As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
The Photo Album (affiliate link)
When Bobby McGowan discovers an old photo album belonging to his mother – who was murdered twenty years ago – he becomes convinced that one of the photos holds the key to finally solving her murder.
Despite the protests of his father and sister, Bobby marches forward with the investigation. He builds a website dedicated to the murder of his mother, and receives a message from the purported killer. There is no turning back now.
A Governess of Great Talents (The Governess Bureau Book 1) (affiliate link)
When a governess of great talents is required, there is only one place the nobility of England go: the Governess Bureau.
It was why Miss Meredith Hubert had worked so hard to gain her place there. Finishing with the Earl of Marnmouth’s children, she is about to be given her next assignment – a Duke called Alfred Carmichael with a reputation to maintain and a half-brother who needs controlling.
Archibald is but eight years old, but already threatens to ruin the family’s reputation as Alfred, the Duke, tries to maintain it. They have to be spotless as there are other families who wish to take their place in society. But Meredith has a secret to hide, and she’s not the only one. Maids sent away in secret, items missing from the house, there is more than one mystery at Rochdale Abbey.
Burden of Poof (Bonnie & Clyde Mysteries Book 1) (affiliate link)
An amateur sleuth named Bonnie and her kitty companion Clyde, with names like those, what could possibly go wrong?
Life hasn’t sparkled too brightly for Bonnie Balfour over the past few years, but a heart-breaking divorce has brought her back to her small rural hometown of Bliss, Georgia, and things are starting to shape up.
The proud new owner of Bless Her Heart—a second chance dress shop and boutique on the town square—Bonnie thinks thirty-eight might not be too late for a fresh start in life after all.
Until a grouchy old widow turns up dead in a pile of donations meant for Bonnie’s shop, and the town’s new detective pins her to the top of his suspect list!
To save her shop, dream and reputation, Bonnie must coordinate clues and stitch together the truth about her innocence, but the unreasonably handsome detective and prying eyes of the local gossip mill are fast fraying her nerves.
Death isn’t always the end…
When Detective Sergeant Jamie Brooke is called to investigate a murder at London’s prestigious Royal College of Surgeons, she’s unprepared for the brutality of the crime. The body of a young woman has been artfully displayed, her organs removed with surgical precision.
As Jamie delves deeper, more bodies surface — each one a twisted reflection of medical history. The investigation leads her into the dark world of body modification, secret anatomical collections, and a mysterious group known only as the Lyceum.
The only person who might be able to help is Blake Daniel, a reluctant psychic whose gift allows him to read the stories behind ancient objects.
Together they must untangle a sinister web of obsession, power, and human experimentation with its roots in the bloody history of surgery. Some collectors will stop at nothing to obtain the specimens they desire…
Stay With You (Whisper Lake: Savage Brothers Book 1) (affiliate link)
Just when Chrissy Caldwell thought things couldn’t get any worse, life showed up and said, “Hold my beer.”
The past year had been a living nightmare, one she couldn’t seem to wake up from. Thanks to her husband skipping town with his twenty-one-year-old assistant and defaulting on the mortgage, Chrissy was moving back into her great-aunt’s dilapidated ranch-style home with her four kids—which was not in her life plan but she was trying to make the best of it. So when her mysterious neighbor, who according to her friends was a Zaddy, offered to help with renovations she figured, why not? What’s the worst that could happen?
Ford Savage was used to life throwing him curve balls. He just never would’ve expected one to come at him in the form of a hot blonde who was a single mom to four kids.
The Baron’s Betrothal (Dangerous Lords Book 1) (affiliate link)
London 1816
Guy Fortescue comes to England to claim his inheritance, Rosecroft Hall, abandoned over thirty years ago when his father fled to France after killing a man in a duel. But England proves to be a dangerous place – someone wants Guy dead. As Guy seeks to discover who lies behind the attacks on his life, he arranges a faux betrothal with Miss Horatia Cavendish.
Unfortunately, things don’t go according to plan. An aspiring poet, Hetty proves to have a mind of her own but in spite of that, Guy finds her far too alluring.
Dangerous….
Headstrong and lovely, Hetty agrees to the betrothal because it allows her to go to London where she can attend literary societies with her aunt. While her affection for Guy grows deeper, she must not forget the betrothal isn’t real. Guy will choose a bride from the beau monde – it will not be a colonel’s daughter from Digswell.
