Book picks similar to
The Acquittal by Anne Laughlin
crime
mystery
lesbian
lgbt
How Sweet It Is
Melissa Brayden - 2013
Her friends and neighbors all think so. While she enjoys her quiet life running the town bakeshop in Applewood, Illinois, she wonders if there could be more. After losing the love of her life four years prior in a plane crash, Molly thinks she’s ready to navigate the dicey dating waters once again. However, you can’t always pick who your heart latches on to. When Jordan Tuscana, the beautiful younger sister of her lost love, returns to town, Molly finds her interest piqued in a manner she wasn’t prepared for.As secrets are uncovered, Molly and Jordan must figure out how to navigate the difficult terrain of their multi-faceted relationship. Especially when something much deeper seems to be bubbling between them.
Gallows Humor
Carolyn Elizabeth - 2019
At thirty-three, she’s in the best shape of her life and has a satisfying position at Jackson City Memorial Hospital. With a good paycheck, great friends, and occasional relationships with smart, beautiful women, she couldn’t be happier. She thinks.Dr. Thayer Reynolds, whiling away some time before the start of her Emergency Department fellowship at JCMH and intrigued by the stories she’s heard, crashes the morgue to get a look at Corey—the woman her young colleagues are whispering about.Totally spinning from her first interactions with Thayer, Corey throws herself into the post mortem exam of a construction worker who fell to his death, which isn’t at all suspicious—until it is. With no support from her boss or the police, Corey investigates the death on her own. Making bad decisions with good intentions, she recklessly endangers her own life and Thayer’s. Even worse—she potentially dooms any chance of a real relationship with Thayer before it even gets started.Genre: Romance, ThrillerEditor: Ann RobertsCover Designer: Judith Fellows
Possessing Morgan
Erica Lawson - 2009
Crime seems to have taken a holiday, and Detective Morgan O'Callaghan is bored, bored, bored. Paperwork is mating and multiplying on her desk, and even a jaywalker is starting to look good. Anything to get her out from behind her desk Enter Andrea Worthington, Charleston socialite and all-around rich girl, right down to the wealthy fianc. She's also the new Assistant District Attorney assigned to Morgan's precinct. Their first meeting is like two freight trains crashing head on. Then a high profile, career make-or-break murder case throws them together again. The investigation has barely begun when Andrea becomes the target of a nearly fatal hit-and-run. But was it really aimed at her? Can she and Morgan find the common ground they need to solve the case and stop the attacks, or are the gaps just too wide to bridge?
Don't Call Me Hero
Eliza Lentzski - 2014
She knew that coming back after eight years in a war zone wouldn’t be easy, but she’d underestimated the real difficulties of transitioning back to civilian life. War is hell, but the aftermath is endless. Looking for a fresh start, she’s left her friends and career in Minneapolis to be a police officer in northern Minnesota. It’s in the tiny town of Embarrass where she learns more about Julia Desjardin. The city prosecutor is cool, professional, and untouchable. But she and Cassidy have history, and Cassidy isn’t going to let her easily forget that. For all their surface differences, Cassidy and Julia have more in common than they first realized—both are reluctant to hand over their pasts to be judged and studied. But it might take someone just as damaged as the other to help each cope with the skeletons in their respective closets.
Ice
Lyn Gardner - 2012
This time...it's worse.Ice begins when a boy is kidnapped from a London park and Detective Inspectors Alex Blake and Maggie Campbell are brought together to work on the case. While their goal is the same, their work ethics are not. Intelligent, perceptive and at times disobedient, Alex Blake does what she believes it takes to do her job. Maggie Campbell has a slightly different approach. She believes that rule books were written for a reason. Unexpectedly, their dynamics mesh, but when her feelings for Alex become stronger than she wants to admit, Maggie provokes the worst in Alex to ensure that they will never be partners again. Three years later, fate brings them together again. Their assignment is simple, but a plane crash gets in their way. Now, in the middle of a blizzard, they have to try to survive...and fight the feelings that refuse to die.
The Wish List
Saxon Bennett - 1996
Newly widowed, she is finally free to acknowledge the unspoken wishes of her heart. But will Maggie and Celia have the courage to overcome their fears... and trust each other enough to finish what never got started? 2nd edition.
French Lessons
Natalie Vivien - 2014
Overprotective of her heart, Vida pushes people away, and despite her loneliness, she's made of art of remaining detached and disconnected. Then she receives an unexpected letter from France. An aunt that Vida never knew she had has died, willing Vida a chateau in the French countryside. What feels like an impossible dream is now Vida's reality: she's an heiress, and the last living member of a family legacy steeped in secrets. When Vida arrives at the chateau, there are more surprises in store for her. She could never have predicted the effect that Renee Chanson, the fiery and captivating woman she meets at the chateau, would have upon her. And she could never have imagined how the decades-old mystery of her family's past would, at last, unfold. Can Vida learn to trust and open her stubborn heart to the possibility of a French romance? Or will she make the same mistakes her mother made and let the love of her life run away from her, leaving her to nurse a permanent broken heart? FRENCH LESSONS is a poignant, passionate novel about coming to terms with the past and learning to love; a tender romance to curl up with. It is approximately 64,000 words long (providing many hours or a few days of romantic reading).
