Book picks similar to
Hard News by Mark T. Sullivan


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Cowboy Ever After: Big Sky Mountain\Bad News Cowboy (The Parable Series)


Linda Lael Miller - 2018
    But he knows there are some things money can’t buy, like Kendra Shepherd’s heart. Can a rough-and-tumble cowboy and a ladylike divorcée find lasting love? Crazier dreams have come true under the vast Montana sky. Bad News Cowboy by Maisey Yates If Kate Garrett could choose her dream man, he wouldn’t be her older brother’s best friend, Jack Monaghan. Sexy and shameless, Jack is the kind of trouble you don’t tangle with unless you want your heart broken. But when Kate lassoes him into giving her some flirting tips, the two of them get caught up in the kind of trouble he’s spent his life avoiding. Can Kate convince Jack that love is the best risk of all?

Thicker Than Blood


C.J. Darlington - 2009
    She’s putting her past behind her and working hard to build her career as a buyer for a large used bookstore. So far she’s been able to keep her drinking problem at bay, but everything changes when she lands a DUI on her thirty-third birthday. When she’s accused of a crime she didn’t commit at work, she has nowhere to turn. She yearns for her estranged family, especially her younger sister May whom she hasn’t seen for fifteen years. Now the owner of a failing cattle ranch in Elk Valley, Colorado, May couldn’t possibly want a relationship with the big sister who didn’t even say good-bye all those years ago, could she? Soon Christy’s fleeing from her shattered dreams, her abusive ex-boyfriend, and God. Could the Triple Cross Ranch be the safe haven she’s searching for, or will May’s new-found faith give her even more reason to reject Christy?

Saving Paradise (Pono Hawkins Thriller Book 1)


Mike Bond - 2019
    The real Hawaii is something else…” When a beautiful journalist drowns mysteriously off Waikiki, former Special Forces veteran Pono Hawkins, now a well-known Hawaii surfer and international surfing journalist, quickly gets embroiled in trying to solve her death. What he learns soon targets him for murder or life in prison as a cabal of powerful corporations, foreign killers and crooked politicians focuses the blame on him. Haunted by memories of Afghanistan, and determined to protect the Hawaii he loves from dirty politics tied to huge destructive energy developments, Pono turns to Special Forces buddies and his own skills to fight his deadly enemies, trying to both save himself and track down her killers. A national US best-seller, Saving Paradise is alive with the sights, sounds and history of Hawaii, is a rich portrait of what Pono calls “the seamy side of paradise”, and a relentless thriller of politics, lies, manhunts and remorseless murder.

Cap's Place


Robert Tarrant - 2015
    Suddenly his world was knocked out of orbit and he found himself living with his Uncle Mickey above Mickey's bar in South Florida. Mickey's untimely death leads to Jack becoming a bar owner. Jack's protective approach to his life includes staying emotionally uninvolved with everyone around him, those who work at the bar, customers, and the objects of his frequent one-night stands. Without warning Jack finds himself struggling to protect his beautiful bartender from unknown forces intent on killing her. Jack is confronted with decisions that require him to ignore rules he had previously deemed unbreakable. The characters who inhabit Cap's Place turn out to be much more complex than Jack ever anticipated. Each book in the Cap’s Place Series is a snapshot into the adventures and evolving lives of Jack Nolan and those who are a part of his South Florida Bar. As is true in real life, no single snapshot answers every question. In Jack’s case, no single glimpse ever clearly reveals to him all of the unfolding puzzles.

Jury of One


David Ellis - 2004
    Her client is a 17-year-old accused of killing a policeman, and she begins to suspect that he may have been involved in an undercover operation to entrap dirty cops, though his role in the scheme remains unclear. Was he the target or the bait—and what does the prosecution really have against him?Then comes the shocker: Shelly fears that she has a connection to this boy, something she has kept secret for years, knowledge that she has hidden from her family and friends for most of her adult life. And as the evidence against the boy mounts, she finds that nothing—not legal ethics, not a statewide political campaign that could swing in the balance—will stop her from keeping him off death row. For with this client, she is truly a jury of one.

Conundrum


Susan Cory - 2012
    But fellow-student Iris Reid knows that any jealous member of the ruling clique would have relished pushing him off.Twenty years later, a reunion is luring the same cast of characters back to Cambridge. The opening night dinner is being held in a Modernist house that Iris has designed. She hopes to untangle the events that led to her friend's death. But the murderer has other plans. When a long-ago boyfriend turns up dead the night of the dinner, all the incriminating evidence points to Iris. What began as an attempt to avenge her old friend, turns into a desperate race to avoid being framed by the clever killer - a killer capable of twisting the truth into a bloody conundrum.

