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Herald Square by Jefferson Flanders


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The Point of Death


Peter Tonkin - 2001
    The opening night of ‘Romeo and Juliet’. But it is not just the young lovers in the play who are star-crossed. Mercutio is found murdered in the middle of the play - but it is real, not stage, blood that flows from his body. Tom Musgrove, is hired by the theatre owners to solve the murder case as quickly and quietly as possible. The theatre has only just reopened after two years of plagues, and they can’t afford a scandal on their doorstep. As Tom plunges into the mean streets of Elizabethan London he soon realises he has jumped blindly into a web of murderous intrigue, which has already claimed the lives of Kit Marlowe and Francis Walsingham. As the shattered remnants of England’s first Secret Service split into two lethally opposed camps, the blood begins to flow from the stinking sewers of Southwark to the gilded halls of Westminster. Can Musgrove track down the murderer and solve the mystery? Or will he end up being the one hunted to The Point of Death? ‘The Point of Death’ is a thrilling Elizabethan murder mystery, full of intrigue and suspense.

Cleopatra's Dagger


Carole Lawrence
    Elizabeth van den Broek is the only female reporter at the Herald, the city’s most popular newspaper. Then she and her bohemian friend Carlotta Ackerman find a woman’s body wrapped like a mummy in a freshly dug hole in Central Park—the intended site of an obelisk called Cleopatra’s Needle. The macabre discovery takes Elizabeth away from the society pages to follow an investigation into New York City’s darkest shadows.When more bodies turn up, each tied to Egyptian lore, Elizabeth is onto a headline-making scoop more sinister than she could have imagined. Her reporting has readers spellbound, and each new clue implicates New York’s richest and most powerful citizens. And a serial killer is watching every headline.Now a madman with an indecipherable motive is coming after Elizabeth and everyone she loves. She wants a good story? She may have to die to get it.

Under a Gilded Moon


Joy Jordan-Lake - 2020
    The country’s grandest example of privilege, it symbolizes the aspirations of its owner and the dreams of a girl, just as driven, who lives in its shadow.Kerry MacGregor’s future is derailed when, after two years in college in New York City, family obligations call her home to the beautiful Appalachians. She is determined to distance herself from the opulence she sees rising in the Blue Ridge Mountains, however close its reach. Her family’s land is among the last pieces required to complete the Biltmore Estate. But something more powerful than an ambitious Vanderbilt heir could change Kerry’s fate as, one by one, more outsiders descend on the changing landscape—a fugitive from Sicily, a reporter chasing a groundbreaking story, a debutante tainted by scandal, and a conservationist prepared to put anyone at risk to stoke the resentment of the locals.As Kerry finds herself caught in a war between wealth and poverty, innocence and corruption, she must navigate not only her own pride and desperation to survive but also the temptations of fortune and the men who control it.

Churchill's Secret Messenger


Alan Hlad - 2021
    Since her parents were killed in a bombing raid, Rose Teasdale has spent more hours than usual in Room 60, working double shifts, growing accustomed to the burnt scent of the Prime Minister’s cigars permeating the stale air. Winning the war is the only thing that matters, and she will gladly do her part. And when Rose’s fluency in French comes to the attention of Churchill himself, it brings a rare yet dangerous opportunity.Rose is recruited for the Special Operations Executive, a secret British organization that conducts espionage in Nazi-occupied Europe. After weeks of grueling training, Rose parachutes into France with a new codename: Dragonfly. Posing as a cosmetics saleswoman in Paris, she ferries messages to and from the Resistance, knowing that the slightest misstep means capture or death.Soon Rose is assigned to a new mission with Lazare Aron, a French Resistance fighter who has watched his beloved Paris become a shell of itself, with desolate streets and buildings draped in Swastikas. Since his parents were sent to a German work camp, Lazare has dedicated himself to the cause with the same fervor as Rose. Yet Rose’s very loyalty brings risks as she undertakes a high-stakes prison raid, and discovers how much she may have to sacrifice to justify Churchill’s faith in her . . .

The Last Orphan


Jeffrey Lowder - 2019
    Two years after his mother and father were murdered in an attack on their California-bound wagon train, little Tommy Dunning crouches in an old root cellar, quivering with cold—and raw fear. Somewhere just above him, men are searching, army men who want to take him away from the only home he remembers. Local settler Eva Dunning believes with every thread of her being that God delivered the orphan to be raised by her. She watches and prays the soldiers will not find the child. But forces beyond her control are closing in. Major James Carleton has orders to collect the boy, Eva’s husband Bennet is threatening to expose their secret, and back in Arkansas, the aging Ruby Seddon is hiring a ruthless gunslinger to help rescue her grandson, no matter the cost in blood or gold. The Last Orphan is the journey of a precocious five-year old and two strong women, each of whom believes God has chosen her to raise the boy in love and the “correct” faith tradition.

