Richard Doster tops today’s Buffet with Safe at Home, a sports novel set in the American South in the early days of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s. This is a “Christian Fiction” novel but doesn’t bang you over the head with religiosity.
Richard’s books have been described as “part comfort food, history lesson, social retrospective, and personal challenge.” As you read his stories, he hopes you’ll take the advice once given by Sir Frances Bacon: “Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.”
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.)
Safe at Home: A Novel
The spring of ’53 started out like any other for sports columnist Jack Hall, as he and the rest of his small southern town, Whitney, eagerly awaited the magical first pitch that would open the Bobcat’s season. But when ticket sales wane with the new distractions of air conditioning and I Love Lucy, the Bobcats face an early end not only to the season but to their careers as well. The team needs a white knight to save them and ironically, that white knight seems to be a 17 year old “colored kid”, Percy Jackson, who’s got a .364 batting average and has never seen a grounder he couldn’t chase down.
Not everyone—not even most people—though can wrap their heads around an integrated baseball field, even if they have seen them on TV. This is Whitney. Things don’t change and they don’t need to change. Do they?
Hearts, minds, faith and tradition will be tested as will friendships and marriages when this sleepy southern town comes to grips with itself amid the early years of the Civil Rights Movement.
Speed Trap (The Cal Bocock Adventures Book 1)
SPEED TRAP is one good cop versus a whole town of bad cops.
SPEED TRAP is set in 1959 in a small south Georgia town, a place you can’t avoid on your long road trip to Florida, and you’d better hope you only get a ticket when you get pulled over.
SPEED TRAP introduces Special Agent Cal Bocock, a handsome young investigator handpicked by the Governor of Georgia to bring down small town tyrant Earl “Boss” Griffin and his corrupt cops and gang of henchmen.
SPEED TRAP features Fancy Fontaine, a beautiful and mysterious lady in black who initially enchants Bocock at the funeral of a murder victim.
Shore Lights (Paradise Point NJ – Book 1)
Maddy Bainbridge left her Jersey Shore home town right after high school, determined to put as many miles as possible between herself and her many meddling relatives.
Now she’s back in Paradise Point — an unemployed single mother whose only option is to accept her mother Rose’s offer of a job and a place to live.
But it doesn’t take Maddy long to discover that the things about your mother that made you crazy at 17 make you even crazier at 32. Rose’s critical comments bring out Maddy’s inner teenager and by the beginning of December, the end is in sight. Maddy would stay there at the Candlelight Inn, her mother’s popular B&B, through Christmas for her daughter Hannah’s sake, but once the New Year rolled around, she’d be out of there.
And then fate, in the form of an online auction battle over a Russian samovar that looks like Aladdin’s lamp, brings home-town hero Aidan O’Malley into her life and suddenly Maddy begins to believe anything is possible.
Irresistible Lies
When Grace’s boyfriend Jamie dumped her just days before their college graduation to follow his dreams, she quickly left town and carved out a new life for herself, eliminating all traces of the man who broke her heart. Well, all traces of him besides their son, whose existence she decided it was best to keep secret from her ex.
Years later, Jamie walks right back into Grace’s life, demanding answers for her unexplained disappearance and seeking a second chance. With everything dear to her on the line, Grace must find a way to resist the one man she never could…
Raspberries and Vinegar (A Farm Fresh Romance Book 1)
Josephine Shaw: complex, yet singleminded. A tiny woman with big ideas and, some would say, a mouth to match. But what does she really know about sustainable living as it relates to the real world? After all, she and her two friends are new to farming.
Zachary Nemesek is back only until his dad recovers enough to work his own land again. When Zach discovers three helpless females have taken up residence at the old farm next door, he expects trouble. But a mouse invasion proves Jo has everything under control. Is there anything she can’t handle? And surely there’s something sweet beneath all that tart.
The Secret of the Stones (An Action & Adventure Thriller) (The Lost Chambers Trilogy Book 1)
Murder, conspiracy, and a an ancient treasure that could alter the course of history blend with an up-tempo, action filled thriller that will keep you turning the pages until the very end.
When an archaeologist disappears and a local college professor murdered, former government agent, Sean Wyatt, is pulled into a race against time to solve an ancient Native American mystery and save his best friend’s life.
Based in the southeastern United States, this thriller blasts through the landscape of Georgia and Tennessee in an action packed adventure filled with murder, intrigue, and mystery.
The Assassin’s List (The Adam Drake series Book 1)
A headline-current thriller about homegrown jihadist assassins and a timid, PC correct government. An assassination of the Secretary of Homeland Security is planned. Adam Drake, an attorney with Special Forces training and experience, uncovers the plot while investigating the murder of a client’s secretary. When the FBI won’t act on his suspicions, Drake takes on a well-funded terrorist sleeper cell, posing as an international security service, to head off a string of assassinations on a long list of America’s VIP’s.
