You know the saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”

So don’t assume that today’s top pick is a children’s book, a comic, or graphic novel. Actually it’s a book for adults, an imaginative novel featuring high technology, sex, and murder. This crime thriller is one of those rare gems that compels you to read it all the way through in one sitting.

Author Christa Charter is a mother of three, military wife, and Amazon Kindle fangirl. She has worked in the video game industry (which figures prominently in her book) for 17 years, including eight years as community manager/website editor/video hostess “trixie360” for Microsoft’s Xbox Live.

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.)

Schooled (Lexy Cooper Book 1)

Thrillers & Suspense > Crime

Schooled (Lexy Cooper Book 1)

Videogames, Sex, and Murder.

When a young woman’s nude body is discovered on the Xenon game company’s corporate campus, community manager Lexy Cooper gets an early morning call from her uncle, homicide detective Mike Malick, to ID the corpse. As Malick investigates the crime, Lexy works the case from inside Xenon and discovers more about the seedy underbelly of the games industry than she ever wanted to know.

Bound By Blood (Bound – Vampire & Werewolf Romance Book 1)

Romance > Paranormal > Werewolves & Shifters

Bound By Blood (Bound - Vampire & Werewolf Romance Book 1)

Vampires and werewolves have been blood enemies for centuries, but now a new threat is rising…demons are escaping from hell and those demons are intent on wiping out both the vamps and the werewolves.

In order to stop the demons, pureblood vampire princess Morgan LaBeaux agrees to the treaty offered by werewolf alpha Jace Vaughn. She’ll mate with him, share her blood with him…and in return, the wolves will aid the vampires in this battle.

But Morgan doesn’t realize just how dangerous the wolves can truly be. Jace has been waiting years to claim her. He’s set a trap for his princess, and now that he has her, Jace doesn’t plan to let her go. He’ll send the demons back to hell, and he’ll keep his vampiress—forever.

Four Ladies Only

African American > Women’s Fiction

Four Ladies Only

Sheridan Hawkins is a chain-smoking, former high school prom queen, trying to survive a marriage fraught with financial and emotional difficulties. Faye “Dimples” Davis is the first lady of a megachurch who desperately wants to have a baby. Victoria Williams is an elementary school teacher fighting for the love of her estranged husband and children. Danielle Wiley is a powerhouse attorney grappling with her sexual identity. These are the heroines of “Four Ladies Only.”

Their friendship began two decades ago in middle school and continued through high school. However, in their senior year, a horrific event took place that destroyed their relationship and belief and trust in one another. Twenty years later, the death of their mutual friend, Sabrina Brown, motivates them to try to reconcile. However, in the process, they are forced to tackle the secrets, lies, deceit, and hypocrisy that underpin each of their lives. But they soon come to realize that their biggest hurdle will be facing and reliving the one night that led to twenty years of separation.

Montana At Sunrise (The Montana Brides, #1)

Historical Romance > Victorian

Montana At Sunrise (The Montana Brides, #1)

Montana Territory, 1875.

For Ellie Sheridan, becoming a mail order bride for Sheriff Frank Patterson and travelling to a small town in Montana seems like the adventure of a lifetime. Now released from her lifetime job of looking after her sick mother in New Harbor, Ellie wants to settle down and become a bride. Love can come later. For now she is content to be a Sheriff’s wife in the town of Broken Spur.

But when she arrives to find Frank is a drunk and has no respect for her, Ellie writes to her sister asking for a ticket home. Her mind is set… even though she loves the West, she will return to Maine and try to forget her bad experience.

Until one morning while out riding she comes across an injured Marshal lying on the trail. Taking him in and tending to his wounds, Ellie wonders if the reason she came out West was to meet Marshal Jack McQueen.

Because now she’s met him, she doesn’t see how she can ever go home.

The God Killers

Suspense > Horror

The God Killers

Imagine an alternate reality that appears, on the surface, just like our own. However, in this reality, the white light famously reported at the end of our lives is not an escape or deliverance — it is a trap. A creature calling itself God in a parallel dimension consumes the souls of humans, devouring their energy to sustain itself. This is the reality that Cipher, Han, Natalie and Father Hurley inhabit in The God Killers. Each has had near death experiences (NDE’s) and each was resuscitated before their souls were consumed, coming back to Earth horrified by the truth: there is no exit.
Now they must attempt the only course of action available to them: they must kill God. With the help of satanic messages decoded from the nonsensical ramblings of the possessed, the group must evade ghosts and demons on their mission to not only save their lives, but, more importantly, their afterlives as well.

The Redemption (Legacy of the King’s Pirates Book 1)

Christian Fiction > Romance > Historical

The Redemption (Legacy of the King's Pirates Book 1)

Charlisse Bristol sets off on a voyage in search of a father she never knew, only to become shipwrecked on an island. She longs for a father’s love to fill the emptiness in her soul from an abusive childhood, but resigns herself to a lonely death of starvation. Her salvation comes in the form of a band of pirates and their fierce, enigmatic leader, Captain Merrick.

The last thing Merrick expected to find in the middle of the Caribbean was a beautiful maiden. Now he is burdened with the task of not only protecting her from his crew, but from himself. A recent convert to Christianity, Merrick is haunted by a sordid past while he struggles to become a better man and accepts a mission from God to hunt down the most vicious pirates on the Caribbean.

Charlisse can make no sense of Captain Merrick. A pirate who prays and drinks rum? Breaking her vow to never trust any man, she finds herself falling for the pirate/priest, who more than once risks his life to save her.

