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Secrets can’t stay buried forever, and when they’re exposed, they can have tragic consequences.
Hannah Walker is living in limbo. Six years ago, her daughter was abducted, and her world fell apart. She’s tried to pick up the pieces of her life, to move on, but not a day goes by when she doesn’t relive the guilt and horror of that day. And then one afternoon she gets a phone call that tips her fragile existence on its head. A discovery in a local garden could be related to Sophie’s disappearance.
Suddenly the hope that has never quite been extinguished is reignited. She’s never given up believing that Sophie is alive but is she being ridiculously naïve? She doesn’t know. All she does know is that this time around she won’t rest until she finds out what really happened to her daughter.
10 million active players. One Game Master. Big Problems.
Infinite Worlds is the most popular VRMMORPG on the market. Its maps are so vast, developer Hard Rock Data utilizes a network of highly advanced Artificial Intelligences to control it. But it’s not without problems.
That’s why Game Masters like Jeff Driscoll have jobs. The downside? He’s not allowed to play the game. Something about conflicts of interest and favoritism.
His very boring and tedious job is to help players deal with the occasional bug that slips through the cracks and ensure they enjoy their time playing enough to give a 5-star rating. It’s a gig. It pays the bills.
However, when the A.I.s unexpectedly issue a Rogue Patch, the game becomes a buggy mess and Jeff’s role radically changes. He finds himself as the only Game Master around, dealing with more problems than he can handle.
Suck My Life: A Paranormal Chick Lit Novel (Sucking Dead Book 1) (affiliate link)
Mya: One minute I’m working in a bookshop and the next minute a vampire decides to kill me.
Enter the tall, dark, handsome stranger who’s been hanging around the store lately. He has a deal he says I can’t refuse. I can either a) die or b) become a vampire and Queen of the Wayward.
Great choices there, hey? Obviously, I choose option b.
So here I am, trying to get used to not only being undead, but to my new royal role where I’m in charge of the Home of Wayward Souls. Yep, any newly dead spirits that are wild, unhappy, and out to cause trouble. All mine.
Oh, and there’s another tiny thing I need to get my head around. The guy who prevented my demise? He’s Death himself. The grim reaper took a shine to me and wants to take me on a date
Captain Madigan (Tales of the Whiskey Richard Book 1) (affiliate link)
Smuggling, fighting, killing – the life of a space privateer is a young man’s game. Albert Madigan, captain of the Whiskey Richard, sure as hell knows that description no longer applies to him.
Madigan’s ship is rundown, his crew is made up of men and women just as flawed as their captain and bouncing from shady job to shady job across the solar system is more trouble than it’s worth. Madigan finally has his opportunity to retire when a high paying contract falls in his lap, but his best laid plans are shot to shit when the job turns out to be a deadly setup.
Taking off across the stars, the crew of the Whiskey Richard fights to stay one step ahead of their pursuers as Madigan comes to grips with what he needs to do to see his quest for vengeance through to its inevitable, bloody conclusion.
Otterly into You (affiliate link)
They’re not-quite enemies. They’re not-really friends. They’re definitely not lovers.
But they’re absolutely going to be one of those things when this is over.
He really doesn’t want to want this woman.
Or her otters.
And no, “otters” is not a euphemism.
She has otters. And she wants him to take care of them. And he’s going to say yes.
Is that going to get him laid?
Probably.
Is that a good idea?
Definitely not.
Is he going to do it anyway?
Absolutely yes.
Blakemort: A Psychic Surveys Companion Novel (Book One) (affiliate link)
“That house, that damned house. Will it ever stop haunting me?”
After her parents’ divorce, five-year old Corinna Greer moves into Blakemort with her mother and brother. Set on the edge of the village of Whitesmith, the only thing attractive about it is the rent. A ‘sensitive’, Corinna is aware from the start that something is wrong with the house. Very wrong.
Christmas is coming but at Blakemort that’s not something to get excited about. A house that sits and broods, that calculates and considers, it’s then that it lashes out – the attacks endured over five years becoming worse. There are also the spirits, some willing residents, others not. Amongst them a boy, a beautiful, spiteful boy…
Who are they? What do they want? And is Corinna right when she suspects it’s not just the dead the house traps but the living too?
The Mirror (affiliate link)
The night before she is supposed to get married, Shay Garrett has no idea that a glimpse into her grandmother’s antique Chinese mirror will completely transform her seemingly ordinary life. But after a bizarre blackout, she wakes up to find herself in the same house—but in the year 1900. Even stranger, she realizes she is now living in the body of her grandmother, Brandy McCabe, as a young woman. Meanwhile, Brandy, having looked into the same mirror, awakens in Shay’s body in the present day—and discovers herself pregnant.
As Rachael—the woman who links these two generations, mother to one and daughter to another—weaves back and forth between two time periods, this imaginative thriller explores questions of family, identity, and love. Courageous, compassionate Shay finds herself fighting against the confines of a society still decades away from women’s liberation, while Brandy struggles to adapt to the modern world she has suddenly been thrust into.
Cashelmara (affiliate link)
East of the Mountains (affiliate link)
Mid-October is harvest time in the Columbia Basin of central Washington, a rich apple- and pear-growing region. Ben Givens, recently widowed, is a retired heart surgeon, once admired for his steadiness of hand, his precision, and his endurance. But now he has been diagnosed with terminal colon cancer. Ben has never been a man to readily accept defeat—but he is determined to avoid suffering, and to avoid being a burden.
Accompanied by his two hunting dogs, he sets out on a trip, which he plans to end with an “accident.” Journeying into deserts, yawning canyons, dusty ranches, and vast orchards, however, he is unprepared for the persuasiveness of memory and the promise he made to his wife, Rachel, the love of his life, during World War II. Along the way Ben will meet some people who force him to think more about his worldview—a young couple, a drifter, a veterinarian, a rancher, a migrant worker—and just when he thinks there is no turning back, nothing to lose that wasn’t lost, his power of intervention is called upon and his very identity tested.
A Visitor’s Guide to Victorian England (affiliate link)
Step into the past and experience the world of Victorian England, from clothing to cuisine, toilet arrangements to transport—and everything in between. A Visitor’s Guide to Victorian England is “a brilliant guided tour of Charles Dickens’s and other eminent Victorian Englishmen’s England, with insights into where and where not to go, what type of people you’re likely to meet, and what sights and sounds to watch out for . . . Utterly brilliant!” (Books Monthly, UK).
Like going back in time, Higgs’s book shows armchair travelers how to find the best seat on an omnibus, fasten a corset, deal with unwanted insects and vermin, get in and out of a vehicle while wearing a crinoline, and avoid catching an infectious disease.
The Innkeeper’s Daughter (The Gentleman Spy Mysteries Book 1) (affiliate link)
In the twilight of a November evening, Sir Henry March, a man of wealth and charm — and a secret agent for the Crown — comes across a badly beaten Eliza Broad, desperate to escape her cruel stepfather. Knowing she has nowhere to go, Sir Henry takes her to his home to recover, and introduces her to a world of culture, art, and literature she never knew existed. But Eliza’s brutal world follows her to London, where elite aristocratic salons coexist with the back alleys of the criminal underworld.
As romance blossoms between them, Eliza unearths an old secret that leads them into the dark, sadistic world of sex trafficking, and allows Henry to finally identify a traitor responsible for selling military secrets and causing the death of thousands.
… See the rest of today ‘s Book Picks here on page 2Page 2