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A Shot in the Bark (Lia Anderson Dog Park Mysteries Book 1) (affiliate link)
A grieving artist, a smitten detective, a devious killer: You never know who you’ll meet at the dog park.
Would you recognize a killer if you talked to one every day? Artist Lia Anderson doesn’t. Neither do her friends at the Mount Airy Dog Park. When the apparent suicide of Lia’s deadbeat boyfriend draws the attention of Detective Peter Dourson, he decides to adopt the dead man’s dog to infiltrate the tight group he’s certain conceals Luthor Morrissey’s killer. As his investigation uncovers secrets, a grieving Lia fights her growing attraction to the laid-back detective. Meanwhile, Luthor’s killer lurks, desperate to stay ahead of the investigation—no matter who has to die…
If you like believable characters, a multi-layered plot, and a compelling sense of humor with your intrigue, pick up this can’t-put-down whodunit for a romp through the dog park with Lia and the gang.
The Vanishing Man (The DI Hogarth Mysteries Book 38) (affiliate link)
Detective Joe Hogarth’s best informant vanishes—just as rumours swirl of a gang war ready to erupt on Southend’s streets.
Then a woman is found dead by the railway tracks. Everyone says suicide.
Hogarth knows better.
When a frightened criminal begs for help and a mysterious ex-Met officer shows up with whispers of a buried London operation, Hogarth sees a pattern. But before he can connect the dots, people start dying.
Someone is silencing the past. One body at a time.
The Last Girl: A Gripping (Steve Campbell Book 1) (affiliate link)
Unraveling evil, one missing girl at a time.
In the small town of Ketchum, Detective Steve Campbell is faced with a chilling case: two women have gone missing, abducted a month apart. With scant evidence, Campbell and Officer Graham uncover disturbing links to cold cases that all lead to one man—Jack Haskins.
As they dig deeper into Haskins’ twisted world, Campbell finds himself plunged into a nightmare far darker than anything he’s encountered in his years on the force. The clock is ticking, and the horrors he uncovers in Haskins’ lair will push him to his limits, as he races to rescue the women before it’s too late.
Phoenix: Steele Shadows Rising (Steele Shadows Investigations) (affiliate link)
A man who cheated death. A woman hired to pick up the broken pieces. And an obsession neither of them saw coming.
Phoenix Steele was supposed to be grateful. They told him he’d been given a second chance. But waking up from a coma to a life of restrictions feels more like a cage than a blessing. Once the fearless heir to the Steele legacy, Phoenix is now labeled unstable, volatile, and dangerous.
Unwilling to accept his issues, Phoenix instantly clashes with his court-mandated therapist—the town’s most eligible bachelorette.
Dr. Rose Floris built her life on structure and discipline, determined to escape a past she never talks about. But when a gruesome murder and a series of strange events point to her as the target of a twisted game, Rose finds herself under the protection of the one man she’s been warned not to trust.
Quick Sands: Theo Ramage (Book 1) (affiliate link)
Money. Love. Murder. Sand?
Ex-FBI intelligence analyst Theo Ramage doesn’t want to die in an endless West Texas wasteland, but there’s gold in them thar hills… or rather, dunes, and old habits die hard.
The fracking craze in the Permian Basin has made Texas sand worth billions, transforming the endless sea of windswept dunes into a modern day El Dorado. All Ramage wants is his truck and load of fresh cut Christmas trees back, but due process in Prairie Home is a bullet, and Ramage won’t stand-down. He joins forces with embattled local rancher Anna Gutierrez, and the duo finds themselves plunged into a world of eco-terrorism, drugs, and murder.
The sheriff wants Ramage gone. The local crime boss, the Sandman, wants him dead, and nobody in the badlands of Texas will give him the time of day, but Ramage can’t let sleeping dogs lie. It’s not in his DNA.
The Boy on the Lawn (Michael DiSanto, Profiler/Ghosthealer) (affiliate link)
When his younger brother disappears off their lawn during an innocent game of catch and no one believes Stevie didn’t just run off, sixteen-year-old Michael DiSanto is forced to take on the search himself. No one, neither his parents nor the police officer who answers the dispatch call can fathom that Stevie could have been kidnapped in the mere few seconds Michael took to grab change for the oncoming ice cream truck. But they don’t know Stevie or have faith in him as Michael does, seeing beneath the label of “special” that society has branded Stevie with, a label that covers a depth of power. A power, as Michael will soon find out, is shared between brothers.
