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The Girls in the Snow (Nikki Hunt Book 1) (affiliate link)
Madison walked through the fallen snow, looking left and right. It had been Kaylee’s idea to use the trail through the forest; she said no one would follow them. But Madison lost sight of Kaylee for a moment and when she found her again she wasn’t alone…
In the remote forests of Stillwater, Minnesota, you can scream for days and no one will hear you. So when the bodies of two fifteen-year-old girls are discovered frozen in the snow, Special Agent Nikki Hunt is sure the killer is local: someone knew where to hide the girls and thought they would never be found.
Though Nikki hasn’t been home in twenty years, she knows she must take over the case. The Sheriff’s department in Stillwater has already made a mistake by connecting the girls’ murders to those of a famous serial killer, refusing to consider the idea that the killer could be someone from town.
Then another girl’s body is found, a red silk ribbon tied in her hair, and Nikki realizes that the killer has a connection to her own dark past, and the reason she left Stillwater.
Death at the Fireside Inn (Veronica Vale Investigates Book 1) (affiliate link)
A determined sleuth.
And a terrible crime.
London 1920. Veronica Vale is content with her obituary writing, parties with friends, and walks with her rescue dog, Benji.
But when a shocking killing occurs at the Winter Garden Theatre and Veronica knows the victim, she finds herself doing more than writing about the death. She’s investigating whodunnit and why.
Veronica enlists her best friend Ruby Smythe, and her street-smart dog, Benji, to figure out what happened and get justice for the victim.
Can our headstrong, clever, amateur sleuth catch the killer before the police? And what secrets will she uncover when she does?
The Girls of Summer Cove (affiliate link)
It’s only for a week, right?
When Mackenzie Walsh left the small town of Summer Cove, Maine, for college in California she had every intention of coming back home. But that was before she met Austin and snagged an internship at her dream company. She’s created the perfect life for herself in California, and Summer Cove will always be there, what’s the rush to go back?
A phone call from her mother about a family emergency catches her off guard, and soon she finds herself back home, in the cold, small town that she couldn’t wait to leave behind.
As she reconnects with Mads and Emma, her two best friends, and her ex-boyfriend Rigsy, she slowly starts to remember what makes the small town so loveable.
With Austin needing her back in California, and her family needing her in Summer Cove, she finds herself torn between the new life that she’s created and the old one that she left behind.
A Springtime Scandal (A Lord for All Seasons Book 1) (affiliate link)
Elodie Templeworth has always been the good sister. The well-behaved sister. The sister on whose shoulders the fate of their family rested.
With three incorrigible younger siblings, Elodie has always made sure she was perfect, above reproach with not a hint of scandal attached to her name. And she was doing a wonderful job of it, too. Until him.
Christian Harrison, Viscount of Brentford could think of little worse than being stuck in some small, country hamlet with nobody and nothing to entertain him. The beautiful Elodie Templeworth had caught his eye. But after a short time in her company he realized that even beauty couldn’t make up for boring, pious purity.
An unfortunate misunderstanding leads to a potential scandal for Elodie and Christian leading Christian to discover that all is not so innocent and demure with the fiery Miss Templeworth. And he’s more than a little intrigued by the passion lurking beneath her rigid composure. Not enough to help her out of a sticky situation though.
He’s ready to wash his hands of Elodie, her family, and the madcap town they all live in. But Elodie has different ideas.
Love in Fine Print (affiliate link)
What happens when a retired NFL quarterback who doesn’t believe in love inherits a matchmaking business and has a meet-cute that ends in the emergency room with a high-powered divorce attorney who is a secret romantic?
A fake marriage, of course.
The Matchmaker
When retired NFL quarterback Ben Whitaker inherits his grandmother’s business, Ever After Matchmaking, he assumes his life will be smooth sailing, setting up eager singles. He’s wrong. No matter how hard he tries to follow in his gran’s footsteps, he is failing miserably.
Ever After isn’t the only thing left in Ben’s care. A ninety-year-old well-meaning/nosy neighbor and a rambunctious two-year-old golden retriever are also in the will, and both are giving him premature gray hair. After the aforementioned golden retriever tackles a gorgeous blonde, resulting in a broken wrist and sprained ankle, Ben is sure his chances with the amber-eyed stunner are toast.
