Angela Henry tops today’s Buffet with her cozy mystery Tangled Roots, the second installment in her “Kendra Clayton” series. One reviewer called it “…a culturally specific, universally appealing, character-driven, top-rate whodunit.” The novel first appeared as a 2006 Kimani Press paperback.
Angela was born and raised in Springfield, Ohio, and received her B.A. in English Literature from Ohio University in 1992. She works as a reference specialist at a community college library and is a member of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters In Crime.
Angela is currently working on Book 5 in the “Kendra Clayton” series.
As usual, each book here has gone FREE within the past 24 hours, except for the Bargain books in the yellow section below. Warning: Kindle book promotions can end without notice, so before downloading click the link “See Kindle price at Amazon” to verify that the book is still free. (Prices and availability may differ outside USA.)
Tangled Roots (Kendra Clayton Mystery #2) (Kendra Clayton Series)
Mystery > Cozy > African American
Author: Angela Henry
For Kendra Clayton life is good—for about five minutes. Then her sweetie, lawyer Carl Brumfield, leaves town to help out his sister in Cleveland. Her soon-to-be-married best friend picks out a hideous bridesmaid’s dress for her to wear (a sequined Smurf-blue nightmare with a bow on the butt). The work she loves as a part-time GED instructor turns into the job from hell when a retired kindergarten teacher with the personality of a piranha becomes her new boss.
And to top it all off, Detective Trish Harmon of the Willow, Ohio, police department shows up at her class looking for Kendra’s favorite student, a troubled young man named Timmy who has been straightening out his life.
A pretty local beautician is dead, and Timmy is suspect number one. When he later shows up at Kendra’s apartment begging for help, it’s only one more step before Kendra’s back on the road to trouble again, trying to find the real killer, stepping over the line from a nice safe life into danger…and getting tangled in the deadly roots of desire.
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The Space Between
Romance > New Adult & College
Author: Victoria H. Smith
When Drake started the night at his father’s campaign fundraiser, he never imagined he’d end it being conned into buying drugs on the West Side. Losing high-stakes poker has its consequences, but he’d repeatedly face them just to hear Lacey Douglas sing. Drake sees Lacey light up the stage, and he has to have her. But his intentions for being on her side of town turn out to be the reason he can’t.
Chicago native Lacey has dreams of the opera, but life has its obstacles. Lacey has come to know her hardships as part of living in the real world and accepts them fully. When Lacey meets the intense and invigorating Drake, a fire is lit inside her, unleashing those dreams again.
Two paths that should have never crossed prove to create the exact pairing the other needs. But when their worlds take time to catch up, everything they have is tested. Finding the space between the two sides that challenge them will be hard, but it’s the only place that will keep them together.
Fall of Sky City
Science Fiction > Adventure > Steampunk
Author: SM Blooding
In a world governed by the opposing forces of the mystical House of Tarot and the tribal Great Families, Synn is caught in the crossfire. He witnesses the slaughter of innocent people, and the devastating murder of his father. This act awakens his Mark of power, a Mark greater than any the world has seen in a very long time.
Queen Nix thought she won a great prize when she destroyed Synn’s father, the leader of the strongest Great Families. She had no idea she’d be doubly blessed by capturing his son. However, before Synn can become her treasured weapon, before she can use him to bring the rest of the world to its knees, she must break him and bind his soul to hers.
She does her job with brutal brilliance. Synn’s mind is broken and his soul is seared to hers in an unbreakable bond.
That doesn’t stop him from wanting to be free. She may have broken his mind and claimed his soul, but he will find a way to destroy her.
Knight of Wands (A Steampunk Fantasy Adventure Novel) (Devices of War)
Science Fiction > Adventure > Steampunk
Author: SM Blooding, Ralene Burke, Ravven
Return to a world of mind blowing visuals, heart stopping action, and ships that sail the skies.
Nix, Queen of Wands, has exactly what she wants—Synn El’Asim, the greatest Mark the world has ever seen. Even though she bound his soul to hers, he is not easily controlled. If she wants him, she must do the one thing that pains her most. Let him go, and give him what he desires. Peace.
Armed with a treaty bearing Nix’s seal, Synn sets off to bridge the gap between the world’s two reigning tyrants—the Hands of Tarot and the Great Families. He struggles to trust Nix as he fights for control of his soul. He’s going to need every ounce of restraint when dealing with his mother, leader of the Great Families. She will not give up her power without a fight. Nix will honor her treaty only if Synn agrees to become her knight. His mother refuses to sign the peace agreement if he falls into the queen’s control.
Frustrated, Synn does the one thing neither woman saw coming. He invites all the tribes, currently voiceless in the war between these two ruling tyrants, to partake in the treaty negotiations. All they have to do is prove their worth in his Peace Games. As Synn’s influence and subsequent power grows, a new fight begins.
Secrets In The Shadows
Romance > Romantic Suspense
Author: T. L. Haddix
After surviving a traumatic attack as a teenager, as well as a disastrous first marriage, Lauren Taylor Grant is content with her life. So what if she gets lonely from time to time? With a healthy, beautiful daughter, and a successful coffee shop-cafe, the divorced single mother convinces herself she doesn’t have time for love. When she gets her first glimpse at her parents’ handsome new neighbor, though, she starts reconsidering her stance. Once Charlie Clark begins breaking through her defensive walls, Lauren finds him hard to resist.
