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Corn Dolls (An O’Malley & Swift Crime Thriller Book 1) (affiliate link)
A young girl is missing. Snatched from her home during a game of hide and seek. Left behind in her place is a doll crudely twisted from stalks of corn.
Psychotherapist Annie O’Malley thought she’d left the police force forever. The trouble is she thinks she knows the identity of the killer, and she’s the only one who can hunt him down before it’s too late.
O’Malley is drawn back to a world she thought she’d escaped, to a case where every turn reminds her of her childhood and her missing sister. When she’s partnered with DI Joe Swift, a man with more ghosts than people in his past, O’Malley has to make the hardest decision of her life.
The After War: (Book One of The After War Series) (affiliate link)
The Dead Love Longer (affiliate link)
Private investigator Richard Steele must solve his most difficult case ever—his own murder—while caught between women on both sides of the grave. His lover Lee is tangled up in the mess he left behind, and his dead ex-wife Diana has been waiting on the other side for her chance at revenge.
In a race against time as his spirit slips away, Richard confronts his many, many failings and faces a power beyond his understanding–love. His only weapon is faith, and he’s running out of bullets.
It’s going to be a hell of a final showdown.
Brotherhood Protectors Vol 1: Books 1-3 (affiliate link)
First 3 books in the Brotherhood Protectors Series
MONTANA SEAL
Former SEAL and shining Hollywood starlet struggle against their burgeoning desire while trying to stay alive in the crosshairs of a murderous stalker.
BRIDE PROTECTOR SEAL
A Navy SEAL bodyguard and his client’s bride struggle with rising desire while fighting to stay alive in the mountains of Montana.
MONTANA D-FORCE
Former Delta Force soldier and troubled LA screenwriter struggle against their burgeoning desire while trying to stay alive in the crosshairs of a murderous rapist.
Murder At The Beaufort (Phoebe Chadwick Mysteries Book 1) (affiliate link)
Phoebe Chadwick’s life is about to change forever but not in the way she planned. After accepting Joanna Reid’s offer of a partnership in the Beaufort Boutique Hotel, she is looking forward to her new life in Shellcove. However, when she steps off the train in the seaside community, she is unprepared for the sudden reappearance in her life of her sister, Elizabeth, with the news that Joanna is dead.
Thrown into despair Phoebe refuses to accept Inspector Henshaw’s conclusion that Joanna took her own life. Suspecting murder and finding an ally in Olivia, the last surviving member of the Beaufort family, she embarks on a mission to find Joanna’s killer.
Christmas Crush (East Village Christmas Book #1) (affiliate link)
If I take on one more thing, my ornaments may all come crashing down…
I’m juggling all I can handle: work, family, and most of all, school. I’m already overloaded when my bestie Luci asks me to take on a big project to help senior citizens. Between Christmas and finals, it couldn’t come at a worse time, but I agree to it anyway.
Just when I think I have it all balanced, sexy baker Gabriel crashes into my life. The last thing I have room for on my plate is dating, yet somehow I end up in a whirlwind of holiday activities…and loving it.
Despite myself, I find myself falling for Gabriel.
But can I handle all my responsibilities and a new man in my life?
It is 1864, and Captain Thomas Musgrave’s schooner, the Grafton, has just wrecked on Auckland Island, a forbidding piece of land 285 miles south of New Zealand. Battered by year-round freezing rain and constant winds, it is one of the most inhospitable places on earth. To be shipwrecked there means almost certain death.
Incredibly, at the same time on the opposite end of the island, another ship runs aground during a storm. Separated by only twenty miles and the island’s treacherous, impassable cliffs, the crews of the Grafton and the Invercauld face the same fate. And yet where the Invercauld’s crew turns inward on itself, fighting, starving, and even turning to cannibalism, Musgrave’s crew bands together to build a cabin and a forge—and eventually, to find a way to escape.
American Royals (affiliate link)
Two princesses vying for the ultimate crown.
Two girls vying for the prince’s heart.
This is the story of the American royals.
When America won the Revolutionary War, its people offered General George Washington a crown. Two and a half centuries later, the House of Washington still sits on the throne. Like most royal families, the Washingtons have an heir and a spare. A future monarch and a backup battery. Each child knows exactly what is expected of them. But these aren’t just any royals. They’re American.
