Free and Bargain Mystery/Suspense/Thriller Books August 2012

[NightBird]

Almost Perfect by John Childress. Free thriller from Endeavor Press, Ltd.

Product Description

Matt Brennan, a brilliant young investment banker in the City of London, is celebrating his greatest deal yet: orchestrating a mega-merger that will transform the electronics industry. He is rich and successful beyond his wildest hopes.

But his personal life is a mess.

Fed up with his constant work, his wife is about to walk out on him.

And he is plagued by mysterious dreams ...of the Inquisition.

When Matt travels to Carcassonne in Southern France to buy a house he hopes will put his marriage and his life back together, he is plunged into the mysteries of the Cathar Sect, a fanatical branch of mediaeval Catholicism also known as the 'the Perfects'.

As he unlocks their secrets, his life is at stake.

And Matt Brennan is about to discover that no man, and no religion, is ever perfect.

[Loosheesh]

Thanks NightBird for this new thread! Mysteries are my second favorite, after romances, so I'll be visiting often

[NightBird]

Great to have you, Loosheesh.

[jersysman]

Thank you very much for this thread!! Mysteries are my #1 favorite genre. I now have a new place from which to gather potential reads.

Thanks, Nightbird!

[bookratt]

Originally Posted by NightBird

Thanks, bookratt, but please do a search before posting to avoid duplication. Some of these have been posted previously. Also, please do not post self-pubs. Otherwise this thread will be overwhelmed. Thanks.

Was just putting all the same type of books together to fit your theme.

Good day everyone!

[Carmelreader]

Thanks for this thread! Will be checking in a lot.

[NightBird]

Welcome, jersysman and Carmelreader.

[amward]

Great thread, mysteries are my favourite reads. Thanks for starting this, it's a really good idea.

[NightBird]

Thanks, amward.

[elemenoP]

Would love to have one of these for "literary" or "non-genre" fiction, but those kinds of books don't seem to be free very often!

eP

[gdimike]

Thanks for this thread!

[NightBird]

Originally Posted by gdimike

Thanks for this thread!

YW.

Very slim pickings right now. I think because it's the end of the month most of the KDPers have used up all their free days. Hopefully things will pick up on the 1st.

[NightBird]

Originally Posted by elemenoP

Would love to have one of these for "literary" or "non-genre" fiction, but those kinds of books don't seem to be free very often!

eP

Well, you could start one. LOL. I don't really know how many there are. It could just be that people are not posting these. I myself mostly post only what interests me.

[NightBird]

David Kessler has more free and bargain legal thrillers at Amazon. He was previously published in paper by Avon, Hodder, etc.

A Fool for a Client is free.

WHEN IT'S A MUSLIM, IT'S A TERRORIST.
WHEN IT'S AN IRISH NATIONALIST, IT'S A FREEDOM FIGHTER!

That at least was the attitude of the American judge who refused to extradite Sean Murphy to stand trial for planting a bomb in a London shopping mall that killed an Indian doctor and a three-year-old kid. Now Murphy is dead and 23-year-old American medical student Justine Levy is on trial in New York for his murder – conducting her own defense and resisting all offers of help from her young, black standby-counsel.

But the evidence is circumstantial and the beautiful but vulnerable Justine remains tight-lipped. Was she a vigilante or was it personal? Did she know the child or the Indian doctor? Is she guilty? For her lawyer it IS personal because he is falling for her.

But who will ultimately decide her fate? The jury? The ruthless gunman who has come to New York to kill her? Or another man who has come in pursuit of the gunman with a ruthlessness equal to that of Justine?

David Kessler’s first thriller doesn’t just excite and mystify, it also asks some tough questions about vigilante justice and the rights of the victim.

Also free is It started out quite simply. (Formerly titled No Way Out, so you may already have this as ATDrake posted it previously.)

Formerly NO WAY OUT

When Bethel Newton, a 19 year old white girl, accuses black TV talk-show host Elias Claymore of raping her, America is deeply divided. In his youth, Claymore was a Black power militant and convicted rapist who escaped from prison and fled to north Africa. But after undergoing a road-to-Damascus change, he came back to America to serve out his sentence, reinventing himself as a neoconservative, born-again Christian and pillar of the establishment.

Now, accused once again, publicly vilified and portrayed as a national pariah, Claymore turns to his friend Alex Sedaka for help. However Alex is pressured into sharing the defense with a law firm appointed by Claymore’s insurers and finds himself working with Andromeda (“Andi”) Phoenix, whose black lover Gene works at a rape crisis center. And when Andi makes an issue of the under-representation of African-Americans on the jury, she starts receiving anonymous threats and finds her lesbian relationship under an intense strain that stretches her divided loyalties to the limit.

Meanwhile Alex must battle his way through DNA evidence, jury tampering and malicious computer hacking. And while all this is going on, Alex’s on-again/off-again girlfriend - TV reporter Martine Yin - is covering the case and putting herself in danger...

The Other Victim is $.99.

In London’s glitzy West End, Tony Neuman, a gifted teenager, is stabbed in what appears to be a mugging. On a luxurious country estate, a lawyer with a chip on his shoulder, is asked to investigate the disappearance of billionaire Fabian Digby. But when Digby’s body turns up floating on the Grand union canal and police frogmen find Tony’s watch on the canal bed, Tony’s brother Phil comes under suspicion.

