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The Obituary Society (An Obituary Society Novel Book 1) (affiliate link)
When Lila Moore inherits her grandfather’s house, she finds herself in a small Midwestern town where margarine is never an acceptable substitution for butter, a coveted family recipe can serve as currency, and the friend who will take your darkest secrets to the grave will still never give you the secret to her prize-winning begonias.
Lila is charmed by the people of Auburn, from the blue-eyed lawyer with the southern drawl to the little old lady who unceasingly tries to set Lila up with her grandson. But when spooky things begin to happen, Lila realizes some of her new friends are guarding a secret like its a precious family heirloom. It’s a dangerous secret, and it has come back to haunt them. Lila is caught in the middle, and her life may depend on uncovering it. But even if she can, can she stay in Auburn when not everyone is what they seem, and even the house wants her gone?
My Brother’s Destroyer (Baer Creighton Book 1) (affiliate link)
Baer Creighton is a gifted distiller of fruited moonshine, capable of detecting even the subtlest lies. He lives in the woods next to his house, philosophizes with his dog Fred, and writes letters to his high school love Ruth–who long ago chose Baer’s brother.
Baer keeps a low profile. Everyone is happy drinking his sublime moonshines — until Fred goes missing. A week later, while Baer harvests apples in the moonlight, a chain of headlights emerges from the woods. A single truck tosses a bundle to the ditch.
When you discover who stole Fred, you’ll know you’ve found a new master of the dark surreal.
An Old Man’s Journey (affiliate link)
At the end of his life, Charles was left with one question: What was it all for?
After his tour of duty and an unremarkable post-Army business career, Charles spent his twilight years watching old movies and waiting for his grandkids to call. He’d lived a good life, been a decent man, but now that his wife was gone he was… Lonely.
Until his old friend Bert introduced him to Crossroads, the new VR sensation. In this virtual world he can move without pain, explore new lands, and most importantly – see his family again. For as long as he can hold their interest, in this fast-paced modern world of instant gratification and VR thrills.
The solution: Build a place his family wants to visit. Armed only with a magic stick with game-breaking powers that should be nerfed, Charles sets out on a journey to find a place to call his own. Along the way, he will be mistaken for an NPC quest giver, become the antagonist in epic questlines, and attempt to teach the next generation proper behavior – even if he has to beat it into them.
Wrath Child (Rational Man Book 1) (affiliate link)
When a third woman dies in Manhattan, FBI Agent Gavin Gregory of the Behavioral Analysis Unit takes notice. The signature of the crimes matches a series of brutal murders he investigated ten years ago, and he fears the killer has returned.
A psychiatrist from a New York mental hospital claims to know the identity of the murderer. When Gregory hears her unbelievable tale–a dark mind trip of demonic possession–he almost walks away, but she knows too many details only the perpetrator would know. Gregory wonders if she is insane or if she is the killer.
When Agent Gregory’s wife is kidnapped, he must embrace the supernatural or risk losing her forever.
The Ancient Enemy has arrived.
A Swarm Battle Core is orbiting Earth preparing for the Reaping.
The remnants of mankind desperately try to either survive or fight back.
But they aren’t certain what they’re going to face. All they have are myths and legends. And when the Swarm actually does land, it’s worse than any of those. Chtulhu, Naga, Kraken, Dragons and other creatures of our dark memory emerge. But not to kill; it’s worse than that.
Major Mike Turcotte, the hero in defeating the Airlia, makes a desperate attempt to stop the Swarm by going directly to the Core. On Earth, the future of mankind hides in the Facility, an underground self-contained ecosystem. And across the planet others prepare for the last fight.
Pink Elephants: A mother’s story of faith, strength and perseverance (affiliate link)
When her five-year-old daughter came home from school with bodily bruises, it was assumed to be innocent schoolyard play.
But when she woke in the middle of the night to an unstoppable bloody nose, it became the beginning of a heart wrenching journey through doctor’s visits and a family’s struggle to make life-and-death decisions in the midst of agonizing uncertainty.