As Princess Beatrice gets closer to becoming America’s first queen regnant, the duty she has embraced her entire life suddenly feels stifling. Nobody cares about the spare except when she’s breaking the rules, so Princess Samantha doesn’t care much about anything, either . . . except the one boy who is distinctly off-limits to her.
When You Trap a Tiger: (Winner of the 2021 Newbery Medal) (affiliate link)
Would you make a deal with a magical tiger? This uplifting story brings Korean folklore to life as a girl goes on a quest to unlock the power of stories and save her grandmother.
Some stories refuse to stay bottled up…
When Lily and her family move in with her sick grandmother, a magical tiger straight out of her halmoni’s Korean folktales arrives, prompting Lily to unravel a secret family history. Long, long ago, Halmoni stole something from the tigers. Now they want it back. And when one of the tigers approaches Lily with a deal–return what her grandmother stole in exchange for Halmoni’s health–Lily is tempted to agree. But deals with tigers are never what they seem! With the help of her sister and her new friend Ricky, Lily must find her voice…and the courage to face a tiger.
The Beautiful (The Beautiful Quartet Book 1) (affiliate link)
In 1872, New Orleans is a city ruled by the dead. But to seventeen-year-old Celine Rousseau, New Orleans is a safe haven after she’s forced to flee her life as a dressmaker in Paris. Taken in by the sisters of the Ursuline convent in the middle of the carnival season, Celine is quickly enraptured by the vibrant city, from its music to its fancy soirées and even its danger. She becomes embroiled in the city’s glitzy underworld, known as La Cour des Lions, after catching the eye of the group’s enigmatic leader, Sébastien Saint Germain.
When the body of one of the girls from the convent is found in Sébastien’s own lair–the second dead girl to turn up in recent weeks–Celine battles her attraction to Sébastien and suspicions about his guilt along with the shame of her own horrible secret.
GodPretty in the Tobacco Field (affiliate link)
Nameless, Kentucky, in 1969 is a hardscrabble community where jobs are few and poverty is a simple fact—just like the hot Appalachian breeze or the pests that can destroy a tobacco field. RubyLyn Bishop is luckier than some. Her God-fearing uncle, Gunnar, has a short fuse and high expectations, but he’s given her a good home ever since she was orphaned at the age of five. Yet now a month shy of her sixteenth birthday, RubyLyn itches for more.
Maybe it’s something to do with the paper fortunetellers RubyLyn has been making for townsfolk, each covered with beautifully wrought, prophetic drawings. Or perhaps it’s because of Rainey Ford, her black neighbor who works alongside her in the tobacco field and with whom she has a kinship—despite the disapproval of others.
Wasps: The Splendors and Miseries of an American Aristocracy (affiliate link)
An examination of WASP culture through the lives of some of its most prominent figures. Envied and lampooned, misunderstood and yet distinctly American, WASPs are as much a culture, socioeconomic and ethnic designation, and state of mind.
Charming, witty, and vigorously researced, WASPS traces the rise and fall of this distinctly American phenomenon through the lives of prominent icons from Henry Adams and Theodore Roosevelt to George Santayana and John Jay Chapman.
Throughout this dynamic story, Beran chronicles the efforts of WASPs to better the world around them as well as the struggles of these WASPs to break free from their restrictive culture.
When twenty-six Army nurses and medics—part of the 807th Medical Air Evacuation Transport Squadron—boarded a cargo plane for transport in November 1943, they never anticipated the crash landing in Nazi-occupied Albania that would lead to a months-long struggle for survival. In a drama that captured the attention of the American public, the group and its flight crew dodged bullets and battled blinding winter storms as they climbed mountains and fought to stay alive, aided by courageous villagers who risked death at Nazi hands to help them.
A mesmerizing tale of the heroism of ordinary people, The Secret Rescue tells a story of endurance kept secret for decades, and of the daring rescue attempts by clandestine American and British organizations amid the tumultuous landscape of the war.
… See the rest of today ‘s Book Picks here on page 2Page 2