Book picks similar to
Toward Night's End by M.H. Sargent
historical-fiction
mystery
fiction
historical
Surface Tension
Christine Kling - 2002
Working as she does in a man's world, Seychelle has to work twice as hard just to compete. Some have even called her reckless. In her view, she's just doing her job, salvaging boats and people's lives. FROM BOOKLIST –Kling packs her debut with nautical detail, interesting characters, a well-tangled plot, and detailed descriptions of both the natural beauty and rampant tackiness of southern Florida. Recommend to James W. Hall fans and to all who like outdoor adventure along with their murder and mayhem. Carrie Bissey Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved SURFACE TENSION Years ago Seychelle Sullivan had the chance to save a person’s life. But on that summer night in Florida, lost in a world of teenage resentment and loneliness, Seychelle was not able to feel any pain but her own. Today Seychelle captains her father’s forty-six-foot salvage boat out of Fort Lauderdale’s New River. But she’s never escaped that one moment when she could have made a difference and didn’t. On a steamy Florida morning Seychelle is answering a Mayday call launched from the five-million-dollar Broward yacht called Top Ten. Racing her fiercest competitor for salvage rights, Seychelle has a personal stake in this rescue: Her former lover, Neal Garrett, is the yacht’s hired skipper. But being the first to reach Top Ten leads to a bloody payday. A beautiful woman has been stabbed to death onboard. And Garrett is nowhere to be found. While the police treat her as the prime suspect, Seychelle begins to unravel a tangled plot centered on a strip club where “all the girls are tens on top.” Seychelle is connecting human predators with innocent victims, and a mystery on land with a mystery buried deep beneath the sea. Now, to find out what really happened to Neal Garrett, Seychelle must retrace his last steps, through two murders and a horrific crime wave, to a final confrontation with someone who may want to kill her . . . or be her salvation. About the Author Christine Kling is the author of five nautical thrillers and one anthology of short stories. She lives aboard her 33-foot sailboat Talespinner and travels wherever the wind and free wifi may take her.
The Zoo Crew
Dustin Stevens - 2012
A random assortment of individuals that came together in western Montana out of circumstance, stayed together by choice. Among them are Ajax, a gaming genius far from his native Boston. Kade, a forest firefighter that spends half his year roaming the blazing countryside, the other half perusing the local nightlife. Sage, registered nurse and proverbial mother hen for the group.At the helm is Drake Bell, displaced Southerner and third year law student. Fresh off a summer spent interning in legal hell, he is only mildly certain he even wants to continue down the path he’s on. Until an old friend comes to find him that is.Eight months pregnant and closing fast on her due date, the girl is scared. What was supposed to have been a simple surrogacy agreement has gone tragically wrong. Young girls like her are coming up missing or even worse. She’s on the run and has nobody else to turn to.If everything the girl is saying is true, some of the largest players in the Missoula community are involved. Armed only with his own trepidations and the loyalty of those around him, Drake must find a way to save his friend and his own growing skepticism before it’s too late.
Solstice
Damian Stevenson - 2013
Dana March is thrust into a game of shadows where nothing is what it seems and she must fight to preserve her own sanity in the face of overwhelming evidence that points to her having made up a story about an abduction. Dana’s sister recently married the charismatic leader of an experimental rural community, The Rainbow Collective, and Dana was on her way to visit with her new beau ‘Jack’ when he supposedly vanished from a roadside motel. Did Dana invent Jack to impress her sister? There is no trace of him and Dana is unable to produce any form of proof that he is real for the police. With no one to vouch for Jack’s existence, Dana must fight to preserve her grasp on reality while playing detective in an environment that suggests civilization is a thin veneer over man’s deepest, darkest impulses. ‘Solstice’ is a gripping, provocative page-turner that will leave you guessing the truth until the very end.
Farthing
Jo Walton - 2006
Lucy is a minor daughter in one of those families; her parents were both leading figures in the group that overthrew Churchill and negotiated peace with Herr Hitler eight years before.Despite her parents' evident disapproval, Lucy is married — happily — to a London Jew. It was therefore quite a surprise to Lucy when she and her husband David found themselves invited to the retreat. It's even more startling when, on the retreat's first night, a major politician of the Farthing set is found gruesomely murdered, with abundant signs that the killing was ritualistic.It quickly becomes clear to Lucy that she and David were brought to the retreat in order to pin the murder on him. Major political machinations are at stake, including an initiative in Parliament, supported by the Farthing set, to limit the right to vote to university graduates.But whoever's behind the murder, and the frame-up, didn't reckon on the principal investigator from Scotland Yard being a man with very private reasons for sympathizing with outcasts… and looking beyond the obvious.As the trap slowly shuts on Lucy and David, they begin to see a way out — a way fraught with peril in a darkening world.
