Book picks similar to
A Melody for James by Hallee Bridgeman


christian-fiction
christian
romance
suspense

Too Close to Home


Lynette Eason - 2010
    Her methods are invisible, and she never stops until the case is closed. When missing teens begin turning up dead in a small Southern town, Samantha is assigned to help local chief Connor Wolfe find the killer. And he has two problems with that. There's her faith--in God and herself. And then there's the fact that she looks exactly like his late wife. As they get close to an answer, the case becomes personal. The killer seems to be taking an interest in Connor's 16-year-old daughter, who thinks her dad is getting way too protective. Can't a girl just have some fun? Too Close to Home ratchets up the suspense with each page, and will have readers cheering for the characters they love as justice is served and love grows even in the face of danger. Read this one with the lights on!

Burning Justice


Helena Smrcek - 2015
    Nora’s future hangs in the balance of his past.Pacifist Mennonite social worker Nora Martin is on the verge of opening a residential facility for first-time offenders. After years of planning, she’ll finally be able to rescue young men from the violence of prison…or what has been their only other option, the violence of the military.But then a stranger in camouflage and combat boots marches through her front door and claims to own her house. And he’s not interested in letting Nora change it.Who is Petty Officer Jacob Schwartz, and why does no one in the close-knit town of French Lick, Indiana want to acknowledge that he exists? What are they hiding? What had seemed like a safe community is now full of secrets and old heartaches, and Nora is caught in the dangerous middle. Her only ally is her best friend, FBI agent Alicia Yu (who readers first met in Glitter and Sorrow), but even Alicia can’t protect her from the way Nora’s heart races every time Jacob’s in the room.Can she trust a man in uniform?Nora and Jacob’s choices have taken them down different paths, but God may still show them a safe way back.

A Brother's Bond


Lee Tobin McClain - 2015
    But when he realizes who Karen Smith is and why she’s here, all he knows for sure is that he has to get rid of her… and fast. Because Karen wants to find out what really happened to her younger brother, killed in these mountains nine years ago. And if she solves the cold case, she’ll destroy Adam’s fragile sister whom he’s vowed to protect with his life. As Adam and Karen wait out the storm together, they care for Adam’s sister and her child and face mysterious threats from the outside world. Why does Karen keep getting warning texts on her phone? Who would toss a brick through Adam’s picture window? And what kind of maniac would try to set fire to a house with four people inside, one of them a vulnerable child? Working together to keep everyone safe, Adam and Karen come to admire each other’s strengths, and the two loners begin to fall in love. But Karen is getting closer to the truth that could put Adam’s sister behind bars and leave her son without a mother. The threats keep escalating. And Adam starts to wonder if he can fulfill the vow to serve and protect that he made as a teenager at the Covenant School . . . and whether he really understands anything at all about what happened all those years ago… This Christian romantic suspense novel starts off the Sacred Bond Guardians series, a spinoff from the Sacred Bond series of Christian Romance novels. Featuring rugged heroes in military and law-enforcement careers, the Sacred Bond Guardians books combine romance and mystery, similar to Love Inspired suspense novels. Christian mystery and suspense for your kindle…with a strong element of romance.

Secrets


Kristen Heitzmann - 2004
    What happened all those years ago, and what is it she so desperately needs him to find? The old villa in Sonoma holds the answers, but it is now owned by a young woman who neither knows nor cares about his mission. But Rese Barret is a force to contend with, and her own impending storm could sweep him up as their sparring creates a fierce and uncomfortable attraction. From bestselling author Kristen Heitzmann.

Hidden


Vannetta Chapman - 2014
    DANA JACOBS would rather forget the night of tragedy and violence that marred her childhood. She is now supervisor in charge of the Department of Homeland Security in Taos, New Mexico. Her team is prepared to handle any threat—biological, chemical, conventional, cyber, even nuclear. BENJAMIN MARSHALL is newly assigned to Dana’s office. Straight from a six year military deployment, he is not what Dana wants or needs. Ben knows God has a reason for putting him in this place at this time—to help Dana. When a local school is threatened, they open a case which leads them on a chase through the Enchanted Circle and Carson National Forest, pursuing a man filled with a bitterness Dana can understand. But her anger is different. It’s justified, it remains hidden inside, and it hurts no one. Can Dana face her own mortality? And when she does, can she truly understand what it means to forgive and to be forgiven?

