Mystery Reads

Who’s Got the Money? by Meredith Holland and Morgan St. James

With $800 Million worth of products produced in federal prisons every year, the opportunity to embezzle millions was ripe.

Despite comical backfires, Jennifer, Kate and Cameron were determined to find out what happened to missing bonus money and managed to pull off an intensive amateur undercover investigation. What they discovered was shocking evidence of something so much bigger — the clever multimillion dollar embezzlement plot. Who masterminded the scam and how did they do it?

This funny crime caper will keep you on your toes as you navigate the twists and turns.

Award-winning Author/Speaker/Columnist Morgan St. James’ most recent book, Who’s Got the Money?, is a fictional funny crime caper inspired by true events experienced by Morgan and her co-author Meredith Holland.

St. James’ short stories appear in Chicken Soup for the Soul books and other anthologies. The recently released The MAFIA FUNERAL and Other Short Stories collection covers everything from true stories to fiction, mystery to romance and some genres in-between. She has written over 500 published articles relative to the craft of writing and people in the industry, as well as the book Writers’ Tricks of the Trade: 39 Things You Need to Know About the ABCs of Writing Fiction.

In the late 1990s she launched a career writing fiction with her sister Phyllice Bradner, also a published writer. The debut Silver Sisters Mystery, A Corpse in the Soup, garnered the USA Book News award as Best Mystery Audio Book 2007. Her list of Silver Sisters Mysteries also continues to grow. A Corpse in the Soup was followed by Seven Deadly Samovars and Vanishing Act in Vegas, the third comical Silver Sisters Mystery.

St. James is an entertaining speaker, presents workshops and frequently appears on author’s panels. She edits and publishes of the online eZine Writers Tricks of the Trade and writes columns for the Los Angeles and Las Vegas editions of Examiner.com.

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Saints and Sinners (A Classic Romance)

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She’s too hot to handle and he doesn’t stand a prayer.

Delilah Sampson is on the run. With two pre-teens in tow, Delilah moves to small Iowa town and is quickly branded a woman of loose morals.

Rev. Matthew Peters is seeking redemption. Sensing a kindred spirit in the town’s newest resident, Matt reaches out to Delilah and her children, putting his own reputation on the line in an attempt to gain their acceptance into the community.

As Dee struggles to maintain a low profile, sparks begin to fly between her and the sinfully handsome reverend.

Could Matt’s promise of a bright future be worth the danger of trusting him? Or will Delilah’s past catch up with her before salvation can be found in the arms of her preacher-man?

Doubleday, Harlequin Books, and Dorchester Publishing. Her titles have
frequented fiction bestseller lists and are translated into many foreign languages.
She is the series developer for True Vows, the first reality-based romance line
from HCI Books.

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Thy Kingdom Come

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Colonel Sam Thorpe, a member of the anti-terrorist task force, must go undercover and train the Patriots, a homegrown militia in central Pennsylvania. His job: get close to self-appointed general Quentin Oliver and uncover the core of evil. Oliver, a disgruntled ex-Marine colonel, plans to steal cesium-137 from a local university and construct seven dirty bombs. During training sessions, Sam also uncovers a link between Oliver and the French Separatist Movement in Quebec. The world is in trouble, and Sam is isolated with only one person in his corner: FBI covert agent Alex Prescott, a kick-ass woman with spiked blond hair and a personality to match. Will she be enough? Or is the world about to realize its worst nightmare?

Don Helin grew up in Minneapolis and attended the University of Minnesota. Upon graduation, he entered the army, spending three tours in the Pentagon. After he left the army, he worked as a lobbyist for the chemical industry. These two careers taught Don that, indeed, truth is stranger than fiction, and they have provided more than enough material for his thriller novels.

Don and his wife, along with Murphy, their West Highland white terrier, settled in the hills of central Pennsylvania. He spent four years as a travel writer before changing his focus and devoting himself full time to writing fiction.

Don is an active member of Pennwriters, a statewide writers’ group, as well as the International Thriller Writers. When he’s not writing, Don and his wife are traveling, hiking, biking, and spending time with their family.

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Miscarriage Of Justice

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The justice system is just a system, not a just system.
Sentenced to fifteen years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, Ethan Rafferty has one thing on his mind – payback! With his time up, the ex-con is free to pursue his mission of revenge. The District Attorney, Mariana Clark, who, during the trial suppressed evidence that would’ve exonerated him, is the focus of his vengeance. Intent on making her life miserable, Ethan employs a variety of tactics to antagonize and torment the woman.
Unable to retaliate through the courts, considering her role in the previous trial, Mariana decides to fight fire with fire. Soon, their feud escalates to a point where neither imagined it would go.
Which one will prevail, Ethan or Mariana? Who will win? Can either? Or, are both of them bound to a destiny produced by a Miscarriage of Justice?

