The Cahill family has a secret. For five hundred years, they have guarded the 39 Clues — thirty-nine ingredients in a serum that transforms whomever takes it into the most powerful person on earth. If the serum got into the wrong hands, the disaster would rock the world. So certain Cahills have always made it their mission to keep the serum safe, buried, locked away. Until now.Thirteen-year-old Dan Cahill and his older sister, Amy, are the latest guardians of the Clues. They think they've done everything right, but a tiny mistake leads to catastrophe. The serum is missing and Dan and Amy have to get it back and stop who stole it . . . before it's game over. For everyone. Views: 59
Betrayed by a greedy half-brother who coveted her inheritance, then accused by her superstitious Salem neighbors of practicing witchcraft, Sarah Townsend found herself kidnapped, sold into bondage, and thrown into the hold of a ship bound for Williamsburg Virginia. A Puritan who believes to show one's bare arm is a sin, now finds herself in Williamsburg where the residents strive to follow the latest fashions in London. REVIEWSA poignant, heartwarming story of a love that transcends religious, political, and cultural differences. This is an author to watch...Romantic Times MagazineRainy weaves an endearing tale of romance that will bring tears to your eyes and laughter that will capture your heart, Make room on your shelf - this one is a keeperJudy SpagnolaBook TrendsBewitchingly funny, tender and emotional... another winner from Kirkland's lyrical pen.Elaine BarbieriAuthorAUTHOR INFORMATIONA national award winning author - Rainy Kirkland has written several historical romances. A graduate from Maryland University, she spent time in the Peace Corp, then taught elementary school in New Jersey. Now living in Florida Ms. Kirkland has returned to her writing career. Look for the continuation of Bewitching Kisses in the second book of the series - Silver Flame coming soon. Views: 59
Mystery. 63740 words long. First Published by SynergEbooks, Sept. 2004 Views: 59
In this twisty thriller from the New York Times bestselling master of suspense, reward-seeker Colter Shaw infiltrates a sinister cult after learning that the only way to get somebody out . . . is to go in.In the wilderness of Washington State, expert tracker Colter Shaw has located two young men accused of a terrible hate crime. But when his pursuit takes a shocking and tragic turn, Shaw becomes desperate to discover what went so horribly wrong and if he is to blame.Shaw's search for answers leads him to a shadowy organization that bills itself as a grief support group. But is it truly it a community that consoles the bereaved? Or a dangerous cult with a growing body count? Undercover, Shaw joins the mysterious group, risking everything despite the fact that no reward is on offer. He soon finds that some people will stop at nothing to keep their secrets hidden . . . and to make sure that he or those close to him say "goodbye" forever. Views: 59
"A tremendous talent."—Lee ChildFrom award-winning author Suzanne Chazin comes a powerful novel of passion, bigotry, and murderous secrets in a homicide detective's picturesque hometown...A body is found in a reservoir fifty miles north of New York City. The victim is young, female and Hispanic. In her purse, the police find a photograph of a baby they believe is her daughter—a little girl they can't identify. Or find. Where is the child? Is she still alive? And what is the meaning behind the disturbing note in the woman's bag? "Go back to your country. You don't belong here."Arriving at the scene is homicide detective Jimmy Vega, who spent the better part of his childhood in the area and still carries the scars. A Latino himself, Vega knows all too well how hard it can be for an outsider to fit into a close-knit place like Lake Holly. Even now, as a respected officer of the law, he has to watch his step in an investigation simmering with ethnic animosities... Views: 59
Melisande, Duchess of Gifford, has enjoyed running wild since surviving her unhappy marriage--but she knows it's only a matter of time before her brother forces her to settle down and be respectable. Determined to make herself free, Melisande decides to escape into ruined exile with an absolutely scandalous affair and leave London forever. But her heart may have other plans when she meets intriguing Lord Grayson Sanbourne... Views: 59
Batter up! It's an NYC-themed Super Special! Ballpark Mysteries are fun, accessible early chapter books that cross baseball action with puzzling whodunits!Catch a baseball mystery—in New York City! Mike and Kate are in for an extra special treat! Two hometown baseball teams in one city! A Subway Series is when the New York Mets play the New York Yankees, and Mike and Kate can't wait to watch all the action! But someone is playing pranks at both ballparks! And when Mike and Kate hear mysterious mumblings at the famous Whispering Gallery at Grand Central Terminal, they just might be able to catch the culprit before the series ends. A longer story, plus bonus backmatter with activities and NYC trivia, makes Subway Series Surprise a truly Super Special addition to the Ballpark Mysteries. Views: 59
