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The Christmas Elf by Carolyn Ridder Aspenson
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Death Master
Anna-Marie Morgan - 2012
Her sobs flecked his shirt with tears, which now flowed freely, their salty water aggravating the wounds accumulated on her naked flesh over the endless days she had been held captive. The end must be near now and she was so sure that it must end. She tried in vain one last time to wrench free her hands, but the bindings held firm. Knees, so long on the floor, would not have held her up anyway - had she tried to run. He was calm; she was wretched. Instinctively, she pulled her thighs to her abdomen to protect her unborn child. His hands tightened, her eyes widened - pleading. His pressure did not relent and slowly everything faded…After months of mental and physical therapy, Yvonne Giles, an Oxford DI, is back at work and that's just how she likes it. So when she is asked to hunt the serial killer responsible for taking apart young women, the DI jumps at the chance but hides the fact that she is suffering debilitating flashbacks. The victims appear to meet their murderer willingly, telling their families they're going on vacation. No one sees them again until their macabre death scenes. A quirk of the killer's signature is the food and wine stains he leaves on the backs of the girls.Yvonne is told to work with Tasha Phillips, an in-her-face, criminal psychologist. The DI's previous experience of working with a profiler involved having a case thrown out by the Crown Prosecution Service for reasons of entrapment. She's not enamoured with the idea of working with one again. Tasha has a lot to prove. The DI has a lot to get over.A tentative link with a 20 year-old cold case brings her closer to the truth, but leaves her staring her own mortality directly in the face...
Mrs. Fix It Mysteries Books 6-10
Belle Knudson - 2016
Her twin boys, Jason and Jared, have graduated college and moved back to town, and her Mrs. Fit It business is going strong. It would seem life couldn't be better. Until... NAILED DOWN MURDER Kate discovers the local baker dead in her car. It's night. There's no one around. And Cookie Halpert didn't die of natural causes. PAINT IT DEAD When a local ex-con with deep roots in this town winds up dead in the parking lot of Daisy's diner, a world of trouble emerges that once again pits Kate against her Police Chief husband. CLAMPED ON MURDER Another dead body turns up in Rock Ridge, this time in a quaint room at the local inn. Rather than call the police, the innkeeper, Amelia knows just who can fix this: Kate Flaherty. TOOL KIT CLUES When a plucky reporter by the name of Jenna Johansen is shot dead, it would seem the reporters aren't just covering the news, but causing it. And Kate will have to use every tool in her kit to catch the killer. WRENCHED IN MURDER The prison warden, Grant Conover has been shot in the head and when Kate barges into his office ready to demand answers she knows he can supply, she is struck with the irreparable truth: her son, Jason might very well end up behind bars.
Campbell Agency
Clara Kendrick - 2017
Lots of suspense, mystery, and romance. No cliffhangers! Book One Gwen Grange doesn’t exist, as far as the world is concerned. She disappeared after her father was accused of horrendous crimes, and has been presumed dead. In reality, she’s simply living off the grid, surviving on her own. But when she comes across Jason O’Neil of Campbell’s Agency in the unlikeliest of places, she’ll be forced to come to terms with what happened to her family and become a functioning part of society once again. Book Two Bridget Barden’s greatest joy in her life is her son, Wyatt, despite the fact that his father died suspiciously after getting involved in the wrong investigation. The last thing she ever expects to do is get involved with another private investigator, but when her connection to Gwen Grange puts her in danger and her home is set on fire as a message to the Campbell Agency men, she finds herself relying on the head of the organization, Alex Campbell, to keep her and her son safe. Book Three Caleb Robinson has been charged with looking after his best friend’s sister while she works to recover from a difficult past. The problem is, he’s falling for her fast. But when his health gets in the way, he’ll doubt whether or not he’s right for the woman who has already overcome so much. Only her persistence and a case that helps him realize what’s most important in life can help him get past his doubts and accept love. Book Four Mark Thompson is determined to track down the man who has for so long been plaguing Campbell’s Agency, and having a source on the police force is a great asset. He’s eager to help Rachel when she asks, but the chemistry between them starts to get distracting. What he could never have predicted is that helping her with her own secret investigation might just crack his own wide open. Book Five Sylvia Lyons is a freelance cartoonist who works in Jackson Square in the historical district of New Orleans. Her boyfriend, Ken, works as a security guard, but he doesn’t tell her much more than that until the day he drags her to Campbell’s Agency where he proceeds to confess the fact that he’s gotten in over his head with the worst criminal possible. Their unhealthy relationship explodes, and Sylvia commits to helping Campbell’s Agency clean up the mess Ken created. When Spencer Nichols takes her under his personal protection, Sylvia is grateful, but both of them are wary of the intense connection between them and distracted by the threat on all of their lives.
