HBS Mystery Reader's Circle: #IAN1

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Thursday, August 21, 2014

Mystery Picks of the Day – August 21, 2014

Today the HBS Mystery Reader’s Circle features our Mystery Novels Picks of the Day. These are some of the BEST DEALS from outstanding Mystery Authors for the Kindle at Amazon.

Follow this blog for outstanding Mysteries and great prices.

Entanglement

An International Spy Thriller

Author: Corbin Coltrane

Price: $ 0.99

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Dr. Shane Somers is a 28 year old physicist and engineer who develops a new form of telecommunications based on Albert Einstein's theory of Quantum Entanglement. His new invention makes the fastest internet connection look like the Pony Express by comparison and could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars if brought to market. Meanwhile, China's top secret agent is determined to acquire the technology for Mr. Chu, the ruthless owner of Chu Industries, a network of over-sized factories in China known for their disregard of the environment and inhumane treatment of its employees.

Magnus Gunnarsson, Shane's long time best friend and former high school rival, pays Shane a visit after not seeing him for several years. Magnus informs him that he now works for TAG, an organization that doesn't officially exist, but has the mission of countering international corporate espionage while also acquiring new forms of technology for the United States in the name of national security.

It is now up to Shane and Magnus, reunited best friends, to track down China's super spy and reclaim the technology before it's too late. But the infamous spy has a few tricks up his sleeve that neither of them see coming. Despite the odds stacked against them, they must succeed... America's economy and global dominance hangs in the balance.

Author Genre: Thriller

Website: Corbin Coltrane
Twitter: @CorbinColtrane
E-Mail: contact@corbincoltrane.com
Goodreads: Check Out Goodreads
Google+: Check Out Google+
Facebook: Check Out Facebook

Author Description:
In addition to writing, Corbin has worked as a consultant on the production of the major motion picture, "Paranoia", starring Harrison Ford, Gary Oldman, and Liam Hemsworth. The movie is based on the best-selling book by Joseph Finder. Corbin is also an avid adventurer. Some of his exploits include: Backpacking through the Siberian wilderness, climbing the White Mountains in the dead of winter, traversing the jungles of South America, Kayaking the entire length of the Maine Island Trail, and diving on shipwrecks off the Atlantic Coast. He also served in the Civil Air Patrol, an auxiliary of the United States Air Force, and earned the Billy Mitchell Award presented to him by Senator William Gormley. Corbin also earned the United States Marine Corps' Distinguished Athlete Award for Wrestling. His international relations include serving as a United States student Ambassador to the then Soviet Union while living in Moscow for a short time. He currently resides on the Jersey Shore with his wife, Jenny, and their two sons, Sawyer and Easton.

Dead Witch Walking

The Hollows Book 1

Author: Kim Harrison

Price: FREE

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All the creatures of the night gather in "the Hollows" of Cincinnati, to hide, to prowl, to party . . . and to feed.

Vampires rule the darkness in a predator-eat-predator world rife with dangers beyond imagining—and it's Rachel Morgan's job to keep that world civilized.

A bounty hunter and witch with serious sex appeal and an attitude, she'll bring 'em back alive, dead . . . Or undead.

Author Genre: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Paranormal

Website: Kim Harrison
Author's Blog: Kim Harrison's Drama
Twitter: @BurningBunnies
Goodreads: Check Out Goodreads
Facebook: Check Out Facebook

Author Description:
New York Times bestselling Kim Harrison was born and raised in the upper Midwest, and she has since returned there to better enjoy the snow. When not at work in the Hollows series, she spends her time tending orchids, landscaping her new/old Victorian home, and learning how to golf with her mom. Her current vices include good chocolate, and exquisite sushi. Her bestselling novels include Dead Witch Walking; The Good, The Bad, and The Undead; Every Which Way But Dead; A Fistful of Charms; For a Few Demons More; and Ever After.

Chill Factor

A Novel

Author: Sandra Brown

Price: $ 1.00

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Romantic suspense abounds in this gripping new thriller from New York Times bestselling author Sandra Brown, in which a successful magazine editor is trapped in her remote cabin with a man believed to be a serial killer.

Cleary, North Carolina, is a sleepy mountain town—the kind of place where criminal activity is usually limited to parking violations. Not so, lately. Four women have disappeared from Cleary over the past two years. And there’s always a blue ribbon left near the spot where each of the women was last seen. There are no bodies, no other clues, and no suspicion as to who their abductor might be. And now, another woman has disappeared without a trace.

