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The Fear In Her Eyes (Ian Quinn Book 1) (affiliate link)
What if everything you believed about the worst event in your life was a lie?
Ian Quinn’s day begins with an anonymous death threat, but that’s not entirely unusual in his line of work as a court-ordered child protection officer. The frustrated parents of his clients often need someone to lash out at — and Ian makes sure that he is the easiest target.
But the threat is nothing compared to the envelope stuffed into his hand by a foul-smelling vagrant who mutters the cryptic message, “He says he’s sorry” before scurrying away.
The envelope with his name scrawled across the front contains a lone visitor’s pass to the Oregon State Penitentiary, and the accompanying message fills Ian’s heart with both terror and revulsion.
The Loch Lannick Series: Books 1-3 (Loch Lannick Boxset Book 1) (affiliate link)
What happens when you meet the right person, at the right time, in the wrong place?
Twenty-two-year-old Leana Mackenzie is looking for adventure. Full of excitement, she leaves her home in a remote Scottish village and heads for the bright city lights.
In Edinburgh she meets Alasdair – a cute and charming singer/songwriter. As their relationship develops everything feels perfect.
But as the sparkle of her new life begins to fade, Leana finds herself longing for her cosy home on the Isle of Skye, and the close-knit family she left behind.
One person you never want to meet on your vacation is your ex. Certainly not your almost-ex husband. But when that almost-ex is a spy who’s vanished on a top-secret mission before you can serve him divorce papers, a chance meeting might either be your silver lining, or your destruction.
Treflee Miller is so done being a spy’s wife. When she goes to Hawaii with a partying group of bridesmaids, she doesn’t expect to run into her soon-to be ex-husband Ty, undercover and on a mission. If only she had the divorce papers on her! If only Ty wasn’t so tempting, tanned, muscular, and completely gorgeous, with that sexy grin that always turns her on. If only her heart didn’t still react to him so traitorously. If only acknowledging that they even know each other wouldn’t get them both killed…
Shallow Waters: A Port Stirling Mystery Book 1 (affiliate link)
Loving the Ladies’ Man (California Dreamin’ Book 1) (affiliate link)
Connor is the last guy in the world I should fall for.
He’s the resident office flirt. I’m the quirky Pride & Prejudice-loving editor who uses big words and dresses like the world’s non-sexiest librarian.
We have nothing in common.
And we’re competitors for the same job.
Game on, right? May the best person win and all that? Fine by me. I’m happy to hold him at arms’ length forever.
And considering I’m practically the only woman in the office he’s never flirted with, he’s obviously happy to do the same.
Yorkie Doodle Dandy (Yorkie Doodle Mystery Book 1) (affiliate link)
A bored Ravenswind witch is a dangerous witch, indeed.
With Amie and Opie away at a bounty hunter seminar, and Arc working crazy long hours at the firm, I’m left to my own devices. And just for the record, I totally should have been going to that event too. Not that I’m bitter about that or anything. Well, not too bitter, anyway.
And wouldn’t you know it, but not just one but both of our bonds agencies were fresh out of work. Or at least, that’s what they told me. Personally, I think Amie had a bit to do with that.
Like I can’t handle chasing down a bond runner on my own or something.
So there I was, with three whole days to myself to fill up, and absolutely nothing to fill them with. Until I found out that my good friend, Mabel Morgan, was being blackmailed.
Regretting You (affiliate link)
Morgan Grant and her sixteen-year-old daughter, Clara, would like nothing more than to be nothing alike.
Morgan is determined to prevent her daughter from making the same mistakes she did. By getting pregnant and married way too young, Morgan put her own dreams on hold. Clara doesn’t want to follow in her mother’s footsteps. Her predictable mother doesn’t have a spontaneous bone in her body.
With warring personalities and conflicting goals, Morgan and Clara find it increasingly difficult to coexist. The only person who can bring peace to the household is Chris—Morgan’s husband, Clara’s father, and the family anchor. But that peace is shattered when Chris is involved in a tragic and questionable accident. The heartbreaking and long-lasting consequences will reach far beyond just Morgan and Clara.
Pachinko (National Book Award Finalist) (affiliate link)
In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant–and that her lover is married–she refuses to be bought. Instead, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan. But her decision to abandon her home, and to reject her son’s powerful father, sets off a dramatic saga that will echo down through the generations.
Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan’s finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee’s complex and passionate characters–strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis–survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history.
The Witch Elm: A Novel (affiliate link)
From the writer who “inspires cultic devotion in readers” (The New Yorker) and has been called “incandescent” by Stephen King, “absolutely mesmerizing” by Gillian Flynn, and “unputdownable” (People) comes a gripping new novel that turns a crime story inside out.
Toby is a happy-go-lucky charmer who’s dodged a scrape at work and is celebrating with friends when the night takes a turn that will change his life—he surprises two burglars who beat him and leave him for dead. Struggling to recover from his injuries, beginning to understand that he might never be the same man again, he takes refuge at his family’s ancestral home to care for his dying uncle Hugo. Then a skull is found in the trunk of an elm tree in the garden—and as detectives close in, Toby is forced to face the possibility that his past may not be what he has always believed.
A Sky Beyond the Storm (An Ember in the Ashes Book 4) (affiliate link)
Picking up just a few months after A Reaper at the Gates left off…
The long-imprisoned jinn are on the attack, wreaking bloody havoc in villages and cities alike. But for the Nightbringer, vengeance on his human foes is just the beginning.
By his side, Commandant Keris Veturia declares herself Empress, and calls for the heads of any and all who defy her rule. At the top of the list? The Blood Shrike and her remaining family.
Laia of Serra, now allied with the Blood Shrike, struggles to recover from the loss of the two people most important to her.
Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic (affiliate link)
From a small town in Mexico to the boardrooms of Big Pharma to main streets nationwide, an explosive and shocking account of addiction in the heartland of America.
In 1929, in the blue-collar city of Portsmouth, Ohio, a company built a swimming pool the size of a football field; named Dreamland, it became the vital center of the community. Now, addiction has devastated Portsmouth, as it has hundreds of small rural towns and suburbs across America–addiction like no other the country has ever faced. How that happened is the riveting story of Dreamland.
With a great reporter’s narrative skill and the storytelling ability of a novelist, acclaimed journalist Sam Quinones weaves together two classic tales of capitalism run amok whose unintentional collision has been catastrophic.
Murder in Chianti (A Tuscan Mystery Book 1) (affiliate link)
The Immortalists (affiliate link)
If you knew the date of your death, how would you live your life?
It’s 1969 in New York City’s Lower East Side, and word has spread of the arrival of a mystical woman, a traveling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the day they will die. The Gold children—four adolescents on the cusp of self-awareness—sneak out to hear their fortunes.
The prophecies inform their next five decades. Golden-boy Simon escapes to the West Coast, searching for love in ’80s San Francisco; dreamy Klara becomes a Las Vegas magician, obsessed with blurring reality and fantasy; eldest son Daniel seeks security as an army doctor post-9/11; and bookish Varya throws herself into longevity research, where she tests the boundary between science and immortality.
… See the rest of today ‘s Book Picks here on page 2Page 2