Letters From The Attic: Step behind the scenes of the 'Jack Rogan Mysteries'
Gabriel Farago - 2013
Step behind the scenes of the Jack Rogan Mysteries and discover the intriguing world of an international historical thriller writer.As a young boy, Gabriel Farago was given the key to his grandfather’s attic. This magical place opened a world of literature, music and history to the inquisitive boy. Gabriel spent many hours in the attic listening to his grandfather’s records, reading his books, and trying to unravel his cryptic journals which many years later inspired the writing of The Empress Holds The Key.What goes on in the mind of a thriller writer? Where do authors draw their inspiration from? Becoming a writer doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It is a journey in itself that provides the material for the stories, and the rich tapestry of characters and settings that bring those stories so vividly to life.
Mandarin Yellow
Steven M. Roth - 2009
Roth's intricate murder mystery - Mandarin Yellow - as Socrates investigates the burglary and attempts to recover the pen, all in an effort to curry favor with his lover's estranged father who is the leader of a Washington and Shanghai based criminal Triad. In a search that takes him from Georgetown to Chinatown and elsewhere in Washington, Socrates finds himself threatened, physically assaulted, suspected of having committed murder, jailed for a time, and constantly confronted by conflicts arising out of his three disparate cultures. Yet he is neither daunted nor deterred by these obstacles. Instead, Socrates draws upon his deep knowledge of vintage fountain pens, Chinese history, and the Mandarin language to puzzle out the complex motives behind the burglary and murders, until he finally uncovers the identities of the criminals and makes a discovery that forever changes his life and the lives of everyone else involved.
Murder in Hatterton Crow
Ormolu Mockingbird - 2013
Her father is having one of his 'prescient turns' again, her mother is planning a trip to Spain with her informal ladies' society, and to cap it all the village baker, Ben Tonkins, has died, which means that Gretchen will be bereft of her favourite dense, jammy sponge cakes. And there is something entirely fishy about Ben's death that sits ill with the intrepid mortician.And what's worse is that Gretchen's solemn and sensible boss, the honey-voiced Carmel, seems to have come down with a case of the crazies, botching the embalming process on Ben, and getting wildly smashed on vodka before bashing both Gretchen and another villager, Rosie Tawber, with a cricket bat.But Gretchen knows Carmel, and she knows that cricket was never her game, so she sets out with the help and hindrance of the villagers to discover who, exactly, is the murderer in their midst - and what could be their motive in this sleepy corner of England.
Sinister Cinnamon Buns
J. Lee Mitchell - 2018
Recipes included in each book. In Castle Creek West Virginia, rivalries run deep, but has this tiny town’s biggest rivalry finally led to murder? When widely disliked socialite Macie Dixon is found dead on the set of her cooking show, suspicion falls on her rival, elderly family matriarch, and owner of the Red Herring Inn, Liddy Lou Cormier. As the investigation heats up, friendships will be tested, and long buried secrets will come to light. With the evidence stacking up against Liddy Lou, her granddaughter Q’Bita will risk her relationship with Sheriff Andy Hansen, and her own life, to clear her Nana’s name. It will take every ounce of Q’Bita’s culinary cunning, and a little help from her best friend Jamie and brother-in-law Rene, to figure out who’s behind the sinister cinnamon buns that killed Macie Dixon. Sign up for the Red Herring Inn newsletter using the link on the About J Lee Mitchell page to get access to contests, freebies, and an inside look at upcoming books. New subscribers will receive BONUS CONTENT as a thank you for signing up.
The Senator
Ken Fite - 2016
Ex-Navy SEAL and federal agent Blake Jordan sets out to rescue his friend and mentor along with his partner, Agent Jami Davis. Against all odds, Jordan must untangle the web of confusion to find the senator before it's too late.In this action-packed debut novel, Ken Fite has written a roller-coaster of a thriller sure to keep you turning the pages late into the night.
