FREE/BARGAIN — Mystery, Suspense & Thrillers

[sufue]

Joffe's Free Friday mystery this week is Murder among the Roses, which is the first in the Maybridge Murder series by Liz Fielding.

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BZJJLRLC
Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BZJJLRLC

Spoiler:

MEET ABBY FINCH. SHE’S THE BUSY MUM OF THREE, AN EXPERT GARDENER AND THE STAR OF YOUR NEW FAVOURITE COZY MURDER MYSTERY.

In the peaceful Cotswolds village of Maybridge, you wouldn’t expect to find a dead body in the rose garden. And certainly not two.

Abby is horrified to discover the bones of a baby buried under a rose bush. It’s in the garden of her soon-to-be ex-husband Howard’s family home.

She immediately calls the police. But she can’t get hold of Howard. He’s off on a jolly with the woman he’s got pregnant.

And then, just two days later, Abby finds Howard himself.
Lying dead in the very same rose garden.
Throat slashed with her own garden spade.

Now Abby is the prime suspect . . .

The other freebies this week are a romance, and a WWII thriller, posted in their appropriate threads.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by sufue

I'm now about half-way through, and it's definitely a mystery and not a rom-com, in spite of what the cover looks like. So I'm glad I didn't cross-post it. I haven't decided yet if I like it - I like some parts a lot, and others less so. It may depend on how it ends...

The price is now $17.99, which is ridiculous. What's the point? I can't imagine there are any sales at all at that price point. I suppose the actual point is to set people up so they leap on the next price drop, but it still seems ridiculous.

I've read the blurb and a few reviews and it sounds to me as if overall it hews too closely to the source history. I personally tend to find that kind of pastiche to be tedious; I'd rather the author use it as a jumping-off point.

[sufue]

Now $1.99 in the US...

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000OIZV98
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/betrayal-in-death-1

Originally Posted by sufue

Betrayal In Death is the twelfth in JD Robb's Eve Dallas/In Death series. It's £2.99 at Kindle UK right now, which is a bit pricey for very old backlist (2001), but eReaderIQ doesn't show it having been less since they started tracking it - in either the UK or US. So here you go...

Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B003O86FEK
Kindle UK/Smile: https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/B003O86FEK

[sufue]

Dixie City Jam is now $0.99 in the US, and discountable at Kobo. My non scientifically rigorous impression is that Burke's books go on sale a lot, but rarely this low. The Kindle link still works and here's for Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/dixie-city-jam-5

Originally Posted by sufue

Dixie City Jam is the seventh Dave Robicheaux book by James Lee Burke. It's $2.99 at Kindle US right now.

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HOFG31O

[sufue]

Scarpetta is somewhat frustratingly (since the title makes it hard to search for independently from the series) the sixteenth book in Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta series. It's $1.99 right now in the US.

KIndle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001650UQ2
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/scarpetta-3

Spoiler:

Leaving behind her private forensic pathology practice in Charleston, South Carolina, Kay Scarpetta accepts an assignment in New York City, where the NYPD has asked her to examine an injured man on Bellevue Hospital’s psychiatric prison ward. The handcuffed and chained patient, Oscar Bane, has specifically asked for her, and when she literally has her gloved hands on him, he begins to talk—and the story he has to tell turns out to be one of the most bizarre she has ever heard.

The injuries, he says, were sustained in the course of a murder . . . that he did not commit. Is Bane a criminally insane stalker who has fixed on Scarpetta? Or is his paranoid tale true, and it is he who is being spied on, followed and stalked by the actual killer? The one thing Scarpetta knows for certain is that a woman has been tortured and murdered—and more violent deaths will follow. Gradually, an inexplicable and horrifying truth emerges: Whoever is committing the crimes knows where his prey is at all times. Is it a person, a government? And what is the connection between the victims?

In the days that follow, Scarpetta; her forensic psychologist husband, Benton Wesley; and her niece, Lucy, who has recently formed her own forensic computer investigation firm in New York, will undertake a harrowing chase through cyberspace and the all-too-real streets of the city—an odyssey that will take them at once to places they never knew, and much, much too close to home.

Throughout, Cornwell delivers shocking twists and turns, and the kind of cutting-edge technology that only she can provide. Once again, she proves her exceptional ability to entertain and enthrall.

[sufue]

It turns out that Leigh Perry is a pen name for Toni LP Kelner, whose Laura Fleming series I have vague but warm memories of from DTB days. And as Leigh Perry, she has more recently written the Family Skeleton series, featuring a skeleton named Sid. I haven't tried this series, which looks super cozy, but the fifth book, The Skeleton Makes a Friend, is now $0.99 at Kindle US, and so I may give it a try.

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B087WZ1GPR

Spoiler:

“Whodunits don’t come much funnier… Fans of offbeat comic mysteries will be richly rewarded.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Georgia Thackery is feeling pretty good about her summer job teaching at prestigious Overfeld College, and she’s renting a rustic cabin right by a lake for herself, her daughter, Madison, and her best friend, Sid the Skeleton. Together again, the trio are enjoying the quiet when a teenager named Jen shows up looking for her friend. Georgia doesn’t recognize the name, but she learns that the person Jen was looking for is actually Sid.

Sid reveals that he and Jen are part of a regular online gaming group that formed locally, and one of their members has gone missing. Sid admits that he might have bragged about his investigative prowess, enough so that Jen wants him to find their missing player. Given that Sid doesn’t have many friends offline—none, really, unless you count the Thackery family—Georgia agrees to help. They manage to discreetly enlist Jen, who lives in town, and follow the clues to... a dead buddy.

Now they've got a killer on their hands. Probing the life of Sid's friend, they realize a lot is wrong both on campus and in the seemingly quaint town, and someone doesn't want them looking deeper…

“You'll love the adventures of this unexpected mystery-solving duo.”—Charlaine Harris, #1 New York Times bestselling author

[sufue]

The Singing Sands is the fifth Alan Grant book by Josephine Tey, or the sixth if you count Grant’s appearance as a minor character in The Franchise Affair. It’s on sale for $2.99 in the US right now. Of course, if you are lucky enough to be in one of the countries where copyright laws already put The Singing Sands in the public domain, you can download for free from Faded Page or Project Gutenberg Canada, and probably some other PD websites too.

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0868T6YCD
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-singing-sands-19

Spoiler:

On sick leave from Scotland Yard, Inspector Alan Grant is planning a quiet holiday with an old school chum to recover from overwork and mental fatigue. Traveling on the night train to Scotland, however, Grant stumbles upon a dead man and a cryptic poem about “the stones that walk” and “the singing sand,” which send him off on a fascinating search into the verse’s meaning and the identity of the deceased. Grant needs just this sort of casual inquiry to quiet his jangling nerves, despite his doctor’s orders. But what begins as a leisurely pastime eventually turns into a full-blown investigation that leads Grant to discover not only the key to the poem but the truth about a most diabolical murder.