Book picks similar to
A Second Daniel by Neal Roberts


historical-fiction
fiction
mystery
historical

The Forgotten Gift


Kathleen McGurl - 2020
    George’s life changes forever the day he meets Lucy. She’s beautiful and charming, and he sees a future with her that his position as the second son in a wealthy family has never offered him. But when Lucy dies in a suspected poisoning days after rejecting George, he finds himself swept up into a murder investigation. George loved Lucy; he would never have harmed her. So who did?Now. On the surface, Cassie is happy with her life: a secure job, good friends, and a loving family. When a mysterious gift in a long-forgotten will leads her to a dark secret in her family’s history she’s desperate to learn more. But the secrets in Cassie’s family aren’t all hidden in the past, and her research will soon lead her to a revelation much closer to home – and which will turn everything she knows on its head…Discover a family’s darkest secrets today

Willow Pond


Carol Tibaldi - 2011
    Now that the world is falling apart, bootlegging is a flourishing business, and she's queen of that castle. Then her infant nephew is kidnapped. Her niece, Laura, and Laura's philandering movie star husband, are devastated. The police have few leads, and speculation and rumors abound in the media circus that follows the celebrity abduction. Only one reporter, Erich Muller, seems to care enough about the child's welfare and the parents' feelings to report the case responsibly. Over the course of the investigation, Erich Muller and Laura fall in love, but their relationship is doomed to failure since he suspects her beloved aunt Virginia is behind the kidnapping. Laura, jaded when it comes to men, sides with Virginia.But Virginia has figured out the truth, and she can't tell anyone for fear of losing her niece's affections and having the police ransack her life. So she pursues her own investigation, shaking down, threatening, and killing one petty crook after another during her search.Little Todd's absence shapes everyone's lives. When he is finally found, the discovery will bring disaster for some and revelation for others.

The History of Things to Come


Duncan Simpson - 2015
    In his possession is a notebook once belonging to Isaac Newton. This is just the latest in a series of shocking crimes connected to objects once belonging to the famous scientist. The police are stumped and the pressure for an arrest is mounting. Enter Vincent Blake, London's leading stolen-art investigator. As Blake sets out to solve the case, a series of devastating events threaten to destroy everything he holds dear. Broken but undeterred, he comes upon a shocking discovery: within the coded pages of a mysterious crimson book, annotated in Newton’s own handwriting, is an explosive revelation. Possessing this secret knowledge turns Blake into a marked man. Caught in the crosshairs of two sadistic hitmen, Blake is propelled into a breathtaking race through London and its dark historical secrets. With time running out, will Blake solve Newton’s deadly puzzle before the world is plunged into a catastrophe of biblical proportions?

The Sam Reilly Collection Volume 2


Christopher Cartwright - 2017
     There’s no doubt their discovery is worth ten times that much. But will any one of them live if they refuse? At the same time, the greatest technological advancement in warfare since the creation of the Atomic bomb has been discovered, and is being offered to the highest bidder. There is just one problem though; the seller might no longer have any control of the weapon. Can Sam Reilly weave his way through the web of industrial and political espionage before the human race loses its greatest fight for survival? The Cassidy Project In the middle of the Pacific Ocean in 1962, at the height of the cold war, the U.S. military experimented with electromagnetic pulses created by detonating high atmosphere nuclear bombs. The project was code named Starfish Prime. The primary objective was to develop the ability to produce an EMP with enough force to knock out an entire nation’s communications, rendering a retaliatory attack impossible. The secondary objective, along with its consequences, was deemed too important to national security to ever be released. In 1983 an American B52 Nuclear Bomber goes missing somewhere near the Bering Strait while delivering a secret cargo at the express order of President Ronald Reagan to an unmapped island. Present day, in the Weddell Sea off the coast of Antarctica, a woman wakes up on a cruise ship to discover she’s the only person left aboard, despite no apparent fault with the ship. Sam Reilly, already on a rescue mission to Antarctica to save five French scientists, may be the only person standing in the way of the completion of The Cassidy Project. The Nostradamus Equation In 1562, Michel de Nostradamus led a small party on an expedition deep into the hostile Desert of Barbary, now known as the Sahara. Without any knowledge of what they might find, the small party had entered the vast desert in search of a miracle. In the present day, Dr. Zara Delacroix enlists the help of Sam Reilly to hunt for answers about a book she believes was buried in the Sahara centuries earlier to protect humanity from some great catastrophe. This ancient manuscript was named The Book of Nostradamus. . .

