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Truth Kills (Angelina Bonaparte Book 1) (affiliate link)
A murdered mistress. An accused mob boss. Can two detectives put their differences aside to find the real killer?
Angelina Bonaparte is starting from square one. After a messy divorce, the middle-aged librarian put down her books and picked up a new gig as a private investigator. When a mob boss heads to jail for his mistress’ murder, she has no issue with the womanizing scumbag rotting in prison. But when the suspect’s pregnant wife swears his innocence, Angelina can’t find it in her heart to refuse the case.
Already reluctant to get involved, her frustration grows when she’s forced to work alongside Ted Wukowski, a homicide detective who thinks a crime scene is no place for a woman. In the search for clues along the mistress’ long record of broken hearts and promises, Angelina’s natural charm is the perfect complement to her temporary partner’s take-no-prisoners interrogation style. And before long, she and Ted can feel their grudging respect transform into an undeniable attraction.
To solve the case and catch the murderer, the PI and the cop must learn to trust each other completely before an innocent man goes to jail for a crime he didn’t commit…
Macarons and Mayhem (Peridale Cafe Book 7) (affiliate link)
Excitement blossoms through Peridale when a prestigious gardening magazine picks the village as the spotlight for their next issue, but that joy quickly turns to dread when members of the local gardening society, The Peridale Green Fingers, start dying one by one after their obituaries are sent to The Peridale Post the day before their murders.
Julia is asked to bake macarons for the magazine’s unveiling of ‘The Best Garden in Peridale’ party, but with death striking the village, she has more important things to worry about. Is somebody killing The Green Fingers’ to better their chances of winning the title as well as the cash prize, or is there something more sinister happening? With her old friend and newspaper reporter, Johnny, by her side, Julia must uncover the truth before every member of the club is crushed like an unwanted weed.
Endurance (The Konrath Collective Book 5) (affiliate link)
WELCOME TO THE WORST BED AND BREAKFAST EVER…
The bed and breakfast was hidden in the hills of West Virginia. Wary guests wondered how it could stay in business at such a creepy, remote location. Especially with its bizarre, presidential decor and eccentric proprietor.
ONCE YOU CHECK IN…
When the event hotel for the national Iron Woman triathlon accidentally overbooked, competitor Maria was forced to stay at the Rushmore. But after checking into her room, she quickly realized she wasn’t alone. First her suitcase wasn’t where she put it. Then her cell phone was moved. Finally, she heard an odd creaking under the bed. Confusion quickly turned to fear, and fear to hysteria when she discovered the front door was barred and the windows were bricked over. There was no way out.
…YOU’LL BE DYING TO LEAVE
Homicide and Honeycrisps (Appleton Farms Book 1) (affiliate link)
Won’t keep the killers away.
Mackenzie Appleton was raised on a farm, and now runs the business side of things for her dad. Her life is filled with all the things she loves – animals, the outdoors and fabulous food – and she wouldn’t change a thing.
When a body is found in the midst of the corn maze, however, Mac’s tranquil world is turned upside down, and she finds herself swept up in trying to solve a murder. Police point to one of her dear, sweet employees as a potential suspect, and Mac would never have believed that she was capable of such a thing, but now she’s not so sure.
A mysterious stalker haunts one of the farm’s gift shop cashiers, and Mac has her hands full, trying to keep everyone safe, while possibly working day to day alongside a murderer. Tensions are high and she takes matters into her own hands.
Murder on Saint Patrick’s Day (Ridgeway Rescue Book 3) (affiliate link)
It’s St. Patrick’s Day and 20-year-old Emma Wright is working hard at training five-month-old Molly, her foster puppy, to become a therapy dog. But her training coach and neighbor gets an emergency call, cutting the lesson short, and Emma volunteers to pick up her daughter at a St. Patrick’s Day concert in town.
When Emma arrives, the concert has just finished up, and the teenage girls are visiting with the band. Then the lead singer stumbles and falls to the ground, dead. Emma becomes the only level head in the crowd and calls for help. When the Sheriff and Colby arrive, they investigate it as a potential accident. But Emma finds subtle clues that something more sinister is going on. Did the leader of the band die in an accident, or was it murder?