Baggage Claim


Amanda Tru - 2011
    But, when her luggage is lost and she is accosted by an infuriating Homeland Security agent named Dawson Tate, events take a dangerous turn. Now, can she and Dawson elude their enemies and prevent a terrorist attack before the bomb in their possession is detonated in the center of Manhattan--all while keeping their obvious attraction to one another in check? Find out in this Romantic Thriller.

Gone to Green


Judy Christie - 2009
    The paper was an unexpected inheritance from a close colleague, and Lois must keep it for at least a year, bringing a host of challenges, lessons, and blessings into her life.When Lois pulls into Green on New Year’s Day, she expects a charming little town full of smiling people. She quickly realizes her mistake. After settling into a loaned house out on Route 2, she finds herself battling town prejudices and inner doubts and making friends with the most surprising people: troubled teenager Katy, good-looking catfish farmer Chris, wise and feisty Aunt Helen, and a female African-American physician named Kevin.Whether fighting a greedy, deceitful politician or rescuing a dog she fears, Lois notices the headlines in her life have definitely improved. She learns how to provide small-town news in a big-hearted way and realizes that life is full of newsworthy moments. When she encounters racial prejudice and financial corruption, Lois also discovers more about the goodness of real people and the importance of being part of a community.While secretly preparing the paper for a sale, Lois begins to realize that God might indeed have a plan for her life and that perhaps the allure of city life and career ambition are not what she wants after all.

Close to Home


Suzanne Ferrell - 2012
    I’m Lorna Doone. Yep, spelled just like the cookie and I own the Peaches ‘N Cream Café here in Weston. You might think nothing much happens in a small mid-western town, but as my friend Harriett says, things aren’t always what they appear. Take our girl Emma for example…”Emma Lewis has a lot on her plate. The single mother of two precocious twin boys and an aging mother who is having trouble getting through each day, the last thing Emma needs is a man in her life, especially a doctor. So when the town’s doctor goes on vacation and his handsome nephew takes over, Emma is shocked to not only find him standing in her bedroom, but accusing her of being a neglectful parent.Clint Preston came to Westen for the year to fill in as the town doc while his uncle took a long needed vacation. Clint also needed a sense of peace and calm to try to find his passion for medicine burned out by long shifts in an urban hospital’s ER. Angered to find two boys in his clinic with broken wrists and no accompanying parent, he is determined to confront their mother. The feisty redhead he meets quickly dispels his belief that she’s a neglectful mother, but he can see her situation is more critical than she wishes to face and finds himself volunteering to help care for her sons and the remodeling of her home.As Emma and Clint forge a relationship among the slightly off-beat characters that inhabit Weston a menace from Emma’s past threatens her and her sons. Clint and Emma join forces to prevent the loss of either boy and the love they’ve discovered in each other’s’ arms.

Diamonds and Cole


Micheal Maxwell - 2013
    In the past, Cole a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, worked for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Time Magazine. Now, he’s returned to the paper where he started his career, The Chicago Sentinel. Instead of writing the big stories, he’s doing the work of a rookie reporter. His “big story of the day” is a cat caught in a tree. During its rescue, the cat’s owner takes her Good Samaritan neighbor hostage. Cole witnesses something so disturbing it reawakens the journalist’s desire to write again.Returning to the paper, Cole finds a desperate message asking for help from Ellie, one that got away. The one that has continually haunted his life. Cole drops everything and flies to California. He must find what would make her so desperate, she would call him after so many years. Cole finds her terminally ill, and abandoned by her husband. He discovers while Ellie was heavily medicated, she mistakenly signed a Power of Attorney. Now her estranged daughter Erin’s inheritance, won’t go to her, but her abusive step-father. Cole vows to find the girl and right the situation.The path to keeping his word is blocked at every turn by the husband who abandoned her, his shady real estate deals, violent con men, street thugs and the lure of a fortune in diamonds that unite them. The anger, sorrow, and crippling guilt of twenty years fires Cole's drive to keep a promise, that in the end, will heal and return the soul to the great journalist.Beaten, bloody but determined, Cole Sage conquers greed and hatred with a strength that only love, and a will as hard as diamond, can achieve.

