Wednesday, December 14, 2016

Mystery Picks of the Day – December 14, 2016

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.




A Raucous Time

Celtic Cousins' Adventures Book 1



Author: Julia Hughes

Price: FREE


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A break-neck chase across country in the hunt for King John's lost treasure.

Wren's discovered an ancient diary; he's convinced that it's the key to a legendary treasure trove. All he has to do is persuade cousin Rhyllann that this isn't a geeky flight of fantasy, escape the protection of Detective Inspector Crombie of the Metropolitan Police and outwit a sinister cult known as "The Brotherhood". What could possibly go wrong?


Author Genre: Mystery & Thrillers, Romance, Fantasy

Twitter: @tinksaid
Goodreads: Check Out Goodreads
Facebook: Check Out Facebook

Amazon Author Profile


Author Description:
Julia Hughes (that's me!) is the London born author of The Celtic Cousins' Adventures: "A Raucous Time", "A Ripple in Time" and "An Explosive Time"; The Griffin Riders' Chronicles: "The Griffin Cryer" and "The Griffin's Boy", and on its own (so far!) "The Bridle Path".

Being Indie means having the freedom to explore different genres; "The Bridle Path" is a romance set in Cornwall ... "The Griffin Cryer" is an urban fantasy; life's more fun when you mix it up a little! Personally, I enjoy adventure stories with a little suspense, featuring original characters, unexpected yet logical twists, friendship that sometimes deepens into romance, and most important, a satisfactory conclusion - because us readers deserve a happy ending!




After the First Death

The Classic Crime Library Book 1



Author: Lawrence Block

Price: $ 0.99


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Alex Penn wakes up in a squalid Times Square hotel room. This is what he sees when he finally opens his eyes:

“The floor was a sea of blood. A body floated upon this ocean. A girl—black hair, staring blue eyes, bloodless lips. Naked. Dead. Her throat slashed deeply.

“It had to be a dream. It had to, had to be a dream. It was not a dream. It was not a dream at all.

“I’ve done it again, I thought. Sweet Jesus, I’ve done it again.”

Years before, Alex Penn woke up in similar circumstances, called the police, went to prison. A technicality freed him—and now there’s been another drunken blackout, another dead streetwalker.

But something nags at his memory, and he begins to suspect some other hand wielded the knife. And if he didn’t murder this woman, maybe he didn’t kill the other one, either.

So he runs, adrift in an urban jungle, hoping to steer clear of the police long enough to solve the crime.


Author Genre: Mystery & Thrillers

Website: LB
Author's Blog: Lawrence Block
Twitter: @LawrenceBlock
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Facebook: Check Out Facebook

Amazon Author Profile


Author Description:
Received the Shamus Award, "The Eye" (Lifetime achievment award) in 2002.

I'm told every good author website needs a bio, so here's mine: "Lawrence Block's novels range from the urban noir of Matthew Scudder (A Drop of the Hard Stuff) to the urbane effervescence of Bernie Rhodenbarr (The Burglar on the Prowl), while other characters include the globe-trotting insomniac Evan Tanner (Tanner on Ice) and the introspective assassin Keller (Hit and Run). He has published articles and short fiction in American Heritage, Redbook, Playboy, Cosmopolitan, GQ, and The New York Times, and 84 of his short stories have been collected in Enough Rope. In 2004, he became executive story editor for the TV series TILT. Several of his novels have been filmed, though not terribly well. His newest bestsellers are Hit Parade, his third Keller novel (July 2006 in hardcover), and All the Flowers are Dying (April 2006 in paperback), the sixteenth Matthew Scudder novel. Larry is a Grand Master of Mystery Writers of America, and a past president of both MWA and the Private Eye Writers of America. He has won the Edgar and Shamus awards four times each and the Japanese Maltese Falcon award twice, as well as the Nero Wolfe and Philip Marlowe awards, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, and, most recently, the Cartier Diamond Dagger for Life Achievement from the Crime Writers Association (UK). In France, he has been proclaimed a Grand Maitre du Roman Noir and has twice been awarded the Societe 813 trophy. He has been a guest of honor at Bouchercon and at book fairs and mystery festivals in France, Germany, Australia, Italy, New Zealand and Spain, and, as if that were not enough, was presented with the key to the city of Muncie, Indiana. Larry and his wife Lynne are enthusiastic New Yorkers and relentless world travelers."




