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Dead Woman Crossing (affiliate link)
She threw open the door, running to the crib. When she looked inside, she gasped. The world around her went silent. Inside, there was nothing but a small stuffed elephant. Where was her baby?
When young, single mother Hannah is found murdered by the banks of a twisting Oklahoma creek, her one-year-old daughter sleeping in a stroller near her body, the small town of Dead Woman Crossing reels in horror.
Detective Kimberley King, recently relocated from New York to Oklahoma, with her young daughter Jessica, can’t ignore the similarity of Hannah’s death to the case of Katie James, the woman that the town of Dead Woman Crossing is named after. Katie was murdered in front of her small daughter in 1905, on the banks of the same creek, and it seems that someone is drawing inspiration from the crime. Could this killer be a copycat?
Nadia Wolf: Books 1-3 (affiliate link)
It’s all fun and games until someone gets murdered.
Nadia Wolf has one wish: Win the World Poker Tournament and collect the one-million dollar prize. Beating Caleb, who challenges her poker career, wouldn’t hurt either.
However, the tournament goes sideways when someone is murdered, and the prize money disappears in front of a live audience. Not one witness sees where the money went nor who killed the victim.
In a twist of fate, Nadia teams up with the casino’s sinfully handsome CEO in an attempt to find the missing prize and to solve a perilous mystery that plagues the casino. With Greyson’s overwhelming allure, Nadia has to keep her head in the game and her hands to herself.
The Murder Mystery (A Beth Haldane Mystery Book 1) (affiliate link)
Meet Beth Haldane: a historian with a taste for gardening, snug coffee shops… and solving mysteries?
It’s a crisp spring day in Dulwich Village when Beth arrives at Wyatt’s School for her new job, keen to impress and show off her research skills. Her boss Alan Jenkins seems a little shifty as he runs off for a mysterious appointment… but Beth puts it out of her mind until lunchtime when, strolling the five-hundred-year-old grounds, she is shocked to stumble over Alan’s dead body: spots of blood on his mustard-yellow tweed jacket, his face covered with a carefully-placed handkerchief.
Beth can’t resist joining the hunt for the killer and soon discovers Alan rubbed his fellow teachers up the wrong way… was it the handsome headmaster who’d planned a secret meeting? The gossiping receptionist who knows everything? Or the wily groundskeeper with a grudge?
When Beth returns from her sleuthing to find Alan’s wife rifling through the archives, it’s clear someone at this school had a deadly secret … But with parents and teachers panicking that the respectable reputation of Wyatt’s is under threat, will Beth find herself in the murderer’s sights before the school bell rings?
The Last Airship (Sam Reilly Book 1) (affiliate link)
A long-lost airship with a deadly cargo. . .
In 1939 a secret airship departed Germany in the dark of night filled with some of the most influential people of its time, each carrying their most valuable possessions. One such item amongst them was as dangerous as it was priceless.
The airship never reached its destination.
In present day, former Marine troubleshooter Sam Reilly discovers a missing clue about the lost airship, triggering a violent treasure hunt against the most dangerous and ruthless men in the world today. . .
. . . and time is running out.
On Bur Oak Ridge (Sheltering Trees) (affiliate link)
In the early 1900s, quiet and reserved Molly Lund finds refuge from her past at the Nelsons’ farm in Minnesota. In an attempt to turn a new page in her life, Molly works at making peace with her losses and coming to terms with the disfiguring burns on her face.
Samuel Woodson, the Nelsons’ hired hand, carries his own cares. Split from his family and bearing a burden of misplaced guilt for an act that haunts him, Samuel–seeing past Molly’s scars–draws her out of her self-protective shell.
Molly and Samuel form a friendship, but just as their hearts lead them deeper, an unexpected guest comes calling, demanding what’s his.
Will Molly and Samuel find a way to be together or will they be separated, due to impediments beyond their control? Can they trust in God’s plan and travel a path that heals the hurts of the past?
The Case of the Careless Kitten: A Perry Mason Mystery (affiliate link)
Helen Kendal’s woes begin when she receives a phone call from her vanished uncle Franklin, long presumed dead, who urges her to contact criminal defense attorney Perry Mason; soon after, she finds herself the main suspect in the murder of an unfamiliar man. Her kitten has just survived a poisoning attempt, as has her aunt Matilda, the woman who always maintained that Franklin was alive.
