As one of four children, Danielle Girard grew up in a house where the person with the best story got heard, and it’s probably no surprise that fast-paced suspense stories have always been her favorite. Girard’s books have won the Barry Award and been selected for the RT Reviewers Choice Award. Two of her novels have been optioned for movies.
Danielle tops today’s Buffet with Dead Center, Book 1 of her mystery/thriller “Rookie Club” series. The story features a tight-knit band of female cops struggling for respect from their male peers.
In college, Danielle was a pre-med student. Then she spent 10 years in a finance career before finally turning to fiction writing. Now she’s a full-time writer who lives with her husband and two children. They split their time between San Francisco and the northern Rockies.
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Dead Center (The Rookie Club, Book 1)
Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
Author: Danielle Girard
Fifteen years ago, the Rookie Club began as a tight-knit band of female cops struggling for respect from their male peers. Jamie Vail was one of them. So was Natasha Devlin, the woman Jamie caught in bed with her husband.
When Natasha Devlin turns up dead, Jamie wants nothing to do with the investigation. As a seasoned inspector in the sex crimes department, Jamie is facing her own terrifying case—female officers are being brutalized by a stranger leaving no clues. The Rookie Club is under attack, possibly by one of their own.
Now, Jamie must confront her past and solve the murder of her ex-husband’s lover before she becomes the killer’s ultimate prize.
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Endless Fear
Romance > Gothic
Author: Adrianne Lee
For twelve long years, April Farraday has struggled to recall what happened the night of her mother’s fatal fall down a flight of stairs. Did she push her mother to her death? If she is ever to be free to spend her life with the man she loves, April must return to scene of the crime and confront her forgotten past.
But there are those at Calendar House who also fear the return of April’s memory, including the man she loves, and they will do anything to keep the truth from coming out. Including committing another murder.
For twelve long years, April Farraday has struggled to recall what happened the night of her mother’s fatal fall down a flight of stairs. Did she push her mother to her death? If she is ever to be free to spend her life with the man she loves, April must return to scene of the crime and confront her forgotten past.
But there are those at Calendar House who also fear the return of April’s memory, including the man she loves, and they will do anything to keep the truth from coming out. Including committing another murder.
Charmed: A Sugar Maple short story
Romance > Paranormal
Author: Barbara Bretton
Can you keep a secret?
Growing up in Sugar Maple, Vermont, knit shop owner and sorceress-in-training Chloe Hobbs learned to keep a secret before she learned to tie her shoes. When your town is home to werewolves, vampires, trolls, sprites, and everything else the real world is told doesn’t exist, you learn quickly how to hide in plain sight.
And now she’s keeping the happiest secret of her life: she and 100% human chief of police Luke MacKenzie are going to have a baby.
But when a quiet young knitter at an afternoon workshop blurts out a warning about Chloe’s unborn baby girl, Chloe and her magickal friends quickly discover just how hard it is to keep the biggest secret of them all.
The Fall of Billy Hitchings (A John Reeves Novel)
Teen & Young Adult > Thrillers > Suspense
Author: Kirkus MacGowan
The John Reeves Creed: “Kill them with kindness. Unless you have a gun.”
John Reeves drives to Myrtle Beach hoping to repair a damaged relationship with his fiancée. Instead, he finds her unconscious in the hospital, the victim of an unexplained explosion at a local restaurant.
Reeves meets Billy Hitchings, a teenager who knows more about the explosion than he should. Their questions lead to an ancient legacy best left alone.
Pulled into yet another crossfire, John Reeves fights to protect his friends and keep a primeval power from falling into the wrong hands.
You — According to Them: Uncovering blind spots that impact your reputation and career
Organizational Behavior > Workplace
Author: Sara Canaday
If you’ve ever worked in an organization of any size, you’ve probably seen it: the talented geniuses with all the right credentials who don’t really seem to be going anywhere in their chosen careers. Sometimes that “talented genius” is us, and we are hard-pressed to understand what’s blocking our ability to advance. In this book, Sara Canaday draws on her years of corporate experience and research to not only explain WHY smart people can end up with stalled careers, but also HOW they can fix the problems (or avoid them in the future).
Sara identifies nine different “syndromes” using very distinct characters and case studies. Sara describes one of these blind spots in detail, along with a list of “quick fixes” for fast response. “Once we understand the power of our personal reputations,” Sara says, “we can begin to see how others’ perceptions of us can impact our ability to compete in the marketplace — for jobs, for raises and for promotions.”
Love To Love You Baby (The Brothers Trehan)
Romance > Contemporary
Author: Kasey Michaels
Jack Trehan is young, rich, and reluctantly retired from his first love, major league baseball. Keely McBride is young, not so rich, and fired rather than retired from her first love, being a big city interior designer.
Do opposites attract? Not so much… but when forced together for the sake of a child whose biggest problem might be that her vanishing mamma named her Magenta Moon, add in an eccentric aunt, a wanna-be mobster, a chameleon-like babysitter, a nosy social worker and, ah, more than a dash of unexpected romantic attraction, and you have a pot overflowing with love and laughter.
PLAZA
Genre Fiction > Horror > Occult
Author: Shane M Brown
Their first mistake was ever telling the world about the wonders they had found.
They should have kept it all a secret. If they’d kept it a secret, fewer people would have died. When archaeologists uncover the largest ancient safe in the world, the wrong kinds of people will show up: criminals, mercenaries, treasure hunters.
