In the shadowy cave network of the Derbyshire Peaks, a skeleton is found—a young girl, hidden deep in the rock, from a summer that a group of people have spent years convincing themselves is safely buried. Detective Sergeant Tom Ward is disillusioned and stuck in a career rut when the discovery forces him into action. The investigation that follows begins pulling old secrets to the surface, secrets that belong to the children who once played an eerie game in those caves—and one of whom never came out. 💀
The cold case structure that Aline Templeton builds here operates on the specific dread that caves and buried childhood secrets generate together—the sense that what happened in that network of tunnels was known by more people than have ever admitted it, and that the skeleton’s discovery is about to force a reckoning that decades of collective silence have been postponing. Ward’s professional disillusionment gives his investigation its personal dimension: a detective who has stopped expecting much from his career suddenly handed a case that demands everything he has. 🔍
Templeton—the author of the long-running DI Marjory Fleming series—writes police procedural with the atmospheric Scottish and British countryside authority that distinguishes her work, and Shades of Death brings that authority to the Derbyshire landscape with the specific cave-darkness atmosphere that the premise demands. The intersection of childhood trauma, collective guilt, and the persistence of a detective who has nothing left to lose gives the novel its sustained tension and moral weight. ⚡
What makes this gripping: Aline Templeton delivers a Derbyshire police procedural of genuine atmospheric dread—a skeleton found deep in a cave network, a group of adults who thought what they did that summer would stay buried, and a disillusioned DS whose career rut ends the moment the investigation begins. 🌟
Forget everything you have heard about ancient myths, vampires, and superheroes—because the Creatus Saga proposes that all of those stories originate from the same source: beings who exist alongside humanity, stronger and longer-lived, created as we were but perhaps before us. They are the reason we have fairy tales and nightmares. They are why we believe in superheroes and monsters. Because they are real, and they have been protecting the human race from a careful, anonymous distance for longer than recorded history. 🌑
That careful distance is about to be shattered. One creatus is falling in love with a human—which endangers not just himself but every member of his kind. In his quest to protect the woman he cannot have, a twist of fate propels him into a new role that fractures his family and ignites a war that has been building beneath the surface of human history for longer than anyone has admitted. The five-book boxed set delivers the complete opening arc of the Creatus Saga in a single free package. 💀
Carmen DeSousa builds the Creatus mythology with the world-building ambition and romantic suspense momentum that distinguishes the series from conventional vampire fiction—these are not vampires in the traditional sense but something older and more carefully constructed, with an internal society, a history, and rules that the central romance is about to violate in ways nobody is prepared for. The five-book collection gives readers the full narrative investment at no cost. 💛
What makes this essential: Carmen DeSousa delivers all five opening Creatus Saga novels in one free collection—ancient beings who are the source of every vampire myth and superhero story, a forbidden love between one of them and a human, and the war within their hidden world that the love story ignites. 🌟
Mallory Westbrook has not set foot in Magnolia Sound in years, and she has good reason for that. Her great-grandfather’s death forces her back—two weeks to settle his affairs, then she returns to her life in New York. It is a perfectly manageable plan, if not for Jake Summerford: her first love, the man who broke her heart, and the person she was most hoping not to see. 💔
Jake has always regretted how things ended. Now that Mallory is back, he is hoping they can start with the past behind them—and as they reconnect, he realizes that friendship is only the beginning of what he wants. Mallory has one foot out the door and is actively looking for reasons to leave Magnolia Sound forever. Jake’s plan to replace her painful memories with better ones is his last real chance to show her that what they had deserves another try. 💛
Samantha Chase writes the Magnolia Sound series with the small-town Southern setting and second-chance romance emotional intelligence that has made her one of contemporary romance’s most widely read authors. The series has built its following across many interconnected books, and Remind Me establishes the world and the central couple with the warmth and earned emotional payoff that Chase’s readership has come to expect—a heroine who has real reasons for staying gone, a hero who has real reasons for asking her to stay, and a community that makes leaving harder than she planned. 🌅
What makes this unforgettable: Samantha Chase launches the Magnolia Sound series with a second-chance romance of genuine emotional pull—a woman who swore she was done with her hometown, the first love who broke her heart and never got over it, and two weeks that keep finding reasons to extend into something neither of them can walk away from. 🌟
