Book picks similar to
A Bite of Strawberry by William Lashner


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Stand By Me!


Sudeep Nagarkar - 2019
    

The Looters


Harold Robbins - 2007
    Money and ego have turned the quest for art into a deadly business in which the superrich battle to possess the rarest and most beautiful objets d'art on Earth.  Sammu-ramat: Queen of Babylon. The first warrior queen in history, called by some the Whore of Babylon. Her golden death mask left a legacy of lust and violence to those who fought to possess it.  Madison Dupre: curator for the billion-dollar Piedmont collection. She fights for her career, her freedom--and her life--after she acquires the fifty-five-million-dollar golden mask of the long dead Babylonian queen.  Coby Lewis: an ex-Navy SEAL, who uses his frogman training to dive for sunken treasure. Madison knows she can't trust him… but she also can't resist him.  Abdul ibn Hussein: His father died protecting the golden mask from thieves. Abdul said that the mask was stolen when the Baghdad museum was looted as American troops entered the city. He also claims that Navy SEALs worked with Iraqis to loot the museum.  New York, London, Zurich, and Malaga are the venues as the heat is turned on Madison--and she goes on the run to clear her name and save her life.

Time of Justice


Robin James - 2020
    A faceless powerbroker has other ideas… Small-town prosecutor Mara Brent must be tough as nails to succeed in her male-dominated profession. But she harbors a soft spot for the victims who rely on her courtroom skill, especially the wheelchair-bound rape survivor she’s known for twenty years. So when her friend’s unsolved case reopens with a DNA match and an arrest, she’s determined to finally bring a monster to justice.Though the fiend is accused of dozens of similar assaults, only Mara’s case has the iron-clad evidence to put him away. But unexpected bombshells at trial threaten to muddy her black-and-white conviction into frightening shades of gray. She suspects there’s a sinister conspiracy out to torpedo the verdict… and her career.Can the hard-nosed attorney uncover the truth before a serial rapist walks free to strike again?Time of Justice is the first book in the pulse-pounding Mara Brent Legal Thriller Series. If you like strong heroines, page-turning twists, and dark suspense, then you’ll love Robin James’s edge-of-your-seat novel. Buy Time of Justice to bring the gavel down on a depraved offender today!

16 Souls


John J. Nance - 2017
    Bizarrely, the fuselage of the smaller aircraft is tenuously wedged onto the huge right wing of his Boeing 757, leading Mitchell to an impossible life-or-death choice. Mitchell’s decision will land the former military pilot in the cross-hairs of a viciously ambitious district attorney determined to send him to prison for doing his job. Despondent and deeply wounded by what he sees as betrayal by the system, Mitchell at first refuses to defend himself or even assist the corporate lawyer forced against her will to represent him. Pitted against the prosecutorial prowess of flamboyant Denver DA Grant Richardson, who is using Mitchell’s case to audition for a presidential appointment as a U.S. attorney, is young defense attorney Judith Winston. Her lack of experience in criminal cases could mean the end of Mitchell’s freedom, if he doesn’t end his own life first. However, a rising level of gritty determination even her law partners have never witnessed before, propels Winston to lay it all on the table to save Mitchell and expose Richardson as a fraud. 16 SOULS takes the reader for a wild ride in a heart-stopping aviation and legal thriller propelled by irresistible characters, an agonizingly possible airborne dilemma, and a desperate refusal both in the air and in the courtroom to give up in the face of devastating odds. "In the air, or in a courtroom, nobody writes a better thriller than John J. Nance."--New York Times bestselling author Steve Jackson

The Hidden Man


David Ellis - 2009
    He's a young, intelligent maverick, but he's also struggling with an overwhelming emotional burden--one that threatens to unravel his own life, and possibly the lives of those around him.Twenty-seven years ago, two-year-old Audrey Cutler disappeared from her home in the middle of the night. She was never found. All the detectives had to go on were vague eyewitness accounts of a man running down the Cutlers' street, apparently carrying someone. Without enough evidence to suggest otherwise, Griffin Perlini--a neighbor with prior offenses against minors--was arrested, but never convicted.The case is long closed when Perlini is murdered nearly thirty years later. Now a man named Mr. Smith appears in Jason Kolarich's office, saying only that he represents a third party who wants the man charged with murder off the hook and that Kolarich is perfect for the job. The new client: Audrey Cutler's older brother, Sammy--Kolarich's estranged childhood best friend--a man he hasn't seen in nearly twenty years.But when Kolarich starts receiving violent threats from Mr. Smith's enigmatic employer, he figures out that the secrecy behind this nameless third party--and the key to winning Sammy's case--is entangled with the mystery of Audrey's disappearance. With his own life and Sammy's in the balance, Kolarich has to put aside not only the mounting anxiety of the job but also a heart-wrenching personal tragedy in order to find out what really happened to Audrey all those years ago.

The Mercenary


Dan Hampton - 2013
    A former military officer haunted by a personal tragedy in his past, the Sandman embarks on a quest for revenge that pits him against friend and country and leads him straight to the heart of the American military establishment.

Cross Roads: Short stories


Val McDermid - 2013
    In Driving a Hard Bargain, PI Kate Brannigan investigates a car theft with a twist. In The Road and the Miles to Dundee, a moving father-daughter relationship is remembered through Scottish songs.

