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The Dark Room

The heart-pounding follow-up to the "electrifying"* Poison Artist shows what happens when our deepest secrets are unburied. *Stephen King Gavin Cain, an SFPD homicide inspector, is in the middle of an exhumation when his phone rings. San Francisco's mayor is being blackmailed and has ordered Cain back to the city; a helicopter is on its way. The casket, and Cain's cold-case investigation, must wait. At City Hall, the mayor shows Cain four photographs he's received: the first, an unforgettable blonde; the second, pills and handcuffs on a nightstand; the third, the woman drinking from a flask; and last, the woman naked, unconscious, and shackled to a bed. The accompanying letter is straightforward: worse revelations are on the way unless the mayor takes his own life first. An intricately plotted, deeply affecting thriller that keeps readers guessing until the final pages, The Dark Room tracks Cain as he hunts for the...
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Pure Dead Trouble

After a vacation in Italy, the Strega-Borgia clan arrives home to a shocking discovery: their faithful butler Latch lying comatose on the front doorstep, reeking faintly of sulphur. Horrified and troubled, Titus and Pandora suspect this may be an omen of bad fortune, but both are soon distracted by their own problems.Only Nanny McLachlan realizes the truth: Whatever it was that came for Latch is coming back. And when it does, will she alone be strong enough to protect the family?From the Hardcover edition.
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Hill of Grace

?1951. Among the coppiced carob trees and arum lilies of the Barossa Valley, old-school Lutheran William Miller lives a quiet life with his wife, Bluma, and son, Nathan, making wine and baking bread. But William has a secret. He's been studying the Bible and he's found what a thousand others couldn't: the date of the Apocalypse.
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Reckless

From elite London society to the golden sands of Egypt . . . and the sacred places of her heart . . .When Kat Adair plunges into the waves to rescue a drowning man, it is just the beginning of an odyssey that will sweep the fisherman's daughter into danger and desire. Convinced she is in love with the man she saved, Egyptologist David Turnberry, she feigns amnesia, thus enabling her to linger among the highborn. Hunter MacDonald, rugged archaeologist, is wise to her little charade -- and determined to protect his best friend.Undaunted, Kat stows away on the ship carrying David and Hunter's expedition party to the land of the pharaoh. Scandal ensues, and Hunter vows the only way to curtail this confounding woman's schemes is to marry her. Inevitably, in the sultry heat of the desert, passions ignite. But as the secrets of the ancient tombs are revealed, terrible danger unfolds, and Kat must trust the one man willing to risk everything to save her from doom.
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Jar City

From Gold Dagger Award--winning author Arnaldur Indridason comes a Reykjavík thriller introducing Inspector Erlendur When a lonely old man is found dead in his Reykjavík flat, the only clues are a cryptic note left by the killer and a photograph of a young girl's grave. Inspector Erlendur discovers that many years ago the victim was accused, but not convicted, of an unsolved crime, a rape. Did the old man's past come back to haunt him? As Erlendur reopens this very cold case, he follows a trail of unusual forensic evidence, uncovering secrets that are much larger than the murder of one old man. An international sensation, the Inspector Erlendur series has sold more than two million copies worldwide.
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Between the Strokes of Night

After the Nuclear Spasm in the 21st century, Homo sapiens was extinct, save for a tiny remnant scattered in small, primitive space colonies. At first Solar Humanity had only one goal: survival. But when the battle for existence was won, humankind began moving outward in slow, multi-generation space ships, and as then millennia passed, planet-based civilizations emerged in many star systems. In the year 27,698 A.D, to these new worlds come the Immortals, beings with strange ties to ancient Earth, who seem to live forever, who can travel light years in days — and who use their strange powers to control the existence of ordinary mortals. On the planet Pentecost, a small group sets out to find and challenge the Immortals. But in the search they themselves are changed: as Immortals, they discover a new threat, not just to themselves, but to the galaxy itself.
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The Meq