Dysphoria
Karelia Stetz-Waters - 2013
As the president of Pittock College, another tragedy explodes into her life soon after her arrival. Besieged by memories of her mentally ill sister, which refuse to let her rest, she must face an abomination even as her mind begins to unravel. A young woman died on the train tracks in a shockingly brutal manner. Reeling from the murder and the threat to her students, Helen is approached by professor Adair Wilson, who draws her into her life and her confidence amid a web of swirling deception. Ivers and Wilson are as desperate to know the identities of the victim and killer as the killer and the police are to hide them. Whether Adair is Helen’s savior and can be trusted as a lover becomes increasingly unclear as Helen becomes a target. In a crisis with no clear allies, Helen must not only learn the truth but fight to stay alive. The killer is watching and she has been chosen. Every hour of doubt, fear, and hopeless investigation brings the bone saw closer.
Coming to Terms
K.A. Moll - 2019
Sexually abused by her father when she was a child, she keeps secrets with her twin sister and numbs past trauma with the bottle. When her twin is psychiatrically hospitalized, she’ll work with the hospital social worker, and in doing so, will be offered no choice but to deal with past horrors. Sage Carson is a clinical social worker, a divorced woman who has no desire for a relationship, one man being enough for a lifetime. When she meets Sawyer, questions about her own sexuality will be awakened, and she’ll have no choice but to deal with them. And, with this backdrop, as these two women begin a new relationship, Sawyer must perform at the top of her game, engaging in a desperate hunt for a serial rapist-murderer, a hunt that will become all too personal.
Facing Evil
C.L. Hart - 2005
Forced to take a leave of absence from her job, Abby heads to a mountain resort where she meets Sarah Murphy. The two women discover love for the first time in their lives, but are soon torn apart. Through twist and turns of the novel, Abby and Sarah experience for themselves the brutality of a serial killer before he ends up dead, and Abby is his accused killer.
Jacob’s War
C.P. Rowlands - 2012
Formerly undercover, she now leads a task force that has trailed meth from the Mexican border to Wisconsin. Teamed up with the Milwaukee Police Special Crimes Unit, they fight a daily battle with drugs, sex crimes, and murders, but her investigation has hit a wall—on the streets and within her organization.In the worst blizzard of the year, the latest victim unexpectedly shows up at AJ’s office. Bright and attractive, small business owner Katie Blackburn angrily relates her experience during the interview when, unknowingly, Katie gives AJ the break she’s desperately needed.Immediately, Katie presents another kind of battle for AJ. Just as she took the oath to keep America safe, AJ’s heart begins to feel the same oath for Katie. AJ knows drugs don’t care who handles them, but she does. It’s her job and her war.
Learning to Love Again
A.K. Rose - 2021
When Cassie Hollander spills her guts to her very straight best friend, she doesn’t get the answer she wants, and even though she knew that would probably happen, she’s still crushed. She’s used to hiding in the shadows, masking her true self and pretending to conform to a life that doesn’t fit her. Everything happens for a reason, and in Cassie’s case, being rejected by Jessica Taylor was the catapult she needed to get her life together in more ways than one. Come along as Cassie figures out who she is, where she’s going, and how wonderful things happen when you open your heart to the chance for real love.
The Door at the Top of the Stairs
Alison Naomi Holt - 2010
The mind is a powerful ally, and 26-year-old Jesse has no memory of the abduction or the subsequent torture. Inevitably, as Jesse drifts from one itinerant job to another, the protective walls carefully constructed by her subconscious are beginning to crumble. Fate lands her on a farm owned by Dr. Ryland Caldwell, a retired psychologist and her partner, Morgan Davis, the master of the Myrena Fox Hunt club. Ryland suspects there is more to Jesse’s foul temper than meets the eye. When Morgan and Ryland accidentally discover vicious scars on Jesse’s back, Ryland knows that without their help, Jesse’s descent into insanity will rapidly overwhelm them all.
Crossed
Meredith Doench - 2015
It’s the case she’s been waiting for, the case that compels her to return to the small town she turned her back on nineteen years ago, the case she plans to ride from the Ohio BCI all the way to the FBI.The case worth risking her shaky relationship with her lover, Rowan. But the horrors of the case recall the unsolved murder of Luce’s first girlfriend, and Luce is forced to confront the local ex-gay ministry that haunted her youth. When the past crosses the present, will Luce lose everything she’s worked so hard to build?
Beautiful Journey
Kenna White - 2008
All around her the Battle for Britain is raging, and ferrying factory-fresh airplanes to combat bases makes excellent use of her skills as flight lieutenant for the British Women's Air Transport Auxiliary. An American in southern England, she is undaunted by war. It's safer than love.The talented aviatrix could fly a crippled craft through a thunderstorm without a compass and find her way home, so it is singularly disconcerting to find herself flying in circles around Emily Mills, a too young, too attractive and too abrasive British literature teacher. Even though Emily's grandmother is Lady Marble, it's a time of war and scarcity and Emily needs work. Kit offers to help her find a job on the air base—and as is often true, no good deed goes unpunished.There's no compass on earth to help when the irascible Emily gets past all Kit's defenses. She knows the sparks could turn to flame,and their hearts are in the line of fire.Kenna White turns her storytelling talents to this unforgettable tale of women who found love, courage, and the courage to love in the midst of a world at war.