mystery

Secrets In The Mirror

Secrets In The Mirror
Title: Secrets In The Mirror
ASIN: B0B34H59Y1
Publisher:
Published: September 13, 2022
Author:
Author's Twitter: @LeslieKainAuth1
This book contains a racist term and explicit language.   “A psychological thriller perfect for our time” that “toes the fine line between sympathetic and terrifying,” Secrets In The Mirror is a sweeping saga of one family’s journey to rise above the toxicity of multigenerational domestic abuse and crime. Gavin struggles to salvage his self-esteem from Dad’s bullying, and from narcissistic abuse by his identical mirror twin. But when Devon gets into drugs and trouble with the Mob, people start dying. Gavin flees far away to protect himself and his new family. But he can’t escape his sociopathic brother, or the Mob. Yet inextricable bonds tie him to Devon, and Gavin vows to break the lethal chain of family dysfunction and rescue his twin from his self-destructive path. Can he save his brother before Devon destroys them both?

Assessed for Awesome Indies Book Awards

This book contains a racist term and explicit language.

A Colossal Injustice

A Colossal Injustice
Title: A Colossal Injustice
ASIN: B0BLT6VB3N
Tag:
Published: 7 Nov. 2022
Author's Twitter: @iammahjr
Griffin Knight hasn't even been in the city for 48 hours, and it’s already obvious that the information in front of him doesn’t add up. As a homicide detective, he's seen it all, but this murder is different. To kill someone in this manner is often a crime of passion or a deeply personal attack, and yet the evidence suggests otherwise. Why was he targeted? How is it connected to Seattle’s biggest megacorp? Was it someone he already knew? What if this is the start of something so much bigger? The only thing Griffin Knight does know is that he needs to find out who did this fast in case others are also at risk!

Assessed for Awesome Indies Book Awards

The Darkness

The Darkness
Title: The Darkness
ASIN: B008X8ZM8G
Category:
Published: August 12, 2012
Author:
Author's Twitter: @carver24
For Andrew Davidson, tragedy marks a turning point… He’s a respected G.P. but when his brother is found with his throat cut, his thoughts turn to anger and revenge. Known villains, who have evaded justice thanks to the efforts of Cairnburgh’s cleverest lawyer, begin to disappear. For rape victim Rhona Kirk, getting on with her life means taking control… She starts a new life in Dundee but haking off her past is difficult, and the men she’s connected with also go missing. When the threats start, she accepts help against her better judgment. For DCI Jack Carston, solving the puzzle is a race against time… He searches for the links between these vanished persons, aware all the time of his own darker impulses and sensing the bond between himself and the vigilante. What he finds is beyond his worst imaginings.

Assessed for 

The Locksmith’s Secret

The Locksmith’s Secret
Title: The Locksmith’s Secret
Published: April 8, 2016
Author's Twitter: @TahliaNewland
Ella’s boyfriend Jamie seems to be her perfect match until a death in the family calls him back to England and it becomes clear that he’s hiding something. Can their relationship survive the revelation of something so astounding that it completely changes Ella’s perception of him and his place in her world? While Jamie struggles with family responsibilities, Ella’s steampunk murder mystery develops a life of its own, raising disturbing memories of her time as a striptease artist and a past life as a sexually abused Italian nun. She also dreams of an ephemeral city, where she seeks to unravel the locksmith’s secret and find the key that opens a door to other realities. All these, together with a lost brother, a desperate mother, a demanding cat, and a struggle to live up to Buddhist ideals, weave together in a rich tapestry that creates an extraordinary work of genre-bending treansrealist fiction    

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The Car Bomb

The Car Bomb
Title: The Car Bomb
ASIN: B00CP5CD5I
Publisher:
Published: May 7, 2013
Detroit’s top TV anchor Frank DeFauw hunts down the story of a judge who may be corrupt—and is one of his best friends. Booze, drugs, womanizing and a passion for the news are all part of what makes this brilliant, erratic newsman a major player in this deeply troubled city. Finally, Frank is forced to decide if digging out the truth about his pal the judge is worth risking his own career, family and skin. With supple prose, brilliant dialogue, sharply-drawn characters and a surprising plot, this is a gripping tale of betrayal, murder and redemption.

