The Eagle and the Tiger


Tim Davis - 2015
    The deceptive, crooked path that led him to today began a few months back. Born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, nineteen-year old Fleming was a professional baseball pitcher with the Chicago White Sox. His successful first year in the minor leagues was waylaid when he received his draft notice. Through a series of misadventures, he ended up enlisting for four years in an elite unit called the A.S.A. or Army Security Agency; the army’s equivalent to the N.S.A. or the National Security Agency. Once in the army, Fleming learned that the recruiter had manipulated him with a host of untruths. Then, to his dismay, he learned that the army had lost his orders and he was placed in an infantry unit. Once in Vietnam, Platoon Sergeant, Levine questioned Fleming and dragged out of him the sad story of how he had enlisted for four years and ended up in an infantry unit. He became the butt of the platoon’s jokes and underwent vicious ribbing by the other platoon members. That day, the platoon was ordered back to their base camp: L.Z. English. Before leaving, they endured a mortar attack and then a ground probe. Fleming’s foxhole mate was critically wounded. Fleming did everything he could to save the man but his wounds were too severe and he died in Fleming’s arms. Repulsed by the ordeal, Fleming was left wondering if he could endure a whole year of this. Twelve-year old Van Phan Duc and his two friends twelve-year old Hoi Anh Vanh and Dan Tri Quang lived happily in their village until the day a N.V.A. invaded and forced them to join their struggle and fight the invading Americans. They were then assigned to a Viet Cong unit where they met Sergeant Chi, the man who would train them to be soldiers for the revolution and lead them into battle. Three American soldiers had been captured. Chi ordered the three boys to participate in brutally torturing the Americans. Dan embraced the torture and it turned him into a brutal fighting machine, much to Chi’s satisfaction. On the other hand, Hoi was repulsed by the events and a part of him died that day. He performed the torture but it wasn’t to Chi’s satisfaction. Van, a devout Buddhist, was also repulsed. He realized that life, as a soldier was three hundred and sixty degrees opposite of Buddha’s spiritual path. The 173rd’s area of operations was the Central Highlands. The 173rd’s home base was in and around the town of Bong Son, but they patrolled all over the province of Binh Dinh. For the next few months, Fleming and Van’s units met on numerous occasions. The first time they engaged each other in combat was in a simple ambush that lasted only two minutes. Both men were left repulsed by the carnage that could take place in only two minutes. Right after the ambush, Fleming’s company was deployed in a battalion-sized operation located in the Dak To mountain range. It was an area where numerous North Vietnamese soldiers infiltrated into South Vietnam from neighboring Cambodia and Laos. Fleming’s company was dropped into an area far from Dak To and the men were forced to march (hump) to their final destination. During the trek, they had to carve their way through impenetrable jungle and cross leach infested rivers to reach their destination, all the while suffering under Vietnam’s oppressive heat. Van’s Viet Cong unit was sent to the Dak To mountain range to do battle with Fleming and his company. Months passed with Van and Fleming’s units constantly meeting. Both men had similar personalities. Both men overcame their initial shock at war’s brutality and became highly competent soldiers who bravely fought the enemy. Both men were ultimately made into squad leaders. Both men continued to hate the war, yet were entrapped in the insanity that was war. They both recognized what war was—a brutally insane series of events where lives were lost and where dreams died.

Sidewinder (The Halcyon Files, #1)


Daniel Foster - 2015
    or maybe it was worth everything. Maybe it was worth enough to commit murder. Pictures don't lie, even when they accuse a loving, devoted husband of murder. Thomas was a brilliant detective, but his last case was never solved because it ended with his disappearance. The reason now seems clear, but Kate won't believe it. She can't. And she'll prove his innocence, no matter what the cost. Corruption and deceit cloud her way, but in the middle of it, she finds the most unlikely person - a homeless boy who clings to her like the child she and Thomas never had. Perhaps she and the boy can survive the truth together. Maybe they can mend the tatters of one another's hearts.