Madness in the Ruins


John A. Connell - 2015
    The only clue, a message, “Those who I have made suffer will become saints and they shall lift me up from hell.” Winter, 1945. Munich is in ruins. Though the war is over, murder still flourishes.U.S. Army investigator Mason Collins enforces the law in the American Zone of Occupation. This post is his last chance to do what he loves most—being a homicide detective.But he gets more than he’s bargained for when the bodies start piling up, the city devolves into panic, and the army brass start breathing down his neck.Then the murderer makes him a target. Now it's a high-stakes duel, and to win it Mason must bring into deadly play all that he values: his partner, his career—even his life.

When Butterflies Cry


Ninie Hammon - 2014
    And that's not even the worst thing he's come home to. And just so you know going in—that dam holding back a 300-million-gallon lake on the mountainside above the little coal camp town of Saddler Hollow—that dam’s going to blow. Grayson Addington comes home to Saddler Hollow, West Virginia, from Vietnam a broken man, ravaged by post traumatic stress syndrome, a chaplain who left his faith in the jungle mud with his massacred unit. His wife, Piper, doesn’t know her husband anymore. In his absence, she turned to his brother Carter for support. Now, she must choose between them—and Carter will stop at nothing to have her. And into this family torn apart by jealousy, deceit and clan loyalties comes a mysterious little girl. Maggie, a battered child with amnesia, shows up on the Addington's front porch and instantly bonds to Sadie, Piper and Grayson’s cripplingly shy toddler. When Maggie runs away and takes Sadie with her, the warring brothers must team up to search for them. But something more than chance has brought the child called Maggie to this wounded family. And nothing less than destiny will be fulfilled by her incredible act of love--on the foggy morning when the coal slag dam at the top of the hollow explodes. Interview with the author: Q. What’s so special about When Butterflies Cry? A. It’s real life on paper. It’s been a Kindle bestseller because the characters in the novel come to life on the page—like the family next door in a small town. The story is gripping, the action nail-biting. Q. Is this a Christian book? A. There’s no religion in it. But there is spirituality--themes of love and sacrifice that touch the soul of readers of any faith—or no faith at all. Q. Why should readers give this book a try? A. Because it’s a book that will break your heart, and then put it back together again. Goodreads and Amazon Reader Reviews Wow. I have found a new favourite author. She is so good and I’ve been burned a lot lately by really bad free books, written poorly and full of mistakes. This is the kind of contemporary women’s fiction I want but usually don’t find in a free book. A (no spoilers) sacrifice makes the book inspirational, but its filled with suspense too. Even though its during the 60's or 70s war in Vietnam, the story itself felt timeless and contemporary and so real I forgot it was fiction and it kept me in suspense way past my bedtime to find out what happened. Sarah Bridges I’m a city girl and I never thought my heart would break over a story about a small town in West Virginia. Not what I expected from a typical paranormal thriller--its a mystery with lots of suspense, like other reviewers said, it was unique. But it is during the Viet Nam war times, and not contemporary fiction like it said. You should read it, but have lots of tissues handy. It was inspirational to me how the chaplain kept hanging on and "doin’ the necessary" and then got home and found his brother with his wife—but I won’t spoil the suspense. I think the mystery about the butterflies landing on her was she was paranormal.