Bruce A. Borders was born in 1967 in Cape Girardeau, MO. Bruce’s childhood years were spent in a number of states, including Missouri, Oregon, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
During his high school years, he was a member of the football, basketball and track teams, involved in various non-athletic activities such as school yearbook production and photography, and won numerous awards for his artistic creations. Bruce graduated Valedictorian in 1984
While in school, Bruce held three part-time jobs; a store clerk, a janitor, and a dental technician, working about 60-70 hours per week. After graduation he became employed full time as a dental technician. Other jobs have included restaurant manager, carpenter and grocery store cashier. For the past sixteen years, he has worked as a commercial truck driver, logging more than two million miles.
At the age of fifteen, Bruce decided to become a writer. He began by writing songs, news articles and short stories. Eventually, books were added to the list. Over the years, he continued to write and currently has a catalog of more than 500 songs, numerous short stories and nine completed books. He writes on a variety of subjects such as the Bible and politics, as well as fictional novels of legal issues and westerns.

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Right Behind You

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A college student walks home alone, in a town terrorized by a knife-wielding maniac. Soon enough, he notices that he’s being followed by a tall stranger.

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The Vault

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Adam Strong has two main problems in life: how to keep the gang from the local council estate out of the woods where he has his den and how to get the new girl at school to notice that he exists.

But the ancient woods next to Compton Fosse contain more dangers than just the risk of a beating from the town’s teenage psycho.

Hidden in Hobthrush Wood is the key to a mystery that weaves four disparate stories into a single web.

* The mansion: A gang of professional robbers mount a night raid on the secluded country home of a reclusive billionaire.

* The dead: Three decaying bodies, wrapped in plastic and chains, are found lying at the bottom of an ornamental lake.

* The convict: A sex offender is released from prison but breaks his parole and goes on the run after giving into temptation once again.

* The friends: Two boys stumble across an eerie secret…

IN AID OF SHELTERBOX

The Vault is being published on Kindle in aid of the disaster relief charity ShelterBox, which provides emergency shelter and vital aid for families who have lost their home as a result of earthquakes, floods, volcanoes etc.

Half of all royalties from sales of the Kindle edition of this book will go to the charity to help its work around the world – see www.shelterbox.org for more information.

Writer, traveller, cyclist and gardener: I’ve always been a dreamer – I wrote my first ‘book’ while at primary school and making up stories has long been one of my favourite occupations.

I was born in Southampton, England, in 1965 and grew up in a small market town called Romsey.

Over the years that followed I worked as a journalist, PR consultant, gardener and, most recently, teaching English in Portugal.

My first novel – The Tale Of Findo Gask – was published in 2006 after winning the national final of a UK competition to discover new authors. I’ve also written several other books and published a collection of short stories.

Please visit my blog – at http://hdthomas.wordpress.com – for more information about me and my books, as well as some of my thoughts on being a writer and the creative process. You can also find me on Facebook – look for ‘Huw Thomas author’.

My latest novel – murder mystery The Vault – was published in March in aid of the disaster relief charity ShelterBox http://www.shelterbox.org (I’ve been involved with this charity for a few years – I was previously in charge of PR & Fundraising at its UK HQ and in 2010-11 my wife and I undertook a 10,000-mile tandem bike ride in aid of ShelterBox!)

My next novel – Pagan’s Sphinx – should be released late in 2012. This one’s being published under the pen name William Webster as it’s a bit different from my other books. Pagan’s Sphinx is an adventure story set in North Africa involving the hunt for a lost statue that may be connected with the lost civilisation of Atlantis.

An extract from Pagan’s Sphinx can be downloaded from my blog – http://hdthomas.wordpress.com/novels/pagans-sphinx/

I’m always happy to hear from readers – contact me via the blog or Facebook.

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Dire Means

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Can fear breed love?
What if a ruthless vigilante transformed one of America’s most affluent, coveted beach-side cities and ended homelessness within its borders in a matter of days? In Dire Means this phenomenon occurs in an unforgettable way.
The ambitious mission isn’t accomplished by any brilliant appeal to public benevolence or by relocating the homeless. An ingenious method uses carefully-targeted fear to cure public apathy toward the most helpless among us. Dire Means weaves a tale of a city under siege, its citizens forced to flaunt the Golden Rule as the only way to survive.
If you have ever contemplated the end of homelessness –despite the seeming futility of such a goal, or if you simply enjoy a story that will take you on an engrossing, original journey, take Dire Means for a drive.