Reviewed 

 

Lies of the Dead

Lies of the Dead
Title: Lies of the Dead
ASIN: B00DNSDELS
Published: June 26, 2013
Author's Twitter: @shaunabickley
What would you risk to find the truth? When Liam disappears in a suspected suicide, his brother Tom is propelled into a world of lies and crime. Liam’s legacy of deceit is dangerous, and when Tom and his sister Andi find themselves in a dangerous showdown, Tom realises the truth may have too high a price. How well do we know those closest to us? When the police accept Liam’s disappearance as suicide, his older brother Tom needs to know more. Tom and his sister Andi search for answers, but don’t know who they can believe as they discover Liam’s friends and associates aren’t the people they claim to be. They are propelled into a world where their ideas of right and wrong don’t exist, and where people demand what neither of them possesses. Liam’s legacy of deceit is dangerous, and when Andi and her twin daughters find themselves in a dangerous showdown, Tom realises the truth may have too high a price. What would you risk to find the truth?

Assessed for Awesome Indies

Bloodie Bones

Bloodie Bones
Title: Bloodie Bones
ASIN: B00XJTCLBA
Publisher:
Published: May 11, 2015
Author's Twitter: @LucienneWrite
In 1796 Bow Street Runner and amateur pugilist Dan Foster is sent to Somerset to infiltrate a poaching gang suspected of murdering Lord Oldfield’s gamekeeper, Josh Castle. Dan has walked into a volatile situation: the locals are up in arms against Lord Oldfield for enclosing Barcombe Forest and depriving them of their rights to gather fuel and food. Against a background of vandalism, arson and riot, Dan discovers that there were others with a grudge against Josh. However, Lord Oldfield orders him to arrest the poachers. When Dan learns that Josh had a claim to the Oldfield estate his suspicions focus on Lord Oldfield. Before he can confront him, rioters attack Oldfield Hall protesting against the arrests. During the fight, Dan finds himself at the mercy of the local doctor and realises that he and Josh were rivals in love. Dan narrowly escapes death and arrests the murderer: Doctor Russell.  

Assessed 

Hollow Moon

Hollow Moon
Title: Hollow Moon
ASIN: B008C2YYHS
Publisher:
Published: May 28, 2012
Author's Twitter: @WyrdStar
What is the secret of the hollow moon? Join intrepid young heroine Ravana O’Brien in a fast-paced and witty science-fiction mystery of interstellar intrigue. Having fled civil war sixteen light years away, Ravana and her father now live in the sleepy commune of the hollow moon, a forgotten colony ship drifting around Barnard’s Star. Yet the evil priest Taranis, the dark architect of destiny, has returned from the dead. What began as a minor escapade to rescue her erratic electric pet soon leads Ravana and friends on an incredible planet-hopping voyage into the shady dystopian world of politics, terrible music and rebellion! Hollow Moon is an adventure for all who relish a dose of humour and practical astrophysics with their fantasy, for young adults and adults young at heart.

Assessed 

The Lupane Legacy

Lupane Legacy, The
A story of international intrigue, of the ghosts of Africa’s history, of tangled family ties, of betrayal, revenge, and redemption, and of two people finding a new start. In 1983 Patrick Khumalo, a five-year-old boy out gathering firewood for his mother in rural Zimbabwe, is the only survivor of one of Robert Mugabe’s notorious Gukurahundi massacres. White Rhodesian settlers who live nearby take the traumatized child in and raise him with their own children. In 2012, Patrick is an archivist for Robert Mugabe’s government. Everyone knows him as the ideal public servant, removed from politics and passion. But Patrick has a secret life, into which he draws Constance, the impulsive, idealistic girl he grew up with, now a classical violinist living in Austria. On the other side of the world, in Washington, D.C., ex-Marine Joshua Denham is trying to find his feet in civilian life as a newly wealthy man with political aspirations. At an Austrian Embassy concert where his cousin Constance is performing, a woman who’s been haunting him for the past year—a private banker he last saw in Kyrgyzstan—sits down at the end of his row. Perhaps he’s found what he was looking for . . . but Devon isn’t quite what she seems. Constance is acting strangely, too. After she leaves abruptly for the airport, Joshua gets a desperate call from her estranged father, Roger: Constance is in trouble. Joshua flies to meet Roger in South Africa, only to find that Roger has his own dark secret. Devon finds herself drawn after them to an abandoned farmhouse in Zimbabwe’s Matabeleland District, and an explosive reckoning with the ghosts of the Rhodesian Bush War. The Lupane Legacy, the first in a series of novels of international suspense and intrigue, is a thriller for the thinking reader, a nuanced exploration of the history of postcolonial Africa as well as of Beltway politics and diplomacy. It’s a story of tangled family ties, of betrayal, revenge, and redemption, and of two people finding their way toward each other, and a new beginning.

Assessed for Awesome Indies