Pink Elephants is the story of a family pushed to the brink, as they face their daughter’s rare life-threatening illness. The Texeira family discovered the most essential ingredients in surviving great adversity: their unwavering faith, gratitude for each day, and the power in each family member’s inner strength.
Told from the mother’s perspective, Pink Elephants takes us into the private moments of tenderness, the fragility of childhood innocence, and the reminder that control over a situation is an illusion.
An Innocent Client: A Legal Thriller (Joe Dillard Series Book 1) (affiliate link)
Where We Belong (affiliate link)
Fourteen-year-old Angie and her mom are poised at the edge of homelessness… again. The problem is her little sister, Sophie. Sophie has an autism-like disorder, and a tendency to shriek. No matter where they live, home never seems to last long.
Until they move in with Aunt Vi, across the fence from a huge black Great Dane who changes everything. Sophie falls in love immediately, and begins to imitate the “inside of the dog,” which, fortunately, is a calm place. The shrieking stops. Everybody begins to breathe again. Until Paul Inverness, the dog’s grumpy, socially isolated owner, moves to the mountains, and it all begins again.
Much to Angie’s humiliation, when they’re thrown out of Aunt Vi’s house, Angie’s mom moves the family to the mountains after Paul and his dog.
Broken (Broken Trilogy Book 1) (affiliate link)
My name is Savannah Miller. Right after my twenty-seventh birthday, I was taken from everything I’d ever known. I was beaten, starved, treated like an animal. With no sense of time and no dignity left, I finally gave up hope.
Then one night, an elite group of US Army soldiers came to my rescue. I was brought to a safe house and given two options: stay under their protection and follow their rules or leave and be guaranteed to be returned to the savages within a week.
I chose option one.
With the help of new friends and a potential new love, I fight to get my life back. This is my story…
Mistakes Not to Make When Avoiding a Rake (The Gardner Girls) (affiliate link)
A cynical rake brings passion and excitement to a small country village in an enemies-to-lovers tale loosely based on Pride and Prejudice.
A retired rake…
The arrival of Thomas Campbell and his elder brother has the small village of Beauford astir. Not only is Thomas tall, dark, and handsome, he is also rumored to be a most notorious rake.
Miss Claire Gardner is young, innocent, and completely infuriating. Yet given an opportunity, Thomas can’t help teaching the headstrong beauty a lesson in desire.
The Face of War (affiliate link)
For nearly sixty years, Martha Gellhorn’s fearless war correspondence made her a leading journalistic voice of her generation. From the Spanish Civil War in 1937 through the Central American wars of the mid-eighties, Gellhorn’s candid reporting reflected her deep empathy for people regardless of their political ideology. Collecting the best of Gellhorn’s writing on foreign conflicts, and now with a new introduction by Lauren Elkin, The Face of War is a classic of frontline journalism by “the premier war correspondent of the twentieth century” (Ward Just, The New York Times Magazine).
Whether in Java, Finland, the Middle East, or Vietnam, she used the same vigorous approach. “I wrote very fast, as I had to,” she says, “afraid that I would forget the exact sound, smell, words, gestures, which were special to this moment and this place.” As Merle Rubin noted in his review of this volume for The Christian ScienceMonitor, “Martha Gellhorn’s courageous, independent-minded reportage breaks through geopolitical abstractions and ideological propaganda to take the reader straight to the scene of the event.”
Night Fall (The Quantico Files Book #1) (affiliate link)
Now that Alexandra “Alex” Donovan is finally free of her troubled upbringing, she’s able to live out her childhood dream of working for the FBI. But soon after she becomes a member of the FBI’s elite Behavioral Analysis Unit, authorities in Kansas and Missouri contact them about bodies found on freight trains traveling across the country–all killed in the same way.
Alex never expected to be forced to confront her past in this new job, but she immediately recognizes the graffiti messages the killer is leaving on the train cars. When the BAU sends her to gather information about the messages from her aunt in Wichita, Kansas, Alex is haunted by the struggles she thought she’d left behind forever.
In a race against time to solve the case while battling her own weaknesses, Alex must face how far she’ll go–and what she’s willing to risk–to put a stop to the Train Killer.
… See the rest of today ‘s Book Picks here on page 2Page 2