Act of War
A Texas oil refinery is destroyed by a backpack nuclear device—just one of a coordinated series of attacks on a multinational energy company being carried out across the globe by a single group determined to stop what they see as the plundering of natural resources. The scale and coordination of the strikes make conventional response inadequate, and the authorities call in military tech specialist Jason Richter and his top-secret counterterrorism unit Task Force TALON. 💀
To stop his opponents, Richter knows he has to beat them at their own game—unconventional hit-and-run attacks brutal enough to strike genuine fear into the most dedicated terrorist operation. He also has to navigate a series of unexpected turns that uncover a mole operating within the upper echelons of government. The combination of external terror threat and internal betrayal gives Act of War its dual-pressure structure, and the stakes escalate from a single refinery to something considerably larger and more catastrophic. ⚡
Dale Brown is one of military action fiction’s most prolific and technically authoritative authors, with a career spanning decades of bestselling novels that draw on his background as a US Air Force officer. The Task Force TALON series delivers the weapons systems, tactical detail, and geopolitical stakes that Brown’s readership comes for, with Act of War launching the arc at a price point that makes the entry investment minimal. 🌟
What makes this propulsive: Dale Brown delivers a Task Force TALON thriller of escalating military stakes—backpack nuclear devices targeting energy infrastructure across the globe, an unconventional counterterrorism unit tasked with matching the threat, and a government mole who is making every move Richter makes considerably more dangerous. 🌟
Kit MacKlenna was never supposed to survive the car crash that killed her parents. She was never supposed to discover that her life was built on a lie. And she was never supposed to touch the ruby brooch. When grief-stricken paramedic and equestrian Kit uncovers her father’s journal, she learns something impossible: she was abandoned as an infant on the Oregon Trail in 1852. Her only clues are a blood-stained lace shawl, a miniature portrait, and an ancient Celtic brooch with the power to carry her across time. 🏇
Determined to complete her father’s decades-long search for the truth, Kit risks everything and finds herself in 1852—on the Oregon Trail, in a world that does not want her to survive. River crossings, disease, violence, and betrayal mark every mile, and Kit’s unique knowledge makes her dangerous, particularly to Cullen Montgomery, whose role in her story becomes clear only as the trail unfolds. The Oregon Trail setting gives the time travel romance its specific historical brutality—this is not a gentle past but a genuinely unforgiving one. 💛
Katherine Lowry Logan writes the Celtic Brooch series with the historical research depth and emotional investment that has sustained it across many beloved installments. The Ruby Brooch establishes the artifact mythology, the time travel mechanics, and the character foundation with the confidence of a writer who knows exactly where her series is going. ⚡
What makes this captivating: Katherine Lowry Logan launches the Celtic Brooch series with a time travel romance of genuine historical power—a paramedic who discovers she was abandoned on the Oregon Trail in 1852, an ancient brooch that carries her back, and a trail that is every bit as brutal and unforgiving as history records. 🌟
1985. Holly Moore is a troubled teenager separated from her little sister at the children’s home where they were placed as orphans—a girl in need of love who meets a man who promises to take care of her, and who hopes her luck has finally changed. 2015. Superintendent Jo Hamilton has only days before her forced retirement when the discovery of a young woman’s remains pulls her back to an unsolved case that has haunted her for decades. 💔
As a young constable, Jo was regularly called out to deal with runaways from Morgate House. When Holly Moore disappeared—after another female resident fell from the cliffs under suspicious circumstances—Jo was convinced the home was hiding something. She was never able to prove it. Now, with retirement looming and one last window of official authority, she tracks down Holly’s sister and reopens the case. The trail leads disturbingly close to home in ways she was not prepared for. 🔍
Emily Gunnis—the author of The Girl in the Letter, which was a major UK bestseller—writes historical mystery thriller with the dual-timeline structure and institutional abuse focus that she handles with particular authority. The children’s home backdrop gives The Girls Left Behind its specific darkness: a place where vulnerable people disappeared into official silence, and where the truth requires someone with both the will and the remaining time to drag it into the light. 💀
What makes this gripping: Emily Gunnis delivers a dual-timeline historical thriller of genuine moral urgency—a 1985 teenager who vanished from a children’s home where something terrible was being hidden, and a superintendent with days before retirement and one last chance to finally prove what she always knew. 🌟
… See the rest of today ‘s Book Picks here on page 3Page 3