Book picks similar to
Secrets of Sant'Angelo by Jeff Shapiro


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The Possible World


Liese O'Halloran Schwarz - 2018
    He’s traumatized and wordless; everything he knows has been taken from him in an afternoon. It’s not clear what he saw, or what he remembers.Lucy, who’s grappling with a personal upheaval of her own, feels a profound, unexpected connection to the little boy. She wants to help him…but will recovering his memory heal him, or damage him further? Across town, Clare will soon be turning one hundred years old. She has long believed that the lifetime of secrets she’s been keeping don’t matter to anyone anymore, but a surprising encounter makes her realize that the time has come to tell her story. As Ben, Lucy, and Clare struggle to confront the events that shattered their lives, something stronger than fate is working to bring them together. An expertly stitched story that spans nearly a century—from the Great Depression through the Vietnam War era and into the present—The Possible World is a captivating novel about the complicated ways our pasts shape our identities, the power of maternal love, the loneliness born out of loss, and how timeless bonds can help us triumph over grief.

Web of Lies


Larry A. Winters - 2015
     When criminal defense attorney Dylan Wood returns from a defeat in the courtroom, he thinks the worst is over. His client will go to prison, and Dylan will move on. But he learns the hard way that not every client is willing to accept the judgment of his peers. Suddenly Dylan has twenty-four hours to overturn the guilty verdict. If he fails, a ruthless, sexy woman who gives new meaning to the term femme fatale will go public with the dark secret of Dylan's own past, destroying his life and those of everyone he loves. This time Dylan is defending himself, and he'll do whatever it takes to survive—even if it means breaking the laws he's sworn to uphold. Web of Lies is a standalone thriller, set in the same Philadelphia legal world as the Jessie Black Legal Thriller series. (Although prosecutor Jessie Black appears in the story, she is not the main character.) If you like gritty crime stories, vividly-drawn characters, and surprising twists and turns, you'll love Larry A. Winters's page-turning story of justice gone crazy. Buy Web of Lies to experience this nail-biting legal thriller today!

The Singer's Gun


Emily St. John Mandel - 2009
    His parents deal in stolen goods and his first career is a partnership venture with his cousin Aria selling forged passports and social security cards to illegal aliens. Anton longs for a less questionable way of living in the world and by his late twenties has reinvented himself as a successful middle manager. Then a routine security check suggests that things are not quite what they appear. And Aria begins blackmailing him to do one last job for her. But the seemingly simple job proves to have profound and unexpected repercussions.

Conviction


Robbin J. Peterson - 2018
    And in an instant, a peculiar encounter with the wrong people changes everything. Dragged from his apartment in the dead of night, Neal is taken to prison and charged with the theft of a priceless museum piece. As days turn into weeks, he is thrown into a world of uncertainty where he must rely on the only person he can trust—the Savior. And as his Russian slowly improves within the prison walls, he begins preaching the gospel in the last place he imagined proselytizing. But when civil unrest erupts in Ukraine, the now-familiar routine of imprisonment is over. Neal is trapped in the chaos, and with his life on the line, his only hope of survival is escape. Yet he learns too late that there is as much danger awaiting him outside the prison walls as within. Someone has gone to great lengths to incriminate the young missionary, and they will stop at nothing to silence him forever.

The James Version


Ruth Dugdall - 2010
    The story of 'The Murder in the Red Barn', this book describes the events through the eyes of Ann Marten, a woman suffering guilt and despair following the terrible history of her family, as she tells her tale to a reluctant young rector. James Coyte has taken up his called in Suffolk, but sinks into his own despair as Ann's story unfolds.

The Ghost


Danielle Steel - 1997
    Nothing in his comfortable existence prepares him for the sudden end to his ten-year marriage—or his unwanted transfer to his firm's New York office. With nothing left to lose, Charlie takes a leave of absence from his job to drive through New England, hoping to make peace with himself.

Run for Your Life


Jean Holbrook Mathews - 2014
    He stumbled on a conspiracy that extended to the upper echelons of the US government—and wrote a legal brief to kill for… After a long and prestigious career, Congressman Max Southland is ready to retire, and as a member of his staff, Mattie Mathis is on hand to help her uncle wind down his career. When Mattie receives a cryptic call from her boyfriend and fellow staffer Craig, she’s left with more questions than answers: an interesting bit of research by a young law student has surfaced that could have national consequences. A copy is on its way to her. Before she can process this information, Craig is dead . . . and Mattie will be next. There is only one person who can help Mattie: Jack Summers, a cop whose sense of duty stems not only from his assignment but from his growing feelings for the woman he’s bound to protect. As the pair runs for their lives, it is clear that a violent cover-up has been plotted—and they must unravel the conspiracy if they hope to survive.

Venom


Fiona Paul - 2012
    Yet ever since her parents’ death, Cassandra has felt trapped, alone in a city of water, where the dark and labyrinthine canals whisper of escape.When Cass stumbles upon a murdered woman—practically in her own backyard—she’s drawn into a dangerous world of courtesans, killers, and secret societies. Soon, she finds herself falling for Falco, a mysterious artist with a mischievous grin... and a spectacular skill for trouble. Can Cassandra find the murderer, before he finds her? And will she stay true to her fiancé, or succumb to her uncontrollable feelings for Falco?Beauty, love, romance, and mystery weave together in a stunning novel that’s as seductive and surprising as the city of Venice itself.