Curse of the Kingsmans
Ethan Somerville - 2010
She wants to see the sights of the great city, but her parents hope she will ensnare a rich nobleman for a husband. On an outing to Newgate market with her cousins, she becomes separated from them and is lured into an alley by a gang of ruffians. She is saved by a tall, gallant stranger who escorts her safely home. Handsome, heroic and aristocratic, Henry Kingsman seems the ideal match for her. But then she learns that Henry is in fact the Fourth Earl of Berwick, a notorious rake from a dark and dissolute family. He is rumoured to deal with smugglers, and his ancestry riddled with incest, insanity and murder. Beth’s father forbids her from seeing him again. However, Beth refuses to believe that Henry is as bad as his forebears, and starts seeing him in secret. When her father finds out he gives her such a beating, that she feels her only choice is to elope with Henry to his forbidding castle in Northumberland – the same bleak fortress where his family committed their loathsome deeds… Also available: Curse of the Kingsmans 2: The Devil's Diary - a far darker and more erotic tale about pirates. Curse of the Kingsmans 3: Escape of Absolon - Aidan's own son Absolon is recruited to solve a mystery. Other books by Emma Daniels and Ethan Somerville: Return to Atlantis - a high school student and a rock star travel to the lost city of Atlantis for the adventure of a lifetime Shadow Warrior - a detective thriller with more than a hint of demon romance Empire of Ice - a dark urban fantasy about a secret Nazi superman formula with the power to create vampires. I married an Alien - a time-travel romance in which a dowdy middle-aged woman suddenly finds herself catapulted in the future, into a whole new body and life. I Married a Time-Traveller - the thrilling sequel to I Married an Alien, in which an introverted mad scientist is granted a whole new lease on life when he wakes up in the body of a gorgeous Terron.
Sara's Game
Ernie Lindsey - 2012
His car was found. He wasn't. Unbelievably, the police report said, "No foul play suspected." There were a few unreliable sightings over the following months, but little else.Now, on the last day before summer break, her three children have gone missing from their schools, all at the same time.And the note under her windshield wiper asks one simple question: Are you ready to play the game?
The Unwilling
John Hart - 2021
Gibby's older brothers have already been to war. One died there. The other came back misunderstood and hard, a decorated killer now freshly released from a three-year stint in prison.Jason won't speak of the war or of his time behind bars, but he wants a relationship with the younger brother he hasn't known for years. Determined to make that connection, he coaxes Gibby into a day at the lake: long hours of sunshine and whisky and older women.But the day turns ugly when the four encounter a prison transfer bus on a stretch of empty road. Beautiful but drunk, one of the women taunts the prisoners, leading to a riot on the bus. The woman finds it funny in the moment, but is savagely murdered soon after.Given his violent history, suspicion turns first to Jason; but when the second woman is kidnapped, the police suspect Gibby, too. Determined to prove Jason innocent, Gibby must avoid the cops and dive deep into his brother's hidden life, a dark world of heroin, guns and outlaw motorcycle gangs.What he discovers there is a truth more bleak than he could have imagined: not just the identity of the killer and the reasons for Tyra's murder, but the forces that shaped his brother in Vietnam, the reason he was framed, and why the most dangerous man alive wants him back in prison.This is crime fiction at its most raw, an exploration of family and the past, of prison and war and the indelible marks they leave.
The Color of Greed
Jack Thompson - 2012
A depraved secret. The ruthless Chinese mafia. Murder is never simple.When the young husband of a wealthy California heiress is found dead on his yacht, private investigator Raja Williams and his tech-savvy partner, Vinny Moore, head to Los Angeles. Their investigation leads to a human trafficking ring, the Chinese mafia, and a cover-up that may go as high as the governor's mansion.As more bodies pile up, Raja and Vinny find themselves targeted by a powerful enemy with much to hide, and must race to uncover the truth before everyone involved, including the two of them, ends up dead.Brilliant. Fearless. Unstoppable. Raja Williams is a private detective who is relentless in his pursuit of justice. Neither the dark, tragic anti-hero nor the James Bond super-hero type, Raja uses his intuitive genius and penetrating empathy to unravel mysteries. His sixth sense for evil gives him headaches and steers him straight into trouble. Readers have described him as "a cross between Dirk Pitt and Alex Cross."Raja's partner, Vinny Moore, is a gorgeous hipster geek who prefers hacking computers to haute couture. Vinny once worked for the U.S. government until she purposely made herself more trouble than they could handle so they would cut her loose. She loves to push Raja's buttons with the hipster lingo she is constantly picking up on the internet. Despite her teasing, Vinny is Raja's best friend.WHAT READERS ARE SAYING:"Best detective since Sherlock Holmes!""I love Raja Williams. He is a brilliant private investigator with an amazing heart.""Crime solving and kick ass...totally enjoyable way to spend time indoors.""This book had me from chapter one and I couldn't put it down. It's fast-paced, full of action, and dripping with mystery.""Hats off to Jack Thompson for a great thriller that was good clean fun.""I've always enjoyed mysteries, but this novel has something special, a certain joie de vivre.""The pace moved quickly, when necessary, to create pulse quickening sequences, and slowed down, when appropriate, to delve into more technical aspects of the investigation.... I'm so happy to have found another author, and character series, to add to my list of must read authors!""I really couldn't put this one down, and read it straight through from start to finish. I see a film in the future."If you like action-packed, fast-paced mysteries with unexpected twists and turns, then you'll love the Raja Williams series.Grab your copy of The Color of Greed and dive right in.
