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Haunted River (Detectives Daniels and Remalla Book 1) (affiliate link)
A woman, clad only in a white nightgown, is dead – her body discovered on the banks of Black River. Her unsolved murder, and her ghost, still haunt the small town where she lived and died.Twenty-five years later, Detective Gordon Daniels inherits his estranged grandfather’s home on the property where the body was found. Anxious to sell it, Daniels invites his partner, Detective Aaron Remalla to help him clean it out and enjoy some time off from their high-pressure job. But their getaway is interrupted when a second woman’s body is found on the river, clad in a white nightgown, and they are unwittingly thrown them into an investigation they would prefer to avoid.Their scrutiny of the nearby town uncovers colorful suspects, including a cranky elderly woman and her entitled grandson, two fortune-telling sisters, a paranormal-investigating sheriff, a drifter with a dubious past, and Daniels’ own grandfather.
Christmas Wishes (affiliate link)
Sydney dreads the sixty hours of community service she has to complete as part of her sentence, but it was still better than going to jail.
Ally, a long time volunteer at the local homeless shelter, knows Sydney’s type. She’s not there to help the community. She’s just ticking boxes.
As the two women get to know one another, there’s an attraction that neither of them can ignore.
Can they make it work despite their differences?
Then There Was You (Haven Bay Book 1) (affiliate link)
Can widow Katarina protect both her battered heart and her beloved B&B from the property developer passing through her small town?
Katarina blames herself for her husband’s death. Her only solace is running the beachfront bed and breakfast they always dreamed of, but now a big city developer plans to buy the property and bulldoze her B&B.
Sterling Knightley has made Katarina’s landlord an offer she can’t refuse. The only way Katarina can keep her promise to her late husband is to persuade the aloof businessman to partner with her, but Sterling holds all the cards.
Katarina doesn’t expect to be charmed by the man beneath Sterling’s prickly exterior, or for him to reignite a spark she thought was dead. But no matter how tempting she finds him, she can’t risk losing her B&B… or her heart.
Compass Cove Books 1- 10 (affiliate link)
Take a trip to Compass Cove, an enchanted town full of magic and mayhem…
Zora Wick is at the end of her tether. After a lifetime of bad luck, it seems she’s ended up at rock bottom, saddled with debt from her cheating ex, a dead-end job with no prospects and a studio apartment that’s not even fit for a dog. It all seems a little hopeless until there’s a knock at the door…
It turns out Zora has long-lost family on the other side of the country, hidden away in a little town on an unknown island. After uprooting herself Zora arrives in town to find that not only has she inherited an estranged family, she’s also the sole heir of the town’s local bakery—there’s one other thing too, apparently she’s a witch.
With a whole world of magic to learn and a small business to run it seems like Zora’s hands are more than full, but when some new evidence comes to light and casts doubts on the nature of her aunt’s death, Zora is quickly drawn into solving a murder mystery.
Charms & Chocolate (Witches World-Folds Saga Book 1) (affiliate link)
What would you do if you found out in your 30s that you had witch powers?
While Mayla believes in having chocolates for every occasion, she doesn’t believe in magic — at least until coffee cups and windows start exploding in her office. When she suddenly finds herself in a forest on her way home through the city and faces mortal danger, her world turns upside-down.
Along with this unexpected danger, she encounters a mysterious stranger, a handsome detective, and plenty of chocolate. If you love books with witches, don’t miss out on this saga!
Champagne Widows: First Woman of Champagne, Veuve Clicquot (affiliate link)
Reims, France, 1800s. Young widow Barbe-Nicole Clicquot possesses an extraordinary gift: Le Nez, an exquisite sense of smell required to craft the world’s finest champagne. Despite crippling grief and laws against women owning businesses, she negotiates a way to take over her late husband’s struggling winery.
Napoleon’s Code shackles her with business restrictions, his wars strangle the economy, and competitors block her every step. Yet, Barbe-Nicole rises like a defiant bubble, confronting prejudice and even clashing with the Emperor himself.