Deadly Dossier

Prequel - The Housewife Assassin Series



Author: Josie Brown

Price: FREE


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Finally--Donna Stone, as you've never seen her before: through the eyes of those who affected her life the most.

In this full-length prequel to The Housewife Assassin series, Acme Industries black-ops agent Jack Craig is tasked with investigating the mysterious death of his organization's most prolific hit man, Carl Stone, only to fall in love with the dead man's wife, Donna--a woman he must never contact, but who may hold the key to her husband's disappearance. When Acme approaches Donna to join their organization as an assassin, Jack's undercover mission will change both their lives forever.


Author Genre: Literature & Fiction, Suspense, Historical Fiction

Website: Josie Brown
Author's Blog: Author Provocateur
Twitter: @JosieBrownCA
Goodreads: Check Out Goodreads
Facebook: Check Out Facebook

Author Description:
In fact my novel, Secret Lives of Husbands and Wives (Simon & Schuster), is being adapted by producer Jerry Bruckheimer as a dramatic series for television.

Like most authors I know, I'm a voracious reader. My favorite classic authors are Edith Wharton, John le Carre, Martin Cruz Smith, Jane Austen, Graham Greene, P.D. Wodehouse, Margaret Mitchell, Glen David Gold, and Raymond Chandler.

As for contemporary authors, I think that both Martin Cruz Smith and John Le Carre are two of the best writers alive, and I love the writing styles of Helen Fielding, Jackie Collins and Allison Pearson. I think John Lescroart and MJ Rose are amazing, both as authors and author advocates.

I'm a cinephile (I see everything--chick flicks, action films, art house movies, almost every kind of foreign film) and I'm a walker and hiker--anywhere from four to eleven miles a day.

Otherwise, I'M WRITING. Or researching for my next books….meeting the wonderful people who let me know that what I write resonates with them…or hanging out in my fave bookstores (which is any bookstore in any town I happen to be in, at the time).

I've got a sweet romantic husband (who both cooks AND walks the dog, come rain, sleet or flood), and two great funny kids, a boy and a girl. Yeah, I know, I'm lucky, and I should count my blessings. (Believe me, I do!)

I'm also the author of three non-fiction books: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Finding Mr. Right [Alpha/Pearson]; Marriage Confidential: 102 Honest Answers to the Questions Every Husband Wants to Ask, and Every Wife Needs to Know [Signal Press]; and Last Night I Dreamt of Cosmopolatans: A Modern Girl's Dream Dictionary [St. Martin's Press]

As a journalist, my celebrity interviews and relationships trends articles have been featured in Los Angeles Times Syndicate International, Redbook and Complete Woman magazines, as well as AOL, Yahoo, AskMen.com, Divorce360.com, and SingleMindedWomen.com

Josie lives in San Francisco, California, with Martin and our two children.

Martin, my husband: THE COMPLETE IDIOT'S GUIDE TO FINDING MR. RIGHT, and MARRIAGE CONFIDENTIAL: 102 HONEST Answers to the Questions Every Husband Wants to Ask, and Every Wife Needs to Know.




A Man to Die For

A Suspense/Thriller



Author: Eileen Dreyer

Price: $ 0.99


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St. Louis Trauma nurse Casey McDonough thinks her life is interesting enough. Her best friend still drops acid, her ex-husband is a cross-dressing psychiatrist, and her mother has turned the third floor of the family home into the Chapel of Eternal Vigilance.

Then, things begin to really go wrong when OB/Gyn Dr. Dale Hunsacker arrives. Handsome, wealthy and charismatic, the good doctor is enchanting the patients of the St. Louis hospital. But, Cassy believes he is a serial killer. And the only person who takes her seriously, is Hunsacker himself.

Caught in a spiral of suspicion and intimidation, Casey approaches ex-Marine, ex-Jesuit homicide sergeant Jack Scanlan for help. All she has are hunches for proof, but she'll do anything to stop the monster walking the halls of her hospital.


