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Year One: Chronicles of The One, Book 1 (affiliate link)
It began on New Year’s Eve.
The sickness came on suddenly, and spread quickly. The fear spread even faster. Within weeks, everything people counted on began to fail them. The electrical grid sputtered; law and government collapsed—and more than half of the world’s population was decimated.
Where there had been order, there was now chaos. And as the power of science and technology receded, magick rose up in its place. Some of it is good, like the witchcraft worked by Lana Bingham, practicing in the loft apartment she shares with her lover, Max. Some of it is unimaginably evil, and it can lurk anywhere, around a corner, in fetid tunnels beneath the river—or in the ones you know and love the most.
As word spreads that neither the immune nor the gifted are safe from the authorities who patrol the ravaged streets, and with nothing left to count on but each other, Lana and Max make their way out of a wrecked New York City.
A woman is found murdered in the cornfields of Nebraska, strung up on a pole, the victim of a deranged killer. It doesn’t take long for the police to realize a serial killer is on the loose—and that his spree has just begun. Detective Mackenzie White, young, tough, smarter than the aging, chauvinistic men on her local force, finds herself called in grudgingly to help solve it. As much as the other officers hate to admit it, they need her young, brilliant mind, which has already helped crack cold cases that had left them stumped. Yet even for Mackenzie this new case proves an impossible riddle, something the likes of which she—and the local force—have ever seen.
Overture (The North Security Trilogy Book 1) (affiliate link)
The world knows Samantha Brooks as the violin prodigy. She guards her secret truth—the desire she harbors for her guardian.
Liam North got custody of her six years ago. She’s all grown up now, but he still treats her like a child. No matter how much he wants her.
No matter how bad he aches for one taste.
Her sweet overtures break down the ex-soldier’s defenses, but there’s more at stake than her body. Every touch, every kiss, every night. The closer she gets, the more exposed his darkest secret.
She’s one step away from finding out what happened the night she lost her family. One step away from leaving him forever.
The Chronicles of Kerrigan Box Set Books # 1 – 6 (affiliate link)
How hard do you have to shake the family tree to find the truth about the past?
Fifteen year-old Rae Kerrigan never really knew her family’s history. Her mother & father died when she was young; it is only when she accepts a scholarship to the prestigious Guilder Boarding School in England that a mysterious family secret is revealed. Will the sins of the father be the sins of the daughter? As Rae struggles with new friends, a new school and a star-struck forbidden love, she must also face the ultimate challenge: receive a tattoo on her sixteenth birthday with specific powers that may bind her to an unspeakable darkness. It’s up to Rae to undo the dark evil in her family’s past and have a ray of hope for her future.
Book 2 – Dark Nebula
Nothing is as it seems anymore.
Leery from the horrifying incident at the end of her first year at Guilder Boarding School, Rae Kerrigan is determined to learn more about her new tattoo. Her expectations are high, an easy senior year and a happy reunion with Devon, the boy she’s not supposed to date.
Million Dollar Staircase (Will Harper Book 1) (affiliate link)
A VERY GOOD FRIEND… WOULD HELP YOU HIDE A BODY
Ready for some action and adventure in the tropics? Join Will Harper, ex-journalist, and budding detective as he tries to solve the mystery behind who would frame his girlfriend for murder. He can’t trust the cops, mayor, or city manager; for all he knows, every official in town could be in on it. But first he must help her get rid of the body! This irresistible Florida mystery opens with a bang and will immerse you in raw emotion served up with healthy portions of action. Small town corruption, greed, human loss, tragedy – this book has it all!
In the Shadow of a Queen (affiliate link)
Based on the true story of the free-spirited daughter of Queen Victoria.
As a young woman, Princess Louise is considered the most beautiful and talented daughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. She is also strong-willed and resists following the queen’s rigid rules and strict protocols for a princess.
After her father’s untimely death, Louise’s life is upended by the inconsolable grief of her mother and the rippling effect that rocks the British Empire. Captive to the queen’s overwhelming mourning, Louise is forbidden to leave her mother’s tight circle of control, attend balls, or have any kind of relationship outside the royal family. She is relegated to the position of personal secretary to her mother—the same position each of her sisters held until they were married.