Then, amidst the chaos, love throws a tempting yet perilous curveball: a passionate connection with her sales manager. But marrying him means forfeiting the winery, forcing her to choose between love and her life’s calling. Will Barbe-Nicole defy the odds and become the first female champagne mogul, or will her dream be crushed by Napoleon himself?
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A Short History of Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce: The Unbelievable True Story of the World’s Most Beloved Dish (affiliate link)
Intellectually engaging and deliciously readable, this is a stereotype-defying history of how one of the most recognizable symbols of Italian cuisine and national identity is the product of centuries of encounters, dialogue, and exchange.
Is it possible to identify a starting point in history from which everything else unfolds—a single moment that can explain the present and reveal the essence of who we are? According to Massimo Montanari, this is just a myth. Historical phenomena can only be understood dynamically—by looking at how events and identities develop and change as a result of encounters and combinations that are often unexpected.
As he shows in this lively, brilliant, and surprising essay, finding the origin of spaghetti—or anything else—is not as simple as it may seem. By tracing the history of the one of Italy’s “national dishes” —from Asia to America, from Africa to Europe; from the beginning of agriculture to the Middle Ages and up to the twentieth century—he reveals that in order to understand our own identity, we almost always need to look beyond ourselves to other cultures, peoples, and traditions.
Back by popular demand, a supernatural detective story revealing the true account of a house haunted by ghosts lingering after a nineteenth century murder.
This true story recounts a Philadelphia family’s encounter with a spectral presence in their eighteenth-century mansion. After experiencing footsteps at night, opening doors, strange sounds and activity that centered around the library, the Cameron family investigates, unearthing the mansion’s tragic past and changing their beliefs about the supernatural world.
Behind the Shadows (affiliate link)
Kira Douglas’s mother, Katy, will die unless she receives a new kidney. Kira is the likely donor candidate . . . until blood tests reveal that she isn’t Katy’s biological daughter. If she isn’t Kira Douglas, then who is she? And how can she save her mother? The only answer is to find Katy’s true daughter by birth.
Kira’s search leads to Leigh Howard, an heiress to a $50 million trust fund, and her formidable protector, Max Payton, a charismatic attorney who doesn’t trust Kira or her theory that she and Leigh were accidentally switched at birth. When Kira’s life is threatened, it becomes clear that someone doesn’t want the truth to come out or allow Kira to lay claim to the legendary Westerfield fortune. Now Max is torn between his loyalty to Leigh and his powerful desire for the woman who has upset their privileged world. But he may be too late to stop a legacy of hate and greed that was set in motion decades ago—and is about to come full circle.
Nancy: A Comic Collection (affiliate link)
This collection celebrates a fresh take on the classic comic strip: “thanks to the brilliance of its young new writer-artist . . . Nancymania is real” (Rolling Stone).
In 2018, Olivia Jaimes became the first woman to write and illustrate the comic strip Nancy. Her irreverent take on the beloved classic has become a sensation with readers and critics—many of whom named it the best comic of the year. This collection includes the first nine months of Jaimes’ run on Nancy, along with an introduction, essay, interview with the author, and a special gallery of Nancy fan art by the author.
The Good Deed (affiliate link)
Set in 2018 against the ironic backdrop of an overcrowded, fetid refugee camp on the beautiful, Homeric island of Samos in Greece, The Good Deed follows the stories of five women: Amina, who is nineteen and has just been released from one of Bashar al-Assad’s secret and torture-ridden prisons in Syria; Leila, a Syrian widow with two little sons, who has lost her daughter and granddaughter to smugglers on a Turkish beach; Nafisa, who survived civil war and gang rape in Sudan only to see her entire family murdered, save for one daughter; Farah, Leila’s lost daughter; and finally, an American named Hilma, who came from New York to Samos to escape her own dark secret, only to become entangled in conflict with the very people she wishes to help.
Drawing from four years of interviews with refugees on Samos, along with twelve previous years of work on the Iraq War, Benedict has written The Good Deed as a series of lyrical, intensely felt alternating voices, following these women’s everyday lives in the camp, as well each of their backstories—stories of families, love, secrets, violence, war, and flight.
… See the rest of today ‘s Book Picks here on page 2Page 2