From #1 bestselling culinary cozy mystery author Catherine Bruns comes the next delightfully delicious Cookies & Chance Mystery... Baker turned reluctant amateur sleuth, Sally Muccio’s, finally found the happiness that’s eluded her for years. She’s in love with a great guy, her bakery is thriving, and now she and her best friend Josie Sullivan are gearing up to appear on the popular reality baking show, Cookie Crusades. But a visit from Sal’s greedy ex-husband Colin, who's looking to cash in on the bakery’s dough, changes everything. Within a few hours Sal’s world—like the shop’s original fortune cookies—is broken apart when Colin turns up dead, and her boyfriend’s arrested for the crime. Now Sal’s mixing it up with vengeful ex-inlaws, a suspicious new employee, slippery baking competitors, and a greasy mobster who’ll stop at nothing to collect on Colin’s unpaid debt. Can Sal prove her man is innocent in time? Or is she about to get baked herself? **Recipes Included!** The Cookies & Chance Mysteries: Tastes Like Murder (book #1) Baked to Death (book #2) A Spot of Murder (short story in the "Killer Beach Reads" collection) What critics are saying: "Catherine Bruns dishes up a deliciously devilish mystery with this feisty suspense story. This is a highly entertaining cozy mystery that would appeal to anyone who likes a little zaniness with their suspense. " —Night Owl Reviews, Top Pick! "I want to visit more with all of the quirky characters just to see what crazy and outrageous things they will do next!" —Fresh Fiction "The delightful whodunit kept me guessing until the end, and the tasty treats had my mouthwatering from start to finish! A fantastic culinary mystery in the vein of Joanne Fluke and Diane Mott Davidson!" —Gemma Halliday, New York Times & USA Today bestselling mystery author "Catherine Bruns has found a winning recipe for an exciting mystery mixed with a dash of humor and a heap of danger. Add in a little romance for spice, and you get one sweet reading treat." —Mary Marks, bestselling author of the Quilting Mystery series. Views: 59
Never Say Die by Tess Gerritsen Never Say Die by Tess Gerritsen Friend...or foe? Twenty years after her father's plane crashed in the jungles of Southeast Asia, Willy Jane Maitland was taking a trip through hell. Saigon was teeming, hot and dangerous. But her search for the truth about that fateful flight was about to make her life even hotter still .. . . Rumpled, irreverent ex-army Guy Barnard knew the jungles and the workings of this mystical Asian nation. But in a country where truth had many faces, even Guy had hidden motives . . . shocking secrets . . . and undeniable attractions. Though the war was over, Vietnam was proving to still be a dangerous place to fall in love. No Way Back by Debra Webb Double Impact: No Way Back by Debra Webb Michal Arad wanted vengeance when he kidnapped former CIA agent Ami Donovan, claiming she'd posed as his lover to set him up as an assassin. But Ami had amnesia and no way of knowing the truth...until Michal took her in his arms. In spite of her fear, Ami sensed Michal wasn't a ruthless killer, but the man she'd once loved...and the father of her child. Views: 59
The Covered Bridge by Karen HarperWhen Benjamin Kline returns to the fold after eight years, Abigail Baughman welcomes him with an open heart. But all is not well in their Amish village. Mysterious happenings put Abby in harm's way, forcing Ben to run to her rescue. He's vowed never to let anyone hurt her, and suddenly everything is at risk—their community, their way of life…and their future together.Fallen in Plain Sight by Marta PerryChildhood friends Sarah Weaver and Jacob Mast see each other in a different light when violence shatters their peaceful society. Now a series of accidents put their faith—and newfound love—to the ultimate test.Outside the Circle by Patricia DavidsIsaac Bowman is an outsider, but Lena Troyer makes the widower and his daughter feel like part of the community. So when a deer-poaching ring divides the town, Isaac vows to keep this gentle woman safe from harm…in spite of the danger to his heart.Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.A strange, shrill voice dragged Abigail from deep sleep. No, it was two voices, one low-pitched, one high. She huddled under her sheet and quilt, then thrashed against them. Dreams had haunted her again—of a couple running through a cornfield, whooping in delight, with Ben leading the way. Ben laughing, knocking over the stalks…running in crazy circles… Had she been dreaming of Ben and Liddy? No. The voices were real. She could hear them right now.Clutching the covers, Abby sat bolt upright. At least the people weren't outside her house. Maybe down by the creek, or on the covered bridge. That often funneled sounds her way. Probably rumspringa kids, maybe some she knew. Drinking beer, staying out late, just as she had during her running-around time. Or maybe it was outsiders telling ghost tales on the old bridge where, if you shouted loud enough, your voice echoed. Ja, scaring someone about the Amish girl and Englische boy who hanged themselves there years ago because their love was forbidden.Despite the fact she was sweating, Abby shivered. She didn't believe in ghosts but she knew the story: the Amish girl had argued with her lover, saying it was wrong to take a life, but he had convinced her to put the noose around her neck and jump with him into the darkness….Abby stopped breathing and strained to listen to the high-pitched voice again. Ja, it was a woman's, strong and strident. Land sakes, couldn't they quiet down and let a body sleep?Trying to keep calm, Abby fumbled on her bedside table for her flashlight, clicked it on and shot its beam toward her battery-run clock. It was 4:14 a.m.! Now she'd never get back to sleep. She had to get up before dawn to make more mushroom chutney and relish for the saturday farmers' market. And she wanted to take a loaf of friendship bread over to her new neighbors across the creek, plus harvest more mushrooms.Her feet hit the rag rug on the floor, and she found her slippers by feel. Though her place was six miles out of town, and the nearest Amish farm was two miles away, she'd lived here for years, first with both grandparents and then just with Grossmamm. She'd never felt afraid here, she told herself, and she didn't now. She knew Wild Run Woods behind the house, Killibuck Creek—really a river—and the old bridge better than anyone. And people had better learn to be quiet at night!As she wrapped a shawl around her flannel nightgown, another thought hit her. Maybe the folks who had taken over the old Hostetler house across the creek had gone down to the bridge and were arguing. If she were the woman who had just moved into that run-down place, she might be shouting, too.By now her curiosity was as awake as she was. In the front room, she knelt by the window she'd left cracked in the crisp September air, and raised the sash a bit higher. The woman's voice wasn't Amish in tone or rhythm. Abby couldn't be sure, but the man must be a modern, too. This part of Eden County had folks who weren't Amish, but they all had the good sense not to be disturbing the peace this time of night.A light shone from one of the windows on the bridge everyone called "the Hanging Bridge," partly because it was suspended from the rocks above the rapids but also because of the double suicide that had happened there. She couldn't imagine taking one's own life for love. Sad that two young folks couldn't see there was so much to live for, even apart. Why, she'd turned down Elam garber's proposal a few months ago, and she felt she had plenty to live for.It wasn't that she didn't sympathize about true love, Abby told herself. She'd seen her older sister, Liddy, as well as friends and cousins, fall in love and get married. But she'd given up on passion and desire ever since she'd been silly and stupid enough to have a huge crush on Liddy's eighteen-year-old come-calling friend, their neighbor Ben Kline. That had been about ten years ago, when she was a mere kid of fourteen. Thanks to Ben messing up his life, he hadn't married Liddy, and had left here for good, jumped the Amish fence to the big city of Cincinnati. Until she found someone who swayed her head and heart like he had, she was content to run her business and her life, Amish to the core and yet a bit on her own, too."You're an idiot!" she heard the woman screech, followed by something she couldn't catch. Despite the constant rustle of white water over rocks below the bridge, the female voice carried.That's all she could take, Abby decided. She was going to go out, shine a light their way, then hustle back here and lock herself in.She hurried into her kitchen, banging her shin on a log plugged with oyster mushroom spawn, and got her big flashlight. She'd needed both lights to gather the mushrooms after dark last night, then pack and store them in the cellar for sale at the market. She went out the back door, which faced her mushroom beds and the forest beyond, then hurried around the side of the house onto the river path. She knew each step in the dark, so she'd wait to use the large flashlight until she was on the old, now-deserted road that led to the bridge.Once she was there, she aimed at the black throat of the bridge and turned on the big beam.Ach! Even pointed away, the brilliance almost blinded her. The shaft of light illuminated a woman dressed in black and wearing an Amish prayer kapp, so it must be one of her people. The figure turned toward the light, threw up a hand to shield her eyes and hissed, "Someone's coming. Get down!"The voice was Englische!And get down from what? Surely someone wasn't drunk enough to jump out a window into the rapids, even though the river was up with all the rain. They'd be smashed on