The Godmothers


Camille Aubray - 2021
    Amie, a beautiful and dreamy French girl from upstate New York, escapes an abusive husband after falling in love with Johnny, the oldest of the brothers. Lucy, a tough-as-nails Irish nurse, ran away from a strict girls' home and marries Frankie, the sensuous middle son. And the glamorous Petrina, the family’s only daughter, graduates with honors from Barnard College despite a past trauma that nearly caused a family scandal.All four women become godmothers to one another’s children, finding hope and shelter in this prosperous family and their sumptuous Greenwich Village home, and enjoying New York life with its fine dining, opulent department stores and sophisticated nightclubs.But the women’s secret pasts lead to unforeseen consequences and betrayals that threaten to unravel all their carefully laid plans. And when their husbands are forced to leave them during the second World War, the Godmothers must unexpectedly contend with notorious gangsters like Frank Costello and Lucky Luciano who run the streets of New York City.Refusing to merely imitate the world of men, the four Godmothers learn to put aside their differences and grudges so that they can work together to protect their loved ones, and to find their own unique paths to success, love, forgiveness, and the futures they’ve always dreamed of.

The Widow of Pale Harbor


Hester Fox - 2019
    Gabriel Stone is desperate to escape the ghosts that haunt him in Massachusetts after his wife's death, so he moves to Pale Harbor, Maine, where there is a vacancy for a new minister. Gideon and his late wife had always dreamed of building their own church, and Pale Harbor is the perfect opportunity.But not all is as it seems in the sleepy town of Pale Harbor. Strange, unsettling things have been happening, and the townspeople know that only one person can be responsible: Sophronia Carver, a widow who lives with a spinster maid in the decaying Castle Carver on the edge of town. Sophronia is a recluse, rumored to be a witch who killed her husband.When Gabriel meets her, he knows the charming, beautiful woman cannot be guilty of anything. Together, Gabriel and Sophronia realize that the mysterious events have one thing in common: they all contain an element from the wildly popular stories of Mr. Edgar Allan Poe. And when the events escalate to murder, Gabriel and Sophronia must find the real killer, before it's too late for them both.

Operation Underpants


Mark A. Biggs - 2017
    It’s the life in your years.” – Abraham Lincoln.Max and Olivia met as teenagers on covert operations during WW2. After the war they married and under the guise of a doddering vicar and his wife, continued a life of secrets as cold war spies. Now 87 years old, left and forgotten in nursing home, they are called back into action. With the fate of London and much of the world hanging in the balance, somehow they must escape and travel to the United Kingdom.There are six books in the Max and Olivia series, captivating espionage adventures of quirky seniors.

The Thin Wall


R. Cyril West - 2014
    Without warning, Russian tanks have crossed the frontier and are pouring into the city. The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia has begun. Arriving with the troops is Colonel Grigori Dal, a seasoned KGB officer and coldblooded killer. While the country slips into chaos, Dal uses the fighting as cover to apprehend an American prisoner of war from a military prison in Prague. Within days, only a cursed woman and a troubled war hero will stand between him and protecting the Cold War’s darkest secret: proof U.S. servicemen were secretly transferred to the Soviet Union.R. Cyril West’s award winning novel of tragic love, suspense, intrigue, and the dangerous machinations of the human heart—The Thin Wall.*BRAG Medallion Award

Deliberate Duplicity (Detective Sasha Frank Mysteries, #1)


David Rohlfing
    A complicated web of clues leaves Sasha and his team with more questions than answers: What's the killer's motive? And how are the victims connected to one another? As the story begins to unravel, the ordinarily calm and collected Sasha begins to feel the immense pressure of the case. Will he be able to solve the mystery before time runs out and bring justice to all who were affected?

Only Killers and Thieves


Paul Howarth - 2018
    When the rain finally comes, it’s a miracle. For a moment, the scrubland flourishes and the remote swimming hole fills. Returning home from an afternoon swim, fourteen-year-old Tommy and sixteen-year-old Billy McBride discover a scene of heartbreaking carnage: their dogs dead in the yard, their hardworking father and mother shot to death, and their precocious younger sister unconscious and severely bleeding from a wound to her gut. The boys believe the killer is their former Aboriginal stockman, and, desperate to save Mary, they rush her to John Sullivan, the wealthiest landowner in the region and their father’s former employer, who promises to take care of them.Eager for retribution, the distraught brothers fall sway to Sullivan, who persuades them to join his posse led by the Queensland Native Police, an infamous arm of British colonial power whose sole purpose is the “dispersal” of indigenous Australians to “protect” settler rights. The group is led by the intimidating inspector Edmund Noone, a dangerous and pragmatic officer whose intellect and ruthlessness both fascinates and unnerves the watchful Tommy. Riding for days across the barren outback, the group is determined to find the perpetrators they insist are guilty, for reasons neither of the brothers truly understands. It is a harsh and horrifying journey that will have a devastating impact on Tommy, tormenting him for the rest of his life—and hold enduring consequences for a young country struggling to come into its own.Set in a period of Australian and British history as raw and relevant as that of the wild frontier of nineteenth-century America, Only Killers and Thieves is an unforgettable story of family, guilt, empire, race, manhood, and faith that combines the insightfulness of Philipp Meyer’s The Son with the atmospheric beauty of Amanda Coplin’s The Orchardist and the raw storytelling power of Ian McGuire’s The North Water.