It is to this backdrop that Lilly Martin returns to close the sale of her mountain cabin, marking the end of her turbulent eight-year marriage to Dutch Burton, Cleary’s chief of police. Dutch’s reluctance to let her go isn’t Lilly’s only obstacle. As she’s trying to outrun a snowstorm, her car skids on the icy road and strikes a man who emerges from the woods on foot. She recognizes the injured man as Ben Tierney, whom she’d met the previous summer. They’re forced to wait out the storm in the cabin, but as the hours of their confinement mount, Lilly begins to wonder if the greatest danger to her safety isn’t the blizzard outside, but the mysterious man right beside her.

Is Ben Tierney the feared abductor? Or is he who he claims to be...her rescuer from harm and from the tragedy that haunts her?

The compelling characters, sexual tension, and stunning plot twists in Sandra Brown’s Chill Factor combine to create a page-turner that will keep readers guessing until the very end.

Author Genre: Mystery & Thrillers, Literature & Fiction, Romance

Website: Sandra Brown
Twitter: @SandraBrown_NYT
Goodreads: Check Out Goodreads
Facebook: Check Out Facebook

Author Description:
Sandra Brown is the author of sixty New York Times bestsellers, including RAINWATER (2010), TOUGH CUSTOMER (2010), SMASH CUT (2009), SMOKE SCREEN (2008), PLAY DIRTY (2007), RICOCHET (2006), CHILL FACTOR (2005), WHITE HOT (2004), HELLO, DARKNESS (2003), THE CRUSH (2002), ENVY (2001), THE SWITCH (2000), THE ALIBI (1999), UNSPEAKABLE (1998) and FAT TUESDAY (1997), all of which have jumped onto the Times bestseller list in the number one to five spot.

Brown began her writing career in 1981 and since then has published over seventy novels, bringing the number of copies of her books in print worldwide to upwards of eighty million. Her work has been translated into thirty-three languages.

A lifelong Texan, Sandra Brown was born in Waco, grew up in Fort Worth and attended Texas Christian University, majoring in English. Before embarking on her writing career, she worked as a model at the Dallas Apparel Mart, and in television, including weathercasting for WFAA-TV in Dallas, and feature reporting on the nationally syndicated program "PM Magazine."

She is much in demand as a speaker and guest television hostess. Her episode on truTV's "Murder by the Book" premiered the series in 2008 and she was one of the launch authors for Investigation Discovery's new series, "Hardcover Mysteries."

In 2009 Brown detoured from her thrillers to write Rainwater, a much acclaimed, powerfully moving story about honor and sacrifice during the Great Depression.

Debt Inheritance

Indebted Book 1

Author: Pepper Winters

Price: $ 0.99

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Nila Weaver's family is indebted. Being the first born daughter, her life is forfeit to the first born son of the Hawks to pay for sins of ancestors past. The dark ages might have come and gone, but debts never leave. She has no choice in the matter. She is no longer free. Jethro Hawk receives Nila as an inheritance present on his twenty-ninth birthday. Her life is his until she's paid off a debt that's centuries old. He can do what he likes with her--nothing is out of bounds--she has to obey. There are no rules. Only payments.

Author Genre: Romance, Ebooks

Website: Pepper Winters
Author's Blog: Pepper Winters
Twitter: @PepperWinters
Goodreads: Check Out Goodreads
Facebook: Check Out Facebook
Pinterest: Check Out Pinterest

Author Description:
Pepper Winters wears many roles. Some of them include writer, reader, sometimes wife. She loves dark, taboo stories that twist with your head. The more tortured the hero, the better, and she constantly thinks up ways to break and fix her characters. Oh, and sex... her books have sex.

She loves to travel and has an amazing, fabulous hubby who puts up with her love affair with her book boyfriends.

Her debut book Tears of Tess will be followed with Quintessentially Q. Her other two titles, Last Shadow and Broken Chance will be coming soon.

Nothing Save the Bones Inside Her

Author: Clayton Lindemuth

Price: $ 0.99

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In 1957 rural Pennsylvania, Angus Hardgrave works an oil rig, fights dogs, distills Walnut Whiskey... and murders wives, friends, anybody.

The presence in the walnut tree on a spur called Devil's Elbow instructs Angus what to do, and so far, following the visions has led Angus to a simple country bounty.

But Angus wants more.