Geoffrey Neil writes noir fiction laced with a social conscience. He graduated from Cal State San Bernardino with a B.A. in Communication and then spent years in an outside-sales-induced haze of professional confusion. Life’s predictable challenges drove him to the keyboard where torrid personal-journal entries, pounded out late at night, led to a therapeutic obsession with writing.
His first writing gig was a weekly column called “Technology Triumphs” for a Los Angeles community newspaper. In 2009 he completed his first novel, Dire Means. His second novel, Human Resources, published on November 1, 2012. He’s now drafting his third novel, Wanton Disregard.
During the day he runs Mollifiers, an IT consulting company in Beverly Hills, California that goes by the slogan, “Technology Anger Management”.

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Fate, Timeless Trilogy Book One

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Is precognition a prescription for happiness or disaster?

The good things in life are coming together for Kristina Collins. She’s found her ideal home, her career is on track for mega success and the man of her dreams has finally come back into her life.

In Fate, the first installment of the Timeless Trilogy, Kris Collins discovers the benefits and risks of having precognitive visions while being stalked by a serial killer. Her friends can’t help her, the FBI can’t save her; she must save herself.

The Timeless Trilogy heroines, Kristina, Veronica and Cassandra, each deal with paranormal abilities as they discover and rediscover eternal love.

International best-selling author Tallulah Grace is an aficionado of anything paranormal, loves to read a good thriller and creates characters as both a hobby and a profession. Tallulah was born and raised in a small southern town located in the foothills of the vibrant Blue Ridge Mountains. When she’s not developing characters and weaving stories, Tallulah enjoys antiquing and bead-weaving.

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You Can’t Always Get What You Want by Darryl Robert Schoon

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In “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” the protagonist gives a beautiful woman a ride home where he finds she’s a lesbian whose lover is his former lawyer. What he discovers plunges him to a world of danger and intrigue he had previously forsworn. But his desire for a beautiful woman is stronger than his fears and he discovers a destiny far different than he had ever imagined. This action-packed story will leave the reader breathless.

Darryl Robert Schoon is an author and speaker known for his writings on the economy, gold and the crisis that currently faces humanity. He graduated from college in 1966 with a degree in political science. He entered law school but soon dropped out to live in the Haight-Ashbury where he became a member of the hippie subculture in San Francisco.
Now a recognized author and speaker, his articles on the economy have been widely published on the web and he has spoken before audiences in the USA, Europe and Australia, and on TV. He is also an ordained minister and owns a condom company. His current focus includes spirituality, metaphysics and economics.

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Implicated by Peter Michael Rosenberg

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Erdogan Denizli cleans up the messes other people make of their lives. Not their dirty houses or their dirty clothes – no, Erdogan gets a call when a bathroom is sprayed with arterial blood after a shamed pervert cuts his own throat, after a home-invasion-gone-wrong leaves bits of brain ground into the carpet, or when an undiscovered death drips putrefying body fluids into the apartment below. He’s a crime scene cleaner in Ventura County, California and after forensics have done their job, he gets to work…

It’s not his job to feel the pain of those left behind, or to feel sadness at a wasted and unmourned life, but he does. He can’t help it. But he doesn’t get involved; he can’t afford to – he can’t risk dredging up the shadows of his own past. But when, on a routine crime scene clean-up, he finds a piece of overlooked evidence, evidence that implicates the cops in an assassins-for-hire conspiracy, he can’t look the other way, because now his own life’s in danger. But who do you turn to for help when it’s the cops that want you dead?

Implicated is a contemporary but noirish thriller with a “cast of characters straight out of an Elmore Leonard novel”: Valerie, the femme fatale who wants to nail the cops who killed her husband… Maxim, the Azerbaijani mobster who wants in on a little bit of the American Dream … ill-fated Sammy the Schmuck with his penchant for other people’s lives (and other people’s money). And Brad and Mikey, the cops who’ve long since thrown “Serve and Protect” out the window.

I’m a novelist, screenwriter and nomad. So far, I’ve travelled in over seventy countries around the world but have yet to find one to call home.

My latest novel, a thriller called “Implicated” is my first foray into indie publishing and I’ve enjoyed the experience so much that I’m now republishing my “back-list” as indie ebooks including the Betty Trask Award-winning “Kissing Through a Pane of Glass”, the suspenseful “Touched by a God or Something”, the chilling “Because It Makes My Heart Beat Faster” and the paranormal romance “Daniels Dream”.

I’ve also written the hallucinatory (and rather strange) “The Uncertainty Principle” (writing as Tyler Montreux) – I refer to it as my Kurt Vonnegut/Tom Robbins homage. A short story “The Fig Tree” is also available on Amazon and I have a new series of detective stories planned.

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