Black Tie Billionaires Box Set Books 1-3 (affiliate link)
BOOK 1: HER BILLIONAIRE BOSS
When a billionaire CEO hires the rebel youngest daughter of his family’s biggest corporate rival to serve as his personal assistant…
Unsure why the troublesome Jacey applied for a job at his company in the first place, Luca Calcagni hands her a punishing schedule, hoping to send her packing as soon as possible. He can’t afford for anyone to find out how deeply or how long he’s been in love with the one woman in the world his family might not ever be able to forgive.
BOOK 2: HER BILLIONAIRE BODYGUARD
When a billionaire boss falls for her hunky bodyguard…
Newly promoted Executive VP Bailey Maddox is anxious to prove her worth to her hard-to-please billionaire family. Knowing her unexpected attraction to her new bodyguard isn’t exactly going to wow them out with her professionalism, she refuses to act on those feelings…at first.
The Thread: A Novel (affiliate link)
Bittersweet (affiliate link)
An outcast teacher and her former student pursue life and love on the unforgiving frontier in the acclaimed author’s tender Western lesbian romance.
Pennsylvania, 1870s. Schoolteacher Imogen Grelznik is unashamed of who she is, even if she’s had to escape her neighbor’s hateful judgments more than once. When she meets beautiful young Sarah, Imogen encourages her to celebrate her own individual spirit—a spirit that Sarah’s husband does everything in his power to crush.
Determined to forge their own path, Imogen and Sarah strike out for the Nevada frontier, where they are free to live by their own rules—and express their love. In her debut novel, New York Times bestselling author Nevada Barr shares a heart-wrenching tale of two women whose boundless devotion to each other is continually challenged by the forces of 19th century America.
The Last Girl to Die (affiliate link)
In search of a new life, seventeen-year-old Adriana Clark’s family moves to the ancient, ocean-battered Isle of Mull, far off the coast of Scotland. Then she goes missing. Faced with hostile locals and indifferent police, her desperate parents turn to private investigator Sadie Levesque.
Sadie is the best at what she does. But when she finds Adriana’s body in a cliffside cave, a seaweed crown carefully arranged on her head, she knows she’s dealing with something she’s never encountered before.
The deeper she digs into the island’s secrets, the closer danger creeps – and the more urgent her quest to find the killer grows. Because what if Adriana is not the last girl to die?
The Ballad of Emma O’Toole (affiliate link)
When a game of cards turns deadly, a gambler is sentenced to life in wedlock in this Western historical romance.
Utah Territory, 1886. Logan Devereaux is a gambler, not a killer. But after shooting a man for cheating at cards, the stakes have never been higher. On trial for his life, he’s offered a shocking alternate form of restitution . . . marriage to his victim’s pregnant sweetheart!
Beautiful Emma O’Toole has sworn vengeance against him—and when a newspaper man puts her tragic story to song, the whole nation waits to see what she’ll do. Their marriage is the riskiest gamble Logan’s ever taken. But he’ll put everything he’s got on the line for a chance at winning Emma’s heart.
Marcovaldo: Or, The Seasons in the City (Helen and Kurt Wolff Books) (affiliate link)
In this enchanting book of linked stories, Italo Calvino charts the disastrous schemes of an Italian peasant, an unskilled worker in a drab northern industrial city in the 1950s and ’60s, struggling to reconcile his old country habits with his current urban life.
Marcovaldo has a practiced eye for spotting natural beauty and an unquenchable longing for the unspoiled rural world of his imagination. Much to the continuing puzzlement of his wife, his children, his boss, and his neighbors, he chases his dreams and gives rein to his fantasies, whether it’s sleeping in the great outdoors on a park bench, following a stray cat, or trying to catch wasps. Unfortunately, the results are never quite what he anticipates.
Are You My Mother? (affiliate link)
Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home was a pop culture and literary phenomenon. Now, a second thrilling tale of filial sleuthery, this time about her mother: voracious reader, music lover, passionate amateur actor. Also a woman, unhappily married to a closeted gay man, whose artistic aspirations simmered under the surface of Bechdel’s childhood…and who stopped touching or kissing her daughter good night, forever, when she was seven.
Poignantly, hilariously, Bechdel embarks on a quest for answers concerning the mother-daughter gulf. It’s a richly layered search that leads readers from the fascinating life and work of the iconic twentieth-century psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, to one explosively illuminating Dr. Seuss illustration, to Bechdel’s own (serially monogamous) adult love life. And, finally, back to Mother—to a truce, fragile and real-time, that will move and astonish all adult children of gifted mothers.
… See the rest of today ‘s Book Picks here on page 2Page 2