Carolyn McCray started her career in veterinary school, but nowadays keeps busy writing historical thrillers, gut wrenching mysteries, and roller coaster-style action/adventure tales.
Born in San Francisco and raised in California’s Napa Valley, Carolyn always had an overactive imagination. As a child you could usually find her dragging the neighborhood children out to the haunted barn to make her Nancy Drew-style audio tapes. That was great practice for writing such blockbusters as Plain Jane, a Patterson-style thriller.
Carolyn tops today’s Buffet with a boxed set, her techno-thriller Robin Hood Hacker Collection.
Currently Carolyn is working on a seven-book contract from Thomas & Mercer, the mystery and thriller imprint owned by Amazon.com.
With over 250,000 books sold, Carolyn now lives on a beautiful lake in the Pacific Northwest where the fog rolls in over the water, snuffing out all signs of life around her.
As usual, each book listed here has gone FREE within the past 24 hours, except for the Bargain books in the yellow section below. Warning: Kindle book promotions can end without notice, so before downloading click the link “See Kindle price at Amazon” to verify that the book is still free. (Prices and availability may differ outside USA.)
Robin Hood Hacker Collection
Suspense > Thrillers > Technothrillers
Author: Carolyn McCray
EDITOR’S NOTE: THIS BOOK REVERTED TO PAID STATUS SATURDAY MORNING:
A code written in unbreakable Angelic script.
The resurgence of the Black Death.
Can an FBI Agent and the Robin Hood Hacker save the world from another Dark Ages?
This collection includes the prequel short story Hacked, the first full-length novel of the series, Encrypted, the bridge short story between Encrypted and Cipher, Binary along with the second book in the series, Cipher, and the exclusive bridge short story between Cipher and Code, Zeroes.
Shore Lights
Romance > Contemporary
Author: Barbara Bretton
There’s nothing more dangerous to a woman’s heart than a man who is single, straight, loves his kid, and doesn’t kiss and tell . . .
Maddy Bainbridge left her Jersey Shore home town right after high school, determined to put as many miles as possible between herself and her many meddling relatives.
Now she’s back in Paradise Point — an unemployed single mother whose only option is to accept her mother Rose’s offer of a job and a place to live. But it doesn’t take Maddy long to discover that the things about your mother that made you crazy at 17 make you even crazier at 32. Rose’s critical comments bring out Maddy’s inner teenager and by the beginning of December, the end is in sight. Maddy would stay there at the Candlelight Inn, her mother’s popular B&B, through Christmas for her daughter Hannah’s sake, but once the New Year rolled around …
Dead Lawyers Tell No Tales
Christian Fiction > Suspense
Author: Randy Singer
Landon Reed is an ex-quarterback convicted of organizing a points-shaving scheme. During his time in prison, he found forgiveness and faith and earned his law degree. Now he longs for an opportunity to prove his loyalty and worth. Be careful what you ask for.
Harry McNaughton is one of the founding partners of McNaughton & Clay—and the only lawyer willing to take a chance employing an ex-con-turned-lawyer. Though Landon initially questions Harry’s ethics and methods, it’s clear the crusty old lawyer has one of the most brilliant legal minds Landon has ever encountered. The two dive into preparing a defense for one of the highest-profile murder trials Virginia Beach has seen in decades when Harry is gunned down in what appears to be a random mugging. Then two more lawyers are killed when the firm’s private jet crashes. Authorities suspect someone has a vendetta against McNaughton & Clay, leaving Landon and the remaining partner as the final targets.
As Landon struggles to keep the firm together, he can’t help but wonder, is the plot related to a shady case from McNaughton & Clay’s past, or to the murder trial he’s neck-deep in now? And will he survive long enough to find out?
The Circuit Rider
Mystery > Historical > Westerns
Author: Dani Amore
Regular Price 9.99, Today $1.99
From award-winning and international bestselling author Dani Amore comes The Circuit Rider, a fast-paced, action-packed serialized Western.
In a wild land full of lawlessness and sin rides Mike Tower, a traveling preacher known as a Circuit Rider. Circuit Riders travel from town to town, offering their services to those in need. Tower is a man of mystery, utterly fearless though he carries no gun. As he sets out on this latest circuit, is he riding toward a new beginning, or running away from a former haunted life?
Bird Hitchcock, a woman known for her skill with a gun and love of the bottle, has taken the job of protecting Mike Tower on his journey to the West. Yet as she and Tower ride, they quickly find themselves on the hunt for an elusive killer who is brutally murdering women. Protecting Tower seems less and less important as Hitchcock discovers a link between her past and the murderer – will she finally get a chance to exact revenge and find redemption?
