches only years ago. But while most Sacramento residents are hiding in the shadows, paralyzed by fear, Lizzy is compelled to go after the Lovebird Killer.
So it’s no surprise that, when a routine workers’ compensation case suddenly leads her and her two young assistants onto the killer’s trail, she welcomes the chase, determined to bring him to justice before he can claim another victim. She never imagines he could be two steps ahead, watching her every move and plotting his bloodiest, most triumphant conquest of all.
… See the rest of today’s Editor’s Picks here on page 2