That is, until he finds out she needs his services.
Bloodshed in the Badlands (Wren and Rascal Mystery Book 1) (affiliate link)
As a freelance journalist, the assignment to write an article about a haunted campground in Arizona is Wren’s dream come true. It combines her love of traveling and camping with her loyal Labrador Retriever, Rascal, and the intrigue of investigating haunted locations. The Old West-style Arizona campground, Forgotten Oasis, has a picturesque setting, but a deadly threat looms beneath the surface.
While Wren digs into the mysteries of the Forgotten Oasis, she finds herself at odds with the young, widowed county marshal, whose protective instincts both frustrate and captivate her. Additionally, she contends with a snarky resident ghost who guards the abandoned saloon and has secrets of his own.
After uncovering a long-forgotten crime, Wren discovers new chilling crimes that only she can unravel when she realizes that a ghostly hint is a key clue.
The serial killer in the shadows looks forward to reading her obituary.
A Prince So Cruel (Healer of Kingdoms Book 1) (affiliate link)
He needs my help, but he’ll be my downfall.
A prince by morning.
A cretin by noon.
A beast by nightfall.
There is a curse on his blood, an ailment that, if revealed, could destroy his kingdom.
The only one who can help him is me, a human with average healing abilities. It’s what the Envoy told him, and her word is law.
I’m his only hope.
He sends his blue-blooded friends to kidnap me so I can join their quest to Mount Ruin, the only place where I can heal him.
The path is terrifying, and the prince is lying, hiding things from me. To make matters worse, he isn’t always nice. A Fae prince isn’t supposed to lust for a human, especially when she’s his prisoner. And a human girl isn’t supposed to burn for someone so out of her league.
The Last Thing He Told Me: A Novel (affiliate link)
Before Owen Michaels disappears, he smuggles a note to his beloved wife of one year: Protect her. Despite her confusion and fear, Hannah Hall knows exactly to whom the note refers—Owen’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey. Bailey, who lost her mother tragically as a child. Bailey, who wants absolutely nothing to do with her new stepmother.
As Hannah’s increasingly desperate calls to Owen go unanswered, as the FBI arrests Owen’s boss, as a US marshal and federal agents arrive at her Sausalito home unannounced, Hannah quickly realizes her husband isn’t who he said he was. And that Bailey just may hold the key to figuring out Owen’s true identity—and why he really disappeared.
Hannah and Bailey set out to discover the truth. But as they start putting together the pieces of Owen’s past, they soon realize they’re also building a new future—one neither of them could have anticipated.
Where the Lost Wander: A Novel (affiliate link)
In this epic and haunting love story set on the Oregon Trail, a family and their unlikely protector find their way through peril, uncertainty, and loss.
The Overland Trail, 1853: Naomi May never expected to be widowed at twenty. Eager to leave her grief behind, she sets off with her family for a life out West. On the trail, she forms an instant connection with John Lowry, a half-Pawnee man straddling two worlds and a stranger in both.
But life in a wagon train is fraught with hardship, fear, and death. Even as John and Naomi are drawn to each other, the trials of the journey and their disparate pasts work to keep them apart. John’s heritage gains them safe passage through hostile territory only to come between them as they seek to build a life together.
When a horrific tragedy strikes, decimating Naomi’s family and separating her from John, the promises they made are all they have left. Ripped apart, they can’t turn back, they can’t go on, and they can’t let go. Both will have to make terrible sacrifices to find each other, save each other, and eventually…make peace with who they are.
The Paris Assignment: A Novel (affiliate link)
Londoner Madeleine Grant is studying at the Sorbonne in Paris when she marries charismatic French journalist Giles Martin. As they raise their son, Olivier, they hold on to a tenuous promise for the future. Until the thunder of war sets off alarms in France.
Staying behind to join the resistance, Giles sends Madeleine and Olivier to the relative safety of England, where Madeleine secures a job teaching French at a secondary school. Yet nowhere is safe. After a devastating twist of fate resulting in the loss of her son, Madeleine accepts a request from the ministry to aid in the war effort. Seizing the smallest glimmer of hope of finding Giles alive, she returns to France. If Madeleine can stop just one Nazi, it will be the start of a valiant path of revenge.