Author Genre: Mystery & Thrillers, Romance

Website: Eileen Dreyer
Twitter: @eileendreyer
Goodreads: Check Out Goodreads
Facebook: Check Out Facebook

Amazon Author Profile


Author Description:
Award-winning, bestselling author Eileen Dreyer is actually evil twins. Known as Kathleen Korbel to her Silhouette readers, she has published twenty-three books for Silhouette since 1986 and, under her own name(Eileen Dreyer), eight suspense novels and ten short stories. She came to publishing from the world of trauma nursing, which taught her some very important lessons, the most important being "don't sweat the small stuff," or, as her family puts it, "come see me when you get hit by a bus."

Eileen won her first publishing award in 1987, being named the best new Contemporary Romance Author by Romantic Times. Since then she has garnered not only a prestigious Anthony Award nomination for mystery, but five Rita Awards from the Romance Writers of America, which garnered her a place as only the fourth member in the RWA Hall of Fame.

Eileen is a voracious reader--of everything--who started writing at ten, when she ran out of Nancy Drews. She writes in two genres, because she believes in the message of both: hope and justice.(well, and because she hasn't finished that big fantasy yet)You can figure out which is which.

A frequent speaker at writer's conferences and universities all across the country, Eileen is a member not only of Romance Writers of America, but Novelists, Inc, Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and, just in case things go wrong, Emergency Nurses Association. She has also assumed the mantle of unofficial mascot for the International Association of Forensic Nurses, a new forensic subspecialty that, amazingly enough, has begun to show up in her work.

A lifelong resident of St. Louis, Missouri, Eileen has been married for thirty-two years to husband Rick, and has two children. She also has animals but refuses to expose them to the glare of the limelight. An addicted traveler, she has sung in some of the best Irish pubs in the world, and enjoys the kind of hands-on book research that lets her salve an insatiable curiosity. She counts film producers, police detectives and Olympic athletes as some of her sources and friends.




Marrow


Author: Tarryn Fisher

Price: $ 0.99


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In the Bone there is a house.

In the house there is a girl.

In the girl there is a darkness.

Margo is not like other girls. She lives in a derelict neighborhood called the Bone, in a cursed house, with her cursed mother, who hasn’t spoken to her in over two years. She lives her days feeling invisible. It’s not until she develops a friendship with her wheelchair-bound neighbor, Judah Grant, that things begin to change. When neighborhood girl, seven-year-old Neveah Anthony, goes missing, Judah sets out to help Margo uncover what happened to her.

What Margo finds changes her, and with a new perspective on life, she’s determined to find evil and punish it–targeting rapists and child molesters, one by one.

But hunting evil is dangerous, and Margo risks losing everything, including her own soul.


Author Genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense,Psychological, Romance

Website: Tarryn Fisher - write or die
Twitter: @Tarryn__Fisher
Goodreads: Check Out Goodreads
Facebook: Check Out Facebook

Author Description:
Tarryn fancies that she was born a writer. She sleeps little, reads a lot and has a bad Starbucks addiction. She currently lives in Washington with her family.


Sponsored by: HBSystems Publications
Publisher of ebooks, writing industry blogger and the sponsor of the following blogs:
eBook Author’s Corner
HBS Mystery Reader’s Circle
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.

Wednesday, December 7, 2016

Mystery Picks of the Day – December 7, 2016

Today the HBS Mystery Reader’s Circle features our Mystery Novels and Novella 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.




Black Water

A Pat Tierney Mystery Book 2



Author: Rosemary McCracken

Price: $ 0.99


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How strong is a mother's love?

When Pat Tierney's daughter, Tracy, asks her to help find Tracy's partner, Jamie Collins, their mother-daughter relationship is stretched to the limits. Pat heads out to cottage country where an elderly man, who killed Jamie’s sister in an impaired driving accident ten years ago, has perished in a suspicious fire. Unfortunately, Jamie is the prime suspect.

Pat takes charge at the new branch her investment firm has opened in the seemingly idyllic community where Jamie grew up, and her search for Tracy's missing sweetheart takes her through a maze of fraud, drugs, bikers and murder.

Once again, Pat proves that family can always count on her.