Nothing stays hidden forever…
Just as Lauren is learning to let go of the past and embrace the future, her personal demons rear their ugly heads in the guise of a vandal hell-bent on destroying Lauren’s happiness. When another local businesswoman is brutally murdered, the investigation into the crime reveals an unexpected connection to Lauren’s past. The message is clear–the past has come calling, and it’s out for blood.
Hellbender (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Series)
Horror > Dark Fantasy
Author: Jason Jack Miller
Although the Collins clan is steeped in Appalachian magic, Henry has never paid it much attention. But when his younger sister dies mysteriously Henry can’t shake the feeling that the decades-old feud between his family and another is to blame.
Henry Collins’ act of retribution forces his family to defend themselves from a rival clan–the Lewises. When Henry attempts to make things right, the world as he knows it crumbles. His home is burned to the ground and Alex, the girl he loves, begins suffering from strange spells that leave her gasping for breath. To restore peace Henry chases the stench to its source and finds himself deep in an Appalachia that remembers mountain lions and Black Bibles and discovers that the curse and the feud sprout from the same bad seed.
TODAY’S BARGAINS……………What’s this?
Vampire Academy (Vampire Academy, Book 1)
Teen & Young Adult > Horror
Author: Richelle Mead
Regularly $9.99, Today $2.99
St. Vladimir’s Academy isn’t just any boarding school—it’s a hidden place where vampires are educated in the ways of magic and half-human teens train to protect them. Rose Hathaway is a Dhampir, a bodyguard for her best friend Lissa, a Moroi Vampire Princess. They’ve been on the run, but now they’re being dragged back to St. Vladimir’s—the very place where they’re most in danger. . . . Rose and Lissa become enmeshed in forbidden romance, the Academy’s ruthless social scene, and unspeakable nighttime rituals. But they must be careful lest the Strigoi—the world’s fiercest and most dangerous vampires—make Lissa one of them forever.
True Spies
Historical Romance > Regency
Author: Shana Galen
Regularly $7.99, Today $1.99
He’s Getting Tired of Deception…
Baron Winslow Keating is honor-bound to finish one last mission as an elite spy for the Barbican group even though he just wants to go home and be with his family. But after years of secrecy and absence, his daughters hardly know him and his wife has given up on him…
She Wants to Try a Little Intrigue…
Lady Elinor has had enough of domestic boredom. She contemplates an affair with a rakish spy, only to discover a world of intrigue and treachery that she never knew existed. Even more shocking, her neglectful husband is suddenly very attentive—quite the jealous type—and apparently there is much more to him than she ever knew…
The Body Departed
Fantasy > Paranormal & Urban
Author: J.R. Rain
Regularly $9.99, Today $1.99
When a killer broke into James Blakely’s apartment and fired twelve bullets into his body, it was the end of James’s life—but just the beginning of his journey to redemption. Sentenced to burn in hell for a crime he cannot remember, James is given the choice to proceed immediately to the afterlife or haunt the world of the living in search of his killer. Electing to return to Earth as a ghost, he attempts to solve the mystery of his own murder, visits the living—starting with his daughter and ex-wife—and confronts the sins in his past that put him on the fast track to eternal damnation.
With the help of a world-class medium, James begins to make progress. Forgiveness is possible, it seems, for a good man who made some bad choices. But with the memories of his life on Earth fading out one by one and his ghost body rapidly disintegrating, James faces the very real prospect of vanishing completely before he learns the devastating secret that kept his soul from achieving its true potential.
Making of the Atomic Bomb
History > United States > 20th Century
Author: Richard Rhodes
Regularly $9.99, Today $1.99
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Twenty-five years after its initial publication, The Making of the Atomic Bomb remains the seminal and complete story of how the bomb was developed, from the turn-of-the-century discovery of the vast energy locked inside the atom to the dropping of the first bombs on Japan.
Few great discoveries have evolved so swiftly—or have been so misunderstood. From the theoretical discussions of nuclear energy to the bright glare of Trinity, there was a span of hardly more than twenty-five years. What began as merely an interesting speculative problem in physics grew into the Manhattan Project, and then into the bomb, with frightening rapidity, while scientists known only to their peers—Szilard, Teller, Oppenheimer, Bohr, Meitner, Fermi, Lawrence, and von Neumann—stepped from their ivory towers into the limelight.
Dear Cary: My Life with Cary Grant
Biographies & Memoirs
Author: Dyan Cannon
Regularly $9.99, Today $1.99
Withhonesty and heart-rending emotion, actress and filmmaker Dyan Cannon tells the story of her topsy-turvy relationship with Hollywood legend Cary Grant. Cannon’s captivating narrative takes the reader behind the scenesof Hollywood’s Golden Age, inside America’s high court of glamour and notoriety in which Cary Grant was king.
In his private life alongside Cannon, however, a story that began with all the romance of his famous films—Charade, ToCatch a Thief, An Affair to Remember or The Philadelphia Story—would end up taking a series of tragic and unpredictable twists and turns. In sharing Grant’s inside story for the first time, Dear Cary is exactly what Hollywood is always looking for . . . the next blockbuster, and a story for romance lovers of all ages.
With rare photos and never-before-seen letters and notes from Cary Grant, Dear Cary is told with poignancy and hard-won wisdom. For anyone who has ever loved and lost, Dyan Cannon’s memoir is an exploration of what love means, and an inspirational story of surviving life’s slings and arrows.
… See the rest of today’s Editor’s Picks here on page 2