Book picks similar to
Island Murders by Wanda Canada
mystery
fiction
mysteries
wilmington-area-authors
Into the Darkness
Barbara Michaels - 1990
There is one catch to her sudden windfall - she must share the wealth with a taciturn and oddly attractive young man who has an entire town stirring up rumors - about murderous secrets and a dark legacy. Now Meg is about to learn the truth behind an old adage: all that glitters is not gold....
The Blond Leading the Blond
Jayne Ormerod - 2011
Curious upon receiving notice of the death of an aunt she hadn't known existed, Ellery travels to Braddocks Beach in hopes of learning a bit about her heritage. There she finds she is to inherit the family house, the family jewels, the family real estate holdings, the family bank accounts, and, much to her dismay, the family role of Queen Bee. Ellery also finds herself accused of Aunt Izzy's murder.Samantha Greene is the lifelong friend and neighbor of Isabel Tinsdale, as well as the self-appointed purveyor of Braddocks Beach history. The recent discovery of a surviving member of Braddocks Beach's 'royal family' sets the town abuzz with anticipation of Ellery's arrival. But Sam soon learns that Ellery is the only person to ever flunk out of Madame Rowena's School of Etiquette and has much to learn about making appearances, leading charity drives, heading up committees, and setting fashion trends. But first and foremost is the business of clearing the Tindsale name of murder.What do a third-grade science teacher and a small-town socialite know about tracking killers? It's what they don't know that gets them into trouble.
The Blood Gospel
James Rollins - 2013
A trio of investigators—Sergeant Jordan Stone, a military forensic expert; Father Rhun Korza, a Vatican priest; and Dr. Erin Granger, a brilliant but disillusioned archaeologist—are sent to explore the macabre discovery, a subterranean temple holding the crucified body of a mummified girl.But a brutal attack at the site sets the three on the run, thrusting them into a race to recover what was once preserved in the tomb’s sarcophagus: a book rumored to have been written by Christ’s own hand, a tome that is said to hold the secrets to His divinity. But the enemy who hounds them is like no other, a force of ancient evil directed by a leader of impossible ambitions and incalculable cunning.From crumbling tombs to splendorous churches, Erin and her two companions must confront a past that traces back thousands of years, to a time when ungodly beasts hunted the dark spaces of the world, to a moment in history when Christ made a miraculous offer, a pact of salvation for those who were damned for eternity.Here is a novel that is explosive in its revelation of a secret history. Why do Catholic priests wear pectoral crosses? Why are they sworn to celibacy? Why do the monks hide their countenances under hoods? And why does Catholicism insist that the consecration of wine during Mass results in its transformation to Christ’s own blood? The answers to all go back to a secret sect within the Vatican, one whispered as rumor but whose very existence was painted for all to see by Rembrandt himself, a shadowy order known simply as the Sanguines.In the end, be warned: some books should never be found, never opened—until now.
Photo Bombed
Daria White - 2021
She’s determined to stand on her own two feet in Edenville, Texas after her bitter divorce. When the town’s wedding of the year stars her friend as the bride, Bianca can’t wait to celebrate the nuptials. Neither she nor the guests expect a corpse! When the police suspect the bride, Bianca's determined to prove her friend’s innocence.Lamar Sims, the new police detective in Edenville, is investigating the murder case. Bianca’s “interference” is not helping, but she won't stop when her friend's freedom is on the line. He makes it clear he wants her to let the police do their job, so she has to find ways around him.No one in Edenville is safe until the killer is behind bars. Bianca won’t let Detective Sims dismiss her hunches. They may have to work together before another dead body shows up.
Blue Labyrinth: by Preston & Child (Pendergast Series, Book 14) | Summary & Analysis
Book*Sense - 2014
Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s Blue Labyrinth is an action-packed detective novel. It neatly braids several major narrative strands into a single, gripping read that will be sure to please standing fans of the series and will doubtlessly welcome new readers into the Pendergast continuum. Blue Labyrinth, follows United States Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Aloysius X. L. Pendergast as he investigates the sudden, startling murder of his estranged criminal son, Alban. As Pendergast looks into the case, he works to delay other investigations that bear in on his family, in which he is not entirely successful; other, seemingly unrelated investigations end up attaching themselves directly to the Pendergast lineage. At length, the investigative strands converge in a tense, tightly paced action scene that could play well in a summer blockbuster, leaving Pendergast and those in his favor alive and well and all those who oppose them dead. You also get the following in this Summary & Analysis of Blue Labyrinth: • Detailed Book Review from Experts • Story Setting Analysis of Blue Labyrinth • Pick up bits you might have missed as we decipher the novel. • Plot Analysis that will help you see the book from another angle. • Details of Characters & Key Character Analysis • Summary of the text, with some analytical comments interspersed • Discussion & Analysis of Themes, Symbols… • And Much More! This Analysis of Blue Labyrinth fills the gap, making you understand more while enhancing your reading experience of the full book.