Presumption of Guilt: Southern California Legal Thrillers Book One


Rachel Sinclair - 2019
    She was once wrongfully accused, and spent 7 years in prison for a murder she didn't commit. Now sworn to protect the indigent accused, she's persuaded to represent Esme Guitierrez, an El Salvadoran refugee who is accused of killing 21-year-old Aria Whitmore. Aria was the daughter of the prominent billionaire hotelier Jacob Whitmore, and was also an aspiring concert pianist and music composer. As Avery digs further into the case, she realizes that there were some sick games taking place behind the closed doors of the Whitmore mansion, and Avery ends up with more questions than answers.  What happened to Aria's birth mother? How did Julian Rodriguez, a young schizophrenic man, come to befriend Aria? And who is sending threatening emails that are filled with facts that are not widely known to the public? When Avery finds out the answers to these questions, she's shocked. But she also realizes that the big reveal opens up more questions than answers, and the case takes an unexpected turn.  As time runs out to find the true culprit, Avery faces the trial of her life. Amidst an intense media glare, death threats, protestors and stalkers breaking into her home, Avery nonetheless gives this case her all. Because if she doesn't, her client will end up on death row.  With the lightning speed, twists and turns you've come to expect from a Rachel Sinclair novel, Presumption of Guilt is a legal thriller that is not to be missed! Come and meet your newest favorite badass attorney, Avery Collins, today!

Come Rain or Shine Bonus Scene (Rose Gardner Investigations, #5.1)


NOT A BOOK - 2019
    It is only available to newsletter subscribers. This scene has MAJOR SPOILERS. VioletI knew my death was imminent, but I wasn’t ready to go quite yet.

And The Rock Cried Out


Ray Bradbury - 1953
    With American economic and military might eradicated, husband and wife become the unfortunate focus for years of subjugation and resentment.

Owning the Future: Short Stories


Neal Asher - 2018
    However, though I think some of them are great, some aren’t, and some are profoundly dated. I am aware that there are those out there, who will just buy these without a second thought, so I have to edit, be selective, and I damned well have to show some respect for my readers. Kindle in this respect can be a danger for a known writer, because you can publish any old twaddle and someone will buy it. Time and again, I’ve had fans, upon hearing that I have this and that unpublished in my files, demanding that I publish it at once because surely they’ll love it. No they won’t. A reputation like trust: difficult to build and easy to destroy. I’ve therefore chosen stories other people have published here and there, and filled in with those I really think someone should have published. Here you’ll find some Polity tales, some that could have been set in the Polity (at a stretch) and some from the bleak Owner universe. Enjoy! Neal Asher 04/06/18

The Brutal Telling / Bury Your Dead


Louise Penny - 2017
    Everybody goes to Olivier's Bistro―including a stranger whose murdered body is found on the floor. When Chief Inspector Gamache is called to investigate, he is dismayed to discover that Olivier's story is full of holes. Why are his fingerprints all over the cabin that's uncovered deep in the wilderness, with priceless antiques and the dead man's blood? And what other secrets and layers of lies are buried in the seemingly idyllic village?Gamache follows a trail of clues and treasures―from first editions of Charlotte's Web and Jane Eyre to a spiderweb with a word mysteriously woven in it―into the woods and across the continent, before returning to Three Pines to confront the truth and the final, brutal telling.It is Winter Carnival in Quebec City, bitterly cold and surpassingly beautiful. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache has come not to join the revels but to recover from an investigation gone hauntingly wrong. But violent death is inescapable, even in the apparent sanctuary of the Literary and Historical Society--where an obsessive historian's quest for the remains of the founder of Quebec, Samuel de Champlain, ends in murder. Could a secret buried with Champlain for nearly four hundred years be so dreadful that someone would kill to protect it?Meanwhile, Gamache is receiving disquieting letters from the village of Three Pines, where beloved Bistro owner Olivier was recently convicted of murder. "It doesn't make sense," Olivier's partner writes every day. "He didn't do it, you know."As past and present collide in this astonishing novel, Gamache must relive a terrible event from his own past before he can begin to bury his dead.

Dead Lawyers Tell No Tales


Randy Singer - 2013
    During his time in prison, he found forgiveness and faith and earned his law degree. Now he longs for an opportunity to prove his loyalty and worth. "Be careful what you ask for." Harry McNaughton is one of the founding partners of McNaughton & Clay--and the only lawyer willing to take a chance employing an ex-con-turned-lawyer. Though Landon initially questions Harry's ethics and methods, it's clear the crusty old lawyer has one of the most brilliant legal minds Landon has ever encountered. The two dive into preparing a defense for one of the highest-profile murder trials Virginia Beach has seen in decades when Harry is gunned down in what appears to be a random mugging. Then two more lawyers are killed when the firm's private jet crashes. Authorities suspect someone has a vendetta against McNaughton & Clay, leaving Landon and the remaining partner as the final targets. As Landon struggles to keep the firm together, he can't help but wonder, is the plot related to a shady case from McNaughton & Clay's past, or to the murder trial he's neck-deep in now? And will he survive long enough to find out?

The Humble Administrator's Garden


Vikram Seth - 1985
    The poet Donald Davie writes: 'Vikram Seth's poems should have an impact far beyond much noisier pieces; for when did we last see a volume in which the poet's eye is on what is objectively before him, rather than on the intricacies of his own sensibility?'

Ehrengraf for the Defense


Lawrence Block - 1976
    Ehrengraf, who takes criminal cases on a contingency basis, and never loses. A small-press limited edition, luxuriously produced, and long since sold out. Seven of the eight stories were originally published in EQMM annual, 1978- ; one story originally published in Mike Shayne mystery magazine.