The Frozen Circle


Peter Watt - 2008
    Almost a century later, two bodies are unearthed in the small Australian country town of Valley View. Following the Armistice, Sergeant Joshua Larkin is sent on a special mission deep into enemy territory in Russia. But when he is ordered to do the unthinkable, he must flee across Europe in order to protect a young woman, Maria, whose family has been executed. With Maria's life under threat from all sides due to her imperial connections, nowhere is safe. Decades later, the discovery of the two skeletons in Valley View poses problems for local policeman Morgan McLean. Who are the victims and why were they killed? Could the rumours of an heir to the Russian throne be true? And what explosive secret is Britain's MI6 desperate to keep hidden by any means necessary? Past and present collide in THE FROZEN CIRCLE, and the fate of two people unleashes a volatile series of events that could reshape the world.

Beachcomber


Karen Robards - 2003
    Taking the summer off from her high-stress advertising job, Bonnie travels to a cozy Carolina beach where she falls for a handsome drifter and begins enjoying her time off, but when she realizes that the women in a string of killings bear her resemblance, she fears she may be next.

The Reincarnationist


M.J. Rose - 1999
    Equal parts modern-day thriller, historical fiction, and love story, with one foot in present-day Rome and New York City, and the other in Rome some 1600 years ago.Photojournalist Josh Ryder survives a terrorist's bomb, only to be haunted by near-hallucinatory memories of a past life in Rome as a pagan priest whose dangerous congress with Sabina, one of the Vestal Virgins, poses a transgression so serious the lovers will face a certain death if exposed. Scents of jasmine and sandalwood and images of furtive liaisons and violence descend on Josh at will, pulling him to an ancient yet strangely familiar Roman burial chamber harboring the remains of a woman clutching a wooden box.A trail of present-day murders takes the reader deeper into a labyrinth at whose heart lies the enigma of a collection of ancient gems, or memory stones, whose origins trace back to both ancient Egypt and India. The stones' promise to "assist the wearer in reaching his next incarnation" sets the ancient and modern worlds on a collision course.The question of who we are cannot be asked without first asking who we were, according to the author. Rose attempts to answer that question based on her own reincarnation research and on the writings of others, spanning thousands of years.

American Cookery


Laura Kalpakian - 2006
    The story is complete with twenty-seven recipes from the life and tumultuous times of Eden Douglass. Eden was born in 1920 into a contentious California tribe, and the ingredients of her life include her grandmother's reserve, her aunt's instinct for action, and her mother's foggy warmth.  Seasoned with spicy herbs, and a few bitter ones, simmered and stirred over time, these instincts shape her destiny. Two strong-willed women--her grandmother Ruth Douglass and her aunt Afton Lance--struggle to pull Eden from the comfy sloth of her parents' home.  Her ill-matched parents drift toward financial collapse, and her father, pursuing phantom wealth, takes the family to an Idaho mining town.  He finds fulfillment in Idaho, but Eden's mother breaks down, and Eden must shoulder the household drudgery, burdens not in keeping with her aspirations to be a journalist.Eden's adventurous spirit takes her far from her faith and family.  She falls in love in wartime London and rides a motorcycle across war-torn Belgium.  After the war, still reeling from a devastating loss, Eden returns to Southern California and is hired by a newspaper, only to confront insidious opposition, yet find an unexpected ally. Then, in 1952, fate puts Eden Douglass in the path of a runaway horse at Greenwater Movie Ranch, where they're filing a B-movie Western.  She falls flat on her face, and Matt March lifts her from the dust.  Charming and charismatic, with good looks, cowboy boots, and appetite for life, and his VistaVision of the Western, Matt ignites Eden's passion.  Three months later, they elope to Mexico. In these exuberant California boom years, Eden nourishes Matt's dreams, even though they are sauced with secrets and larded with debt.  He tests Eden's strengths and his children's love. A big-cast book, American Cookery fulfills the wide embrace of its title.  The novel chronicles the stories behind family recipes and the lives that touch Eden's--lives of horse thieves, ranchers, railroad men, developers, dreamers, migrants, immigrants, natives, Latter-Day Saints, sinners, silent-film stars, sidekicks, and stunt people. The good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful emerge in these pages as American Cookery serves up the whole gorgeous banquet of life.

The Paperboy


Pete Dexter - 1995
    A local redneck was tried, sentenced, and set to fry.Then Ward James, hotshot investigative reporter for the Miami Times, returns to his rural hometown with a death row femme fatale who promises him the story of the decade.  She's armed with explosive evidence, aiming to free--and meet--her convicted "fiancÚ."With Ward's disillusioned younger brother Jack as their driver, they barrel down Florida's back roads and seamy places in search of The Story, racing flat out into a shocking head-on collision between character and fate as truth takes a back seat to headline news...

Point of Honor


Maurice Medland - 1997
    A master storyteller." - Clive Cussler Two men separated by a strict code of honor locked in a lethal game of international terror . . . Jorge Cordoba has schemed and murdered his way to the top of a Colombian drug cartel intent on bankrupting the industrialized nations of the world. But when the freighter delivering the goods that will secure the cartel's - and Cordoba's - future goes missing, he's thrown into a life or death struggle to recover it. Enter Navy Lieutenant Daniel Blake, a former merchant marine officer who's just been ordered to lead a boarding party of seven men and one woman onto an abandoned freighter. In the hull of the freighter are thirty tons of cocaine, $350 million in cash - and half a dozen corpses with their tongues cut out. Separated from his own ship with a typhoon rapidly approaching, Blake and his team are plunged into a battle of terror against not one, but two treacherous enemies - Cordoba's strike force racing to the scene and a savage murderer who is still aboard. At the heart of this electrifying novel are two very different men, separated by their morality and strict code of honor, bound together in a deadly game of power and survival that each must fight to the very end.

Agent of Chaos


Kami Garcia - 2017
    His story is set in the spring of 1979, when serial murder, the occult, and government conspiracy were highlighted in the news.The book will follow Mulder as he experiences life-changing events that set him on the path to becoming an FBI agent.