Lucky that Helen took her uncle’s advice―Mason immediately takes her as a client. But while it’s clear that the occurrences are connected, and that their connection will prove her innocence, the links are too obscure to be recognized even by the attorney’s brilliantly deductive mind. Risking disbarment for his unorthodox methods, he endeavors to outwit the police and solve the puzzle himself, enlisting the help of his secretary Della Street, his private eye Paul Drake, and the unlikely but invaluable aid of a careless but very clever kitten in the process.
The Female Brain (affiliate link)
Since Dr. Brizendine wrote The Female Brain ten years ago, the response has been overwhelming. This New York Times bestseller has been translated into more than thirty languages, has sold nearly a million copies between editions, and has most recently inspired a romantic comedy starring Whitney Cummings and Sofia Vergara. And its profound scientific understanding of the nature and experience of the female brain continues to guide women as they pass through life stages, to help men better understand the girls and women in their lives, and to illuminate the delicate emotional machinery of a love relationship.
Why are women more verbal than men? Why do women remember details of fights that men can’t remember at all? Why do women tend to form deeper bonds with their female friends than men do with their male counterparts? These and other questions have stumped both sexes throughout the ages.
The Oceanography of the Moon: A Novel (affiliate link)
After the untimely deaths of her aunt and mother, young Riley Mays moved from Chicago to her cousins’ Wisconsin farm. Here she found solace in caring for her extraordinary adoptive brother, exploring the surrounding wild nature, and gazing at the mystical moon—a private refuge in which she hides from her most painful memories. But ten years later, now twenty-one, Riley feels too confined by the protective walls she’s erected around herself. When a stranger enters her family’s remote world, Riley senses something he’s hiding, a desire to escape that she understands well.
Suffering from writer’s block, bestselling novelist Vaughn Orr has taken to the country roads when he happens upon the accommodating, if somewhat unusual, Mays family. He’s soon captivated by their eccentricities—and especially by Riley and her quiet tenacity. In her, he recognizes a shared need to keep heartbreaking secrets buried.
Mistletoe and Mulled Wine at the Christmas Campervan (affiliate link)
Christmas feels like a real gift for Lucy this year. Her cosy coastal cottage is starting to feel like home, her new pizza business is getting the locals ‘All Fired Up’, and she can’t wait to spend it with her new flame Jack, the charismatic owner of the Cocktail Campervan.
Winding along the snow-dusted Northumberland coast for a whirlwind of Christmas markets and celebrations, Lucy and Jack can’t resist stealing a few kisses under the mistletoe. But there’s a twist in their romantic tale when Lucy’s ex turns up in the village. As her past closes in, Jack becomes increasingly distant. And Lucy worries he’s holding back a few secrets of his own . . .
Shadows of a Princess (affiliate link)
This sensational and controversial bestseller is an explosive account of her life, from the man who was by her side throughout its most turbulent period.
In 1981 Lady Diana Spencer was seen by many as a lifeline for the outdated Windsor line. But Diana didn’t follow the script. Instead she brought a revolution.
Patrick Jephson was Diana’s closest aide and adviser during her years of greatest public fame and deepest personal crisis. He witnessed the disintegration of her marriage to Prince Charles and the negotiation of the royal divorce.
Rooted in unique first-hand experience, Shadows of a Princess is an authoritative, balanced account of one of the world’s most famous and tragic women.
Evolutionary biologist and science writer Alanna Collen’s stunning alarm call concerning the widely-ignored role our gut microbes play in our health and well-being.
“Fascinating…. Everything you wanted to know about microbes but were afraid to ask.”— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
You are just 10% human. For every one of the cells that make up the vessel that you call your body, there are nine impostor cells hitching a ride. You are not just flesh and blood, muscle and bone, brain and skin, but also bacteria and fungi. Over your lifetime, you will carry the equivalent weight of five African elephants in microbes. You are not an individual but a colony.
Until recently, we had thought our microbes hardly mattered, but science is revealing a different story, one in which microbes run our bodies and becoming a healthy human is impossible without them.
In this riveting, shocking, and beautifully written book, biologist Alanna Collen draws on the latest scientific research to show how our personal colony of microbes influences our weight, our immune system, our mental health, and even our choice of partner.
… See the rest of today ‘s Book Picks here on page 2Page 2