Alone when her father dies, eighteen-year-old Emeline Margulies decides to follow the voice of God in all things. When she hears that she is to escape the clutches of a violent Korean War vet by marrying Angus Hardgrave--a man rumored to have pitiable luck with wives--she humbles herself and follows God's will.

And finds herself trapped between a stalking rapist and a serial killer. As each decision leads her closer to destruction, Emeline must choose between following the faith that got her into trouble...

Or the moxie, resolve, and evil within that promise to get her out.

Author Genre: Thriller, Mystery, Suspense

Website: Clayton Lindemuth
Twitter: @claylindemuth
Goodreads: Check Out Goodreads
Google+: Check Out Google+
Facebook: Check Out Facebook
Pinterest: Check Out Pinterest

Author Description:
Clayton Lindemuth writes noir because that's where he lives. His debut, Cold Quiet Country, earned a coveted Starred Review from Publishers Weekly.

Clayton's follow-up novels Nothing Save the Bones Inside Her and My Brother's Destroyer deliver all the "thrilling, visceral, unsparing" (Publishers Weekly) prose that generated comparisons to noir masters such as Donald Ray Pollack, Tom Franklin, Ron Rash, William Gay, and Daniel Woodrell.

When Clayton is not writing, he's training for a marathon or reading economics or apologetics. He's a dog lover and eternally misses Arizona. Clayton lives in Missouri with his wife Julie and his puppydog Faith, also known as "Princess Wigglebums."

Sponsored by: HBSystems Publications
Publisher of ebooks, writing industry blogger and the sponsor of the following blogs:
eBook Author’s Corner and HBS Author's Spotlight

HBS has verified prices when this article was posted. Please verify the price before buying and its availability at your location for that price.

Monday, August 18, 2014

Mystery Picks of the Day – August 18, 2014

Shattered Palms

Lei Crime Series

Author: Toby Neal

Price: $ 0.99

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Maui is lush mountains, cloud forest and exquisite birdsong—but for Detective Lei Texeira, arrows break that peace.

Someone is stalking poachers that are capturing Maui’s rarest birds, and Lei pursues the case with her usual leap-first, look-later style—but will she be able to catch a killer, save the birds, and still make it to her own wedding? Shattered Palms is a roller coaster ride from the top of Haleakala to the beach and back again, with extinction at stake.

Author Genre: Mystery & Thrillers, Suspense

Website: Toby Neal
Twitter: @tobywneal
E-Mail: tobyneal0@gmail.com
Goodreads: Check Out Goodreads
Google+: Check Out Google+
Facebook: Check Out Facebook
Pinterest: Check Out Pinterest
Post with Profile + Interview: HBS Author's Spotlight

Author Description:
Toby Neal was raised on Kauai in Hawaii. She wrote and illustrated her first story at age 5 and has been published in magazines and won several writing contests. After initially majoring in Journalism, she eventually settled on mental health as a career and loves her work, saying, "I'm endlessly fascinated with people's stories."

She enjoys many outdoor sports including bodyboarding, scuba diving, beach walking, gardening and hiking. She lives in Hawaii with her family and dogs.

Toby credits her counseling background in adding depth to her characters-from the villains to Lei Texeira, the courageous and vulnerable heroine in the Lei Crime Series.

Five Days in May

Author: Ninie Hammon

Price: FREE

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The writhing finger of death hurls across the prairie toward Graham, Oklahoma, one Friday afternoon in May, 1963, on a collision course with the lives of 4 people—each of whom has already planned a personal rendezvous with death in some other form that day.

In Jonas Cunningham’s mind, what he’s planning isn’t murder. The handful of little white pills that will free his precious Maggie from the fog of Alzheimer's is a gift, a final act of unconditional love.

Jonas’s 16-year-old granddaughter, Joy, isn’t planning “murder” either. She's pregnant and sees only one way to keep from shaming her family. Secrets like that are hard to keep though, in a small town.

Joy's father, Rev. Mac MacIntosh has lost his wife and his faith and on Friday, he plans to commit professional suicide—not just leave his church, but abandon his call to ministry.

Princess has an appointment with the Reaper on Friday, too, one she’s been staring down for 14 years. At 5 o’clock, the state of Oklahoma will strap her into an electric chair called Sizzlin’ Suzie and turn on the juice.

But as the strange, psychic death row inmate meets daily with the minister during the final 5 days of her life, everything in both their lives begins to change. Princess knows—about Mac’s life and family. And sees—the Big Ugly coming to eat up the world. She sees other terrible things, too, and is determined to carry to her grave an incredible secret about the little sister she confessed to beheading a decade ago.