Making Payments: An American Indian, the Vietnam War, Laos, and the Hmong


John Oventile - 2012
    But this wasn’t science fiction; this was a journey of harsh reality, pain, hunger, danger, and death. George Downwind, an American Indian, an Ojibwa, grew up in the isolation of a twentieth-century reservation. But instead of succumbing to the alcoholism and hopelessness around him, his outlook was shaped by the myths and legends of an earlier time. From countless stories told by old men around campfires, he thought he knew what life had been like for his people in the time before the white man. In his imagination he lived this life, passed the tests of manhood and tasted battle. When the end came he experienced the depression of watching his people be defeated and disintegrate as a culture. To the west of the battlefields in Vietnam during the 1960’s and early ‘70’s, across the border in the neutral country of Laos, another war raged. This war was seldom mentioned in the news and when it was, it was referred to as the “Secret War.” Few people heard of it and fewer still knew who was doing the fighting. It was the Hmong, a minority ethnic group who had survived for a thousand years in their mountain sanctuaries through slash and burn agriculture, and a resolute adherence to their culture. They valued freedom, family, and wanted nothing more than to be left alone. They were a primitive people without a written language living in a primitive land. And, just as with the American Indian tribes, each of the Hmong clans had their own approach to survival. Some fought, some forged alliances, and other just tried to say out of the way. Grievously injured in the chaos of battle in Vietnam in the early days of that war, George Downwind, a private in the U.S. Army, was rescued from certain death and nursed back to heath by one of these clans. During his time with them he experienced the full brutality of the life they lived—the same life that had been the fate of his ancestors. When it came time for him to leave Laos and the Hmong, he had a debt to repay. He owed his life to the Hmong and vowed to make the payments.

Comrade Koba


Robert Littell - 2020
    One day after following a passageway, Leon meets Koba, an old man whose apartment is protected by several guards. Koba is a high-ranking Soviet officer with troubling insight into the thoughts and machinations of Comrade Stalin.   Through encounters between a naive boy and a paranoid tyrant, Robert Littell creates in Comrade Koba a nuanced portrayal of the Soviet dictator, showing his human side and his simultaneous total disregard for and ignorance of the suffering he inflicted on the Russian people. The charm and spontaneity of young Leon make him an irresistible character—and not unlike Holden Caulfield, whom he admits to identifying with—caught in the spider’s web of the story woven by this enigmatic old man.

24 + 1 Christmas Tales: Butterfly Adventures in Santa's Secret City


Alexander Ruth - 2011
    They are accompanied by their friends the three electric blue fireflies and the fearful phoenix. Whether it be helping to check wish lists, granting a white Christmas or manufacturing magical Christmas presents, the butterflies can be found everywhere: their mission is to make Christmas bigger, better and more perfect.

The Renegade Queen


Eva Flynn - 2015
    Disgusted by war, he sought a new world. She was the first women to run for President, campaigning before women could vote.He was the Hero of Vicksburg, disillusioned with the government after witnessing the devastating carnage of the Civil War.Their social revolution attracted the unwanted who were left out of the new wealth: the freed slaves, the new immigrants, and women.Who were they?This is the true story of Victoria Woodhull and the love of her life, James Blood. Adored by the poor, hated by the powerful, forced into hiding during their lifetimes and erased from history after death, the legend of their love lives on. It’s 1869 and Victoria has a choice to make. She can stay in an abusive marriage and continue to work as a psychic, or she can take the offer of support from handsome Civil War general James Blood and set about to turn society upside down. Victoria chooses revolution.But revolutions are expensive, and Victoria needs money. James introduces Victoria to one of the wealthiest man in America”"Commodore Vanderbilt. Along with her loose and scandalous sister, Tennessee, Victoria manipulates Vanderbilt and together they conspire to crash the stock market”"and profit from it. Victoria then parlays her fortune into the first female-owned brokerage firm. When her idol Susan B. Anthony publishes scandalous rumors about Victoria’s past, Victoria enters into a fierce rivalry with Susan to control the women’s movement. James supports Victoria's efforts despite his deep fears that she may lose more than the battle. She might lose part of herself.Victoria starts her own newspaper, testifies to Congress, and even announces her candidacy for President. But when Victoria adopts James's radical ideas and free love beliefs, she ignites new, bruising, battles with Susan B. Anthony and the powerful Reverend Henry Beecher. These skirmishes turn into an all-out war, with Victoria facing prejudice, prosecution, and imprisonment. Ultimately, Victoria and James face the hardest choice of all: the choice between their country and their love.