Author Genre: Mystery

Website: Rosemary McCracken
Author's Blog: Moving Target
Twitter: @RCMcCracken
Goodreads: Check Out Goodreads
Facebook: Check Out Facebook

Amazon Author Profile


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Author Description:
Rosemary McCracken writes the Pat Tierney mysteries. Safe Harbor, the first mystery in the series, was a finalist for Britain's Debut Dagger. It was published by Imajin Books in 2012, followed by Black Water in 2013 and Raven Lake earlier this year. “The Sweetheart Scamster,” a Pat Tierney story in the anthology, Thirteen, was a Derringer finalist in 2014. Jack Batten, The Toronto Star’s crime fiction reviewer, calls Pat “a hugely attractive sleuth figure.”

Rosemary lives in Toronto, Canada, and teaches novel writing at George Brown College.




Don't Speak

Jade Harrington Series Book 1



Author: J. L. Brown

Price: $ 0.99


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he nursery rhyme was wrong. Words can hurt you.

Ambitious, twenty-something FBI Special Agent Jade Harrington cuts her vacation short to investigate the murder of a conservative radio personality only to discover that he may be the victim of a serial killer. Whitney Fairchild, the elegant and charismatic Democratic senator from Missouri, campaigns in a cutthroat race for president of the United States. Cole Brennan, the most popular conservative talk-show host in the nation, battles nightly to save his country and help the incumbent Republican president maintain his ‘inner conservative’ to win re-election.

The lives of Jade, Whitney, Cole, and the killer—who has an agenda of his own—are on a collision course. That course will not just impact them each in ways they could never have foreseen, but also the future of the United States of America. Amidst a backdrop of contemporary power politics driven by the influence of talk radio and social media, DON’T SPEAK thrills even as it explores many of the complex issues facing Americans today.


Author Genre: Thriller, Suspense, Crime

Website: J. L. Brown
Twitter: @jl_brownauthor
Goodreads: Check Out Goodreads
Facebook: Check Out Facebook

Amazon Author Profile


Author Description:
J. L. Brown combines her love for sports, politics, and current affairs in her writing. Two of her short stories, Justice for One and Behind the Gates, were published in cc&d magazine in 2014.

A native of Fairfax, VA, she currently resides with her wife in Seattle, and is working on the second book in the Jade Harrington series.




The Mistaken

The Mistaken Series Book 1



Author: Nancy S. Thompson

Price: $ 0.99


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All Tyler Karras wants is to enjoy life with his expectant bride. What he gets instead is a graveside seat at her funeral. With the woman who killed her uncharged and still free, all Ty wants now is revenge.

His brother, Nick, has dangerous connections and suggests a sadistic plan: grab the woman responsible and hand her over to his associates--sex-traffickers in San Francisco's Russian Mafia. They offer Ty more than he dreamed possible. In exchange for the woman, they'll finally let his brother leave the business for good--with his debt wiped clean and his heart still beating.

There's just one problem: Ty kidnaps the wrong woman.

Now he must protect Hannah Maguire from the very enemy he's unleashed, but the Russians are holding Nick as leverage to force Ty to complete their deal. Caught in a no-win situation, Ty must find a way to save himself, his brother, and the woman, but with the Russian Mafia, even two out of three makes for very long odds.


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

Author's Blog: Nancy S. Thompson
Twitter: @NancySThompson
E-Mail: acadia1997@msn.com
Goodreads: Check Out Goodreads
Facebook: Check Out Facebook

Amazon Author Profile


Author Description:
Nancy S. Thompson is the award-winning author of the dark romantic thrillers, The Mistaken and Leverage, and Stirred, a contemporary romantic suspense. She is a California transplant currently living in Seattle, Washington with her husband. Besides moonlighting as a freelance editor, she also has her own interior design business within the model home merchandising industry.




The Taxidermist's Daughter

A Novel



Author: Kate Mosse

Price: $ 0.99


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In a remote village near the English coast, residents gather in a misty churchyard. More than a decade into the twentieth century, superstition still holds sway: It is St. Mark’s Eve, the night when the shimmering ghosts of those fated to die in the coming year are said to materialize and amble through the church doors.