Murder At The Fourth: A Forest Pines Mystery


Duncan Whitehead - 2016
    That is until local businessman, Donald Sands, is found murdered on the local golf course. Young and inexperienced Sheriff, Steve Calder, needs help and turns to Jenny to assist him in his investigation. Suddenly Jenny is plunged into a mystery unlike any other she has encountered and faces a multitude of suspects who all have a reason to rejoice the victim's death. It isn’t going to be as easy as Jenny thought, as she tries to find out who killed the most unpopular man in town. A string of mistresses, a jealous husband, a shady realtor as well as a down on his luck store owner, who couldn't repay a debt, are just some of the suspects as the plot thickens, and twists abound. Meanwhile, skeletons from Jenny's past are rattling their unwelcome bones. The truth contorts to a climax that will leave readers breathless.

Scorched Earth


David L. Robbins - 2002
    Robbins, bestselling author of The End of War and War of the Rats, comes a novel of searing intensity and uncompromising vision. Part mystery, part legal thriller, it is a story of crime and punishment set in a small southern town during one brutal, hot, and unforgiving summer that lays bare the potential of the human heart to hate–and, ultimately, to heal. The inhabitants of Good Hope, Virginia, haven’t felt the cooling effects of rain in weeks. The crops are withering. The ground is parched. There is no relief in sight. With the town a tinderbox waiting to explode, all it takes is a spark to ignite all the prejudice, the rage, and the secrets that are so carefully kept hidden. And then, in the midst of the terrible heat, a tragedy occurs. A baby is born and dies in her mother’s arms. The child, Nora Carol, is buried quickly and quietly the next day in a church graveyard. It should have ended right there–but it didn’t, for Nora Carol is of mixed race.The white deacons of Good Hope’s Victory Baptist Church, trying to protect the centuries-old traditions of their cemetery, have the body exhumed. That night the church is set ablaze, and the sole witness is the only suspect–Elijah Waddell, Nora Carol’s father.Nat Deeds, a former prosecutor and an exile of Good Hope, is pressed into service as Elijah’s attorney. With a politically savvy prosecutor and a vindictive sheriff aligned against him, Nat knows it will be nearly impossible to get Elijah acquitted. But Elijah refuses to accept a plea.As the evidence mounts, Nat begins to suspect there is something his client isn’t telling him, and the next revelation turns Good Hope into a powder keg: a body is found in the ashes of the church. Now Elijah is accused of murder, and the case is no longer a matter of winning or losing, but of life or death.The only way Nat can save his client is to scratch and claw for any shred of evidence, even if he has to bend the law to find it. As the summer heat intensifies and passions reach their boiling point, Nat must navigate through the incendiary secrets kept by friends and neighbors, by the guilty and the innocent, to an act of justice that has nothing to do with the law.

Coast Road / Three Wishes


Barbara Delinsky - 1998
    After ten years of marriage, they divorced and went their separate ways. Jack stayed in San Francisco. Rachel moved with their two young daughters to Big Sur.Six years later, an alarming middle-of-the-night phone call demands that Jack put aside his own busy life and career as a leading architect to rush to his ex-wife's hospital bed. While she lies comatose, Jack maintains a bedside vigil and finds himself getting to know Rachel better than he ever did -- through their daughters, her friends, and, even more, through her art. Meanwhile, the beauty and grace of the Redwood canyon where she has made her home also work their own special alchemy upon Jack. He begins to see Rachel, his daughters, and the story of his marriage with new eyes.Three WishesWhat if wishes really could come true?It's the question facing waitress Bree Walker when she awakens in the hospital following a blizzard in sleepy Panama, Vermont. While she can't recall the near-tragedy that landed her there, she's overcome with the certainty that she has been granted three wishes. One seems to have come true already; at her side is renowned author Tom Gates, the accident's only witness, who had come to Panama to make sense of his fame; and who now makes Bree his cause.Suddenly, the things Bree has wanted most; a home, a soul mate, a family; are within her grasp. But are the wishes real? And if they are, what is their price? As Bree and Tom consider what their hearts truly require, they discover that to live their dreams, they will have to take unimagined risks....