Winter Memorial


C.C. Warrens - 2018
    In the paperback version, there is a three chapter preview of Cross Fire. A winter memorial, held to recognize fallen officers, becomes slightly more than they bargained for when hard feelings and unresolved issues rise up.

Cast the First Stone: A stunning wartime story


Angela Arney - 1992
    It was done at last. They were married. The wedding took place in Naples, a city of burning rubble and poverty – for the time was 1944 and the Germans were in retreat. Thousands of Italians were starving and prepared to do anything to survive. Liana was more determined than most, not only to survive, but to get out of the hell-hole that Naples had become. She had lied, cheated, played provocative games, and now stood in a crumbling church before an emaciated priest. Beside her stood Nicholas Hamilton-Howard, Earl of Wessex, a young English officer who was totally bewitched by the exquisite Italian girl. Even during the service she was terrified – terrified that someone would reveal the truth about her, but when the final blessing was given she knew she was safe and she vowed to devote her life to making Nicholas happy, even though she did not love him – even though their life together was to be built on lies and deception… Angela Arney was born in Hampshire, where she still lives with her husband. She has been a teacher, a hospital administrator and a cabaret singer. The author of a number of romances, Cast the First Stone is her first full-length novel.

A Cunning Plan


Astrid Arditi - 2016
    But she’s not the only one. Handsome IRS agent Ethan Cunning is surveying Kate too, but for entirely different reasons. He is attempting to nail Kate’s playboy boss. Ethan and Sloane decide to help each other, which sends Sloane’s wobbly life spinning out of control. She’ll have to face danger, humiliation, and – scariest of all – the dating scene, to lure her daughters’ father home. Losing control was the best thing to happen to Sloane…until it turned lethal.

Girl in Reverse


Lore Dresden - 2017
    One killer. A devastating secret. On a lazy and warm summer evening in 2001 young Sadie and Madison Hunter and their parents are brutally assaulted. The case has been cold for eighteen years, and it's a shock for the Snohomish County Police Department to find a man dead in Sadie's niche bookstore, It’s a Mystery, with the same MO that killed her parents: four stab wounds in a perfect square.What could tie the death of her parents to this strange man killed in Sadie’s store almost two decades later? The sisters vow to catch the killer who destroyed their lives and they must do it before newly-minted homicide detective Michael Kwon does—or risk exposing their biggest secret of all.

Mordecai: The Life & Times


Charles Foran - 2010
    It is also an extraordinary love story that lasted half a century.The first major biography with access to family letters and archives. Mordecai Richler was an outsized and outrageous novelist whose life reads like fiction.Mordecai Richler won multiple Governor General's Literary Awards, the Giller Prize, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, among others, as well as many awards for his children's books. He also wrote Oscar-nominated screenplays. His influence was larger than life in Canada and abroad. In Mordecai, award-winning novelist and journalist Charlie Foran brings to the page the richness of Mordecai's life as young bohemian, irreverent writer, passionate and controversial Canadian, loyal friend and deeply romantic lover. He explores Mordecai's distraught childhood, and gives us the "portrait of a marriage" — the lifelong love affair with Florence, with Mordecai as beloved father of five. The portrait is alive and intimate — warts and all.

Came a Shadow


Patrick Dakin - 2011
    Although the act brings with it a sense of tremendous relief, Reuben takes no pleasure in it. The subsequent murder of his sister, though, is an entirely different matter. When done, in fact, his only regret is that he can't kill her all over again.Sixty-four years later, when four year old Sophie Crandall is abducted from her grandfather's home in rural Maine, the ensuing investigation brings answers no one, least of all the police, are prepared to hear.A roller coaster ride of a book that will thrill you, shock you, and, ultimately leave you with a sense of dread.

Entangled


Barbara Ellen Brink - 2010
    One summer of her childhood is a mystery she intends to solve. But digging up her past also lays bare the skeletons of others, including her mother’s. Entangled between what she once believed and a new reality, will she be able to live with the consequences of full disclosure?

