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Mind Your Manors (A Flamingo Realty Mystery Book 1) (affiliate link)
Are small towns the safest place? Or are they the best at covering up unwanted mysteries?
Meet Stella O’Neil, retired FBI agent Oscar O’Neil’s granddaughter. She’s got a lot on her plate, trying to figure out her crazy, stubborn family, the hidden secrets that caused her grandfather’s estrangement from her dad, and starting out as a real estate agent. Throw in a dead body found in what used to be the town’s “royalty” family’s manor, and she’s neck deep in a mystery.
As Stella’s curiosity leads her from one town resident to the next, a dramatic tale of family secrets starts to appear, but is she getting too close to the truth? A scary car chase in the dark has her nerves on edge, but she won’t give up until she finds out who the skeleton once was. She’s so close… but someone… maybe more than one person… will do anything to stop her.
Murder at Archly Manor (High Society Lady Detective Book 1) (affiliate link)
A high society murder. A spirited lady detective. Can she out-class the killer before an innocent person takes the fall?
London, 1923. Olive Belgrave needs a job. Despite her aristocratic upbringing, she’s penniless. Determined to support herself, she jumps at an unconventional job—looking into the background of her cousin’s fiancé, Alfred.
Alfred burst into the upper crust world of London’s high society, but his answers to questions about his past are decidedly vague. Before Olive can gather more than the basics, a murder occurs at a posh party. Suddenly, every Bright Young Person in attendance is a suspect, and Olive must race to find the culprit because a sly murderer is determined to make sure Olive’s first case is her last.
The Glamour Years of Flying as a Stewardess (affiliate link)
You made your bed, now die in it…
Bored barista Selena Smith’s life is so normal it hurts — until an eccentric old woman claiming to be her aunt appears in the cafe. She insists on Selena coming to work at the Kindred Spirits Inn, her remote bed-and-breakfast. The only problem? The inn and its guests are anything but normal.
When Selena arrives at Kindred Spirits, she discovers magic radiating from the inn’s every surface, paranormal patrons prowling its halls, and an inexplicable new ability to see flashes of the past.
But Selena’s newfound powers aren’t spiriting away all the guests. Someone — or something — lurking in Kindred Spirits is desperate to exorcise her from the inn before she exposes all the skeletons hanging in the closet of Room 666.
The Ragman’s Daughter (affiliate link)
At just nine-years-old, Briar Walker is forced out onto the cold London streets to hunt through piles of dirt and ash for things her drunken father can sell in exchange for a bottle of whiskey. Longing for the day when she can escape his wrath, Briar secretly hides away a few treasures of her own.
Then, one day, Briar is cornered by the terrible Jones twins and forced to run for her life. Pulled to safety by the charming and handsome Jack Harris, Briar finds herself at the mercy of The Family; one of the most notorious pickpocket gangs in the whole of London. To her surprise, she’s offered a place with The Family, and a place with Jack, until tragic events tear them apart and threaten Briar’s entire future…
Mars Journey: Call to Action: Book 1: A SciFi Thriller Series (affiliate link)
3.5Gs of crushing pressure exerted itself on the bodies and organs of the two astronauts geared up in their orange flight suits locked into takeoff position inside the compact Wyvern spacecraft atop the rapidly ascending rocket. These two veterans of space-flight were used to these conditions. What they were not used to was the dangerous rescue mission they were embarking on—one that had never been attempted before…
Brent Carlson, a brilliant but disgraced former astronaut, embarks on a modern day quest to gather and train the crew of the first international mission to Mars. Meanwhile, the power hungry billionaire CEO of a massive global technology conglomerate has launched a bid to reach Mars first and claim the red planet as corporate property.
Lou Reed: A Life (affiliate link)
The essential biography of one of music’s most influential icons: Lou Reed.
As lead singer and songwriter for the Velvet Underground and a renowned solo artist, Lou Reed invented alternative rock. His music, at once a source of transcendent beauty and coruscating noise, violated all definitions of genre while speaking to millions of fans and inspiring generations of musicians.
But while his iconic status may be fixed, the man himself was anything but. Lou Reed’s life was a transformer’s odyssey. Eternally restless and endlessly hungry for new experiences, Reed reinvented his persona, his sound, even his sexuality time and again. A man of contradictions and extremes, he was fiercely independent yet afraid of being alone, artistically fearless yet deeply paranoid, eager for commercial success yet disdainful of his own triumphs.
My Pretties (affiliate link)
A serial kidnapper is preying upon women. He abducts them, then locks them in one of the cages dangling from the ceiling in a soundproofed basement. There, he sits quietly and just watches them, returning night after night, hoping he’ll be in the room at the moment his beautiful captives finally starve to death.
Charlene and Gertie have become fast friends at the restaurant where they work. But Charlene is concerned when she hears how her co-worker spends her evenings: Gertie’s cousin is one of the missing, and Gertie wanders the city streets where many of the abductions took place, using herself as bait with a high-voltage stun gun in her pocket. Charlene reluctantly offers to trail her in a car, just in case she does lure the kidnapper and things go wrong.
Not According to Plan (affiliate link)
My birthday. A bar. Karaoke. And a man so hot he could melt the sun.Sparks flew. Lust took over. For one night of my life, I felt alive.
Then I was back to my “boring” life. Career-driven. Goal-oriented. Always planning ahead.
But nothing could have prepared me for the positive pregnancy test. We weren’t that reckless.
There goes my “boring” life. And what happens when I tell the father?
The Expectations (affiliate link)
But after fourteen long years of waiting, Ben arrives at school only to find that the reality of St. James doesn’t quite match up with his imaginings. At the same time, his new roommate, Ahmed Al-Khaled, the son of a fabulously wealthy Emirati sheik, can’t navigate the unspoken rules of New England blue bloods. Even as Ben and Ahmed struggle to prove themselves in the place they have revered for so long, each of them must face losing it forever.
Alta California: From San Diego to San Francisco, A Journey on Foot to Rediscover the Golden State (affiliate link)
In 1769, an expedition led by Gaspar de Portolá sketched a route that would become, in part, the famous El Camino Real. It laid the foundation for the Golden State we know today, a place that remains as mythical and captivating as any in the world.
Despite having grown up in California, Nick Neely realized how little he knew about its history. So he set off to learn it bodily, with just a backpack and a tent, trekking through stretches of California both lonely and urban. For twelve weeks, following the journal of expedition missionary Father Juan Crespí, Neely kept pace with the ghosts of the Portolá expedition—nearly 250 years later.
Mrs. Poe (affiliate link)
Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions (Ataraxia Book 3) (affiliate link)
To control our emotions is to control ourselves, and to control ourselves is to control our destiny.
It has forever been said that we are ruled by our emotions, but this today is truer than ever. Much more than reason or tradition, it is our emotions that determine our choice of profession, partner, and politics, and our relation to money, sex, and religion. Nothing can make us feel more alive, or more human, than our emotions, or hurt us more. Yet, the emotions are utterly neglected by our system of education, leading to millions of mis-lived lives.
This book proposes to redress the balance, exploring over 25 emotions and drawing some powerful and astonishing conclusions along the way.
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