Alone in the crowd is Constantia Gifford, the taxidermist’s daughter. Twenty-two and unmarried, she lives with her father on the fringes of town, in a decaying mansion cluttered with the remains of his once world-famous museum of taxidermy. No one speaks of why the museum was shuttered or how the Giffords fell so low. Connie herself has no recollection—a childhood accident has erased all memory of her earlier days. Even those who might have answers remain silent. The locals shun Blackthorn House, and the strange spinster who practices her father’s macabre art.

As the last peal of the midnight bell fades to silence, a woman is found dead—a stranger Connie noticed near the church. In the coming days, snippets of long lost memories will begin to tease through Connie’s mind, offering her glimpses of her vanished years. Who is the victim, and why has her death affected Connie so deeply? Why is she watched by a mysterious figure who has suddenly appeared on the marsh nearby? Is her father trying to protect her with his silence—or someone else? The answers are tied to a dark secret that lies at the heart of Blackthorn House, hidden among the bell jars of her father’s workshop—a mystery that draws Connie closer to danger . . . Closer to madness . . . Closer to the startling truth.


Author Genre: Fiction, Historical Fiction

Website: Kate Mosse
Twitter: @katemosse
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Facebook: Check Out Facebook

Amazon Author Profile


Author Description:
Kate Mosse is the author of the # 1 International bestseller LABYRINTH, and a presenter for BBC television and radio in London. Born in 1961, she grew up in West Sussex, England, she read English at Oxford and holds honorary MAs from Oxford and Chichester Universities. A publisher for seven years, she is the Co-Founder & Honorary Director of the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Orange Award for New Writers, the prestigious annual literary awards celebrating international writing in English by women. She is also a television and radio presenter for the BBC in London, fronting such series as 'The Readers & Writers Roadshow' and 'Open Book.'

Previous books include Becoming a Mother and The House: Behind the Scenes at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, as well as two novels Eskimo Kissing and Crucifix Lane. LABYRINTH, her international # 1 bestseller, was published in the UK in July 2005. A Sunday Times #1 bestseller in hardback and paperback, and a New York Times Top 10 bestseller, it was the over all best selling book in the UK for 2006 and won 'Best Read of the Year' in the British Book Awards. It is also shortlisted for the IMPAC international literary award, for a CWA Steel Dagger and has been shortlisted for 'Author of the Year' for the 2007 British Book Awards. LABYRINTH is published in 40 countries.

A former Executive Director of Chichester Festival Theatre, Kate is a member of the Royal Society of Arts, a Board member of the international sponsorship organisation Arts & Business, Kate was named International Woman of Achievement in 2000 for her contribution to the Arts.

Kate lives with her husband and two teenage children in Sussex, England, and Carcassonne, southwest France.




Trident's First Gleaming

[#1] A Special Operations Group Thriller



Author: Stephen Templin

Price: $ 0.99


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Former SEAL Chris Paladin leaves SEAL Team Six to become a pastor, but CIA spook Hannah Andrade pulls him back into Special Operations Group, the ultra-secret unit that SEAL Team Six operators and others served under to eliminate bin Laden. Chris and Hannah are joined by Delta Force’s Sonny Cohen to stop a new terrorist threat from launching a deadly cyber-terror against the United States.


Author Genre: Thriller, Suspense, Mystery

Website: Stephen Templin
Author's Blog: Templin's Room
Twitter: @StephenTemplin
Goodreads: Check Out Goodreads
Facebook: Check Out Facebook

Amazon Author Profile


Author Description:
STEPHEN TEMPLIN is a New York Times, USA Today, and international bestselling author, with movie rights sold to Vin Diesel. His books have been translated into 13 languages. He publishes with three of the Big 5 publishers: Simon and Schuster, St. Martin's Press, and Hachette UK.

He wasn't a SEAL, but he completed Hell Week, qualified as a pistol and rifle expert, blew up stuff, and practiced small-unit tactics during Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) training. Later, Steve became a missionary. Then for 14 years he lectured as a tenured professor at Meio University in Japan, where he trained in the martial art aikido. His PhD is in education, and he lives in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Feel free to talk with Steve through Twitter and Facebook.


Sponsored by: HBSystems Publications
Publisher of ebooks, writing industry blogger and the sponsor of the following blogs:
eBook Author’s Corner
HBS Mystery Reader’s Circle
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.