Lucy Carol tops today’s Buffet with her cozy mystery Hot Scheming Mess.
Lucy writes mysteries for those who like it fun, fast, and don’t mind losing a little sleep. Living and writing in the Pacific Northwest, she loves martinis, flowers, dancing, a good lipstick, and cake. Her background is in the performing arts, having been an actress, voiceover artist, choreographer, and singing telegram.
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Hot Scheming Mess (A Madison Cruz Mystery Book 1)
In this fast-paced mystery, out-of-work actress Madison Cruz runs an obstacle course of singing telegrams and spies as she tries to connect with her FBI mother, yet hide evidence for her grandfather. Hunky wrestlers and crazy zombie fans aren’t helping even though they really, really, try to!
As the mystery heats up, so does her attraction to a couple of sexy guys who are vying for her affections. With two to choose from you’d think Madison could have double the fun. But she can’t think about that right now, because the enemy is right behind her.
Imaginations
In the Club of the Unknown, where the music blares and the faces are hidden behind masks, Gwyn meets a boy. Not just any boy, but one she is certain she has met before.
Only that’s not possible.
Gwyn lives in the last city of men, where memories are made through repetition and yesterday is forgotten with the reset.
The world has peace, what’s left of it anyway. Peace that has been gained through sacrifice.
But as behavioural school ends and Gwyn is sent out into the work force, she discovers that not everyone resets. Not everything is as it seems. The peace they live in is as fake as the masks they wear in the clubs. She starts to see that the walls surrounding the city, to keep the monsters out, might actually be keeping them in.
An Inner Fire
Grayce Walters, animal acupuncturist, harbors a secret. She hides her intuitive gifts from the world until she becomes embroiled in arson on Seattle’s waterfront.
As a key crime witness, Grayce must convince the attractive, logical, by-the-numbers fire investigator, Ewan Davis,that the fire she witnessed is part of a larger criminal conspiracy. Grayce embarks upon a mission to gather proof of the dangerous threat. She enlists the help of her cross-dressing best friend, her street-wise assistant, and Davis’ poodle, to conduct her own investigation.
As her feelings for Davis shift between white hot passion and cold fear, Grayce must risk exposing her secrets to save Davis’ life.
No More Wasted Time (The Mathews Family Book 1)
After losing her husband to a sudden heart attack, Tess Mathews escapes to Bora Bora to lay her husband and sorrow to rest. What she doesn’t expect is a new beginning.
Tom Clemmins is an A-list actor whose life revolves around work and an onslaught of women. He travels to Bora Bora for a much-needed break. Tom has a few ideas of how he’ll enjoy his vacation, but love isn’t one of them. Until he sees Tess.
Reserving a private shark-feeding excursion to scatter her husband’s ashes into the lagoon, Tess is furious when Mr. Hollywood bribes his way onto the boat, leaving her no other choice but to share the boat ride.
Tess is torn between tremendous guilt and zealous lust when their boat ride turns into a week full of romance and desire neither thought imaginable. Utterly smitten with a woman for the first time in his life, Tom casts his commitment phobia aside and whisks Tess off to Malibu where he introduces her as his “girlfriend” on the red carpet.
Manannan’s Magic (Manannan Trilogy Book 1)
Manannan McLir escapes his enemies and finds sanctuary, for a little while, on the Isle of Man. Both feared and urgently needed, he uses his skills and the strange knowledge from the East to cure wounds and sickness.
Among his patients is Renny, a young Celtic girl who falls in love with him and is witness to a terrifying experience one night. As he tells her later,
“My visions are the only true magic I possess, and this knowledge must be kept a deadly secret, otherwise my life, and perhaps yours, is in peril.”
These visions predict the future, for other forces are stirring in this Year 800. A Viking chieftain has sent his son to look for land that he can conquer and settle.This young man, Edan, hears about the Magician, as Manannan is called, and alerts his people.
When the Vikings invade, bringing with them Manannan’s bitterest enemy, a great battle takes place and Manannan must escape from the island. But he is surrounded and only cunning, not magic, can help him now.
Hurricane Dan (A Zombie Novel)
Dan Kelly is a young businessman who has grown sick of the way things work. He has given up trying to make a living and gone on a drinking binge that puts him out on the street. A few days later, as he is trying to adjust to his new life as a vagabond, zombies begin popping up in the streets of Manhattan.
Dan and his homeless friend, Barns, make plans and gather weapons. They begin working their way to safer ground, finding others in need and expanding their numbers.
As the city spirals into a full zombie apocalypse, Dan and his friends seek shelter behind a giant police barricade. The barricade sections off a couple blocks of the city from the zombie outbreak. It is there that the survivors try to hold their ground and wait for help that may never come.
Prodigal
It was supposed to be Lexy Quinn’s year. Shy, pragmatic seventeen-year-old Lexy has finally landed the coveted spot as Senior Editor of her school’s newspaper when the rug is ripped out from under her. Her mother is diagnosed with a rare illness and the family must move half-way across the country to privileged Preston Hills, Texas.