The Guardian of Secrets


Jana Petken - 2013
    Celia's two sons march under opposing banners, whilst her twin daughters take different paths; one to the Catholic Church and the other to the battlefields. And in the shadow of war, a sinister villain from the past resurfaces with the sole purpose of destroying the entire family. "Four generations struggle in a suspenseful family saga, which begins in 1912, in Kent, England, and ends in 1939 in Spain, during the Civil War."

The Sixth Victim


Tessa Harris - 2017
    Flower girl Constance Piper is not immune to dread, but she is more preoccupied with her own strange experiences of late.Clairvoyants seem to be everywhere these days. In desperation, even Scotland Yard has turned to them to help apprehend the Ripper. Her mother has found comfort in contacting her late father in a séance. But are such powers real? And could Constance really be possessed of second sight? She longs for the wise counsel of her mentor and champion of the poor, Emily Tindall, but the kind missionary has gone missing.Following the latest grisly discovery, Constance is contacted by a high-born lady of means who fears the victim may be her missing sister. She implores Constance to use her clairvoyance to help solve the crime, which the press is calling “the Whitechapel Mystery,” attributing the murder to the Ripper.As Constance becomes embroiled in intrigue far more sinister than she could have imagined, assistance comes in a startling manner that profoundly challenges her assumptions about the nature of reality. She’ll need all the help she can get—because there may be more than one depraved killer out there...

The Blue and the Grey


M.J. Trow - 2014
    Having been an eye witness to the assassination of President Lincoln, Matthew Grand, a former captain of the 3rd Cavalry of the Potomac, has come to London on an undercover assignment to hunt down the last of the assassin's co-conspirators. Ambitious young journalist Jim Batchelor has been charged with writing a feature article on the visiting American, with the aim of getting the inside story on the assassination. Both men are distracted from their missions by the discovery of a body behind the Haymarket Theatre in London s Soho district. It's the latest in a series of grisly garrottings by a killer known as the Haymarket Strangler. As Grand and Batchelor team up to pursue their investigations through the dark underbelly of Victorian London, it becomes clear that there may be a disturbing connection between the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the Haymarket Strangler.

The English Heart


Helena Halme - 2013
    This was love. The stuff she’d read about in books since she was a teenager; the films she’d watched. This was how Ryan O’Neal felt about Ali MacGraw in Love Story, and Barbra Streisand about Robert Redford in, The Way We Were. Kaisa grinned. She’d wanted to pose the same question to the Englishman that Katie had to Hubbell, ‘Do you smile ALL the time?’ When a young Finnish student, Kaisa, is invited to the British Embassy cocktail party in Helsinki to celebrate a Royal Navy visit to Finland, she’s not looking for romance. After all, her future has been carefully planned: she’s to complete her degree, marry her respectable, well-to-do Finnish fiancé Matti, and live happily ever after. Enter the dashing Peter, a newly qualified Navy Officer. Like a moth to a flame, Kaisa falls head over heels in love. Kaisa and Peter embark on a long-distance relationship, but at the height of the Cold War, while the Englishman chases Russian submarines, Kaisa is stuck in Finland, a country friendly with the Soviet Union. Can they trust each other? Can their love go the distance? The English Heart is the first novel in the ‘unputdownable’ Nordic Heart Romance Series. If you liked An Officer and a Gentleman, or enjoy European fiction, you’ll love this stylish love story by the Finnish author Helena Halme. Pick up this heart-warming 1980s Nordic fiction title today! PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED AS 'THE ENGLISHMAN'