Already an accomplished painter, Louise risks the queen’s wrath by exploring the art of sculpting, an activity viewed as unbefitting a woman. When Louise involves herself in the day’s political matters without Queen Victoria’s approval, including championing the career of a female doctor and communicating with suffragettes, the queen lays down the law to stop her and devotes her full energy and resources to finding an acceptable match for her defiant daughter.
Blackout Trail (affiliate link)
When the world goes dark, a doctor embarks on a perilous journey.
Doctor Anna Hastings is no stranger to disasters, having spent much of her career as an aid worker in conflict zones around the world. Yet when an electrical phenomenon known as an EMP brings down the power grid, Anna faces catastrophe on a scale she never imagined. She must learn what it means to be a doctor in a world deprived of almost all technology.
As the blackout causes planes to fall from the sky, Anna crosses paths with devoted father Mark Ryan in the chaos at the airport. Mark convinces Anna to travel with him and his seven-year-old daughter Lily to their family’s cabin in remote Maine. There Mark hopes to reunite with his wife, and find a safe refuge from a society on the brink of collapse.
The Luminaries (affiliate link)
Hemlock Falls isn’t like other towns. You won’t find it on a map, your phone won’t work here, and the forest outside town might just kill you.
Winnie Wednesday wants nothing more than to join the Luminaries, the ancient order that protects Winnie’s town—and the rest of humanity—from the monsters and nightmares that rise in the forest of Hemlock Falls every night.
Ever since her father was exposed as a witch and a traitor, Winnie and her family have been shunned. But on her sixteenth birthday, she can take the deadly Luminary hunter trials and prove herself true and loyal—and restore her family’s good name. Or die trying.
But in order to survive, Winnie enlists the help of the one person who can help her train: Jay Friday, resident bad boy and Winnie’s ex-best friend. While Jay might be the most promising new hunter in Hemlock Falls, he also seems to know more about the nightmares of the forest than he should. Together, he and Winnie will discover a danger lurking in the forest no one in Hemlock Falls is prepared for.
Italian Shoes: A Novel (affiliate link)
Living on a tiny island that is surrounded by ice during the long winter months, Fredrik Welin is so lost to the world that he cuts a hole in the ice every morning and lowers himself into the freezing water to remind himself that he is alive. Haunted by memories of the terrible mistake that drove him to this island and away from a successful career as a surgeon, he lives in a stasis so complete that an anthill grows undisturbed in his living room.
When an unexpected visitor disrupts this frigid existence, Frederik begins an eccentric, elegiac journey—one that displays the full height of Henning Mankell’s storytelling powers.
Nimitz Class (affiliate link)
It’s as big as the Empire State Building, a massive floating fortress at the throbbing heart of a U.S. Navy Carrier Battle Group.Its supersonic aircraft can level entire cities at a stroke. Its surveillance gear can track every target within thousands of square miles–in the air, on the surface, and under the sea. Its crew of six thousand works night and day to keep this awesome military machine at peak performance. It’s a Nimitz-Class nuclear carrier, the most powerful weapons system on the planet. Nothing can touch it.
So when the first stunned messages say only that the Thomas Jefferson has disappeared, the Navy reacts with disbelief. But as her battered escorts report in, the truth becomes inescapable: a Nimitz-Class carrier has been claimed by nuclear catastrophe–the mightiest military unit on earth, vaporized without warning by an accidental detonation of unimaginable power. No other explanation is possible.
The Slate (affiliate link)
In another life, Agatha Cardiff was Congressman Paul Paxton’s chief of staff, a coolheaded fixer who made all his problems disappear. At Paxton’s behest, she covered up a shocking scandal that would have ruined a powerful senator’s career. It was one moral compromise too far and Agatha vowed, Never again.
After twenty years in exile, Agatha’s life in the margins of Washington, DC, is about to become much more difficult. The rules have changed in her absence—that senator is now president, and Paxton, number three in the House, expects a nomination to the Supreme Court. After all, he knows where the president’s skeletons are buried.
At the same time, Agatha’s quiet life on Capitol Hill shatters when her tenant—a woman with complex connections to DC—vanishes. Suddenly, Agatha is drawn back into a mire of corruption, blackmail, and deception precisely when she can least afford it.
… See the rest of today ‘s Book Picks here on page 2Page 2