How to Murder a Millionaire
Nancy Martin - 2002
They gave me the land--and a property tax bill for two million dollars. Which is why I, Nora Blackbird, a former socialite who never really held a job in all of my thirty-one years, found myself in dire need of a paycheck. . ."Now Nora has a job as a society page columnist for a Philadelphia paper. This down—and almost,—out former debutante is happy to reclaim her place within the city's elite. Until her first party assignment, when she stumbles upon the murdered body of the host—a millionaire art collector and old family friend. Her sisters—sexy, hard-edged Emma and flaky earth mother Libby, who has her hands full with husband number two and four kids—only complicate matters as Nora investigates. And meanwhile the son of a rumored New Jersey crime boss is pursuing her with bone-melting come-ons she can barely resist. Priorities, Nora, think priorities...
The Enemy Within
Noel Hynd - 2006
This hopefully will cure many Kindle-related format and spellcheck problems in earlier editions. If you buy a download and continue to have significant problems, please contact me at NH1212f@yahoo.com. Many thanks. Noel Hynd November 16, 2014. Rave reviews: “The Enemy Within is loaded with fascinating details about how federal-level investigations can waste time and lives. . . . A muscular story with great bones.”—USA Today“The Enemy Within is a great story, written intelligently and introducing a very sympathetic main character.”—The Dallas Morning News“[A] high-octane thriller,,, Hynd is a solid, dependable writer with enough literary flair to move him up a few notches above the Ludlums and Clancys of the world. —BooklistFrom Publishers WeeklyIn this exhaustive political action thriller, it's 2009, and Secret Service agent Laura Chapman is pulled off her White House detail to identify and thwart an assassin... The only clues: the assassin is male and he's a Secret Service agent himself. Laura, who has spent more than a decade on duty at the White House, is not your standard, black suit and earplug-wearing poker-faced agent: she drinks too much, smokes pot, sees apparitions and gets depressed. Noel Hynd knows the ins and outs of Washington's agencies both public and secret. He meticulously describes Laura's investigation step by frustrating step. There are subplots dealing with an American attack on Libya, sleazy American spies, Laura's love life and the question of whether those ghosts she keeps seeing are real or not. When the ending finally lopes onstage, it's not as spectacular as most readers would wish, but Hynd ties up all his loose ends, freeing the likable Laura for duty in subsequent volumes. (Mar.) Copyright © 2004 Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistDescribed by the publisher as " 24 meets Alias meets The Day of the Jackal," this tightly plotted novel features a female intelligence agent assigned to ferret out a would-be presidential assassin who may be lurking in the ranks of the Secret Service. But Laura Chapman isn't a clone of Alias' Sydney Bristow; the story bears only the slightest resemblance to Day of the Jackal; and there is no 24 -like episodic structure (or single-day story, either, for that matter). Hynd, whose previous efforts have mixed horror and crime ( A Room for the Dead, 1994), is a solid, dependable writer with enough literary flair to move him up a few notches above the Ludlums and Clancys of the world. With the right kind of word of mouth--something beyond facile comparisons to TV shows--this high-octane thriller with just enough political edge should find the eager audience it deserves. -- American Library Association. Product DescriptionIt is early summer of 2009, an uneasy time in the American capital. Washington is tense over a showdown between the United States and the new ruler of Libya.Laura Chapman is a U.S. Secret Service agent assigned to the White House. She is quirky, solitary, and frequently unorthodox. She is sexy and fit, adept with a pistol as well as with a hundred-pound Everlast bag. But she is also a brilliant intelligence analyst. That’s why she has been assigned to the Presidential Protection Detail for the past eleven years.The CIA assigns Laura to a case that borders on the unthinkable: an assassination plot against the new president. Shockingly, the trigger man will be a member of the United States Secret Service.
The Halo Effect
M.J. Rose - 2004
The novel is the first in a new series featuring the Butterfield Institute, a Manhattan sex therapy clinic employing psychiatrist Dr. Morgan Snow. One of Morgan's patients, the clever and selective call girl Cleo Thane, has written a memoir full of thinly disguised portraits of her clients, powerful men with odd fantasies and fetishes. She leaves this potentially explosive manuscript with Dr. Snow and then misses several appointments, causing Morgan to suspect foul play. Yet NYPD Det. Noah Jordain and his team, diligently pursuing leads in what's become a gory, ritualistic series of prostitute murders, have no evidence that Cleo, whose clientele puts her in a class by herself, might be a victim. Noah and Morgan are drawn to each other, but when Morgan can't persuade Noah to devote more effort to the search for Cleo, she determines to go undercover and meet Cleo's principal clients herself. Ill-equipped for this masquerade, Morgan is soon in over her head and in peril. The mystery takes second place to the catalogue of sexual eccentricities, but Cleo is an engaging guide to the world of dysfunction Rose painstakingly constructs.
