Lorena McCourtney tops today’s Buffet with her cozy mystery Dying to Read. As one reviewer put it: Seasoned with romance and a fascinating collection of peculiar characters, this clever tale will keep you guessing about more than murder.”

Lorena is a long-time resident of Southern Oregon and enjoys using Oregon settings in her books. She wrote numerous short stories for children before moving on to romances and now to mysteries, often with a bit of humor. She won the American Christian Fiction Writer’s Mystery “Book of the Year” and twice won the Daphne Du Maurier Award of Excellence.

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.)

Dying to Read (The Cate Kinkaid Files Book #1): A Novel

 Mystery > Private Investigators

Dying to Read (The Cate Kinkaid Files Book #1): A Novel

All she wanted was a paycheck. What she got was a murder.

Cate Kinkaid’s life is . . . well, frankly it’s floundering. Her social life, her career, her haircut–they’re all a mess. Unemployed, she jumps at the chance to work for her PI uncle, even though she has no experience and no instincts. After all, she is just dabbling in the world of private investigating until she can find a “real” job.

All she has to do for her first assignment is determine that a particular woman lives at a particular address. Simple, right? But when she reaches the dark Victorian house, she runs into an hungry horde of gray-haired mystery readers and a dead body. This routine PI job is turning out to be anything but simple. Is Cate in over her head?

Run: A Complete Beginners Guide (Learn How To Start Running)

 Individual Sports > Running & Jogging

Run: A Complete Beginners Guide (Learn How To Start Running)

Have you ever seen someone running down the street, and thought, “If only I could do that, I could be healthier and skinnier?” This book shows you how to become that runner no matter your existing ability. Anyone can become a runner with proper training and motivation, and I’m going to show you how.
Taking your first steps as a runner can be challenging and frustrating without a solid plan. Too many books push you too hard and too fast which can lead to failure. In this book, I show you proven techniques that changed me from being a complete non-runner into a slim, fit, efficient runner in 16 weeks.
In this book, you will get a 6 week “Pre-Running” Plan that gets you off the couch and into basic running shape. This plan is adaptable to anyone no matter your age, physical fitness, or ability level. Once you complete this “Pre-Running” plan, you will start on a 10 week training plan to get you into shape for your first 5K race!

2076: A Revolutionary Tale: All Systems Have Failed

 Science Fiction > Dystopian

2076: A Revolutionary Tale: All Systems Have Failed

All systems have failed. The seas have risen, the skies have darkened and the American Midwest has become a desert. A handful of corporations own and operate the country and food is used as a means of oppression. The year is 2074. America is now a third-world nation and China, with its prosperous and burgeoning middle class, is the leader of the Free World.

Against this backdrop, a devastating raid by the wealthy ruling class on a stronghold of rebels fighting against the system inadvertently unites two enemies in a forbidden love that threatens to tear their worlds apart. Carlin Pheney, a decorated military pilot and member of the upper class, is captured by Aelena Hall, a veteran leader of the food wars. Together, they become fugitives on the run from a military industrial complex headed by Carlin’s father. Aided by strangers and betrayed by friends, they are swept up in an unstoppable global catastrophe.

Sawyer Beckett’s Baby Mama Drama Guide For Dummies

 Humor

Sawyer Beckett's Baby Mama Drama Guide For Dummies

After going through pregnancy at her side, listening to all the mumbo-jumbo jargon strangers in white coats spewed at me, just to have my woman do the exact opposite the minute we left their office- I decided to help my fellow man.

In a language we actually speak.

If you’ve got a Baby Mama, pick up this short, simple guide and thank me later.

Summer Sky (The Blue Phoenix Series Book 1)

 Women’s Fiction > Romance

Summer Sky (The Blue Phoenix Series Book 1)

Sky changed her life for a man once, and she has no intention of doing it again – even if he is a six-foot, tattooed rock god who makes a mean bacon sandwich.

Sky Davis is fed up with boyfriend Grant taking her for granted, and when she comes home to find him wearing a girl, Sky suspects the relationship is over. She takes an unscheduled vacation and leaves the life (and guy) she hates behind.

Rock star Dylan Morgan is struggling with fame and infamy, sick of his life being controlled by other people. Dylan cuts his hair and walks away from his role as lead singer of Blue Phoenix, leaving behind chaos and speculation.

Outside the English seaside town of Broadbeach, their cars and worlds collide.

Unintended

 Fiction > Gay & Lesbian

Unintended

Taylor thought he had everything together. He just got into the college of his choice and all he had to do was coast through the rest of the year, enjoy his friends, and wait for freedom. He hasn’t really participated in the gossip about the mysterious and beautiful new boy who just showed up in school, but he had to admit the guy was intriguing.

Alex was completely lonely. His family moved so often that he’d never had a chance to really fit in anywhere. The new guy in town, gorgeous and rich, he was the object of envy, the subject of stares. But he dreamed of having one real friend in a sea of shallow acquaintances. Somebody who actually knew him, not just what he looked like.

They met by accident, when Taylor stumbled into Alex’s room at a party. It only took them one night to decide they were meant to be best friends, and not much longer after that to realize that they were in love.

