Mystery Reads

Wild for You by Sophia Knightly

To Love, Honor, and Protect

Detective Clay Blackthorne has his hands full when he promises to safeguard an old college pal’s sister without letting her know what he’s up to. He never imagines that lively Marisol Calderon will knock his socks off and put a ring on his finger—and all at his suggestion! Their marriage of convenience is meant to protect her and Clay doesn’t plan on being hitched for long to the tempting beauty. But the honeymoon sure feels real to him…

Sassy Marisol is used to doing whatever she wants—and right now her plan is to shake up the hot detective’s hard-edged demeanor. But the fun turns to danger when a mystery stalker bent on marrying her marks her as his prey. Temporarily becoming Clay’s wife seems like a practical way to thwart the stalker. But as passion ignites and Marisol falls for the tender heart buried beneath the tough detective’s chest, Clay’s true identity is revealed and she begins to wonder who—if anyone—she can trust…

Bestselling author Sophia Knightly loves to cook up hot romance and delicious humor in her feel-good stories. Whether it’s romantic suspense or romantic comedy, her books are fun and sexy contemporary romances.

A two-time Maggie award finalist, she believes in love-at-first sight and happy endings, and she always enjoys a good laugh. When not writing or reading, she finds pleasure in walking the beach, exploring museums, going to the theatre, enjoying good food, and watching movies. One of her favorite pastimes remains simply watching people, especially those in love!

Write to her at: sophiaknightly@gmail.com
Follow her on Twitter @SophiaKnightly
“Like” her Facebook author page at: http://on.fb.me/vGfJ5t
Visit her website at: http://www.sophiaknightly.com

Website(s)
Author Home Page Link
Link To Book On Amazon

Untraceable

By Mystery Reads Leave a Comment

WINNER OF 2012 INDIEREADER DISCOVERY AWARD FOR YOUNG ADULT. Grace has lived in the Smokies all her life, patrolling with her forest ranger father who taught her about wildlife, tracking, and wilderness survival. When her dad goes missing on a routine patrol, Grace refuses to believe he’s dead and fights the town authorities, tribal officials, and nature to find him.

One day, while out tracking clues, Grace is rescued from danger by Mo, a hot guy with an intoxicating accent and a secret. As her feelings between him and her ex-boyfriend get muddled, Grace travels deep into the wilderness to escape and find her father.

Along the way, Grace learns terrible secrets that sever relationships and lives. Soon she’s enmeshed in a web of conspiracy, deception, and murder. And it’s going to take a lot more than a compass and a motorcycle (named Lucifer) for this kick-butting heroine to save everything she loves

Website(s)
Author Home Page Link
Link To Book On Amazon

Touched by Death by Dale Mayer

By Mystery Reads Leave a Comment

Death had touched anthropologist Jade Hansen in Haiti once before, costing her an unborn child and perhaps her very sanity. A year later, determined to face her own issues, she returns to Haiti with a mortuary team to recover the bodies of an American family from a mass grave.

Visiting his brother after the quake, independent contractor Dane Carter puts his life on hold to help the sleepy town of Jacmel rebuild. But he finds it hard to like his brother’s pregnant wife or her family. He wants to go home, until he meets Jade – and realizes what’s missing in his own life.

When the mortuary team begins work, it’s as if malevolence has been released from the earth. Instead of laying her ghosts to rest, Jade finds herself confronting death and terror again. And the man who unexpectedly awakens her heart – is right in the middle of it all.

Dale Mayer is a prolific multi-published writer. She’s best known for Tuesday’s Child, Hide’n Go Seek, and Maddy’s Floor. Besides her romantic suspense/thrillers, Dale also writes paranormal romance and crossover young adult books in several different genres. To go with her fiction, she also writes nonfiction in many different fields with books available on resume writing, companion gardening and the US mortgage system. She has recently published her Career Essentials Series . All her books are available in print format as well. To find out more about Dale and her books, visit her at http://www.dalemayer.com. Or connect with her online with Twitter at www.twitter.com/dalemayer and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/dalemayer.author

Website(s)
Author Home Page Link
Link To Book On Amazon

Tourist Trap

By Mystery Reads Leave a Comment

You just know the Easter sunrise service is going to be a bummer when the San Francisco fog lifts to reveal a body nailed to a landmark cross. Next: mass shellfish poisoning at Pier 39. A very different kind of serial killer is operating here—one who seems to have a grudge against the whole city.