When the savage tornado roars with a sound like gravel in a blender into their small prairie town on that May Friday, all 4 of the people who'd penciled in "death" on their calendars actually do confront eternity.

But none of them comes to the crossroads of life and death by the path they'd planned or leaves with the result they expected.

In the end, the Big Ugly will decide who lives and who dies that day.

Author Genre: Suspense, Thriller, Fiction

Website: Ninie Hammon - Suspense colored with hope…
Author's Blog: Ninie Hammon 9e's Blog
Twitter: @niniehammon
E-Mail: niniehammon@niniehammon.com
Goodreads: Check Out Goodreads
Google+: Check Out Google+
Facebook: Check Out Facebook

Author Description:
I think I might be able to grab and hold your attention here if I set myself on fire.

That's probably the only way, though, and since I'm neither that desperate for you to find out about my life nor that mentally unstable, I think I'll pass.

In truth, my life isn't really all that interesting. Which is OK because you don't buy my books to find out about me. You buy my books to find out about my characters. And they ARE interesting. Oh, my goodness yes! Industrial-strength interesting. Interesting on steroids!

There's Princess from Five Days in May, the inmate set for execution who knows things she can't possibly know and is determined to carry to her grave an incredible secret about the little sister she confessed to beheading thirteen years ago.

There's Will from Black Sunshine, who has returned after 20 years to man up to what he did in the coal mine that day AFTER the explosion that killed 27 miners.

There's Anne from The Memory Closet, who has forgotten her entire childhood but has pledged to do whatever it takes to recover those memories--even if it costs her sanity or her life.

There's Bubba Jamison, the brutally vicious dope grower from Home Grown, Slap-Yo-Mama Carmichael, the old black stand-up comic from The Last Safe Place, Ron Wolfson, the crusading photojournalist from Sudan and Grayson Addington, the shattered Vietnam vet from When Butterflies Cry. (Set for release fall of 2014.)

You want interesting--I got interesting! Pull up a chair, sit down by the fire, open one of my books and let the suspense start to build. Or less idylically, grab a seat on the A Train to Brooklyn or the Piccadilly Line to London Waterloo Station and fire up your Kindle.

But since this is MY biographby, after all, I should give you a thumbnail--which is all the space it takes to tell my story. I grew up on the endless prairie of the west Texas High Plains--in Muleshoe, (No, I am not making that up.) where you could put both the city limits signs on the same post. I wrote my first book at age 8, a gripping, spell-binding page-turning thriller about two bees that decided to make chocolate instead of honey. After that august start, short stories, skits, poetry and endless journals warred with the dust bunnies for under-my-bed real estate.

I wrote commercials for a television station when I was a college English major at Texas Tech University, but beyond that, it was years before I finally landed a job where somebody actually paid me to put words on paper. In 1980, I became a newspaper reporter. Of course, I didn't know jack about journalism, but my first editor told me, "If you can write, I can teach you the rest of it. If you can't write, the rest of it doesn't matter." I could write and during a 25-year-career in journalism, I won boatloads of writing awards--even started my own newspaper.

But that career came to an abrupt end when my husband became the director of Young Life in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Scandinavia and we moved to England! For the first time in a quarter of a century, I wasn't writing every day. Within a week, so many words had backed up in my head it was either write a book or have a stroke. I picked Door #1.

The only thing I took away with me from my newspapering days was my muse. Or musES. The California Raisins--you know, the heard-it-through-the-grapevine, tada, tada raisins. Hardees Restaurant once gave out little raisin action figures with their burgers and I collected the set. They're never far from me when I write. They whisper story ideas into my ear. Without a word of additional input from me, my raisins have enough backlogged plots--chock full of action, adventure, mystery and suspense and a wee bit of romance--to carry me through 2046.

Hard Target

Romantic Suspense

Author: Barbara Phinney

Price: $ 0.99

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Military policewoman, Sgt. Dawna Atkinson, is trained to keep her South American embassy safe, but when a bomb is detonated out front one morning, her home unit sends her old instructor, Tay Hastings, to assist with the investigation.

Tay is the one person who can ruin all she's worked so hard for. He's also her one weakness, thanks to a night of shared indiscretion that still haunts her dreams.

Tay wants to tell her how he fought to take the blame for that night, and how she makes him feel, but circumstances prevent that. As the investigation heats up, they find that it's one thing to guard the embassy, but another, much harder thing to guard their own hearts.

