Category Archives: Mystery Monday

If you love a good mystery then you should check out this week’s spotlight!

Title: The Last Close Call by Laura Griffin
Publisher: Berkley
Genre: Contemporary, Mystery, Romantic Suspense
Length: 334 pages

Summary:

A talented genetic analyst and a detective who’s haunted by an elusive cold case team up in the new standalone romantic suspense from New York Times bestselling author Laura Griffin.

Forensic genealogist Rowan Healy has made a name for herself by helping investigators trace the family trees of violent criminals who have eluded justice for years. But the pressure of police cases left her burned out, and she’s shifted her focus to helping adoptees find their biological parents.

Austin detective Jack Bruner has spent his career successfully tracking down vicious criminals—with the notable exception of the West Campus Rapist, a meticulous offender in Texas who has never been identified. When the latest two victims come to light, Jack sees his target is escalating his violent behavior—and only with Rowan’s help does he stand a chance of cracking this case.

Moved by Jack’s dedication and the brutal details of the attacks he lays out, Rowan agrees to help. When her ground-breaking DNA research sheds new light on the criminal’s background and helps them zero in on a search radius, Rowan and Jack must race against the clock to find a ruthless killer who’s growing bolder the longer he evades the law.

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If you love a good mystery then you should check out this week’s spotlight!

Title: Distant Sons by Tim Johnston
Publisher: Algonquin
Genre: Contemporary, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller
Length: 400 pages

Summary:

WHAT IF?

What if Sean Courtland’s old Chevy truck had broken down somewhere else? What if he’d never met Denise Givens, a waitress at a local tavern, and gotten into a bar fight defending her honor? Or offered a ride to Dan Young, another young man like Sean, burdened by secrets and just drifting through the small Wisconsin town?

Instead, Sean enlists Dan’s help with a construction job in the basement of a local—the elderly, reclusive Marion Devereaux—and gradually the two men come to realize that they’ve washed up in a place haunted by the disappearance of three young boys decades earlier. As Sean and Dan’s friendship deepens, and as Sean gets closer to Denise and her father, they come to the attention of a savvy local detective, Corrine Viegas, who has her own reasons for digging into Dan’s past—and for being unable to resist the pull of the town’s unsolved mystery. And with each chance connection, an irreversible chain of events is set in motion that culminates in shattering violence and the revelation of long-buried truths.

Gripping and immersive, this crime novel by bestselling author Tim Johnston becomes so much more: a book about friendship and love and good hard work—and a masterful read about how the most random intersection of lives can have consequences both devastating and beautiful.

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If you love a good mystery then you should check out this week’s spotlight!

Title: The Intern by Michele Campbell
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Genre: Contemporary, Pschological Thriller
Length: 384 pages

Summary:

A young Harvard law student falls under the spell of a charismatic judge in this timely and thrilling novel about class, ambition, family and murder.

Madison Rivera lands the internship of a lifetime working for Judge Kathryn Conroy. But Madison has a secret that could destroy her career. Her troubled younger brother Danny has been arrested, and Conroy is the judge on his case.

When Danny goes missing after accusing the judge of corruption, Madison’s quest for answers brings her deep into the judge’s glamorous world. Is Kathryn Conroy a mentor, a victim, or a criminal? Is she trying to help Madison or use her as a pawn? And why is somebody trying to kill her?

As the two women circle each other in a dangerous cat-and-mouse game, will they save each other, or will betrayal leave one of them dead?

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If you love a good mystery then you should check out this week’s spotlight!

Title: The Death of Us by Lori Rader-Day
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
Genre: Contemporary, Mystery, Psychological Thriller
Length: 378 pages

Summary:

From the award-winning author of Death at Greenway and The Lucky One comes a chilling suspense novel in which the discovery of a submerged car in a murky pond reveals betrayals and family secrets that will tear a small town apart.

One rainy night fifteen years ago, a knock at the door changed Liss Kehoe’s life forever.

On that night, Ashley Hay stood on Liss’s front porch and handed over her brand-new baby Callan.

She was never seen or heard from again.

Since then, Liss has raised Callan as her own, and loves him as fiercely as any mother would. But in the back of her mind, she’s always wondered whether Ashley is still out there somewhere—and feared what might happen if she comes back.

When Ashley does reappear, it’s not in the way Liss expected. After all these years, Ashley’s car has been found… in the quarry pond on Kehoe property. But the discovery of the car dredges up more questions than answers. What really happened on the night of Ashley’s disappearance? Was it a tragic accident, or something far more sinister? Someone in town knows the truth, and they’ll go to great lengths to keep it quiet.

As tensions rise in the small community, Liss must fight to protect her family and keep her own secrets hidden—or risk losing everything she loves.

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If you love a good mystery then you should check out this week’s spotlight!

Title: The Buried by Lisa Childs
Bane Island Book Four
Publisher: Zebra Books
Genre: Contemporary, Mystery, Suspense
Length: 296 pages

Summary:

For fans of the bestsellers The Sanatorium and The Guest List, the latest novel in this atmospheric series, set in a former insane asylum on a remote island off the coast of Maine, is laden with Gothic atmosphere and brilliantly plotted twists and turns.

Somewhere inside Halcyon Hall, the elite spa with an infamous past on a remote Maine island, are the answers state trooper Mae Montgomery desperately needs to solve a murder investigation. To find them, she’s checking into the exclusive retreat under an assumed name—that of her late sister, a former model. But at least one person isn’t fooled.

Fitness trainer Bode James grew up on Bane Island and took it upon himself to transform the former psychiatric hospital into a wellness resort. But a killer still lurks here. Bode already lost the mother of his child. And though he believes Mae is there under false pretenses, he also fears that without her help, more people will die.

Mae blames Bode for contributing to her sister’s death. But who can be trusted at Halcyon Hall? Beneath its history of dead and missing women is a legacy of evil that must be reckoned with at last, before it buries them all . . .

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If you love a good mystery then you should check out this week’s spotlight!

Title: Saving Emma by Allen Eskens
Publisher: Mulholland Books
Genre: Contemporary, Mystery, Legal Thriller
Length: 337 pages

Summary:

A lawyer’s race to reveal a wrongful conviction collides with the dark shadow of a murder in his own home in this propulsive and perfectly-plotted thriller from “one of our best crime writers at the top of his game” (William Kent Krueger, New York Times bestselling author).

When Boady Sanden first receives the case of Elijah Matthews, he’s certain there’s not much he can do. Elijah, who believes himself to be a prophet, has been locked up in a psychiatric hospital for the past four years, convicted of brutally murdering the pastor of a megachurch. But as a law professor working for the Innocence Project, Boady agrees to look into Elijah’s file. When he does, he is alarmed to find threads that lead back to the death of his colleague and friend, Ben Pruitt, a man shot to death four years earlier in Boady’s own home.

Ben’s daughter, Emma, has lived with Boady and Boady’s wife Dee ever since that awful night. Now fourteen years old, Emma has been growing distant, and soon makes a fateful choice that takes her far from the safety of her godparents. Desperate to bring her home, and to free an innocent man, Boady must do all he can to investigate Elijah’s case while fighting to save the family he has deeply come to love.

Written with energy, propulsion, and his characteristic pathos and insight, Eskens delivers another pitch-perfect legal thriller that reveals a twisted murder and explores faith, love, family, and redemption along the way.

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