Lexy can’t think of a worse place to be than at a school full of snobby rich kids where she’ll have to start all over to get people to notice her writing, or–who is she kidding—notice her at all. When jock celebrity quarterback and all-around golden boy Ash Preston gives her an exclusive interview, Lexy’s life takes an unexpected turn. Ash is the perfect guy and even better, he sees Lexy as she wants to be seen. There’s just one problem: Ash is Christian and Lexy doesn’t believe in God.
CUTTER’S GROVE
Stranded one night during a violent sandstorm in the California desert, Lucas Tunney sees something that scares him senseless. Was it really the ghost of a young child that appeared to him through the swirling mass of dust and debris, or was the vision simply a figment of his imagination, brought on by stress and exhaustion? Although almost sure the sighting was genuine, there remains a lingering doubt.
But now he’s faced with the problem of what to do with this knowledge. Going to the authorities is out of the question. He’ll be locked up for sure based on irrefutable evidence of insanity if he starts expounding on the existence of ghosts. It seems he has little choice in the matter – he has to try to determine the circumstances surrounding the girl’s fate on his own and, in the process, learn who might have been responsible.
Firefly Lane
In the turbulent summer of 1974, Kate Mularkey has accepted her place at the bottom of the eighth-grade social food chain. Then, to her amazement, the “coolest girl in the world” moves in across the street and wants to be her friend. Tully Hart seems to have it all—beauty, brains, ambition. On the surface they are as opposite as two people can be: Kate, doomed to be forever uncool, with a loving family who mortifies her at every turn. Tully, steeped in glamour and mystery, but with a secret that is destroying her. They make a pact to be best friends forever; by summer’s end they’ve become TullyandKate. Inseparable.
So begins Kristin Hannah’s magnificent new novel. Spanning more than three decades and playing out across the ever-changing face of the Pacific Northwest, Firefly Lane is the poignant, powerful story of two women and the friendship that becomes the bulkhead of their lives.
Slaughterhouse-Five
Adapted for a magnificent George Roy Hill film three years later (perhaps the only film adaptation of a masterpiece which exceeds its source), Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) is the now famous parable of Billy Pilgrim, a World War II veteran and POW, who has in the later stage of his life become “unstuck in time” and who experiences at will (or unwillingly) all known events of his chronology out of order and sometimes simultaneously.
Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness. He is surrounded by Vonnegut’s usual large cast of continuing characters (notably here the hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and the alien Tralmafadorians who oversee his life and remind him constantly that there is no causation, no order, no motive to existence).
Slaughterhouse-Five was hugely successful, brought Vonnegut an enormous audience, was a finalist for the National Book Award and a bestseller and remains four decades later as timeless and shattering a war fiction as Catch-22, with which it stands as the two signal novels of their riotous and furious decade.
SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper
SEAL Team Six is a secret unit tasked with counterterrorism, hostage rescue, and counterinsurgency. In this dramatic, behind-the-scenes chronicle, Howard Wasdin takes readers deep inside the world of Navy SEALS and Special Forces snipers, beginning with the grueling selection process of Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S)—the toughest and longest military training in the world.
After graduating, Wasdin faced new challenges. First there was combat in Operation Desert Storm as a member of SEAL Team Two. Then the Green Course: the selection process to join the legendary SEAL Team Six, with a curriculum that included practiced land warfare to unarmed combat. More than learning how to pick a lock, they learned how to blow the door off its hinges. Finally as a member of SEAL Team Six he graduated from the most storied and challenging sniper program in the country: The Marine’s Scout Sniper School. Eventually, of the 18 snipers in SEAL Team Six, Wasdin became the best—which meant one of the best snipers on the planet.
When Shadows Fall (Callaways #7)
Olivia Bennett is a biographer, a narrator of lives far more interesting than her own. When she volunteers to write down the memories of Eleanor Callaway, an elderly woman suffering from Alzheimer’s, she gets caught up in a compelling story of a great love and a terrible secret. Suddenly, she is no longer a spectator but an investigator, and in her quest for the truth, she not only finds herself at odds with Eleanor’s sexy and very protective grandson Colton Callaway, but she also discovers a more personal connection to Eleanor’s past.
Colton is a firefighter, a man used to going after what he wants and getting it. He pushes the limits, takes chances, and is willing to risk everything to save a life, especially if that life belongs to his grandmother.
As Olivia and Colton stir up the smoldering embers of the past, they soon come to realize that the greatest danger may not come from those who want to protect their secrets, but from each other. Because the one thing neither of them has ever been willing to risk is their heart.
Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf
Over fifty years later, Ben Hogan’s book Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf is still considered one of the premier instructional books on the fundamentals of the game of golf. Renowned for his swing, Ben Hogan methodically describes his technique through his Lessons and the beautiful illustrations drawn by Anthony Ravielli. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, this famous book is a must-have reference guide for any golfer.
… See the rest of today’s Editor’s Picks here on page 2