Watching


Calle J. Brookes - 2012
     That thought drove Dr. Georgia Dennis in every decision she made, personal and professional. A profiler with the Complex Crimes Unit of the FBI, she was tired of being second-guessed by her boss Michael “Hell” Hellbrook. Once they caught the sociopath responsible for stoning teenaged girls, she was gone from Hellbrook’s team faster than the ink could dry on the transfer papers. Georgia and Hellbrook are hot on the trail of a sadistic killer targeting women and girls with brown hair and brown eyes—women with a striking resemblance to Georgia. Hellbrook will do anything to protect his team, even the woman he never wanted on it in the first place. By keeping her at his side, he grows closer to her until the flame between them erupts and consumes them both. As they get deeper involved with the case and with each other, they do not realize someone else is watching, someone whose descent into madness threatens everyone around them. Is this watcher their killer, or someone much closer? PAVAD: PREVENTION & ANALYSIS OF VIOLENT ACTS DIVISION: PAVAD—the Prevention & Analysis of Violent Acts Division—is a special directorate of the FBI located in St. Louis. PAVAD was formed by Edward Dennis to combat today’s modern crimes in a modern nation. PAVAD consists of only the best of the FBI’s best, and addresses cases involving everything from kidnapping, money-laundering, extortion, all the way up to RICO violations. The PAVAD directorate has more than a dozen teams ready to mobilize at a moment’s notice to every corner of the United States…

Touching the Clouds


Bonnie Leon - 2010
    She pilots a mail-delivery plane in the forbidding Alaskan wilderness, the lone woman in a male profession. But even that seems easy compared to finding true love. She likes a fellow pilot and would even consider marrying him--if it weren't for Paul, a mysterious man on her mail route with a gentle spirit and a past to hide. Can Kate break through the walls Paul has put up around his heart? And will her quest for adventure be her demise?

Concrete Evidence


Rachel Grant - 2013
    Now she wants revenge…Accused of stealing artifacts from a five hundred year-old shipwreck, underwater archaeologist Erica Kesling is determined to clear her name. She’s concealed her past and taken a job certain to give her access to the buyer of the missing antiquities. She's finally closing in on her goal, when she's distracted by a sexy, charismatic intern who makes her want something other than revenge.But Lee Scott is no intern. He's looking for the lead conspirator in an international artifact smuggling scheme, and Erica is his prime suspect. He’ll do whatever it takes to win her trust and get her to reveal her secrets, even seduce her.As Erica and Lee struggle to conceal their real agendas, the one thing they can’t hide is the attraction that burns hot between them. When Erica’s quest puts her life in jeopardy, Lee must choose between old loyalties and a woman he never expected to fall for.

Burned


Jennifer Youngblood - 2014
    Sydney Lassiter has the perfect life—glamour, wealth, and all the high-society status to go with it. But something is tell her that she needs to return to the sleepy little town of Stoney Creek, Alabama where she grew up. She hasn’t been there since her father was killed in a boating accident—or was he murdered? She takes a job as a safety consultant at the local sawmill—the same place where her father worked—and sets out to discover the truth about his death. In Stoney Creek, you don’t ask the kinds of questions Sydney is asking. There are too many secrets—secrets that someone will do anything to keep hidden. To complicate matters, Sydney becomes enmeshed in a confusing love quadrangle involving two men, and the other woman, who seems to want both of them. And both men seem to have some connection to the death of her father. The closer Sydney gets to the truth, the more it seems that her quest could destroy not only her but the people and town she has come to love.

Inescapable


Nancy Mehl - 2012
    Lizzie Engel is used to running away. At eighteen, she left her Mennonite hometown, her family, and her faith with plans never to return. Five years later, Lizzie finds she'll have to run again. False accusations at her job, a stalker, and a string of anonymous threatening letters have left her with no other options. This time, however, her escape is back to Kingdom, her hometown. As Lizzie becomes reacquainted with Kingdom, she realizes she may not have left her Mennonite roots and her faith as firmly in the past as she thought. She draws on the support of Noah Housler, an old friend, as she hides out and attempts to plan her next steps. When it becomes painfully clear that the danger has followed Lizzie to Kingdom, suspicions and tensions run high, and she no longer knows who to trust. With her life and the lives of those she loves at risk, Lizzie will have to run one last time--to a Father whose love is inescapable.

Chasing Sunsets


Eva Marie Everson - 2011
    A divorced mother of two, Kim resents her ex-husband for moving on with his life and living it up while she struggles to understand what went wrong. When her sons end up spending five weeks of summer vacation with their father, Kim's own father suggests a respite in the family vacation home on tiny Cedar Key Island. As Kim revisits her childhood memories and loves, she soon discovers that treasures in life are often buried, and mistakes--both past and present--become redeemable in God's hand.Readers will be swept away to an island retreat where they walk alongside Kim as she discovers that God's answers may not come easily, but they do come.