Book picks similar to
The Master (Across the Ocean, Book 2) by Dora Ilieva
giveaways
digital
first-reads-shelf
g-b
The Vatican Cameos: A Sherlock Holmes Adventure
Richard T. Ryan - 2016
After learning from the pontiff that several priceless cameos that could prove compromising to the church, and perhaps determine the future of the newly unified Italy, have been stolen, Holmes is asked to recover them. In a parallel story, Michelangelo, the toast of Rome in 1501 after the unveiling of his Pieta, is commissioned by Pope Alexander VI, the last of the Borgia pontiffs, with creating the cameos that will bedevil Holmes and the papacy four centuries later. For fans of Conan Doyle's immortal detective, the game is always afoot. However, the great detective has never encountered an adversary quite like the one with whom he crosses swords in "The Vatican Cameos.."
Spare Change
Bette Lee Crosby - 2011
A boy running for his life. A town defending them both.From award-winning USA TODAY Bestselling Author BETTE LEE CROSBY, the first book of a gritty, small-town, family saga in the tradition of the finest Southern fiction.Small-town gossip never much bothered Olivia Westerly. As a single career woman, she's weathered her share. It's easy to ignore the raised eyebrows over her late-in-life marriage to Charlie Doyle. But after he drops dead on their honeymoon, the whispers are salt on her raw grief. Especially when an orphaned, eleven-year-old-boy shows up on her doorstep, looking for the grandfather he never met.Behind Ethan Allen Doyle's wary blue eyes lie heavily guarded emotions that unexpectedly tug on Olivia's heart, and she finds herself wanting to win his trust. But when his murderous secret comes looking for him, the entire town embraces the lonely widow and desperate child to show its true heart when danger threatens one of its own.A heartwarming tale of love, loss and unexpected gifts, featuring a woman you'd like to call friend, a boy you will ache to hug, and a town you wish you could call home. USA TODAY BESTSELLER AND WINNER OF FIVE LITERARY AWARDS - Royal Palm Literary Award, Reviewer's Choice Award, FPA President's Book Award, IAN Outstanding Fiction Award, Eadon Contemporary Fiction Award
Only the Truth
Pat Brown - 2012
Life changes little for him from day to day until he brings home a young drifter he meets at the railroad tracks, the mysterious Charlene, whose last name he never asks. He becomes her Sweet Billy Ray and his love for Charlene is steady and uncomplicated until the sheriff shows up to take her away in handcuffs. With the only woman he has ever loved behind bars for cold-bloodedly murdering the old man across the road, a confused and devastated Billy Ray sets out on a quest to find the truth, only the truth, whether it leads him to be able to save his Charlene from a death sentence or it frees him from her spell.
The Box
Brian Harmon - 2011
And when his lab partner, Brandy, unexpectedly turns up in possession of the box's key, he finds himself with an opportunity to not only solve an exquisite mystery, but to do so with someone he very much wishes to impress. But the secret of the box is far greater than either of them suspect. Soon, they uncover a map that leads them deep underground, into the city's vast and complex subterranean system, where the miles upon miles of service tunnels and drainage pipes are long rumored to be haunted. Here, far below the streets, Albert and Brandy discover an ancient and very deadly labyrinth, hidden for ages deep beneath the earth. Together, they encounter strange statues populating the darkness, shadowy creatures prowling the endless passages, and dangerous chambers where their most primal urges are violently turned against them. Their clothes lost in a moment of strange lust, they find themselves forced to navigate the unearthly stone corridors naked and vulnerable. Their only chance for survival lies within the odd assortment of objects found inside the box, from which Albert must somehow piece together a map.