Up the Walls of the World (affiliate link)
Up the Walls of the World is the 1978 debut novel of Alice Sheldon, who had built her reputation with the acclaimed short stories she published under the name James Tiptree Jr. A singular representation of American science fiction in its prime, Tiptree’s first novel expanded on the themes she addressed in her short fiction. “From telepathy to cosmology, from densely conceived psychological narrative to the broadest of sense-of-wonder revelations, the novel is something of a tour de force” (The Science Fiction Encyclopedia).
Known as the Destroyer, a self-aware leviathan roams through space gobbling up star systems. In its path is the planet Tyree, populated by telepathic wind-dwelling aliens who are facing extinction. Meanwhile on Earth, people burdened with psi powers are part of a secret military experiment run by a drug-addicted doctor struggling with his own grief. These vulnerable humans soon become the target of the Tyrenni, whose only hope of survival is to take over their bodies and minds—an unspeakable crime in any other period of the aliens’ history . . .
French Lessons: A Memoir (affiliate link)
Brilliantly uniting the personal and the critical, French Lessons is a powerful autobiographical experiment. It tells the story of an American woman escaping into the French language and of a scholar and teacher coming to grips with her history of learning.
In spare, midwestern prose, by turns intimate and wry, Kaplan describes how, as a student in a Swiss boarding school and later in a junior year abroad in Bordeaux, she passionately sought the French “r,” attentively honed her accent, and learned the idioms of her French lover. When, as a graduate student, her passion for French culture turned to the elegance and sophistication of its intellectual life, she found herself drawn to the language and style of the novelist Louis-Ferdinand Celine. At the same time, she was repulsed by his anti-Semitism. At Yale in the late 70s, during the heyday of deconstruction she chose to transgress its apolitical purity and work on a subject “that made history impossible to ignore”: French fascist intellectuals.
We Should Hang Out Sometime: Embarrassingly, A True Story (affiliate link)
When I was twenty-five years old, it came to my attention that I had never had a girlfriend. At the time, I was actually under the impression that I was in a relationship, so this bit of news came as something of a shock.
Why was Josh still single? To find out, he tracked down each of the girls he had tried to date since middle school and asked them straight up: What went wrong?
The results of Josh’s semiscientific investigation are in your hands. From a disastrous Putt-Putt date involving a backward prosthetic foot, to his introduction to CFD (Close Fast Dancing), and a misguided “grand gesture” at a Miss America pageant, this story is about looking for love–or at least a girlfriend–in all the wrong places.
Poignant, relatable, and laugh-out-loud funny, this memoir is for anyone who has ever wondered, “Is there something wrong with me?”
Becoming a Master Communicator: Balancing New School Technology with Ol’ School Simplicity (affiliate link)
Renée explains how to become a master communicator in personal and professional settings by knowing when to use digital technology and when to put the devices down to have a direct conversation.
Discover how to:
Establish true self-confidence, fulfilling relationships, and an extraordinary career.
Use simple and practical tools to strengthen your communication muscles every day.
Save time, energy, and stress by getting right to the heart of a communication matter.
Become a powerful leader in your professional life.
Take hold of every opportunity that comes across your path.
Experience more joy, gratitude, and presence each day.
Claim who you want to be and the life you want to lead.
Everything starts with communication, and when you can communicate confidently and honestly, you become unstoppable. That journey begins here.
Container Gardening Complete: Creative Projects for Growing Vegetables and Flowers in Small Spaces (affiliate link)
The Borgia Confessions: A Novel (affiliate link)
During the sweltering Roman summer of 1492, Rodrigo Borgia has risen to power as pope. Rodrigo’s eldest son Cesare, forced to follow his father into the church and newly made the Archbishop of Valencia, chafes at his ecclesiastical role and fumes with jealousy and resentment at the way that his foolish brother has been chosen for the military greatness he desired.
Maddalena Moretti comes from the countryside, where she has seen how the whims of powerful men wreak havoc on the lives of ordinary people. But now, employed as a servant in the Vatican Palace, she cannot help but be entranced by Cesare Borgia’s handsome face and manner and finds her faith and conviction crumbling in her want of him.
As war rages and shifting alliances challenge the pope’s authority, Maddalena and Cesare’s lives grow inexplicably entwined. Maddalena becomes a keeper of dangerous Borgia secrets, and must decide if she is willing to be a pawn in the power games of the man she loves. And as jealousy and betrayal threaten to tear apart the Borgia family from within, Cesare is forced to reckon with his seemingly limitless ambition.
… See the rest of today ‘s Book Picks here on page 2Page 2