The Governor’s Sons
During the summer of 1936, Ash Kroth, a young law student from a southern family of wealth and political prestige, falls in love with the help, beautiful “Negro” college girl Catherine Wilkes.
Nearly thirty years later, as a segregationist governor in the midst of civil rights turmoil, Ash is forced to confront the inevitable consequences of his love for her.
In 1965, Harland Hall, a black Civil Rights leader, moves to the capital city in an effort to quell the racial violence occurring not far from his mother’s home. But what mysterious link does this young man have to the Governor’s past?
TODAY’S BARGAINS……………What’s this?
Far as the Eye Can See
Bobby Hale is a Union veteran several times over. After the war, he sets his sights on California, but only makes it to Montana. As he stumbles around the West, from the Wyoming Territory to the Black Hills of the Dakotas, he finds meaning in the people he meets-settlers and native people-and the violent history he both participates in and witnesses. Far as the Eye Can See is the story of life in a place where every minute is an engagement in a kind of war of survival, and how two people-a white man and a mixed-race woman-in the midst of such majesty and violence can manage to find a pathway to their own humanity.
Robert Bausch is the distinguished author of a body of work that is lively and varied, but linked by a thoughtfully complicated masculinity and an uncommon empathy. The unique voice of Bobby Hale manages to evoke both Cormac McCarthy and Mark Twain, guiding readers into Indian country and the Plains Wars in a manner both historically true and contemporarily relevant, as thoughts of race and war occupy the national psyche.
In Cassie’s Corner
Cassie’s best friend, bad boy Todd, is gone. Gone as in dead. Gone as in ghost.
But she doesn’t realize that when he wakes her in her bedroom and begs her not to believe what they say about him. It’s not until the next day when her parents tell her about the accident that she learns the truth…
The police believe Todd was living up to the family name, drinking and driving and coming to a predictable end. It’s up to her to find out the truth and clear his name.
Todd is shocked at his sudden change in circumstances…and angry. He struggles with his new ghostly reality, realizing all he’s lost as he watches his brother build a relationship with Cassie as the two pair up to find out what really happened to him.
The truth isn’t always pretty, and Cassie has to be stronger than ever before. Especially when the whole world seems to be against her.
Sanctum (Guards of the Shadowlands Book 1)
A week ago, seventeen-year-old Lela Santos’s best friend, Nadia, killed herself. Today, thanks to a farewell ritual gone awry, Lela is standing in paradise, looking upon a vast gated city in the distance – hell. No one willingly walks through the Suicide Gates, into a place smothered in darkness and infested with depraved creatures. But Lela isn’t just anyone – she’s determined to save her best friend’s soul, even if it means sacrificing her eternal afterlife.
As Lela struggles to find Nadia, she’s captured by the Guards, enormous, not-quite-human creatures that patrol the dark city’s endless streets. Their all-too human leader, Malachi, is unlike them in every way except one: his deadly efficiency. When he meets Lela, Malachi forms his own plan: get her out of the city, even if it means she must leave Nadia behind. Malachi knows something Lela doesn’t – the dark city isn’t the worst place Lela could end up, and he will stop at nothing to keep her from that fate.
1001 Low-Carb Recipes: Hundreds of Delicious Recipes from Dinner to Dessert
Drawing on the best 1001 recipes from Dana Carpender’s bestselling books including 500 Low-Carb Recipes, 15-Minute Low-Carb Recipes, 500 More Low-Carb Recipes, 200 Low-Carb Slow Cooker Recipes, The Low-Carb Barbeque Book, and Low-Carb Smoothies. You’ll find delicious and varied options including recipes for “high-carb” foods you thought you had to give up forever such as Cinnamon Raisin Bread and Mocha Chocolate Cheesecake. Staying the low-carb course will be easy with choices from barbecue to slow-cooker to internationally-inspired dishes.
Phone Kitten: A Cozy, Romantic, and Highly Humorous Mystery
Shy, funny, loveable Emily’s a pretty unlikely candidate for a phone sex operator. She’d die if she had to talk dirty face-to-face—especially to her hot cop boyfriend. She sure didn’t set out to do phone sex—she wanted to be a writer. But when her BFF framed her for plagiarism, she got in a tiny financial hole and saw this ad for a “phone actresses”…
Hey, it’s not nearly as bad as it sounds. No pantyhose or pantsuits, no regular hours, you’re your own boss, and lots of people to talk to. Guys, that is. But here’s the odd thing—lots of them want to talk about more than Emily’s imagined attributes; they start to think of her as the best friend they’ll never have to meet. Next thing you know, one of her customers gets killed. What’s a phone kitten to do? Solve the murder herself, of course!
… See the rest of today’s Editor’s Picks here on page 2