Lost Boy Found
Kirsten Alexander - 2019
Originally published in Australia as Half Moon Lake.In 1913, on a summer's day at Half Moon Lake, Louisiana, four-year-old Sonny Davenport walks into the woods and never returns. The boy's mysterious disappearance from the family's lake house makes front-page news in their home town of Opelousas. John Henry and Mary Davenport are wealthy and influential, and will do anything to find their son. For two years, the Davenports search across the South, offer increasingly large rewards and struggle not to give in to despair. Then, at the moment when all hope seems lost, the boy is found in the company of a tramp. But is he truly Sonny Davenport? The circumstances of his discovery raise more questions than answers. And when Grace Mill, an unwed farm worker, travels from Alabama to lay claim to the child, newspapers, townsfolk, even the Davenports' own friends, take sides. As the tramp's kidnapping trial begins, and two desperate mothers fight for ownership of the boy, the people of Opelousas discover that truth is more complicated than they'd ever dreamed.
K-Town Confidential
Brad Chisholm - 2021
The crime takes place in a gritty Koreatown ‘room salon' with Naomi holding the murder weapon. The case is tried in the L.A. media and everyone takes sides. The deeper Holly digs, the darker the secrets become. Holly risks everything to find the truth, only to learn that if she reveals it, Naomi goes to prison for life. If Holly keeps the secret, then Naomi may walk, but Holly will have betrayed her lover. No one will guess the plot twists in K-Town Confidential.
Lightning Strike
William Kent Krueger - 2021
In the summer of 1963, it is the whole world to 12-year-old Cork O’Connor, its rhythms as familiar as his own heartbeat. But when Cork stumbles upon the body of a man he revered hanging from a tree in an abandoned logging camp, it is the first in a series of events that will cause him to question everything he took for granted about his hometown, his family, and himself.Cork’s father, Liam O’Connor, is Aurora’s sheriff, and it is his job to confirm that the man’s death was the result of suicide, as all the evidence suggests. In the shadow of his father’s official investigation, Cork begins to look for answers on his own. Together, father and son face the ultimate test of choosing between what their heads tell them is true and what their hearts know is right.In this masterful story of a young man and a town on the cusp of change, beloved novelist William Kent Krueger shows that some mysteries can be solved even as others surpass our understanding.
The Glass Forest
Cynthia Swanson - 2018
At twenty-one, she’s married to charming, handsome Paul, and has just given birth to a baby boy. But one phone call changes her life forever.When Paul’s niece, Ruby, reports that her father, Henry, has committed suicide, and that her mother, Silja, is missing, Angie and Paul drop everything and fly to the small upstate town of Stonekill, New York to be by Ruby’s side.Angie thinks they’re coming to the rescue of Paul’s grief-stricken young niece, but Ruby is a composed and enigmatic seventeen-year-old who resists Angie’s attempts to nurture her. As Angie learns more about the complicated Glass family, staying in Henry and Silja’s eerie and ultra-modern house on the edge of the woods, she begins to question the very fabric of her own marriage.Through Silja’s flashbacks, Angie’s discovery of astonishing truths, and Ruby’s strategic dissection of her parents’ state of affairs, a story of love, secrets, and ultimate betrayal is revealed.
The World Cannot Give
Tara Isabella BurtonTara Isabella Burton - 2022
Don't miss the novel Vogue calls "The Secret History meets The Price of Salt", following an impressionable new student at an elite boarding school who falls in with the devoted members of a cultish choir group on campus, impassioned by their hunger for transcendence and, especially, the charismatic girl who rules over them… When shy, sensitive Laura Stearns arrives at St. Dunstan’s Academy in Maine, she dreams that life there will echo her favorite novel, All Before Them, the sole surviving piece of writing by Byronic “prep school prophet” (and St. Dunstan’s alum) Sebastian Webster, who died at nineteen, fighting in the Spanish Civil War. She soon finds the intensity she is looking for among the insular, Webster-worshipping members of the school’s chapel choir, which is presided over by the charismatic, neurotic, overachiever Virginia Strauss. Virginia is as fanatical about her newfound Christian faith as she is about the miles she runs every morning before dawn. She expects nothing short of perfection from herself—and from the members of the choir. Virginia inducts the besotted Laura into a world of transcendent music and arcane ritual, illicit cliff-diving and midnight crypt visits: a world that, like Webster’s novels, finally seems to Laura to be full of meaning. But when a new school chaplain challenges Virginia’s hold on the “family” she has created, and Virginia’s efforts to wield her power become increasingly dangerous, Laura must decide how far she will let her devotion to Virginia go. The World Cannot Give is a shocking meditation on the power, and danger, of wanting more from the world.