Their second mistake was opening it.
Why would an ancient culture devote three generations to build a giant stone safe? Why would they bury it so the jungle could hide it from the world? Why ritually sacrifice one hundred thousand people to ensure its secrecy?
Their last mistake proved the biggest.
This last mistake hurt the most. Their last mistake was to assume that nothing had been left behind to keep guard….
The Diary Of An Expectant Father
Family Relationships > Fatherhood
Author: Pete Sortwell
Not only is Graham Peterson unlucky in his choice of careers, he’s also been terrible with women throughout his adult life. That changes when he meets Alison on a work night out. Unfortunately for Graham, things change so drastically that within a month of dating Alison he gets the news that he’s about to become a father for the first time.
The Candle Star (Divided Decade Trilogy, 1)
Teen & Young Adult > Historical Fiction
Author: Michelle Isenhoff
After a tantrum, Emily Preston is shipped from her plantation home to her inn-keeping uncle in Detroit. There Emily meets Malachi, son of freed slaves, who challenges many ideas she grew up believing. But when Emily stumbles upon two runaways hidden in her uncle’s barn, she finds that old ways die hard. And Mr. Burrows, the charming Southern slave catcher, is only yards away, lodged in the hotel.
On To Richmond (Bregdan Chronicles #2)
Christian Fiction > Historical
Author: Ginny Dye
Burdened with the responsibility of running an entire plantation, Carrie Cromwell fights to understand the forces tearing her beloved country apart. As battles rage around her, she watches as her life slowly unravels and she discovers truths she would never have imagined.
Will her actions and decisions push her even further from those she loves? When the danger she dreads becomes reality, will she find the courage and strength to escape?
Robert is pulled into battle, facing things he would never have imagined. Moses and Rose face a great loss, and then make a decision that could claim their lives.
Everyone struggles to survive and live in a country that has exploded into Civil War.
11/22/63
Science Fiction > Alternate History
Author: Stephen King
Regular Price $9.99, Today $2.99
On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed. What if you could change it back? Stephen King’s heart-stoppingly dramatic new novel is about a man who travels back in time to prevent the JFK assassination—a thousand-page tour de force.
Following his massively successful novel Under the Dome, King sweeps readers back in time to another moment—a real life moment—when everything went wrong: the JFK assassination. And he introduces readers to a character who has the power to change the course of history.
Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students—a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night 50 years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk.
Not much later, Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane—and insanely possible—mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake’s life – a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.
A tribute to a simpler era and a devastating exercise in escalating suspense, 11/22/63 is Stephen King at his epic best.
The Awesome Girl’s Guide to Dating Extraordinary Men
Women’s Fiction > Friendship
Author: Ernessa T. Carter
Regular Price $9.99, Today $1.99
The only things that Sharita, Thursday, Risa, and Tammy have in common are their disastrous love lives. But the year three of them turn 30 will be different, they swear!
Sharita, a plump and conservative accountant wants to make partner at her firm and find the man of her dreams.
Thursday, the daughter of a formerly chart-topping political rapper, wants to stop being a serial one-month stander, and settle down into a stable life with a stable boyfriend.
Risa, a skinny and audacious electronica punk rocker, wants to finally land an album deal, which she feels is the only way to win back the heart of her on-again of off-again closeted girlfriend. And after getting fired as the spokesmodel for her family’s hair company, sweet and gorgeous Tammy wants to prove that she has what it takes to make it on her own.
None of these women get what they want, but over the course of two years, they get exactly what they need. And that proves to be the best thing after all.
Overboard!: A True Blue-water Odyssey of Disaster and Survival
Biographies & Memoirs
Author: Michael J. Tougias
Regular Price $9.99, Today $1.99
In May 2005, Tom Tighe, captain of a forty-five-foot-long sailboat named the Almeisan, and his first mate, Loch Reidy, welcomed three new crewmembers for a five-day voyage from Connecticut across the blue waters of the Gulf Stream to sun-drenched Bermuda. The new crew included forty-six-year-old Kathy Gilchrist, seventy-year-old Ron Burd, and thirty-four-year-old Chris Ferrer. Although Tighe had made the trip forty-eight times, with Reidy accompanying him on twenty of those voyages, the rest of the crew had joined to learn more about offshore sailing.
Four days into the voyage, an enormous storm struck, sweeping two of the crew into the towering sea. The remaining crewmembers managed to stay aboard the vessel as it was slowly torn apart by the rampaging ocean. Overboard! follows the simultaneous desperate struggles of both those still on the boat and those fighting for their lives in the sea.
The Coast Guard, alerted to the Almeisan’s distress, rushed to the storm-tossed scene. Their ensuing search and rescue mission proved so spectacularly difficult and dangerous that it was later selected—from among thousands of incidents—as the Guard’s search and rescue case of the year. Highly trained helicopter pilots and rescue swimmers alike found themselves in almost as much trouble as those trapped by the ferocious ocean.
Kitty Cat, Kitty Cat, Are You Waking Up?
Children’s eBooks > Animals
Author: Bill Martin Jr., Laura J. Bryant
Regular Price $9.99, Today $1.99
Kitty Cat should be getting ready for school, but instead, she’s practicing her purr, looking for her socks, chasing a little mouse, and more. Will Kitty Cat make it out of the house in time for school?
… See the rest of today’s Editor’s Picks here on page 2