Though her perseverance, defiance, and heart will be tested beyond imagining, no risk is too great for a brave wife and mother determined to fight and survive against inconceivable odds.
If You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood (affiliate link)
After more than a decade, when sisters Nikki, Sami, and Tori Knotek hear the word mom, it claws like an eagle’s talons, triggering memories that have been their secret since childhood. Until now.
For years, behind the closed doors of their farmhouse in Raymond, Washington, their sadistic mother, Shelly, subjected her girls to unimaginable abuse, degradation, torture, and psychic terrors. Through it all, Nikki, Sami, and Tori developed a defiant bond that made them far less vulnerable than Shelly imagined. Even as others were drawn into their mother’s dark and perverse web, the sisters found the strength and courage to escape an escalating nightmare that culminated in multiple murders.
The Stillwater Girls (affiliate link)
Two sisters raised in fear are about to find out why in a chilling novel of psychological suspense from the author of The Thinnest Air.
Ignorant of civilization and cautioned against its evils, nineteen-year-old Wren and her two sisters, Sage and Evie, were raised in off-the-grid isolation in a primitive cabin in upstate New York. When the youngest grows gravely ill, their mother leaves with the child to get help from a nearby town. And they never return.
As months pass, hope vanishes. Supplies are low. Livestock are dying. A brutal winter is bearing down. Then comes the stranger. He claims to be looking for the girls’ mother, and he’s not leaving without them.
To escape, Wren and her sister must break the rule they’ve grown up with: never go beyond the forest.
Past the thicket of dread, they come upon a house on the other side of the pines. This is where Wren and Sage must confront something more chilling than the unknowable. They’ll discover what’s been hidden from them, what they’re running from, and the secrets that have left them in the dark their entire lives.
The Quarry Girls: A Thriller (affiliate link)
Killers hiding in plain sight. Small-town secrets. A girl who knows too much. From the Amazon Charts bestselling author of Unspeakable Things and Bloodline comes a nerve-twisting novel inspired by a shocking true crime.
Minnesota, 1977. For the teens of one close-knit community, summer means late-night swimming parties at the quarry, the county fair, and venturing into the tunnels beneath the city. But for two best friends, it’s not all fun and games.
Heather and Brenda have a secret. Something they saw in the dark. Something they can’t forget. They’ve decided to never tell a soul. But their vow is tested when their friend disappears—the second girl to vanish in a week. And yet the authorities are reluctant to investigate.
Heather is terrified that the missing girls are connected to what she and Brenda stumbled upon that night. Desperately searching for answers on her own, she learns that no one in her community is who they seem to be. Not the police, not the boys she met at the quarry, not even her parents. But she can’t stop digging because she knows those girls are in danger.
She also knows she’s next.
One Italian Summer: A Novel (affiliate link)
When Katy’s mother dies, she is left reeling. Carol wasn’t just Katy’s mom, but her best friend and first phone call. She had all the answers and now, when Katy needs her the most, she is gone. To make matters worse, their planned mother-daughter trip of a lifetime looms: to Positano, the magical town where Carol spent the summer right before she met Katy’s father. Katy has been waiting years for Carol to take her, and now she is faced with embarking on the adventure alone.
But as soon as she steps foot on the Amalfi Coast, Katy begins to feel her mother’s spirit. Buoyed by the stunning waters, beautiful cliffsides, delightful residents, and, of course, delectable food, Katy feels herself coming back to life.
And then Carol appears—in the flesh, healthy, sun-tanned, and thirty years old. Katy doesn’t understand what is happening, or how—all she can focus on is that she has somehow, impossibly, gotten her mother back. Over the course of one Italian summer, Katy gets to know Carol, not as her mother, but as the young woman before her. She is not exactly who Katy imagined she might be, however, and soon Katy must reconcile the mother who knew everything with the young woman who does not yet have a clue.
… See the rest of today ‘s Book Picks here on page 2Page 2