When more Asian boys go missing in surrounding Berkeley, California neighborhoods, Michael finds he can slip into cracks and crevices of the investigation that the police can’t, making himself the boys’ only real hope for survival. Yet, he soon finds that his relentless search is drawing him into the orbit of a deadly enemy, one that will stop at nothing to keep secrets, for whom nothing is sacred, not even the lives of children, including Michael’s.
How to Read a Book: A Novel (affiliate link)
Our Reasons meet us in the morning and whisper to us at night. Mine is an innocent, unsuspecting, eternally sixty-one-year-old woman named Lorraine Daigle…
Violet Powell, a twenty-two-year-old from rural Abbott Falls, Maine, is being released from prison after serving twenty-two months for a drunk-driving crash that killed a local kindergarten teacher.
Harriet Larson, a retired English teacher who runs the prison book club, is facing the unsettling prospect of an empty nest.
Frank Daigle, a retired machinist, hasn’t yet come to grips with the complications of his marriage to the woman Violet killed.
When the three encounter each other one morning in a bookstore in Portland—Violet to buy the novel she was reading in the prison book club before her release, Harriet to choose the next title for the women who remain, and Frank to dispatch his duties as the store handyman—their lives begin to intersect in transformative ways.
Where the Forest Meets the Stars (affiliate link)
Sometimes the most extraordinary miracles come wrapped in ordinary packages
Life has taught Jo Teale and Gabriel Nash to trust in science and logic rather than miracles. But when a mysterious girl appears in the woods claiming to be from the stars, their carefully constructed worlds begin to shift. The child, calling herself Ursa Major, says she needs to witness five miracles before she can return home. As Jo and Gabe help her on her quest, they discover that the greatest miracle might be their own healing. Between scientific certainty and stellar magic, three wounded souls learn that love sometimes requires a leap of faith.
Frank and Red are a mess.
Frank is a grumpy old curmudgeon. A recluse whose only company is the ‘ghost’ of his dead wife, Marcie. He is estranged from his friends, his son, and the ever-changing world beyond his front gate.
And then Red moves in next door.
Red is six. A boy struggling to adjust to the separation of his mum and dad, a new school, and the demonic school bully. Red is curious, smart, he never stops talking, and he’s got a trampoline.
From the moment Red’s blonde mop appears over the top of the fence that divides their two gardens, the unlikeliest of friendships is born.
. . . And it is a friendship that will change both of their lives forever.
The Wall of Winnipeg and Me: A Novel (affiliate link)
Vanessa Mazur refuses to feel bad for quitting—she knows she’s doing the right thing. The thankless job of personal assistant to the top defensive end in the National Football Organization was always supposed to be temporary. She has plans for her life, and none of them include washing extra-large underwear one more day for a man who could never find it in him to tell her good morning, congratulate her on a job well done, or wish her a happy birthday—even when she was spending it working for him.
The legendary “Wall of Winnipeg” may be adored by thousands, but after two years Van has had enough.
But when Aiden Graves shows up at her door begging her to come back, she’s beyond shocked. Mr. Walled-Off Emotions is actually letting his guard down for once. And she’s even more dumbstruck when he explains that her job description is about to become even more outrageous: something that takes the “personal” in personal assistant to a whole new level.
Allegedly (affiliate link)
Mary B. Addison killed a baby.
Allegedly. She didn’t say much in that first interview with detectives, and the media filled in the only blanks that mattered: A white baby had died while under the care of a churchgoing black woman and her nine-year-old daughter. The public convicted Mary and the jury made it official. But did she do it?
There wasn’t a point to setting the record straight before, but now she’s got Ted—and their unborn child—to think about. When the state threatens to take her baby, Mary’s fate now lies in the hands of the one person she distrusts the most: her Momma. No one knows the real Momma. But does anyone know the real Mary?
Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone (Ernest Cunningham Book 1) (affiliate link)
Everyone in my family has killed someone. Some of us, the high achievers, have killed more than once. I’m not trying to be dramatic, but it is the truth. Some of us are good, others are bad, and some just unfortunate.
I’m Ernest Cunningham. Call me Ern or Ernie. I wish I’d killed whoever decided our family reunion should be at a ski resort, but it’s a little more complicated than that.
Have I killed someone? Yes. I have.
Who was it?
Let’s get started.
- EVERYONE IN MY FAMILY HAS KILLED SOMEONE
- My brother
- My stepsister
- My wife
- My father
- My mother
- My sister-in-law
- My uncle
- My stepfather
- My aunt
- Me
… See the rest of today ‘s Book Picks here on page 2Page 2