Author Genre: Romance,Religious, Inspirational Fiction

Website: Barbara Phinney
Author's Blog: Barbara Phinney's Blog
Twitter: @BarbaraPhinney
Goodreads: Check Out Goodreads
Google+: Check Out Google+
Facebook: Check Out Facebook

Author Description:
USA Today bestselling author Barbara Phinney retired from the military to raise her two children and soon turned her creativity toward writing. That's when she asked herself, what was the hardest genre to write? Romance. Nearly twenty years later, she's published in that genre, going on to final in several contests and take the plunge into the self-publishing pool, with Deadly Trust, set in the shadow of the bridge to Prince Edward Island, on the warm beaches that inspire her. Hard Target is a thriller set in Bolivia.

Her Warrior series, which starts with Bound to the Warrior, then to Protected by the Warrior, finishing off with Sheltered by the Warrior, out in Feb 2015. An exciting series!

Barbara lives in Eastern Canada with her husband, since her children have left the nest. She and her husband now take mission and humanitarian trips to places like Bolivia and Haiti.

Barbara also writes mysteries and sci-fi under the pen name of Georgina Lee. Her latest is Cape of Secrets, and look out for Death on the Ocean Floor, then Turn of the Tide.

Reaper's Run

Plague Wars Series Book 1

Author: David VanDyke

Price: $ 0.99

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When US Marine Sergeant Jill Repeth's blown-off legs begin to regenerate, she thinks it's a medical miracle. But the breakthrough that heals her war injuries is exactly what the government desperately wants to quash - by any means necessary. Hunted, she must cross an America wracked by strife to try to find a family who may already be dead, searching for the inhuman secret of what started it all.

Reaper's Run is an origins story and apocalyptic novel, the beginning of one warrior's journey from tactical cop to freedom fighter and beyond. It leads the reader into the acclaimed Plague Wars futuristic thriller series.

Author Genre: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Horror

Website: Author David VanDyke
Author's Blog: David VanDyke's Author Blog
Twitter: @DVanDykeAuthor
E-Mail: david(at)davidvandykeauthor.com
Goodreads: Check Out Goodreads
Google+: Check Out Google+
Facebook: Check Out Facebook

Author Description:
David VanDyke is a former US Army Airborne enlisted soldier and, later in life, a US Air Force officer. He served in and out of combat zones all over the world in the 1980s through the 2000s. He lives on the East Coast with his wife and three dogs.

If you are an established reader/reviewer, please contact the author at one of the places below to obtain a free review copy of any of his works.

David VanDyke is also a technical writer and freelance proofreader, copy and content editor. If you need editing services, please e-mail him at the address below.

Dead Days

Episode 1 - A Zombie Apocalypse Serial

Author: Ryan Casey

Price: FREE

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How would you survive the Dead Days? Riley Jameson is a regular guy. A little hard-of-luck and going through a rough time at work, but nothing he can't handle. That was before the creatures rose. Feasting on human flesh, their hunger is insatiable. The zombies are unstoppable. The police are gone. The government has collapsed. The world as Riley knew it has changed, forever. In this new, terrifying world, Riley is forced to think quick and act fast in order to survive. As he encounters numerous skin-crawling scenarios, his morals are pushed to the very limit, forcing the question: can humanity survive the onslaught of the dead, not only on the outside but on the inside? The answers often prove unsettling in this unique zombie apocalypse series unlike any other.

Author Genre: Mysteries & Thrillers, Horror, Science Fiction

Website: Ryan Casey - Author of Mysteries, Thrillers, Horror & Sci-Fi
Twitter: @GoRyanGo
Goodreads: Check Out Goodreads
Google+: Check Out Google+
Facebook: Check Out Facebook

Author Description:
Ryan Casey is an author of mysteries, thrillers, horror and sci-fi. He has written seven novels, a long-running serial, and several novellas and short stories. Across all genres, Casey is renowned for his dark, page-turning suspense, his unforgettable characters, and his knockout twists. His work includes the best selling Dead Days horror serial, the Brian McDone mysteries, Sinkers, The Hunger, Killing Freedom, What We Saw, The Watching, She Remembers, Something in the Cellar and Silhouette.

Casey lives in the United Kingdom. He has a BA degree in English with Creative Writing from the University of Birmingham, and has been writing stories for as long as he can remember. In his spare time, he enjoys American serial television, is a slave to Pitchfork's Best New Music section, and wastes far too much of his life playing Football Manager games.