Veteran journalist Martin J. Smith tops today’s Buffet with Time Release, his Anthony Award-nominated debut novel, which first appeared in paperback in 1997.
Amazon’s staff reviewers called Time Release “an exceptionally smart and exciting first thriller from a fine journalist who knows how to take items from recent headlines–poison in painkillers, repressed memory–and turn them into totally absorbing fiction. Psychologist Jim Christensen, raising two daughters on his own, has many reasons not to get involved in a mass murder case which could harm his family. But the troubled boy at the heart of the mystery is too much of a challenge for Christensen to resist.”
Martin is a former senior editor of the Los Angeles Times Magazine, and currently is editor-in-chief of Orange Coast, the monthly magazine of Orange County, California. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, and raised in Pittsburgh, Martin began writing professionally while a student at Pennsylvania State University in the late 1970s.
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Time Release
Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Police Procedurals
Author: Martin J. Smith
Pittsburgh, 1986: The city is gripped in a panic as a maniac slips poison onto pharmacy shelves. All of the evidence has pointed to Ron Corbett, but shoddy policework let Corbett off the hook, left the crime unsolved.
Ten years later, it’s happening again. This time, for the most personal of reasons, Detective Downing has made it his mission to see Corbett behind bars. He enlists the help of Jim Christensen, a psychologist who specializes in memory, to interview Corbett’s son, now a young man with a painful past and problems of his own. Does the boy remember his father poisoning pill containers? Has he blocked memories of a horrific crime spree enacted in his own house? As Christiansen explores the boy’s memory and Downing grows more obsessive investigating the case, both men fear that the killings now may not be as random as they once thought, and that unlocking memories may draw them too close to a vicious predator.
No Place for a Lady (Heart of the West Book 1)
Christian Fiction > Historical Romance
Author: Maggie Brendan
Crystal Clark arrives in Colorado’s Yampa Valley amid the splendor of a high country June in 1892. After the death of her father, Crystal is relieved to be leaving the troubles of her Georgia life behind to visit her aunt Kate’s cattle ranch. Despite being raised as a proper Southern belle, Crystal is determined to hold her own in this wild land–even if a certain handsome foreman doubts her abilities.
Just when she thinks she’s getting a handle on the constant male attention from the cowhands and the catty barbs from some of the local young women, tragedy strikes the ranch. Crystal will have to tap all of her resolve to save the ranch from a greedy neighboring landowner. Can she rise to the challenge? Or will she head back to Georgia defeated?
Book one in the Heart of the West series, No Place for a Lady is full of adventure, romance, and the indomitable human spirit. Readers will fall in love with the Colorado setting and the spunky Southern belle who wants to claim it as her own.
All I Have to Give: A Christmas Love Story
Christian Fiction > Romance > Holidays
Author: Melody Carlson
Anna and Michael have been trying for years without success to have a baby. Now in her late thirties, Anna has given up on the hope of motherhood after heartbreaking miscarriages and shattered dreams. As Christmas nears, she has to consider the possibility that it might be time to empty out the nursery and convert it to a guest room. Amidst her heartache, Anna secretly struggles with strange health problems that have her very worried.
But, as often happens at Christmastime, there are miracles in store for Anna and Michael. As each tries to give the other the perfect Christmas gift the magic of Christmas is working its way into their lives. And what each of them unwraps for Christmas will surprise everyone.
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Living with Gusto
Literature & Fiction > Personal Transformation
Author: Elizabeth Day
I sometimes wonder if I did it on purpose, if I consciously broke everything in my life that was working. And if so, if I had known how it would feel to have my husband unable to look at me, if I had realized my daughter and I would go months without speaking, and if I had understood the extent of the destruction I would bring to the life we had built, would I have still done it? Would I have still made that single decision that became the turning point in our lives?
I still wonder. Had I not created that catalyst that landed me in the grip of despair, would I have been able to hear Gusto telling me, “The suffering needs to end”? Or would the suffering have remained as silent as his voice had become?
For now, I’ll do as Gusto once asked me to do when the answers were mine to create. I’ll let the questions roll on the backs of waves until the ocean of time turns them into something I want to reach out to and pull to me, until clarity surfaces and I want nothing less than to embrace it like the sweetness of a mango.
For now, I have the one answer that matters. I know who I am. I am Ophelia.
The Sunset Prophecy
Fantasy > Contemporary
Author: P.J. Day
One fateful evening, Keelen Grant, who spent five of her prettiest and most marketable years trying to make it in Hollywood, finally meets her boss, Thomas Click, an eccentric photographer and gallery owner. The shrewd and mysterious business man offers the struggling actress a choice…but one that comes with a heavy price.
Unsettled by the photographer’s proposition, Keelen reconnects with ex-lover and enigmatic artist, Logan Drake, who promptly offers her work of a different kind. But Logan’s intentions for keeping Keelen around go further than just give her a helping hand. Indeed, Logan has big plans for Keelen…if only she will accept his offer.
Keelen quickly learns her decisions have a ripple effect on reality. A reality where her own past, the city’s past, and the history of those she comes in contact with, are much more complicated and far-reaching than she’d ever imagined.
Loss De Plott & The Colour Red: 1 (The Book of Dreams)
Children’s Books > Christmas
Author: Stephan J Myers
Christmas will never be the same again as the magic of colour is brought to life for children everywhere in The Colour Red. A fantastical Christmas adventure as Loss discovers a book of dreams that transports her to a place where snowmen play. A rhapsody of images and words for reader’s young and old that will linger long after the last page is turned. Timeless in its telling The Colour Red forever captures the magic of childhood dreams in a book you will want to read over and over again.