The Survivors Club


Lisa Gardner - 2002
    In this masterful new novel, the killer may very well be the one you sympathize with the most... THE FIRST RULE IS NEVER BLAME THE VICTIM.They survived what no woman should ever have to endure. Now these three women have the means, the opportunity, and the perfect motive. Are they trying to get away with murder--or is someone trying to make sure that this time they don't get away at all? The Survivors Club... that's what Jillian Hayes, Carol Rosen, and Meg Pesaturo call it. They won't consider themselves victims. They are survivors. They faced the blazing headlines and helped lead the investigation that caught the man who changed their lives forever. And now that Eddie Como, the College Hill rapist, has been murdered, shot down outside a packed courthouse moments before his trial was about to begin, all three women are openly ecstatic that he's dead. They are also the prime suspects in his murder. Detective Sergeant Roan Griffin knows all too well what can drive even the best people to cross the line. But he has never seen a case quite like this one. No one doubts that the murder of Eddie Como was a professional job, especially when the gunman is killed only blocks away from the shooting.But questions taunt Griffin: Who ordered the deaths of Eddie Como and his killer? Could three ordinary women have been driven to do the unthinkable? Had someone in the Survivors Club become a killer? Griffin seeks the truth--and finds himself confronted with the leader of the Survivors Club. Jillian Hayes is beautiful, successful, cool as ice, and she harbors a pain that mirrors Griffin's own. Did the horror of what happened to her push her over the thin and desperate line that separates survival and revenge? And if it did, could he blame her--or anyone in the Survivors Club? Then another woman is brutally attacked.Suddenly, with the city on the ragged edge of panic, gripped in a media and political firestorm of controversy, cover-up, and conspiracy, the hunt is on for a ruthless and cunning killer. For Griffin, this may well be the case that shatters his career. For Jillian, the harrowing nightmare is beginning all over again. Someone is out there. Someone who wants to finish what was started. Someone who wants to make sure that no one survives the Survivors Club.

The Letter


Kathryn Hughes - 2013
    The novel explores two historical strands, bringing together an abused housewife from the 1970s and a young girl from the early 1940s in a story of love, loss and unexpected consequences.The Letter follows the life of Tina in the 1970s who seeks respite from her abusive marriage by volunteering at a charity shop. One day, while sorting through the pockets of a second-hand suit, she comes across an old letter. It is still firmly sealed and un-franked. Unable to resist the pull of curiosity, Tina opens the letter. It was written on 4th September 1939. She is so moved by the contents and bemused as to why the letter was never delivered, she embarks on a quest to find out what became of the writer and his intended recipient.The mystery of how this love letter ended up in Tina’s hands is also uncovered through Billy’s story from the early 1940s. He writes a letter that will change his life forever, unaware that it will not be read for another 34 years, and then by a complete stranger.With a swift pace, memorable characters and a wonderful conceptual depth, Hughes’ novel is one that simply can’t be put down.

The Herb Gatherers


Elizabeth Harris - 1991
     The tormented spirit of mysterious Alienor, a once beautiful young woman abandoned by her Crusader lover centuries ago, relentlessly follows him. In ways that he has never understood, Rafe is cursed by her powerful and obsessive love, which has endured across the ages, taunting him and visiting him in his dreams... Who is Alienor? What does she want? And what lengths will she go to seek her revenge? Yet Rafe is not the only one who is still suffering at the hands of Alienor’s wrath and when he agrees to take part in a séance whilst on holiday in Crete, he receives a message that changes his life forever. It leads him on a trail to the quiet Kent countryside and there, as if waiting for him, is Nell Gurney. Her resemblance to Alienor is uncanny and he is instinctively drawn to her. Initially oblivious to any growing danger, Nell and Rafe quickly become close, driven by a strange sensation that they already know each other. But someone else intrudes upon them in a horrifyingly intimate manner and tries to hint that identity is no longer a matter of personal choice... Beneath the cosy exterior of the cottage Nell shares with her father, there is a dark secret that has shaped the lives of the Gurney family for centuries. As the forgotten story of a scorned woman comes to life, Nell and Rafe are mirrors for a force that has the power to destroy them. When tragedy strikes, Rafe’s friend Stephen and a bewitching, chilling exploration into the practise of exorcism is their only hope... Praise for Elizabeth Harris ‘Enormously enjoyable … hard to put down. Elizabeth Harris writes with sensitivity and skill and a spine-chilling eye for the sinister’ - Barbara Erksine, author of Lady of Hay Elizabeth Harris was born in Cambridge and brought up in Kent, where she now lives. After graduation she hid a variety of jobs including driving a van, being a lifeguard and working in the Civil Service. She has travelled extensively in Europe and America, and lived for some years in the Far East. Elizabeth Harris was one of the finalists of the 1989 Ian St James Awards.