Garden of Stones
Sophie Littlefield - 2013
Within weeks, she and her mother, Miyako, are ripped from their home, rounded up along with thousands of other innocent Japanese-Americans and taken to the Manzanar prison camp. Buffeted by blistering heat and choking dust, Lucy and Miyako must endure the harsh living conditions of the camp. Corruption and abuse creep into every corner of Manzanar, eventually ensnaring beautiful, vulnerable Miyako. Ruined and unwilling to surrender her daughter to the same fate, Miyako soon breaks. Her final act of desperation will stay with Lucy forever...and spur her to sins of her own. Bestselling author Sophie Littlefield weaves a powerful tale of stolen innocence and survival that echoes through generations, reverberating between mothers and daughters. It is a moving chronicle of injustice, triumph and the unspeakable acts we commit in the name of love. "Littlefield has a gift for pacing...page-turning action and evocative, sensual, harrowing descriptions." -Publishers Weekly
Black Out
John Lawton - 1995
Detective-Sergeant Troy starts with the clue of a neatly dismembered corpse leading him into a world of stateless refugees, military intelligence, and corruption all the way to the top of Allied High Command.
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.
Germania
Harald Gilbers - 2013
All of the victims are linked to the Nazi party. But according to one eyewitness account, the perpetrator is not an opponent of Hitler's regime, but rather a loyal Nazi.Jewish detective Richard Oppenheimer, once a successful investigator for the Berlin police, is reactivated by the Gestapo and forced onto the case. Oppenheimer is not just concerned with catching the killer and helping others survive, but also his own survival. Worst of all, solving this case is what will certainly put him in the most jeopardy. With no other choice but to futher his investigation, he feverishly searches for answers, and a way out of this dangerous game.
Full Dark House
Christopher Fowler - 2003
In Full Dark House, Christopher Fowler tells the story of both their first and last case--and how along the way the unlikely pair of crime fighters changed the face of detection.A present-day bombing rips through London and claims the life of eighty-year-old detective Arthur Bryant. For his partner John May, it means the end of a partnership that lasted over half-a-century and an eerie echo back to the Blitz of World War II when they first met. Desperately searching for clues to the killer's identity, May finds his old friend's notes of their very first case and becomes convinced that the past has returned...with a killing vengeance.It begins when a dancer in a risque new production of Orpheus in Hell is found without her feet. Suddenly, the young detectives are plunged in a bizarre gothic mystery that will push them to their limits--and beyond. For in a city shaken by war, a faceless killer is stalking London's theaters, creating his own kind of sinister drama. And it will take Arthur Bryant's unorthodox techniques and John May's dogged police work to catch a criminal whose ability to escape detection seems almost supernatural--a murderer who even decades later seems to have claimed the life of one of them...and is ready to claim the other.Filled with startling twists, unforgettable characters, and a mystery that will keep you guessing, Full Dark House is a witty, heartbreaking, and all-too-human thriller about the hunt for an inhuman killer.
30 Pieces of Silver
Carolyn McCray - 2010
John the Baptist's bones inscribed in ancient Greek. A dark secret carried from the foot of the crucifixion. Can science solve the world's greatest mystery?
Younger
Suzanne Munshower - 2015
Desperate to prove she is still relevant, the fiftysomething accepts a shady job offer from Pierre Barton, secretive billionaire owner of Barton Pharmaceuticals. Isolated in a facility outside London, she agrees to test a new top-secret product guaranteed to make her look thirty years younger. Anna is starting to look on the outside the way she feels on the inside: ageless. But she soon discovers that her predecessor died under mysterious circumstances, leading her to research just who stands to gain—and lose—with this miraculous product. When Pierre drops dead in front of her, she takes off on a dangerous journey across Europe hoping to stay alive long enough to uncover the truth.With the hard-won knowledge that younger isn’t always better, Anna is determined to escape and reclaim her life before it’s too late.