the rocks below, maybe drowned.Abby heard something clatter, then a man's low voice. Not wanting a confrontation, she clicked off her flashlight, turned and fled, losing one slipper, but not turning back. In the house, she locked the door and peered out the kitchen window. Nothing now. No light, no sound. About ten minutes later she saw red taillights on the far side of the bridge disappear, as if a wild animal were backing away into the blackness.After breakfast, Abby searched hard for her lost slipper and couldn't find it. So she fed her buggy horse, Fern, let her out to graze in the small meadow, then had a hearty breakfast of a honey mushroom frittata and herbal tea before going to work.Her wood ear mushrooms—"They are listening!" Grossmamm always used to say since they looked like human ears—seemed perfect as she used her sharpest harvesting knife to cut them from the stacked logs she'd inoculated with their spawn last year. After she finished, she'd take that loaf of bread over to the new couple she'd caught a glimpse of moving in. She couldn't see them that well through the autumn trees, but she could tell they were Englische.Abby prayed they would be good neighbors, as she intended to be. A shame they were moderns, but she didn't mind her half-hour buggy rides into town for market and church on her own. Unlike most Amish maidals with many siblings, Abigail Baughman had only one sister, who now lived in Pennsylvania. A baby brother born too early in a bad birth had taken their mother with him. Because her parents were forty when she was born, and Liddy seemed so much older, more like a second mother, Abby had always felt like an only child. She had lots of friends from her school days, and many cousins, but she had to admit she'd become a bit of a loner, especially after her mamm died and daad still traveled so much with his construction team.Many Amish girls were married by twenty-four, Ab-by's age. She knew she'd find the right Amish man one day and rear her own family. But he'd have to live out here where she could pursue the wildcrafting, gathering and overseeing of the mushroom crops that were, as Grossmamm also used to say, "our bread and butter."About ten o'clock, after making a kettle of mushroom chutney, left on the stove to cool, Abby changed her work apron and shoes, donned her bonnet over her prayer kapp and packed up the loaf of friendship bread. It wasn't quite hunting season yet for deer or wild turkey, only for squirrel, but she locked the door behind her. Last year two Englische hunters had scared her to death. She'd come back from gathering precious morels in the woods and walked into her kitchen to find them getting drinks of water.As she set out, still skimming her gaze across the ground for her lost slipper, she jerked to a stop. Two sets of tracks—and hers—marred the mud by the path where she'd watered her ever-thirsty shaggy mane mushrooms yesterday. One print was smaller than the other, but they could have belonged to either sex. The mud was so wet that only the shape of the shoe was there, not tread marks.Abby followed the footprints toward her house and around the edge of the bed of wood chips that boasted her big parasol mushrooms, then lost them where the sawdust trail began. In the meadow behind the fence, Fern was cropping grass. The gentle mare looked up at Abby as if to ask, "What? What's wrong?""Nothing," Abby answered, and headed down the path toward the bridge again. Just someone passing through? Squirrel hunters? She'd heard some distant rifle shots yesterday. Had Elam come to pester her again, maybe with Ruth Yutzy, the new girlfriend he'd been showing off? Or maybe the tracks belonged to the people who had been on the bridge? But she hadn't seen or heard anyone follow her last night. Keeping an eye on the woods, she continued down the path.Several covered bridges in this area drew occasional visitors, but none were used much anymore. The Hanging Bridge, once called the Homestead Bridge after the nearby town, had been b... Views: 59
"You cannot fail to be reminded of Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles," comments Christie biographer Charles Osborne of The Sittaford Mystery -- in which remote, snowbound Dartmoor is the setting for some strange goings-on, and of a grisly murder.The novel opens at Sittaford House, the grand manor owned by Captain Joseph Trevelyan of the Royal Navy, though he does not live there -- preferring the income from renting it out. In the midst of a blinding snowstorm, the occupants of Sittaford House have chosen for their evening's diversion ... a séance. They receive a chilling message: ‘Captain Trevelyan… dead… murder.’Is this black magic or simply a macabre joke? Unfortunately, it is the truth -- and it is up to our plucky young heroine, Emily Trefusis, to prove that her fiancé, Captain Trevelyan's nephew, is not, as he has been accused, the murderer. But who is the murderer? And what will he or she do in the wilds of Dartmoor to end Emily's investigation? Views: 59
