The savagery of the killer is something the small community of Kodiak Basin, Alaska has never seen before. With nowhere else to turn, the Sheriff is forced to enlist the help of the FBI.A special agent with a mysterious past...Special Agent Mickey Parsons of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit receives the Sheriff's request and flies to Alaska to help in the investigation. Parsons has the most closed cases of any special agent in Behavioral Science's history, but the mental and physical scars of the last case he handled in the field nearly six years ago has left him tired and contemplating retirement.Uncertain if he has the strength to follow a killer into the darkness again, Parsons may need the Sheriff as much as she needs him.A monster in the making...Parsons believes the Hennleys to be the killer's first victims. But the sheer brutality has him convinced he's dealing with someone more monster than man. Someone that is escalating in their sadism, and if left free, will bring terror on the community unlike any they have ever experienced.

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    Chapters: Harrison Bergeron, Epicac, 2br02b, Welcome to the Monkey House, Miss Temptation, Report on the Barnhouse Effect, All the King's Horses, Who Am I This Time?, Deer in the Works. Source: Wikipedia. Free updates online. Not illustrated. Excerpt: "Harrison Bergeron" is a satirical, dystopian science fiction short story written by Kurt Vonnegut and first published in October 1961. Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, the story was re-published in the author's collection, Welcome to the Monkey House in 1968. In the story, social equality has been achieved by handicapping the more intelligent, athletic or beautiful members of society. For example, strength is handicapped by the requirement to carry weight, beauty by the requirement to wear a mask and so on. This is due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th amendments to the United States Constitution. This process is central to the society, designed so that no one will feel inferior to anyone else. Handicapping is overseen by the United States Handicapper General, Diana Moon-Glampers. Harrison Bergeron, the protagonist of the story, has exceptional intelligence, strength, and beauty, and thus has to bear enormous handicaps. These include headphones that play distracting noises, three hundred pounds of weight strapped to his body, eyeglasses designed to give him headaches, a rubber ball on his nose, black caps on his teeth, and shaven eyebrows. Despite these societal handicaps, he is able to invade a TV station, declare himself Emperor, strip himself of his handicaps, then dance with a ballerina whose handicaps he has also discarded. Both are shot dead by the brutal and relentless Handicapper General. The story is framed by an additional perspective from Bergeron's parents, who are w...More: http: //booksllc.net/?id=18941

    

    With "Nightfall," written in 1941, Asimov triggered a spark of awareness in the publishing community that science fiction could be more than Buck Rogers comic books. His "Foundation" series and robot novels (he coined the word "robotics") are acknowledged as the cornerstone of modern science fiction. Asimov's Foundation series was awarded the Best All-time Novel Series Hugo Award in 1966. He was awarded the special lifetime Nebula Grandmaster award in 1987.Over the next fifty years, Isaac Asimov would distinguish himself as one of the most prolific, versatile, and creative authors ever. His broad range of works includes histories, children's books, collections of articles, mysteries, and books concerning the Bible, literature, geography, humor, and nonfiction science material. He managed over his creative lifetime to have at least one book included in each of the Dewey Decimal System's 10 major library classifications. He was known for his profound knowledge of Shakespeare, the Bible, Gilbert and Sullivan, limericks, and history, whether it be Roman, Greek or American. Isaac Asimov died in 1992 at the age of 72.Volume 1 of "Isaac Asimov: Short Stories" contains the Hugo and Nebula Award Nominee, Locus Poll Award Winner and Asimov's Reader's Choice Award Winner "Robot Dreams," the Hugo Award Winner and Locus Poll Award Nominee "Gold," the Locus Poll Award Nominee "Potential," the Asimov's Reader's Choice Award Nominated "Kid Brother," and more excellent short science fiction, including arare 1974 Saturday Evening Post four-part series, collectively entitled the "The Dream."

    https://www.penguin.com.au/bonus/400-...In this exclusive FREE Jack Reacher short story, a rookie detective finds Jack wounded and in hospital…

    

    He's young. He's bright. He's ambitious. Mitch could have the pick of the big firms in New York and Chicago, but he's chosen the Memphis tax firm of Bendini, Lambert & Locke. They're selective. They pay outrageous salaries. They have a turnover rate of zero. And Mitch is about to find out why.Several events fuel Mitch's growing suspicions: two of the partners die in a suspicious diving accident off Grand Cayman; the senior partners seem unduly proud of the fact that no one has ever resigned; and security measures at the office are, even for a company with billionaire clients, more than a little extreme. Then Mitch makes an explosive discovery: The firm is owned and operated by the most powerful organized crime family in Chicago. Even as Mitch discovers the truth, he finds himself caught between the FBI, who wants an informant inside the firm, and the firm itself, which will make him a very rich man—or a very dead one.The ChamberAdam Hill is in his first year at a top Chicago law firm. He volunteers for the toughest assignment any lawyer could ask for. His prospective client doesn't want Adam or his law firm. He is an unrepentent and outspoken racist with a violent past. He is on Death Row for the murder of two Jewish children in a horrific bombing in 1967.Why would he take on Adam, a complete novice, to defend him? And why would Adam want his case so desperately? The answer lies in the past, in a twenty-year-old secret buried in the madness of another time...