The Lawyer’s Lawyer (Jack Tobin)
Thrillers > Legal
Author: James Sheehan
Regular Price 9.99, Today $1.99
Jack Tobin, the main character of The Mayor of Lexington Avenue returns in this non-stop novel that combines enthralling plot twists with some of the best coutroom fiction being written today.
Tobin, known as the lawyer’s lawyer–the guy the best lawyer’s say they’d want to represent them in a courtroom battle–undertakes the representation of a serial killer who he believes to be innocent. The Chief of Police is outraged, the citizens of Oakville where the murders occurred, erupt, and the State Attorney is out for blood as Jack challenges the criminal justice system once again.
Sheehan masterfully weaves stories of love and friendship into one man’s uncompromising search for truth within the four corners of a courtroom where it is often spoken about but seldom seen. Jack is in a fight for his life and the outcome is in doubt right up to the turn of the final page.
A trial lawyer himself, James Sheehan is also a top-notch thriller writer. Once again he succeeds in translating the depth of his courtroom knowledge into an entertaining and truly fascinating read.
APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur-How to Publish a Book
Writing, Research & Publishing Guides > Authorship
Author: Guy Kawasaki, Shawn Welch
Regular Price $9.99, Today $2.99
In 2011 the publisher of one of my books, Enchantment, could not fill an order for 500 ebook copies of the book. Because of this experience, I self-published my next book, What the Plus!, and learned first-hand that self-publishing is a complex, confusing, and idiosyncratic process. As Steve Jobs said, “There must be a better way.”
With Shawn Welch, a tech wizard, I wrote APE to help people take control of their writing careers. APE’s thesis is powerful yet simple: filling the roles of Author, Publisher and Entrepreneur yields results that rival traditional publishing. We call this “artisanal publishing”–that is, when writers who love their craft control the publishing process and produce high-quality books.
APE is 300 pages of step-by-step, tactical advice and practical inspiration. If you want a hype-filled, get-rich-quick book, you should look elsewhere. On the other hand, if you want a comprehensive and realistic guide to self-publishing, APE is the answer.
What the Dog Did
Biographies & Memoirs > Pets & Animal Care
Author: Emily Yoffe
Regular Price $11.99, Today $2.99
- $14.95 List Price
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Dave Barry meets The Secret Lives of Dogs in Emily Yoffe’s funny and insightful look at all things canine. Filled with adventures of heroic dogs, lovable and lazy dogs, malodorous dogs, phlegmatic and incontinent dogs, What the Dog Did delivers some of the most outlandish and certainly the funniest dog stories on record.
Yoffe has long been one of the little-known treasures of American journalism–a comic virtuoso who is willing to endure any indignity if it will leave the reader weeping with laughter. This book will appeal to those who are happy to risk rib damage from laughing out loud, but it deserves a broader audience as well.
Ruby Red
Historical Fiction > Science Fiction > Time Travel
Author: Kerstin Gier, Anthea Bell
Regular Price $9.99, Today $2.99
- $16.99 List Price
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Gwyneth Shepherd’s sophisticated, beautiful cousin Charlotte has been prepared her entire life for traveling through time. But unexpectedly, it is Gwyneth who in the middle of class takes a sudden spin to a different era!
Gwyneth must now unearth the mystery of why her mother would lie about her birth date to ward off suspicion about her ability, brush up on her history, and work with Gideon—the time traveler from a similarly gifted family that passes the gene through its male line, and whose presence becomes, in time, less insufferable and more essential. Together, Gwyneth and Gideon journey through time to discover who, in the 18th century and in contemporary London, they can trust.
Kerstin Gier’s Ruby Red is young adult novel full of fantasy and romance.
Disenchanted
Humor > Fantasy > Epic
Author: Robert Kroese
Regular Price $9.99, Today $1.99
Robert Kroese’s Disenchanted comes fully loaded with the wit and charm of The Princess Bride and a sense of humor all its own. This clever take on the traditional fantasy includes footnotes that keep the narrator honest, a cast of characters that resembles something out of the Island of Misfit Toys, and a fantastic setting filled with words and names that test pronunciation skills.Being assassinated doesn’t have many upsides, so when King Boric is felled by a traitor, the king comforts himself with the knowledge that, like all great warriors, he will spend eternity carousing in the Hall of Avandoor. There’s just one problem: to claim his heavenly reward, Boric must release the enchanted sword of Brakslaagt.
Now, to avoid being cursed to walk the land of Dis forever as an undead wraith, he must hunt down the mysterious Lord Brand who gave him the sword twenty years ago. So begins Boric’s extraordinary journey across the Six Kingdoms of Dis, a walking corpse who wants nothing more than to be disenchanted and left in peace. Along the way he’s advised by the Witch of Twyllic, mocked by the threfelings of New Threfelton, burned, shot at, and nearly blown to bits. But nothing can prepare him for coming face-to-face with Lord Brand. For in that moment, Boric discovers that nothing—in life, in death, or in between—is exactly what it seems.
