Cardinal Virtues: War of the Submarine: Book 1 (affiliate link)
Commander Alex Coleman is no hero. Just ask him.
It’s 2037 and Alex is one more disobeyed order away from kissing his naval career goodbye.
He used to be high speed, the kind of officer on the fast track to submarine command. Then he threw it all away trying to save a few civilian lives from his glory hungry commanding officer. No pain no gain, right? Alex isn’t sorry he did the right thing but being everyone’s favorite scapegoat isn’t fun.
Now, he’s marking time to retirement on Armistice Station, an underwater megastation where you can buy and do anything—except salvage a trashed Navy career. Alex is stuck doling out supplies to visiting Navy ships and chasing unruly sailors, just how he wanted to spend his last years in the good old U.S. Navy.
But things aren’t quiet in Alex’s underwater amusement park. France and India are expanding into the Indian Ocean and want the United States out, and Alex’s eclectic band of castoff sailors are all that’s in their way.
Fire In The Mind: Doctor Wise Book 1 (affiliate link)
A victim engulfed in flames. A psychic series of clues. Can a PhD with incredible mental powers stop a real-life firestarter?
Years after a tragic car accident claimed his fiancée, Dr. Leonard “Len” Wise is just coming to terms with his demons. Now sober, the countless drunken nights helped him cope with the pain while he studied his newly-acquired psychic abilities. When a friend enlists him to deliver a lecture on parapsychology, he never expected it to end with a strange invitation: a police consult on a case of spontaneous human combustion.
With no-nonsense Detective Bill McGee by his side, Len deduces the victim may have been murdered by someone with similar abilities to his own. But when an enchanting suspect catches fire before his eyes, the PhD becomes the prime suspect. To clear his name and protect the people he loves, Can Len take his powers to the next level before he too is engulfed in flames?
A Dodgy Death: Kat McCoy Lake Country Book 1 (affiliate link)
A dotty aunt. A death on the staircase. And valuable drawings that have disappeared.
With her aunt’s prophetic final phone call ringing in her ears, Kat McCoy sets off for England’s Lake Country where she just wants to settle her aunt’s affairs and possibly find a decent-sized tea mug.
But the question remains …
Did her aunt die from an accidental fall or something more sinister?
With help from new friends, including the handsome village constable, Kat tries to settle the question of her aunt’s death. Can she unmask the killer, find the drawings and still make her flight home to the States?
The Condor Passes (affiliate link)
Like many people in turn-of-the-twentieth-century New Orleans, Thomas Henry Oliver came to the city to escape a dull life—in his case, a childhood in the backwoods of the Midwest. But few New Orleans immigrants find as much prosperity as Oliver does amongst the city’s lively streets, amassing an enormous fortune built from brothels and speakeasies. By the time he’s ninety-five, Oliver has created a dynasty in Storyville, the city’s notorious red-light district, but as his wealth grows, so does his family’s desire to control it. After a series of strokes, Oliver must choose an inheritor, even though his two entitled daughters and ambitious adopted son don’t always seem worthy of his legacy.
His first daughter, an introverted perfectionist, marries a greedy, alcoholic, and adulterous Cajun, and his second daughter fosters a secret desire for her brother-in-law. On his deathbed, Thomas learns that the gold that built the Oliver name now corrupts his legacy and threatens to tear his family apart.
Consider the Lilies (affiliate link)
First published in 1968, Consider the Lilies is widely celebrated as one of the finest achievements in contemporary Scottish literature. Set in the time of the Highland Clearances—the mass eviction of tenant farmers that began in the mid 18th century—it tells the tale of a solitary woman whose home is razed in the name of “agricultural improvement.”
Having lived her whole life among her rural Highland community, she is suddenly told that she will be forced from her home, which will then be burned to the ground. The shattering pronouncement leaves her shocked and disoriented as her thoughts shift between despair for her future and memoires of the life that will soon be gone.
Daughter of Destiny: An Autobiography (affiliate link)
Daughter of Destiny, the autobiography of Benazir Bhutto, is a historical document of uncommon passion and courage, the dramatic story of a brilliant, beautiful woman whose life was, up to her tragic assassination in 2007, inexorably tied to her nation’s tumultuous history. Bhutto writes of growing up in a family of legendary wealth and near-mythic status, a family whose rich heritage survives in tales still passed from generation to generation. She describes her journey from this protected world onto the volatile stage of international politics through her education at Radcliffe and Oxford, the sudden coup that plunged her family into a prolonged nightmare of threats and torture, her father’s assassination by General Zia ul-Haq in 1979, and her grueling experience as a political prisoner in solitary confinement.
With candor and courage, Benazir Bhutto recounts her triumphant political rise from her return to Pakistan from exile in 1986 through the extraordinary events of 1988: the mysterious death of Zia; her party’s long struggle to ensure free elections; and finally, the stunning mandate that propelled her overnight into the ranks of the world’s most powerful, influential leaders.
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