And this is a very different kind of serial killer tale—a funny one. Well, actually, what serial killer’s funny? But lawyer sleuth Rebecca Schwartz is warm and witty, never takes herself too seriously, and on one occasion offers closing testimony with green hair. A highly embarrassing moment, but the bright chartreuse is all in the service of making her case. No way does she believe her client would nail somebody—especially to a cross. And the things she has to do to prove it are hilarious and often unorthodox, yet always professional. Sometimes hyper-professional–the average lawyer simply can’t be bothered spraying herself with Thunderbird to fit in with her witnesses!

A wild ride through Baghdad by the Bay…and a great courtroom drama.

Author of the Skip Langdon and Talba Wallis mystery series; Edgar-winner; New Orleans resident.

Also founder of www.booksBnimble.com, an electronic publishing start-up, and author of the YA paranormal adventure, CURSEBUSTERS!

Latest adventure:
I’ve reworked my writing class as an ebook called WRITING YOUR WAY (http://amzn.to/o6XN3T), with special emphasis on first chapters and marketing. You can see The Prose Nazi video below for an idea of my approach–i.e. flexible; designed to find YOUR best writing method, not force mine on you. We also have outtakes for your amusement. The third video, which I’ll call GTFA, is a trailer for a fun parody book booksBnimble couldn’t resist doing one rainy afternoon. Check out my websites, www.cursebustersbook.com, www.booksBnimble,com (where I also blog) and www.casamysterioso.com.

Website(s)
Author Home Page Link
Link To Book On Amazon

MEAN: A psychological thriller novelette

By Mystery Reads Leave a Comment

Cassandra Connelly looks like a normal twenty-four-year-old girl. She seems sweet and shy. She works hard in two jobs and still finds time to do volunteer work. Nonetheless, there’s something wrong within her. She has a lot of anger boiling inside, and a very problematic past, making her a dark, twisted woman.

She hides her true self from the world, but there’s someone Cassandra hates so much, she has been thinking of doing something unspeakable: killing this person.

To her, killing this person is absolutely necessary, for he or she should not be alive. However, since she is still not sure about doing it or not, she seeks help. She goes to a psychiatrist in order to make a decision: should she continue hiding her meanness and being a normal girl, or should she let the meanness win and kill this person she believes deserves to die?

In this contemporary piece of fiction, we’ll find out how badly child abuse and a dysfunctional family can transform a life for worse, much worse.

Mean is a novelette (longer than a short-story but shorter than a novella).

ADVICE: CONTAINS VIOLENT SCENES AND HARSH LANGUAGE

Renata F. Barcelos lives in Brazil with her beautiful and creative daughter and teaches English and Spanish as Second Languages. She loves dark, twisted and flawed characters and stories.
She watches way too much TV and reads perhaps too many (almost exclusively) mystery novels, convincing herself it’s all work–research for her own stories. She writes for as long as she can remember, and her other stories are waiting impatiently to be published. Soon to be released, her next book is a coming-of-age mystery novel called “My sore hush-a-bye”.

Website(s)
Author Home Page Link
Link To Book On Amazon

The Hunter Inside by David McGowan

By Mystery Reads Leave a Comment

You can lock your windows and your doors, but you cannot lock your mind from The Hunter Inside.

Paul Wayans and Bill Arnold have something in common. They are being stalked by a vicious killer.

Sandy Myers, rushing from home with her 7 year-old twins in tow, grabs a letter from the mailbox. It is addressed to Sandy Carson. Her maiden name. Contained within the plain manila envelope is a photograph. A photograph of a corpse.

The past has caught up with them, and now their lives are in jeopardy. A monster more fearsome than any the world has ever seen is hunting them, bringing with it echoes from the past and threatening the future of civilisation.

Should they run, or should they stand and fight?

FBI Special Agent Sam O’Neill will fight desperately to solve a case that he could not solve ten years before. Then, he had no clues as to the identity of the vicious killer. This time, it’s different.

But can he find them before it’s too late? And if he does not, will ANYONE survive?

The Hunter Inside is a psychological thriller with a twist. It is a page-turning roller-coaster of a novel that you won’t be able to put down until all of its secrets, twists and turns have been revealed. Packed full of gruesome murders, fear and suspense, it harbors a monster so fearsome it will give you nightmares.

Shimasou is here – and no-one is safe.

David McGowan is 34 years old and from Liverpool in the United Kingdom. He holds a degree in English language and literature, and spins tales of suspense with a twist. He rates as his biggest influences Stephen King, Dean Koontz and Peter Straub.

Website(s)
Author Home Page Link
Link To Book On Amazon

Beauty

By Mystery Reads Leave a Comment

“I’d been sitting here wishing on a star, the moon, genies, birthday cakes, wishing wells, whatever I could think of that would make what just happened not be true. I’d never had a wish granted in my life. That was the stuff kids believed in. I wasn’t a kid anymore…”

Plain. Invisible. Ugly. Fat.