Death by Station Wagon
Jon Katz - 1993
He’s got a wife and two kids, a mortgage and a station wagon, and an office in the American Way Mall tucked between a furniture store and a sneaker emporium. And he’s got a modest caseload of the kind a quiet suburban town generates: deadbeat dads, insurance malingerers...until now. Two popular high school students have been found dead on a deserted estate. The police call it murder-suicide, a case of love gone sour, but the dead boy’s friends think otherwise—and they’ve hired Kit to prove the cops wrong. Soon bizarre acts of violence and murder terrorize the town, and Kit begins to uncover corrosive secrets beneath suburbia’s placid surface. The closer Kit comes to answers, the more perilous the case becomes, till Kit stands in danger of losing his detective license... and his life.
Metro Girl
Janet Evanovich - 2004
Number one New York Times bestselling author, Janet Evanovich, is moving into the fast lane with Metro Girl, a thrilling, high-octane misadventure with high stakes, hot nights, cold-blooded murder, sunken treasure, a woman with a chassis built for speed, and one very good, very sexy NASCAR driver who’s along for the ride."Wild" Bill Barnaby's dropped off the face of the earth and big sister Alex heads for Miami, Bill's last known sighting, on a harrowing hunt to save her brother ... and maybe the world. Truth is, Alex has been bailing her brother out of trouble since they were kids. Not that Bill's a bad sort. More that he acts first and thinks later. Unfortunately, this time around, Wild Bill will be Dead Bill if Alex doesn't find him in time.Alex blasts through the bars of South Beach and points her search to Key West and Cuba, laying waste to Miami hit men, dodging Palmetto bugs big enough to eat her alive, and putting the pedal to the metal with NASCAR driver Sam Hooker.Engaged in a deadly race, Wild Bill's "borrowed" Hooker's sixty-five foot Hatteras and sailed off into the sunset ... just when Hooker has plans for the boat. Hooker figures he'll attach himself to Alex and maybe run into Bill. Maybe Hooker can salvage what's left of his vacation. And maybe Hooker'll get lucky in love with Bill's sweetie pie sister. After all, Hooker is NASCAR Guy. And NASCAR Guy is good at revving a woman’s engine.The race to the finish is hot and hard, taking Alex and Hooker into international waters, exposing a plot to grab Cuban gold and a sinister relic of the Cuban missile crises.Creative cussing and sexual innuendo included.
Starvation Lake
John Carson - 2020
Every year on the anniversary of her incarceration, she taunts him with a phone call, giving him one message; when I get out, I'll kill you.Now, Bracken has transferred back to Edinburgh from Fife and is thrown into the deep end on his first day back on duty.There's a killer who is emulating Ailsa, threatening to surpass her body count.Bracken knows he needs her on board to help him track the killer down, but she's reluctant to get involved.Then the case takes an unexpected twist, and she agrees to help. But this new killer is taking them down a dark, twisted path, where nobody sees the outcome.Until it's too late.
The Great Catsby (A NOLA Tail Mystery Book 1)
B.K. Baxter - 2020
I swear he’s judging me as I settle in and try to make new friends in my new small-town Louisiana neighborhood.And just when I start to settle into my new job and get back to reading my classic novels, I’m pulled chapters deep into a mystery. The Beauty Queen in the town has been offed. Someone has killed the darling. Wouldn’t you know it? An innocent man has been framed. I shouldn’t get involved, but somehow, my cat seems to have a way with finding clues in some of my favorite stories. Not that any of that makes sense. Why would it?The cat is the sleuth, I’m the amateur, and we have alligators in the backyard. Throw in a dead body, a book club that’s filled with suspicious characters, and you have my new life. And I thought being a librarian in Louisiana was going to be dull.
The Interpretation of Murder
Jed Rubenfeld - 2006
It unfurls on a sweltering August evening in 1909 as Freud disembarks from the steamship George Washington, accompanied by Carl Jung, his rival and protégé. Across town, in an opulent apartment high above the city, a stunning young woman is found dangling from a chandelier—whipped, mutilated, and strangled. The next day, a second beauty—a rebellious heiress who scorns both high society and her less adventurous parents—barely escapes the killer. Yet Nora Acton, suffering from hysteria, can recall nothing of her attack. Asked to help her, Dr. Stratham Younger, America’s most committed Freudian analyst, calls in his idol, the Master himself, to guide him through the challenges of analyzing this high-spirited young woman whose family past has been as complicated as his own. The Interpretation of Murder leads readers from the salons of Gramercy Park, through secret passages, to Chinatown—even far below the currents of the East River where laborers are building the Manhattan Bridge. As Freud fends off a mysterious conspiracy to destroy him, Younger is drawn into an equally thrilling adventure that takes him deep into the subterfuges of the human mind. Richly satisfying, elegantly crafted, The Interpretation of Murder marks the debut of a brilliant, spectacularly entertaining new storyteller. In 2007 The Interpretation of Murder won the prestigious Best Read of the Year award from Richard and Judy's Bookclub in the UK (comparable to Oprah Winfrey in the USA).
The Bookshop of Yesterdays
Amy Meyerson - 2018
But on Miranda’s twelfth birthday, Billy has a mysterious falling-out with her mother and suddenly disappears from Miranda’s life. She doesn’t hear from him again until sixteen years later when she receives unexpected news: Billy has died and left her Prospero Books, which is teetering on bankruptcy—and one final scavenger hunt.