NanoStrike

 Technothrillers

NanoStrike

Terrorists attack a London Underground train, slaughtering two-hundred innocents in seconds with a nanoweapon small enough to hide in a hint of perfume.

First responder, Detective Chief Inspector Quinnborne, defies orders and hunts for the weapon’s unhinged genius creator. The authorities label Quinnborne a traitor, but when the nanotechnology spirals out of control, his grit and bloody-minded determination become humankind’s last thin hope of survival faced with a weapon of mass destruction that can be deployed at will and against which there is no defense.

TODAY’S BARGAINS……………What’s this?

Abducted (Lizzy Gardner Series, Book 1)

 Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Abducted (Lizzy Gardner Series, Book 1)

When Lizzy Gardner was only seventeen, what should have been the perfect night became the perfect nightmare. Kidnapped just blocks from home after a romantic evening with her boyfriend, Jared, she woke up to find herself at the mercy of a depraved serial killer. Imprisoned and tormented for months by the maniac she came to know as Spiderman, Lizzy narrowly escaped, the only one of his victims to survive. But Spiderman escaped too, outwitting police and cursing Lizzy to spend her life looking over her shoulder…

Fourteen years later, Lizzy is a private investigator who teaches self-defense to teenage girls in her free time. She does what she can to help others protect themselves and to forget the horror of her ordeal, yet fears she will always be known as “the one who got away.” Then she receives a phone call from Jared, now a special agent for the FBI, with grim news. The killer has resurfaced, this time with a very specific target—Lizzy. And he’s made it clear that she will not escape him again. So begins a chilling game of cat-and-mouse, a terrifying, heart-pounding hunt that only one will survive.

From Russia with Love (James Bond Book 5)

 Thrillers > Espionage

From Russia with Love (James Bond Book 5)

Bursting with action and intrigue, From Russia with Love is one of the best-loved books in the Bond canon—an instant classic that set the standard for sophisticated literary spycraft for decades to come.

James Bond is marked for death by the Soviet counterintelligence agency SMERSH in Ian Fleming’s masterful spy thriller, and the novel that President John F. Kennedy named one of his favorite books of all time.

SMERSH stands for “Death to Spies” and there’s no secret agent they’d like to disgrace and destroy more than 007, James Bond. But ensnaring the British Secret Service’s most lethal operative will require a lure so tempting even he can’t resist. Enter Tatiana Romanova, a ravishing Russian spy whose “defection” springs a trap designed with clockwork precision. Her mission: seduce Bond, then flee to the West on the Orient Express. Waiting in the shadows are two of Ian Fleming’s most vividly drawn villains: Red Grant, SMERSH’s deadliest assassin, and the sinister operations chief Rosa Klebb—five feet four inches of pure killing power.

Nexus

 Hard Science Fiction

Nexus

In the near future, the experimental nano-drug Nexus can link humans together, mind to mind. There are some who want to improve it. There are some who want to eradicate it. And there are others who just want to exploit it.

When a young scientist is caught improving Nexus, he’s thrust over his head into a world of danger and international espionage – for there is far more at stake than anyone realizes.

From the halls of academe to the halls of power, from the headquarters of an elite US agency in Washington DC to a secret lab beneath a top university in Shanghai, from the underground parties of San Francisco to the illegal biotech markets of Bangkok, from an international neuroscience conference to a remote monastery in the mountains of Thailand – Nexus is a thrill ride through a future on the brink of explosion.

Johnstown Flood

 Social Sciences > Disaster Relief

Johnstown Flood

The stunning story of one of America’s great disasters, a preventable tragedy of Gilded Age America, brilliantly told by master historian David McCullough.

At the end of the nineteenth century, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, was a booming coal-and-steel town filled with hardworking families striving for a piece of the nation’s burgeoning industrial prosperity. In the mountains above Johnstown, an old earth dam had been hastily rebuilt to create a lake for an exclusive summer resort patronized by the tycoons of that same industrial prosperity, among them Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and Andrew Mellon. Despite repeated warnings of possible danger, nothing was done about the dam. Then came May 31, 1889, when the dam burst, sending a wall of water thundering down the mountain, smashing through Johnstown, and killing more than 2,000 people. It was a tragedy that became a national scandal.

Playing It Safe

 Women’s Fiction > Romance

Playing It Safe

Julia Boyd has dated more than her share of jerks, and she’s done even pretending to like them—and her sharp tongue wouldn’t let her fake it anyway. Putting her dating life on hold and focusing on her event planning career is a much safer bet for this salacious blue-eyed blonde…until she meets her newest client.

Organizing the opening for an art gallery should be a breeze for Julia, but gallery owner Alex Holt is becoming very distracting. Tall and muscular with enough charisma and sexy dimples to make Julia swoon (then salivate), Alex could be the perfect man. The two of them click immediately, creating enough witty banter to make her libido go into overdrive.

But just before flames of passion can erupt with Alex, Julia begins planning an engagement party…and learns the groom is Aiden, the man who broke her heart years ago. When Aiden admits that he still has feelings for Julia, everything changes. Should she seek shelter in the familiarity of the past, or should she risk everything on a hot new love?

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

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