Heart of the Country
Women’s Fiction > Domestic Life > Christian Fiction
Author: Rene Gutteridge, John Ward
Faith and Luke Carraday have it all. Faith is a beautiful singer turned socialite while Luke is an up-and-coming businessman. After taking his inheritance from his father’s stable, lucrative business to invest in a successful hedge fund with the Michov Brothers, he’s on the fast track as a rising young executive, and Faith is settling comfortably into her role as his wife.
When rumors of the Michovs’ involvement in a Ponzi scheme reach Faith, she turns to Luke for confirmation, and he assures her that all is well. But when Luke is arrested, Faith can’t understand why he would lie to her, and she runs home to the farm and the family she turned her back on years ago. Meanwhile, Luke is forced to turn to his own family for help as he desperately tries to untangle himself from his mistakes. Can two prodigals return to families they abandoned, and will those families find the grace to forgive and forget? Will a marriage survive betrayal when there is nowhere to run but home?
True of Blood
Fantasy > Paranormal & Urban
Author: Bonnie Lamer
- $2.99 List Price
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“I have a television so I know what a family is supposed to look like but mine is nothing like that. To begin with, both my parents are dead. Not the kind of dead where you bury them in the ground, say some nice words, cry a lot and then never see them again. Nope, when they died they refused to ‘go into the light’ or whatever it is you’re supposed to do when you die. Instead, they came back home. As ghosts. Have you ever been sent to your room by a parent who has no corporeal form? I have and it sucks…”
Xandra Illuminata Smith has lived for the last three years with ghosts as parents but her life gets even stranger after her seventeenth birthday when she finds out that her mother is actually a Witch in hiding and her biological father, whom she knew nothing about, is a Fairy and King of the Fae realm.
The Embattled Road
Women’s Fiction > Domestic Life > War
Author: J.M. Madden, Viola Estrella
Three embattled Marines must deal with their devastating physical and emotional injuries in a world that seems to have turned against them.
When the rescue helicopter crashes into his convoy in Iraq, Marine First Sergeant Duncan Wilde struggles with the loss of men, his career and the use of his body. Things can’t get much worse. Until his fiancée decides she has to move on with her life, and that of her unborn child by another man.
Sergeant Chad Lowell knew when he went to war that it would come with a price. And it did. A young Marine under his command is killed by a landmine. Chad’s left with one less leg and a mountain of recriminations. That doesn’t mean he wants to be a pitied by every female he comes in contact with.
Kane
Mystery > Police Procedurals
Author: Steve Gannon
Los Angeles is terrorized by a series of murders. One man can stop the killer: Detective Daniel Kane. But for Kane–devastated by personal tragedy and haunted by a secret that could destroy his family–to do so may cost him everything, even his life . . .
At times chilling, funny, and occasionally brutal, Kane is a nonstop thriller filled with complex characters, surprising twists, and unforgettable scenes. From a political firestorm that sends the investigation spinning out of control to an unexpected, breathtaking climax, Kane will keep you in suspense until the turn of the final heart-pounding page.
To the Grave: A Genealogical Crime Mystery #2
Mystery > Historical
Author: Steve Robinson
Follows American genealogist Jefferson Tayte as he uncovers the disturbing consequences of a seemingly innocuous act in 1944 that was intended to keep a family together, but which ultimately tore it apart. His research exposes hidden pasts and the desperate measures some people will take to keep a secret.
Sitting in a hotel room at gunpoint, facing an impossible decision, Tayte is forced to wonder how his latest assignment had come to this. Five days earlier, after a child’s suitcase arrives unexpectedly at his client’s home in Washington DC, Tayte embarks upon a journey that takes him back to England as he tries to unravel the story of Mena Lasseter – a girl whose life has become a family mystery.
Hoping to reunite his client with the birth mother she never knew she had, having no idea that she’d been adopted, Tayte’s research draws him back to wartime Leicestershire and the arrival of the US 82nd Airborne, which irrevocably changes the course of Mena’s life. But as Tayte tries to find out what became of her and why she was separated from her suitcase all those years ago, he soon finds that he is not the only one looking for her.
BECAUSE I’M A MAID!
Comics & Graphic Novels > Manga > Comedy
Author: Sayuri Sakai
- $2.99 List Price
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The heroine, Karen Otonashi, tries out for a maid position with the Mitsurugi family in the hopes of becoming a great maid like her grandmother.
What kind of tests will the Mitsurugi family’s handsome young masters set? Find out in Sayuri Sakai’s latest girls’ manga.
… See the rest of today’s Editor’s Picks here on page 2