When nineteen year old Evelyn Barns wakes up two hundred and forty-three pounds lighter, her heart’s desire suddenly becomes her curse.

“Your fate is in your hands,” were the witch’s words, but when every bad deed counts, there’s not much she can do to stop the weight from packing back on, even with coke as her new best friend. It was all moving too fast, her pain only masked by a high that was becoming harder to keep. A new life and social status was all she ever wanted but what she finds leaves her drowning in a beautiful nightmare that only gets worse.

Suicidal and guilt ridden, Evelyn must decide if loving herself is worth letting go of everything else.

There was beauty somewhere in there. She just had to find it.

Patria L. Dunn (Patria Dunn-Rowe) hails from the small town of Louisa Virginia. Born in 1981, a true child of the 80’s; her interest range from classic to unimaginable. While The Gifts Trilogy is her first work, it certainly isn’t her last. A young woman with many talents and many titles such as: Pianist, Author, & most importantly Mother, if you ask about her accomplishments she will tell you: “The best is yet to come.”

Website(s)
Author Home Page Link
Link To Book On Amazon

Down Among the Dead Men

By Mystery Reads Leave a Comment

GET READY FOR A JAW DROPPING TWIST…

From the bestselling author of TRIAL JUNKIES comes the ITW Thriller Award Nominee for Best Novel

When assistant district attorney Beth Crawford’s sister Jen invites her on a weekend cruise to Baja California, Beth is looking forward to a few days of much needed down time. But the fun in the sun doesn’t last long when Beth meets a mysterious couple on board and Jen disappears without a trace on the streets of Playa del Sol.

Now Beth must travel through Mexico’s violent underbelly–a stranger in a strange land–while searching desperately for her missing sister. And the only one who can help her is Nick Vargas, a disgraced newspaper reporter on the trail of a dangerous and deadly cult that has big plans for the upcoming celebration of El Dia de los Muertos–The Day of the Dead.

Robert Gregory Browne began his career by selling a two-part mystery story, NOTHING BUT THE COLD WIND, to EasyRiders magazine. After more than a decade as a screenwriter, Browne shifted his focus to his first love, novels, and wrote KISS HER GOODBYE, which recently served as the basis for a CBS Television series pilot, starring Dylan Walsh and Terry Kinney.

Rob’s subsequent books are the thrillers TRIAL JUNKIES, WHISPER IN THE DARK, KILL HER AGAIN, DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN and THE PARADISE PROPHECY (as Robert Browne).

Website(s)
Author Home Page Link
Link To Book On Amazon

PLUMMET

By Mystery Reads Leave a Comment

Working in a big law firm is murder.
Want to find out for yourself?
Then take the plunge…

Micah Grayson is an eager rookie fresh out of law school. Raphael Bianco is a degenerate senior associate who’s never met a temptation he could resist. Gabe Weiss is a millionaire senior partner who has a dream life. All three are litigators at Sullivan & Adler, the most powerful law firm in Manhattan. Two of them share a lover. One of them will kill in cold blood. But who is his victim? A dark why-dun-it set in the backstabbing conference rooms of corporate law.

MICHAEL ZAROCOSTAS is represented by the Ann Rittenberg Literary Agency, which also represents New York Times bestselling authors DENNIS LEHANE (Mystic River, Shutter Island, The Given Day), PAUL DOIRON (Bad Little Falls), and C.J. BOX (Blue Heaven).

Michael’s work has been honored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Nicholl Fellowship, the Chesterfield Writers Film Project, and the Rupert Hughes Prose Writing Competition (at the former Maui Writers Conference).

Website(s)
Author Home Page Link
Link To Book On Amazon

Murder at Thumb Butte by James D. Best

By Mystery Reads Leave a Comment

In the spring of 1880, Steve Dancy travels to Prescott, Arizona to gain control of a remarkable invention. But on his first night in the territorial capital, his friend, Jeff Sharp is arrested for a midnight murder at Thumb Butte. Dancy launches a personal investigation to find the real murderer, only to discover the whole town wanted the victim dead. For help, he turns to another old friend and associate, Captain Joseph McAllen of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.

Can Dancy discover the true killer before his friend stretches a rope on the courthouse square?

James D. Best is the author of The Shopkeeper, Leadville, and Murder at Thumb Butte in the Steve Dancy Western series. His other books include Tempest at Dawn, The Shut Mouth Society, and The Digital Organization. Tempest at Dawn is a dramatization of the 1787 Constitutional Convention. James has written monthly columns for two magazine and numerous journal articles. He lives with his wife, Diane, in Paradise Valley, Arizona.

Website(s)
Author Home Page Link
Link To Book On Amazon