Concealment
Rose Edmunds - 2015
But beneath the successful façade, Amy has secrets she’d rather her bully-boy boss Ed didn’t discover—like her troubled past and the little voice she hears in her head… When a junior colleague is murdered, Amy’s fragile equilibrium is shattered. She suspects a client’s fraud links Ed to the killing, but is her paranoia working overtime? As Ed tries to discredit her, Amy fears for her job, her sanity and her life. But she’s a tough professional, not a quitter, and somehow she must find a way to fight back...
The Best Seller
Dina Rae - 2016
Her book practically writes itself. She marries her gorgeous agent. Her name is on all of the best seller lists. Billionaire author Jay McCallister takes an interest in her meteoric rise to fame and invites her into his world of alien-believing celebrities. Her life changes forever when he tells her that they were both created inside of a laboratory. These authors are embedding an alien genetic code within the pages of their novels that originated from Nazi Germany because... The time has come. They are here.
Locust Hill
Barbara Bayes - 2019
Confined to a wheelchair after a mass subway shooting, she has been unwilling or unable to speak since the terrifying day she was wounded in the train. One person who might be able to shed some light on the murder is compassionate caregiver Margaret, temporarily hired as Fiona’s personal assistant. From the very first day of her arrival, Margaret senses that something is not quite right about the household...something disquieting and hard to pinpoint. As the mysteries pile up and the friendship between Margaret and her patient grows, the caregiver finds herself sifting through a complicated tangle of lies while trying to help her charge heal both physically and emotionally. The slow burn suspense gradually escalates as a series of shocking revelations brings us to a devastating conclusion.
Showtime
Chloe Kayne - 2012
Behind the gates of the legendary Marvelle Circus, she is thrust into a mysterious world she never knew existed—a paradise populated with outcasts. It’s in this glamorous new home that Laila sparks a controversial romance with notorious sideshow performer, "The Disappearing Man," and learns just how dangerous her new life can be.Touring the picturesque eastern coast of America, Laila’s immersed in friendship, vaudeville, festivals, sequins, and serial killers. But behind the curtain, a sadistic plan is brewing that will crack the very foundation upon which she’s become so dependent.
All That Remains
Hannah Holborn - 2015
A fragile child. Will they save each other?Harvey’s training at The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children prepared him for the most important case of his career to date, the abduction of eight-year-old Gabriel Wheeler. Nothing, however, could prepare him for the boy’s blame-shifting mother from hell who shoots up instead of alerting police when the boy goes missing. Nor is Harvey equipped to deal with the heartbreak when his girlfriend leaves him on the same night, taking Effie, the non-biological young daughter Harvey adores. The case goes cold when Harvey fails to interview Effie’s best friend, the only witness able to identify the perpetrator’s car. As police resources are wasted on dead ends and wrong suspects, Gabriel receives unlikely help to escape from Willard Crawley, a simple-minded abductor seeking a replacement for the infant brother he accidentally suffocated years before.Book 1 in the Missing & Exploited Suspense Series, All That Remains explores childhood resiliency in a dangerous adult world (previously published as Notes From a Cold Case).
Sleeping Roses
RaShelle Workman - 2009
Sick of her dangerous marriage, Sophie leaves her husband, determined to start a new life. But her husband isn't going to let her go that easily. If he can't have her, no one can. It's hunter versus hunted."It's strange, mysterious, and down right cool! It made me wonder if this really happened." - Jek Jamison"A suspense/thriller where nothing is as it seems." - Heartsong ReviewsIf you love Nicholas Sparks novels, including Safe Haven, then pick up "Sleeping Roses," and be swept away.