Into the Deep
Suspense > Paranormal > Psychics
Author: Lauryn April
Ivy Daniels is a high school junior still learning who she is. After an accident, Ivy finds herself with an ability she doesn’t want, an ability to uncover secrets which quickly begins to redefine what she thinks about the people around her as well as herself. Because of this ability, Ivy becomes the one thing that stands between an angry teen and the death of every student on campus. The only problem is she doesn’t know who wants everyone dead. Will she figure out who has this dark secret, or will she fail to find him in time?
Through her search to do the right thing, Ivy discovers that knowing the thoughts and secrets of those around her may just tear her apart.
20 Minute Express Recipes for Busy People
Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Quick & Easy
Author: Ericka Smits
Most people, when thinking of cutting down the time spent in the kitchen, believe that this means buying more take-out and/or processed foods that are laden with calories, fat and sodium. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Anybody can prepare a meal that will keep their time in the hot kitchen to a minimal yet without sacrificing on health.
This cookbook offers 70 meal ideas that you can prepare in 20 minutes or less.
Don’t let sides be an afterthought – turn to these simple, high-flavor vegetables, pastas, and grains for family and company meals.
TODAY’S BARGAINS……………What’s this?
Rule: A Marked Men Novel
Women’s Fiction > Romance
Author: Jay Crownover
Regularly $9.99, Today $0.99
Sometimes opposites don’t just attract – they catch fire and burn the city down
Shaw Landon loved Rule Archer from the moment she laid eyes on him. Rule is everything a straight-A pre-med student like Shaw shouldn’t want – and the only person she’s never tried to please. She isn’t afraid of his scary piercings and tattoos or his wild attitude. Though she knows that Rule is wrong for her, her heart just won’t listen.
To a rebel like Rule Archer, Shaw Landon is a stuck-up, perfect princess – and his dead twin brother’s girl. She lives by other people’s rules; he makes his own. He doesn’t have time for a good girl like Shaw – even if she’s the only one who can see the person he truly is.
But a short skirt, too many birthday cocktails and spilled secrets lead to a night neither can forget. Now, Shaw and Rule have to figure out how a girl like her and a guy like him are supposed to be together without destroying their love…or each other.
Seven Men: And the Secret of Their Greatness
Christian Living > Men’s Issues
Author: Eric Metaxas
Regularly $9.99, Today $1.99
In Seven Men, New York Times best-selling author Eric Metaxas presents seven exquisitely crafted short portraits of widely known—but not well understood—Christian men, each of whom uniquely showcases a commitment to live by certain virtues in the truth of the gospel.
Written in a beautiful and engaging style, Seven Men addresses what it means (or should mean) to be a man today, at a time when media and popular culture present images of masculinity that are not the picture presented in Scripture and historic civil life. What does it take to be a true exemplar as a father, brother, husband, leader, coach, counselor, change agent, and wise man? What does it mean to stand for
honesty, courage, and charity, especially at times when the culture and the
world run counter to those values?
Each of the seven biographies represents the life of a man who experienced the struggles and challenges to be strong in the face of forces and
circumstances that would have destroyed the resolve of lesser men.
Snowzilla
Children’s Books > Humor
Author: Janet Lawler
Regularly $9.99, Today $1.99
It snowed without stopping for week after week. When it ended at last, Cami Lou took a peek. She bundled and booted and zipped up her brother. “Let’s build a huge snowman unlike any other!” Cami Lou and her brother build the biggest, hugest, most mammoth snowman the world has ever seen. It’s Snowzilla!
The snowman becomes an instant sensation, and tourists pour into the small town. But not everyone is impressed. Some say the giant snowman brings giant problems. Then a judge rules that Snowzilla must come down. Can Cami Lou and her brother save Snowzilla? This fun winter story combines rhyming text with adorable acrylic and colored pencil artwork.
Bloody Mary (Jack Daniels Mysteries)
Mystery > Women Sleuths
Author: J.A. Konrath, Jack Kilborn
Regularly $3.99, Today $0.99
Start with a tough but vulnerable Chicago cop. Add a hyperactive cat, an ailing mother, a jealous boyfriend, a high-maintenance ex-husband, and a partner in the throes of a mid-life crisis.
Stir in a psychopath littering the city with body parts. Mix with equal parts humor and suspense, and enjoy Bloody Mary–the second novel in the funny, frightening world of Lieutenant Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels.
Join Jack as she struggles to repair her train wreck of a personal life while tracking down and convicting one of the scariest serial killers in recent memory–a killer for whom getting caught is only the beginning…
The Last Queen of England: A Genealogical Crime Mystery #3 (Jefferson Tayte)
International Mystery & Crime
Author: Steve Robinson
Regularly $3.99, Today $0.99
A centuries-old royal conspiracy. The ultimate heir hunt…
This book is the third in the series, although it can be enjoyed as a stand-alone story without having first read the earlier books in the series: In the Blood and To the Grave. All titles in the series available in audiobook format from March 18, 2014.
It should have been a quiet weekend in London – a long overdue visit with the only true friend American genealogist Jefferson Tayte ever had. Now his friend lies bleeding in his arms and Tayte must follow his research to understand why, making him the target of a ruthless, politically motivated killer.
Working with historian Professor Jean Summer and New Scotland Yard on what becomes a matter of British national security, Tayte soon finds himself in a race to solve a three-hundred-year-old genealogical puzzle. It takes them all on a deadly, high stakes chase across London as Tayte tries to connect the pieces and work out the motive behind a series of killings that spans twenty years.
In what is Tayte’s most personal assignment to date, The Last Queen of England combines historic fact with fiction, challenging British history as we understand it. It uncovers a conspiracy that if proved could ultimately threaten an institution that has lasted more than a thousand years: the British monarchy.
… See the rest of today’s Editor’s Picks here on page 2