Flinder's Field
D.M. Mitchell - 2013
Nobody has the faintest idea where she’s gone. She was wearing only a light skirt and T-shirt, didn’t take anything with her, no suitcase, nothing. Simply went out one dark evening and never returned. Some say she went off with another man, because there’d already been talk in the small Somerset village of Petheram that she’s that type of woman – attractive, flirty with it, dressed too provocatively. But her husband, Bruce Tredwin, doesn’t believe a word of the callous whisperings of the locals as they gossip about his outsider wife. So he never gives up searching for her. A fortnight later on a stormy winter’s night he finds her. She’s naked in a place called Flinder’s Field, wandering aimlessly, badly bruised and in total shock. But what she says to him will astound everyone. She says she’s been abducted by aliens, and she was never to be the same again, with tragic consequences… Forty years later and George Lee is coming back to Petheram, the village of his birth. His estranged father has died and there are things his mother would like him to sort out. George hates the village, couldn’t wait to get out and make a life for himself as a writer of cheap and gory thrillers. He notices that Adam Tredwin, Sylvia Tredwin’s son, has also returned to Petheram. As children, the two used to be friends, briefly, before Adam’s father was killed in the 1980s by a hit-and-run driver and Sylvia took him away from the village. But it’s when George begins to tidy out his father’s loft and slowly begins to learn more details about Sylvia Tredwin’s disappearance that he starts to uncover dark secrets and hidden truths – discoveries that will peel back the decades to reveal a labyrinthine world of madness, jealousies, deceit, lies and murder. He little knows his idle quest to find out the truth behind Sylvia Tredwin’s abduction will have profound and dangerous consequences for all concerned.
The St. Valentine's Day Cookie Massacre
Elisabeth Crabtree - 2014
What begins as a run of the mill, albeit tasty, assignment turns into something much more dangerous when one of the Cookie Jar’s employees is poisoned. Now Kat is chasing the biggest story of her life, while trying to catch the eye of her handsome editor and avoid becoming the killer’s next victim. A cozy novella: approximately 44,000 words
Christmas, a Cat and Cardiac Arrest
N.L. Cameron - 2017
After being closed for six months, The Barrell Inn has reopened, just in time for the Holidays and thanks to Allie Garrett. Met by both resistance and open arms from the locals, Allie attempts to fill the big shoes her Great Aunt left behind.
Dead Money
Rodney Hobson - 2013
The murderer must be a resident of Killiney Court.
A Caffeine Conundrum
Angela Ruth Strong - 2018
Sassy city girl Tandy Brandt moves to the small town of Grace Springs to start a coffee shop, never imagining she'll be competing with local beauty queen Marissa Alexander and her dream of running a tea house. Unfortunately, the current store owner dies before selling the location to either of them, and they both become murder suspects. The unlikely pair team up in an attempt to discover the real killer, though with the secrets in Tandy's past and Marissa's infamous clumsiness, they could be their own worst enemies. Despite their differences, they follow clues to question a sweet, apple pie baking antique store owner, a GQ Santa in the retirement center, and a hipster millionaire with no social skills. Will they be able to figure out whodunit and prove their innocence before one of them goes to jail...or worse?
The Capsule Killer Box Set Books 1-3
W.L. Knightly - 2020
With a history of trouble, including bad relationships, alcohol, and ditching college, finishing up her criminology degree seemed like the best way to start.While catching up back home with summer courses, she joins a study group to keep on track, but when her friends convince her to go geocaching, a simple trip will shake up her entire world. When the only treasure they find is a human bone, it will send her on a mission fueled by personal trauma to figure out what happened to the victim.Will she find the killer, or uncover secrets that have been long buried?Unearth the EvidenceWith the investigation into Kara Lockland’s death causing a stir, Suede Harris has a hunch that everything happening in Summer Grove is connected.After requesting to shadow Special Agent Nate Hawthorn on the case, she hopes they figure out whose killing young women and why Kara ended up in the lake before her friend Graham loses his freedom for a crime she’s not sure he committed.With more bodies being found, each uncovering more clues, will they nab the suspect before he kills again?Or will they only lead to more questions?Harboring the TruthNow that Special Agent Nate Hawthorn is busy determining if their latest case was murder or suicide, and is left dealing with the backlash of Connor Levine’s release, Suede Harris finds information that could lead to a potential motive for their killer.But will she share it with Nate, or try to find answers on her own?While sorting out the timeline, Suede learns secrets that could not only land her in hot water with the Sheriff, but change everything she trusts and believes.When betrayal cuts too close to home, Suede is forced to see just who has her back and who would leave her hanging.
It's a Dunder-Bull Wife
Karen Cantwell - 2011
Everything in Dunder-Bull is five-star rated, including the wives. As Barb puts it, “Dunder-Bull Wives make Stepford Wives look like couch potatoes.” Succumbing to the need to “measure-up,” Barb decides to prepare a grand and luscious Christmas feast for a party of twenty. The problem? Barb can’t cook her way out of a turkey-roaster bag. In usual Barbara Marr fashion, chaos ensues. Will she survive? Will her family fall victim to salmonella food poisoning? Will Martha Stewart ridicule her publicly?A Barbara Marr Holiday short story, sure to tickle your funny bone and touch your heart at the same time.All profits from the sales of this short story go to the charity, Make-a-Wish Foundation.