From Publishers WeeklyAnyone who can get past the trite opening scenes of country singer Cash's fantasy debut will be pleasantly surprised as the stilted prose becomes the accented speech of a fluent foreigner and the sketchy characters turn into solid people. As the orphan Zianno searches the world for the mysterious Sailor, he soon meets other Basque children who share his true heritage: they are the Meq, who stay 12 years old until they meet their soul mates and choose to attain mortality together. Zianno's almost-romance with the beautiful and mortal Carolina and his friendships with other Meq are described with a deep tenderness that plays up the brutality of the Fleur-du-Mal, an ancient renegade Meq who kills Carolina's sister and kidnaps her daughter. As Zianno, Sailor and their companions hunt the Fleur-du-Mal, the vividly painted landscape of the early 20th century unfolds around them, populated by many famous people (from T.S. Eliot to Scott Joplin) and events from the 1904 World's Fair to the 1918 influenza epidemic. Those expecting a conventional tale of immortality's woes or a coming-of-age story won't find either, but as light and engaging historical fiction with a fantasy twist, the novel works well. FYI:_In the 1970s, the author was a member of the Ozark Mountain Devils band and composed the hit pop song "Jackie Blue."_ Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. FromStarred Review Cash's first novel is a surprisingly ingenious, lushly detailed story that turns fantasy on its head. Yes, it features a battle of good against evil, magic amulets, and a group on a quest to discover its long-forgotten heritage. But beyond that, it soars into new territory. The Meq is a race that has lived anonymously among humans throughout the centuries. But when Meq turn 12, they remain that age, in body if not in mind, until they each meet the one other Meq who is their soul mate. The day he turns 12 in 1881, Ziannio Zezen, known as Z, loses his parents in a tragic train wreck, knowing only that he must keep the baseball his father gave him and must find Umla-Meq and Sailor. As he embarks on the search, various humans as well as other Meq befriend him, and they unite in trying to stop the evil Meq known as the Fleur-du-Mal. As years pass, the plot encompasses the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, China's Boxer Rebellion, and other turn-of-the century events with a you-are-there flavor, and also dips back into antiquity through the memories of Meq who have been alive for centuries. The drama is intense, the characterizations are fully realized, and the very cadence of the language infuses a rich sense of time, place, and historical context that draws one in. Sally EstesCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Deadly Illusions

Molly Saint hires new PI's Greg and Jill McKenzie to check into her husband's background, then disappears. It starts them on a tangled trail of deceit. Complicating matters further, Greg gets drawn into a troubling police investigation stemming from the assassination of the Federal Reserve Board chairman at a Nashville hotel. The case resurrects old problems with a Murder Squad detective and his colleagues among Nashville's finest. The deeper the McKenzies dig, the more deadly illusions they face. After threats, break-ins, and another murder, the charade ends in a shocking showdown. Praise for Chester D. Campbell's work: "A gem of a writer." - Crimespree Magazine "Riveting." - Women on Writing "Unique." - The Best Reviews "Creative imagery." - Blue Iris Journal "Fabulous mysteries." - Midwest Book Review "Excellent." - Front Page Reviews "Intriguing and Entertaining." - The (Nashville Tennessean "Masterful plotting." - Spinetingler MagazineReview"Enjoy the Greg McKenzie mystery series, as this is one author a reader can count on." -- Blue Iris Review "This series keeps getting better. The McKenzies are a unique sleuthing couple. Don't miss this one." -- Julia Spencer-Fleming, Agatha and Anthony Award winning authorAbout the AuthorI got bitten by the writing bug when I started work as a newspaper reporter while a journalism student at the University of Tennessee. That was more than 60 years ago. Since then I've worked as a freelance writer, a magazine editor, a political speechwriter, an advertising copywriter, a public relations writer and an association manager. I started writing novels after retirement. I write the Greg McKenzie mysteries featuring a retired Air Force OSI agent. The first, SECRET OF THE SCROLL (2002), takes place in Nashville and Israel. The second, DESIGNED TO KILL (2004), is set around Pensacola, FL, and the third, DEADLY ILLUSIONS (2005), wanders about Nashville. The fourth,  titled THE MARATHON MURDERS (2008), involves the long-defunct Marathon Motor Works in Nashville, and the fifth is A SPORTING MURDER (2010), dealing with professional sports in Nashville. My second mystery series follows the adventures of Nashville PI Sid Chance. The first book, titled THE SUREST POISON (2009), deals with a toxic chemical spill in a suburban county, the second, THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE MURDEROUS (2011), involves Medicare fraud, drug dealing, bad cops, and a ruthless hit man.
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The Fourth Bear nc-2

The Gingerbreadman: Psychopath, sadist, genius, convicted murderer and biscuit is loose in the streets of Reading. It isn't Jack Spratt's case. He and Mary Mary have been reassigned due to falling levels of nursery crime, and the NCD is once more in jeopardy. That is, until a chance encounter during the Armitage Shanks literary awards at the oddly familiar Deja-Vu Club lead Jack and Mary on the hunt for missing journalist Henrietta 'Goldilocks' Hatchett, star reporter for the Daily Mole. She had been about to break a story involving unexplained explosions in Herefordshire, Pasadena and the Nullabor Plain; The last witness to see her alive were The Three Bears, comfortably living out a life of rural solitude in Andersen's wood. But all is not what it seems. How could the bear's porridge be at such disparate temperature when they were poured at the same time? Was Goldy's death in the nearby 1st World War Themepark of SommeWorld a freak accident? And is it merely chance that the Gingerbreadman pops up at awkward moments? But there's more. What does a missing scientist with a terrifying discovery in subatomic physics, a secret weapon of devastating power, a reclusive industrialist known only as the Quangle-Wangle and Colonel Danvers of the National Security all have in common?
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