A Noble Pair of Brothers


Suzanne Downes - 2014
    When C. H. Underwood arrives in the village of Bracken Tor in the spring of 1820, he intends only to visit his brother, the vicar, and take a long rest from his work as a Classics tutor at Cambridge University. However, almost as soon as he arrives he finds himself intrigued by an unsolved murder, committed the year before. The headless corpse of a young woman was found in woods belonging to the local landowner and Magistrate, Sir Henry Wynter. Underwood finds the notion that the body lies in a grave marked “Unknown” to be abhorrent. He decides to use his free time to discover the identity of the victim – and if possible bring her killer to justice. His brother begs him to proceed with caution, as the murder had roused feelings of a controversial nature amongst the villagers. Before long he has uncovered not only the girl’s final movements before her death, but also the possibility of two other murders having taken place in Bracken Tor. His task is not made any less complicated by his developing relationship with Charlotte, one of Sir Henry’s daughters, and by the myriad characters he comes across in his investigation. The theory that the girl had been killed as some sort of barbaric ritual is only one of his difficulties, and when a young man arrives in the midst of a cricket match, claiming to be the victim’s husband, the whole village becomes privy to the fact that Underwood is attempting to solve the mystery. When the newcomer is shot through the heart whilst in Underwood’s company, he finds himself not only universally reviled for his interference, but also accused of murder himself. It takes all his ingenuity to extricate himself from the chaos he has caused, but he always has Verity Chapell, governess to the Wynter girls, to help him in his quest to find the murderer.

The Beauty Bride


Claire Delacroix - 2005
    And he has no choice but to see them all wed in haste.Lady Madeline’s heart is not for sale…especially not to a notorious outlaw like Rhys FitzHenry. Yet Madeline’s hand has been sold, to none other than this battle-weary warrior with a price on his head. A more dutiful maiden might cede to the Laird’s command and meekly accept her fate, but Madeline has never been obedient. She decides to run away, though she never dreams that Rhys will pursue her.She does not expect this taciturn man to woo her with fanciful stories, much less that each of his enthralling tales will reveal a scar upon his shielded soul. She never imagines that a man like Rhys could imperil her own heart while revealing so little of his own feelings. When Rhys’ past threatens his future, Madeline takes a leap of faith. She dares to believe him innocent—and risks her own life to pursue a passion more priceless than the rarest gem.

The Case of the Pig in the Evening Suit


R.R. Gall - 2013
    A far from ordinary detective. A topical thriller.The Case of the Pig in the Evening Suit is the first book in a trilogy of murder mystery thrillers.In the Scottish town of Dumfries, people come to Jin Johnstone with their problems - but this can lead to problems of his own.A missing son, a beautiful, enigmatic woman, a pig in an evening suit: it is the swift start to a deadly turn of events.

The Darkness Knows


Cheryl Honigford - 2013
    Big city. Brutal murder. Chicago, 1938. Late one night before the ten o’clock show, the body of a prominent radio actress is found dead in the station’s lounge. All the evidence points to murder…and one young, up-and-coming radio actress, Vivian Witchell, as the next victim. But Viv isn’t the type to leave her fate in the hands of others—she’s used to stealing the show. Alongside charming private detective Charlie Haverman, Vivian is thrust into a world of clues and motives, suspects and secrets. And with so much on the line, Viv finds her detective work doesn’t end when the “On-Air” lights go out…The gripping first novel in a new series from debut author Cheryl Honigford, The Darkness Knows is a thrilling mystery that evokes the drama and scandal of radio stardom in prewar Chicago.

Superior Justice


Tom Hilpert - 2011
    He's a tough-guy, thinks-he's-funny, rock-music-playing, gourmet-cooking, painfully-moderate-drinking, hard-boiled man of the cloth. He is even available for a bit of romance, under the right circumstances. Borden gets deeply involved in things he doesn't understand when one of his parishioners is arrested for a vigilante killing. The parishioner shares his true alibi with Borden, under the privileged status of religious confession. Knowing the man is innocent, Borden must prove it somehow, without divulging his secret. Along the way he uncovers a twisted series of murders and cover ups. Before it is all over, Borden himself has been bribed, beaten, shot, and arrested for murder. Even worse, he's fallen in love and had his heart broken.