A Summer Ball's Love


Alice Kirks - 2021
    Unable to stand her loneliness anymore, she hesitantly attends a ball where she meets the most charming Earl she could ever dream of. However, her stepmother is not happy with Mariah’s unexpected acquaintance, as she has always envied and viewed her as her own daughter’s competitor. To make matters worse, Mariah’s illness gets in the way of spending time with her charming admirer and threatens to bring her blossoming dreams crashing down. Will Mariah let down her defences and find the way to be with the man that has started to fill her with joy and love? Or will her bossy stepmother and sudden illness destroy it all?John Blackmore, Earl of Winchester, did not intend to spend his whole summer in Cheltenham. However, after losing a bet at a card game, he is compelled to keep his word. Little did he know that his dull summer would soon turn into a fascinating one, due to him being immediately mesmerised by the gracious lady he meets on a special night. When John sees that this ethereal existence has been haunted by a mysterious illness, he is determined to move heaven and earth to help her recover. However, time is running short, as the beautiful woman’s health mysteriously deteriorates with each passing day. Will John manage to find the cause of Mariah’s illness and the cure for both her disease and his own heart? Or will he fail to rescue the only woman who has managed to occupy his every thought?While Mariah and John discover the depth of their shared feelings, wicked powers threaten the blooming love between them. When John discovers hidden truths that might irreversibly change Mariah's life forever, her overbearing stepmother will make any effort to keep her confined to the house. Will Mariah and John break down the walls that jeopardize their only chance at a happy life? Could fate have something better in store for them both?

The Dublin Trilogy Deluxe Part 1


Caimh McDonnell - 2021
    The series has been a critically acclaimed worldwide Amazon bestseller and it is optioned for TV.The two-part box set features the books with the ancillary novellas and short stories presented in the order the author Caimh McDonnell thinks they should be read in, with new introductions written especially for this edition. Please note – this is the first part!The Dublin Trilogy Deluxe Part 1 contains:A Man With One of Those Faces (The Dublin Trilogy Book 1): The first time somebody tried to kill him was an accident; the second time was deliberate. Now, Paul Mulchrone finds himself on the run with nobody to turn to except a nurse who has read one-too-many crime novels and a renegade copper with a penchant for violence. Together they must solve one of the most notorious crimes in Irish history before they’re history.Bloody Christmas (Novella): It’s Christmas Eve and DS Bunny McGarry is in the mood to celebrate – he’s back on duty after proving that throwing a senior officer off a building was an appropriate action during an investigation. His festivities are interrupted when someone attempts to assassinate him while he’s taking a leak. Bunny soon finds himself in a race against time to trace a kidnapped child before the people who ordered the hit realise that he is less dead than they had hoped.Dog Day Afternoon (Short Story): Bunny McGarry always pays his debts, and if that means saving a certain dog from a date with the grim reaper, then so be it. Getting a canine off death row is not as simple as you’d think though, particularly when the pooch in question is a couple of biscuits short of a full dog’s dinner.The Day That Never Comes (The Dublin Trilogy Book 2): Paul Mulchrone’s newly established detective agency is about to be DOA. One of his partners won’t talk to him for very good reasons and the other has seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth for no reason at all. Can he hold it together long enough to figure out what Bunny McGarry’s colourful past has to do with his present absence?Please note: All the novels and short stories have been previously available to readers separately.

Final Arrangements: A Novel


Miles Keaton Andrew - 2002
    He decided right then, at the age of nine, what he wanted to be when he grew up...an undertaker. The day he turned twenty-one, Casey joined the ranks of Morton-Albright, a family owned and operated mortuary, in the small Florida town of Angel Shoals. Immediately, he felt right at home. He seems to have a gift for embalming. The Morton and Albright families welcome him like the family he never had. The quirky and mischievous Natalie Albright is the girl he's always dreamed of. And within the walls of Morton-Albright, Casey feels a reassuring presence that calms him, like nothing ever has before. But his happiness will be short-lived if the mortuary falls victim to a rapacious funeral-home giant. With family secrets being uncovered, contested wills, and rumors of illegal funeral practices circling, the lives entwined in this funeral home become filled with intrigue, deception, and, of course, death. Bringing abundant experience and a fresh wit to the page, Miles Keaton Andrew offers a clever, spirited, darkly humorous first novel, rich with dialogue and full of nuanced characters.