The link between the two deaths is Gold a perfume made by the company that Digby acquired just before his death. But Gold is no ordinary perfume… it seems to have addictive properties…

Checkmate at the Beauty Pageant (The Dov Shamir Adventures) is $.99.

FULLY REVISED AND RE-EDITED

When 32 beauty contestants are kidnapped in a military-style operation, it's a job for top Israeli intelligence officer Dov Shamir. The kidnapper – “Lee Chadwick” - has threatened to kill the girls unless former US and world chess champion Billy Segal can be persuaded to come out of retirement and play against a chess program that runs on the internet using the computers of those who are watching the games for "parallel computing."

But Segal has lost his nerve and so it is up to Shamir - who is also an international master of chess - to come up with a plan.

Meanwhile the girls are being pampered in a luxurious mansion on a large Caribbean island but warned not to try and escape. And those who do they find themselves coming up against a six foot three lesbian who delights flexing her muscles at their expense.

Will Dov and the girls be able to prevail? Will the combined efforts of the American, British and Israeli intelligence be able to locate where the girls are being held? And will they be able to overcome the heavily armed guards without getting the girls killed? But the most important question is who is the mysterious “Lee Chadwick” who never seems to appear but is pulling the strings and controlling things from behind the scenes? Could it be some one who has been out in the open all along?

[NightBird]

Jim Stinson has his Stoney Winston Hollywood mysteries, previously published by Scribner, free at Kobo (three of the four), and the first one free at Sony, B&N, and Apple. The last one is $1.99 at Apple.

The series in order:

Double Exposure

Description
(Newly proofed and reformatted) Ah, the romantic 1980s! No Internet, Facebook, or Twitter. Telephones tied to the wall. Music on vinyl or flimsy cassettes -- and don’t even start on the fashions! Hollywood wandered in the desert between the lush studio days that were gone and our flush modern times full of cable and Netflix. Work for film people was scarce in those days and Stoney Winston just barely scraped by. If the 1980s were romantic, Stoney was far too busy surviving to notice....Desperate for cash, Stoney takes a job tracking a missing daughter whose porno screen test is being used to blackmail the owner of a tiny, failing studio. When he finds the girl murdered, the bad guys responsible start hunting him down, with a similar plan for Stoney. Pursuing his quest (and saving his hide) Stoney tangles with a randy TV evangelist, hired thugs, two lethal fires, and a cold midnight swim off a boat taking him out to sea on a one-way trip with a heavy anchor. All the while, three women offer him aid and comfort, though only one is his live-in lady. In the end, Stoney delivers a rough and ready justice, but all he gets in return is a totaled car. He keeps his lady, though, and that’s more important to him.

Sony

B&N

Kobo

Apple


Low Angles

Description

Against his better judgment, Hollywood foot soldier Stoney Winston arrives at a flea-bitten desert Hamlet to help Diane LaMotta direct her first feature, a no-budget indie action potboiler titled Cycles from Hell. The director’s hostile, the cameraman’s drunk, the crew’s rebellious, and the real bikers playing most of the parts perform as bad as they smell. Diane and a biker momma start fighting over Stoney, while the production’s being slowly killed by systematic sabotage that turns into stabbing, near-drowning, and violent death. Stoney’s only weapons are his courage, his movie smarts, and his friend, Scuzzy. Courtly Nathaniel Hawthorne (“Scuzzy”)Fenster supports his Talmudic scholarship by playing heavies in biker films. Since he stands six-six, weighs 300 pounds, and sprouts hair in all directions, the very sight of him would make Attila wet his pants. He works a lot.

Kobo


Truck Shot

Description

Stoney Winston is teaching a film workshop at low-rent Angeles Commercial Design College when the college president is literally blown away. To pry loose the insurance transfusion needed to keep the dying college alive, Stoney has to prove it wasn't suicide. Stoney follows the murderer’s trail into a labyrinth of embezzlements, real estate hustles, and suspicious moves by a mysterious multinational company. Before he emerges, he has to fight fires, foil attempts on his life and fly like a bird. Through all this, he has to help his class finish their pretentious student film, which involves a woman and a goldfish, both of them symbolic, naked, and pregnant. Meanwhile, his prettiest student wants him in bed, his friend Tina, the new college president, leans on him for help and maybe more, and a surprise from his past adds romantic complications. In the end, Stoney's glad to retreat to the routine madness of Hollywood and resume his eternal struggle to rise above the bottom level of the Industry food chain.

Kobo


TV Safe $1.99

Description

Big bucks incite big greed, and the quiz show Oh-Pun Sesame! Offers a $1 million prize that people will kill for. Vulnerable celebrities like show star Kelli Dengham hide career-destroying secrets. And a low-caste program staffer named Stoney Winston has to stop the murders and protect the beautiful airhead star. A perennial Hollywood foot soldier, Stoney’s equipped to navigate the backwater swamps of late ‘80s Hollywood, where he uncovers a psychotic fan writing eerie mash notes telling Kelli the fun sadistic things he’ll do to her, plus two murders linked to the show and slides stolen from Kelli’s nude photo session that could kill far more than just her career. Once again, Stoney has to rely on his movie smarts, inherent decency, and wry sense of humor to get him through all this with his sanity – and maybe his very life – intact.

Apple