The Sound of Crickets

Contemporary Fiction > Women’s Fiction

The Sound of Crickets

Four women who have never met …
Four lives inextricably joined …
Four friendships that will last forever …

Named after Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, Amelia Thompson always thought life would have given her wings. Instead, she finds herself stuck at home with three small children, and a body she no longer recognises. Hoping to connect with like-minded people, she decides to reach out on a women’s forum to try to find others with whom to start a blog.
To her delight, she gets a response. Sara, a romance author whose elderly mother has just moved in with her. Kelly, whose husband only wants to spend time down the pub, and Charlotte, who is suffering from empty nest syndrome now her daughter has left home.

Reverb

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Reverb

James Whren is brilliant, beautiful, rich, and taken—with himself, or more precisely, his genius for creating music. Desired by many, committing to no one but his muse, on the eve of his brother’s funeral, his father inadvertently turns his life into a living nightmare, and James is left abandoned in hell with no one real to save him.

His odyssey to freedom takes him beyond the looking glass, to the reflection of friends and lovers. Humbled and alone, James escapes to the Greek island of Corfu. But instead of finding solace there, loneliness almost consumes him.

Until Elisabeth, and her son, Cameron.

TODAY’S BARGAINS……………What’s this?

The Scavenger’s Daughters (Tales of the Scavenger’s Daughters Book 1)

Women’s Fiction > Contemporary Women

The Scavenger's Daughters (Tales of the Scavenger's Daughters Book 1)

Having survived torture and imprisonment during China’s Cultural Revolution, Benfu escaped to find love with his compassionate and beautiful Calla Lily. Together they build a fulfilling life around the most menial of jobs—Benfu’s work collecting trash. As he sorts through the discards of others, he regularly discovers abandoned children.

With unwavering determination, he and Calli spend decades creating a family of hand-picked daughters that help heal the sorrow and brighten their modest home. But all is not perfect and when crisis threatens to separate their family, Benfu—or possibly his band of headstrong daughters—must find a way to overcome the biggest hardship yet.

Inspired by a true story, and set against the backdrop of a country in transition, The Scavenger’s Daughters is a sweeping present day saga of triumph in the face of hardship, and the unbreakable bonds of family against all odds.

A Man Above Reproach

Historical Romance > Regency

A Man Above Reproach

2013 Winner — Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award — Romance

In 1830s London, scandalous whispers surround the pub known as the Sleeping Dove, a hidden bordello catering to nobles eager to shed the trappings of their stations. Josephine Grant knows the rumors are true—she plays piano at the Dove and is known only as the “Bawdy Bluestocking” to the pub’s faithful.

The reluctant Duke of Lennox is called “The Uncatchable” by society ladies, not that he cares for them or their nicknames. Elias Addison’s estate was thrust upon him when his father died, and it has been little else but a burden.

When a friend brings him to the Sleeping Dove in an attempt to lighten his mood, the Duke of Lennox finds himself at the Bawdy Bluestocking’s piano, and together they begin to play a dangerous melody. Though Elias cannot resist courting her, she has a past to protect, a shaky future, and no time for frivolous nobility with soft hands. When the Duke uncovers the truth, will he wish he had never heard the tune?

Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original

Biographies & Memoirs > Composers & Musicians > Jazz

Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original

The first full biography of pianist/composer Thelonious Monk, written by noted historian, with full access to the family’s archives and with dozens of interviews.

This is the critically acclaimed, gripping saga of an artist’s struggle to “make it” without compromising his musical vision. It is a story that, like its subject, reflects the tidal ebbs and flows of American history in the twentieth century. To his fans, he was the ultimate hipster; to his detractors, he was temperamental, eccentric, taciturn, or childlike. His angular melodies and dissonant harmonies shook the jazz world to its foundations, ushering in the birth of “bebop” and establishing Monk as one of America’s greatest com­posers. Elegantly written and rich with humor and pathos, Thelonious Monk is the definitive work on modern jazz’s most original composer.

Fear the Sky (The Fear Saga Book 1)

Science Fiction > Alien Invasion

Fear the Sky (The Fear Saga Book 1)

In eleven years time, a million members of an alien race will arrive at Earth. Years before they enter orbit, their approach will be announced by the flare of a thousand flames in the sky, their ships’ huge engines burning hard to slow them from the vast speeds needed to cross interstellar space.

These foreboding lights will shine in our night sky like new stars, getting ever brighter until they outshine even the sun, casting ominous shadows and banishing the night until they suddenly blink out.

Their technology is vastly superior to ours, and they know they cannot possibly lose the coming conflict. But they, like us, have found no answer to the destructive force of the atom, and they have no intention of facing the onslaught of our primitive nuclear arsenal, or the devastation it would wreak on the planet they crave.

So they have flung out an advanced party in front of them, hidden within one of the countless asteroids randomly roaming the void.

They do not want us, they want our planet. Their Agents are arriving.

The Back Door Man

Science Fiction > Cyberpunk

The Back Door Man

All credit cards have stopped working. Today. This morning.

What cash you have in your wallet is it. ATMs and bank systems are down. You can’t get gas, groceries… Commerce has essentially come to a halt. Such is the backdrop of THE BACK DOOR MAN.

Our society is computercentric. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. We’re plugged in. Managing our finances online. Downloading apps for our iPhone. Reading the WSJ on our Kindle.

There are things out there on the cutting edge we don’t even know we need to fear. THE BACK DOOR MAN takes us there.

We see it through the eyes of James Kolinsky, a simple family man who works in information security. His day goes from bad to worse when he discovers that his greatest fear is his fault and what’s happened to him has happened to millions of others.

He’s been set up. His family—make that the world—has been taken hostage. The next twenty-four hours we find out what James Kolinsky is really made of.

… See the rest of today’s Editor’s Picks here on page 2

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