Deadly Webs: The Beginning Book 0


James Hunt - 2017
    Her teachers love her, and her single parent mother always knows her twelve year-old daughter will make the right decisions. But when Mallory goes missing, her mother calls Seattle PD for help. Detective Chase Grant, and his partner, piece together the evidence to find the girl before time runs out.

The Bad Penny


Katie Flynn - 2002
    She pedals off into the storm and delivers a baby girl in a filthy slum dwelling, just as the mother dies. The drunk and violent father tells Patty to get rid of it, so she takes the child away, meaning to deliver it to the nearest orphanage. But Patty had spent her entire childhood in an institution, except for the frequent occasions when she ran away, and cannot bear to hand the baby over. She has no idea how the baby will affect the attitude of those around her…nor how her life will change as a result…

Steady Trouble


Mike McCrary - 2017
    Now older, wiser, and tougher than ever before, Teddy has managed to carve out a small place in Austin’s criminal underworld, but that world comes with its own brand of trouble. Trouble she’s learned to handle with some razor-sharp wit and the occasional baseball bat.Desperate to buy the only link to her childhood – her parents’ old farm – Teddy jumps at an opportunity that could change her life. A stranger has just walked into her bar and presented her with a chance to get back a little of what she once had, but it may not be as simple as she thinks. This chance of a lifetime may take her down a long, winding road filled with more trouble than she might be able to handle.From Mike McCrary, author of Genuinely Dangerous and the Remo Cobb series comes the first book in a brand-new exciting series of thrillers. Steady Trouble is filled with nonstop action, humor, a touch of heart, and fun character affectionately known as Steady Teddy.

Life, Part 2: Lydia's Story--The Second Chance


S.W. Hubbard - 2019
     When she married a much older man, Lydia took a shortcut from grad student to middle-aged matron. Do not pass go. Do not drink jug wine or buy Ikea bookshelves. Now Lydia finds herself a 45-year-old widow. She’s got a suburban McMansion she doesn’t want, a hole in her day where her job used to be, and a bunch of married-couple friends eligible for Social Security. Lydia wants to start over and recapture the endless possibilities life offers at age 25. She adopts a shelter dog with issues. Buys a charming little starter home on the verge of collapse. And accepts a job she doesn’t know how to do. Lydia soon learns that youth isn’t for the faint-hearted. Her dead husband is trying to control her future through the terms of his will. And her impulsive decisions may cost her some new friendships she can’t bear to lose. But with the help of a quirky dog trainer, a hilarious colleague, and a hunky young carpenter, Lydia may get a second chance at the life she missed.

The Other Daniel


John Hardy Bell - 2014
    His horrendous crimes went unchecked for four years before FBI profiler Camille Grisham finally caught him. In the stories that followed, she was labeled a hero. In her own mind, she was anything but.The events of that day traumatized Camille in ways the world never knew. And while resigning from the Bureau has done little to ease the pain, she has taken comfort in knowing that she will never have to share that pain with the world.Then she meets a true-crime reporter named Jacob Deaver, and the trauma she hoped to keep hidden suddenly becomes all-too-public.The unforeseen turn that follows will thrust Camille into the harrowing wilderness of the past while revealing a terrifying new menace that threatens to destroy the post-FBI life she is working so hard to build.The arrest of Daniel Sykes was the darkest chapter in Camille Grisham’s life.But a much darker chapter is soon to be written.

True Evil


Julia Derek - 2018
    His relative did it because she blames him for the death of her one true love. After spending five years in juvie, he's released on parole and determined to reveal the truth about his relative. In the meantime, he meets a girl he develops feelings for. Shane's relative is a psychopath so good at manipulating people that she has managed to get everyone to believe Shane killed two people that she's killed. She never expected Shane to get such a soft sentence, but instead that he would remain in jail forever. Now she must start from scratch to get him back behind bars. To get her revenge right finally, she'll use the girl Shane falls in love with, breaking his heart as much as his spirit.NOTE: No sex or violence, but some bad language.