    

    Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King - A 30-minute Summary of the Novel Inside this Instaread Summary: Overview of the entire bookIntroduction to the Important people in the bookSummary and analysis of all the chapters in the bookKey Takeaways of the bookA Reader's Perspective Preview of this summary: Part1Chapter 1Down-on-his-luck, Augie Odenkirk helps homeless Janice Cray care for her baby as they wait in the early morning fog for a job fair. A gray Mercedes plows into the crowd. Augie, Janice and the baby are among the victims.Part 2Chapters 1-3About a year after the Mercedes crash, Retired Detective K. William Hodges watches more grubby reality shows, fails to enjoy his beer, and thinks, again, of shooting himself. The arrival of the mail distracts him. A letter, allegedly from the driver of the killer Mercedes, stuns him. The writer brags about killing eight and wounding many. He says that he got off sexually at he drove into the crowd. He wore a condom and used bleach to get rid of any DNA. He wore a hair net under a clown mask for the same reason. He knows Hodges is miserable and hopes the letter cheers him up. He gives Hodges a website where they can talk, including a username: kermitfrog19.Chapters 4-6Hodges wonders if he should turn the letter over to his former partner, Pete Huntley. He believes the writer is the killer because he knows inside information about the condom and the bleach. The idea of using this letter, and chats on line, to catch the killer gives Hodges a reason to live.Chapter 7-9Hodges analyzes the letter and sees that the writer has several identifying traits, including misusing perk for perp and peppering his words with an image of a smiley face. The same smiley face was glued onto the steering wheel of the Mercedes. Hodges calls Pete and makes a lunch date....

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

    It's a case that nobody wants to touch, deeply rooted in old evil—and old evil is Charlie Parker's specialty. He's about to enter a living nightmare, a dreamscape of sorrow haunted by the murderous specter of a hooded woman, by a black car waiting for a passenger that never comes, and by the sinister complicity of both friends and enemies in Larousse's brutal death. Soon, all will face a final reckoning in an unearthly realm where the paths of the living and the dead converge. A place known only as the White Road. THE BLACK ANGELWhen a young woman disappears from the streets of New York City, ties of friendship and blood inevitably draw ingenious, tortured detective Charlie Parker into the search. Soon he discovers links to a church of bones in Eastern Europe, a 1944 slaughter at a French monastery, and to the myth of an object known as the Black Angel—considered by evil men to be beyond priceless. But the Black Angel is not a legend. It is real. It lives. It dreams. And the mystery of its existence may contain the secret of Parker's own origins. THE UNQUIETDaniel Clay, a once-respected psychiatrist, has gone missing. His daughter insists that he killed himself after allegations surfaced surrounding the harm done to patients in his care. Now, a killer obsessed with finding the truth about his own daughter’s disappearance is seeking revenge—and private investigator Charlie Parker finds himself trapped between those who want the truth about Clay’s disappearance to be revealed, and those who will go to any length—no matter the cost—to keep a deep, dark secret about a local town hidden.

    A once up-and-coming detective, she's been given this beat as punishment after filing a sexual harassment complaint against a supervisor.But one night she catches two assignments she doesn't want to part with: the brutal beating of a prostitute left for dead in a parking lot and the killing of a young woman in a nightclub shooting. Ballard is determined not to give up at dawn. Against orders and her partner's wishes, she works both cases by day while maintaining her shift by night. As the investigations entwine, they pull her closer to her own demons and the reason she won't give up her job, no matter what the department throws at her.

    Today, he discovers she was murdered. Tomorrow, he will learn her most guarded secrets, leaving him to wonder: Who was the woman I married? Why was she murdered? And, above all . . . Who murdered her? Revenge is not sweet: It is essential. COLD VENGEANCE: Devastated by the discovery that his wife, Helen, was murdered, Special Agent Pendergast must have retribution. But revenge is not simple. As he stalks his wife's betrayers--a chase that takes him from the wild moors of Scotland to the bustling streets of New York City and the darkest bayous of Louisiana--he is also forced to dig further into Helen's past. And he is stunned to learn that Helen may have been a collaborator in her own murder. Peeling back the layers of deception, Pendergast realizes that the conspiracy is deeper, goes back generations, and is more monstrous than he could have ever imagined--and everything he's believed, everything he's trusted, everything he's understood . . . may be a horrific lie. Nothing is what it seems. TWO GRAVES: For twelve years, he believed she'd died in an accident. Then, he was told she'd been murdered. Now, FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast discovers that his beloved wife, Helen, is alive. And Pendergast must embark on a furious cross-country chase to rescue her. But all this turns out to be mere prologue to a far larger plot: one that unleashes a chillingly--almost supernaturally--adept serial killer on New York City. His pursuit of the murderer will take Pendergast deep into the trackless forests of South America, to a hidden place where the evil that has blighted both his and Helen's lives lies in wait . . . a place where he will learn all too well the truth of the ancient proverb: Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.

    Elrod's picked 15 of her favorite short works for this multi-genre collection spanning 15 years of publication.Also included is a never before published VAMPIRE FILES story, featuring her urban fantasy vampire PI, Jack Fleming!Each story has been polished afresh for this anthology, with pages of new material added.More information -- and previews of the stories! -- may be found at her website vampwriter-dot-com.Titles:1. A Night at the (Horse) Opera (Vampire Files, Fleming)2. The Breath of Bast (Vampire Files), Ecsott)3. Bossman (Original mystery, no vamps)4. Slaughter (Vampire Files, Fleming & Gordy)5. The Devil's Mark (Original historical vampire)6. You'll Catch Your Death (Vampire Files)7. Izzy's Shoe-In (Historical mystery introducing Izzy DeLeon, fearless girl reporter)8. The Quick Way Down (Vampire Files, Fleming and Gordy)9. The Scottish Ploy (Original romance/mystery)10. Grave-Robbed (Vampire Files, Fleming)11. The Company You Keep (Vampire Files, Gabriel Kroun)12. Death in Dover (Jonathan Barrett before he got vamped, historical mystery)13. Drawing Dead (ALL NEW VAMPIRE FILES, Fleming)14. King of Shreds and Patches (Hamlet from a different point of view, mystery)15. Fugitive (Science fiction/space opera)16. BONUS STORY! The Wind Breathes Cold (Quincey Morris: Vampire)