Chirping about new releases
DECEMBER 2022 NEW RELEASES
Death Takes a Bath
A Cotswold Crimes Mystery
by Sharon Lynn
When Maddie McGuire lands an archeology internship at the Roman Baths in England, she assumes everything will go her way. But when this college sophomore discovers a severed human ear on her doorstep, she must solve its meaning before she becomes the next victim, or worse, gets deported. Her tentative friendship with young constable Edward Bailey and the beauty of the Bath Abbey are no comfort as her aristocratic coworker Simon Pacock sabotages her every move. And the danger only increases when she discovers a dead body, both ears intact.
Litbop: Art and Literature in the Groove
by Tim Chapman
Litbop is a literary journal containing short fiction, short-short fiction, poetry, art, photography, and cartoons. The first issue contains work by Carma Lynn Park, Catherine Jacobi, Christine Sneed, Crystal S. Rudds, D. Kosiba, Jennifer Worrell, Katherine Ace, L.C. Fiore, Lani T. Montreal, Libby Fischer Hellmann, Molia Dumbleton, Rachel L. Robbins, Randall Jon Van Vynckt, Rob Sokolick, Sara Peak Convery, Tim Chapman.
NOVEMBER 2022 NEW RELEASES
Cleopatra’s Vendetta – A Stryker Thriller
by Avanti Centrae
Royal secrets. Epic lies. This “dangerous” and controversial standalone thriller from international bestselling VanOps author Avanti Centrae is a fast-paced bombshell of a story about truth and courage.
Born a goddess, Cleopatra died a prisoner. But the cobra’s deadly kiss was just the beginning…
OCTOBER 2022 NEW RELEASES
Milford Elementary: Book One in the Gwendolyn Strong Small Town Cozy Mystery Series
One deceased groom-to-be. One dead-end clue. One last chance at redemption. Gwendolyn Strong feels lost outside the classroom. And at loose ends after retiring, the ex-kindergarten teacher longs for the excitement her stable marriage and yoga sessions can’t provide. So the spirited fifty-something leaps into action when a former student takes his life on the eve of his wedding day.
Skeptical that he died by his own hand, Gwendolyn teams up with her elderly mentor and true-crime addict daughter to scour the small town for clues while dodging the dismissive cops. But when her prime suspect turns up fatally crushed in a freak accident, she fears a cunning culprit could be pulling some murderous strings.
Can Gwendolyn solve the case before her name is next on the hit list? Milford Elementary is the nail-biting first book in the Gwendolyn Strong Small Town Cozy Mystery Series. If you like whip-smart heroines, buried secrets, and gripping suspense, then you’ll love J A Hoda’s masterful whodunit.
Deep Dire Harvest
By Joy Ribar
Grapes wait for nobody. The tourist season is running full swing when Frankie’s vineyard is ripe for picking, leaving her a little frazzled as she divides her time between the Bubble & Bake shop and Bountiful Fruits winery. When a dead body surfaces in nearby Blackbird Pond, it quickly becomes an albatross around Frankie’s neck. The victim, a national bird expert in town for Fall Migration Days, also happens to be a cousin to Cherry and Pom, Bubble & Bake employees. The B & B crew are sure to ruffle some feathers during their sleuthing: Can they solve the murder before the guilty bird flies the coop?
The Last Door
By Sheila Lowe
When identical twins inherit a Victorian mansion from a stranger, the bequest changes everything they knew about their past.
Jessica Mack is not afraid of ghosts. She has been communicating with the spirit world since last year, when she was forced to surrender to her psychic gifts. Since then, she has used those gifts to help the FBI, and to answer voices from the Other Side asking for favors. Most of the requests are poignant — “tell my wife I’m sorry for the way I behaved.” “Let my son know I love him.”
- Who was Vadim Evanov and why did he leave his entire estate to the twin sisters?
- Why was she warned not to enter the last door on the second-floor landing?
- Why does Beethoven’s wistful composition, Für Elise, keep haunting her?
Jessica’s visit to the Big Sur estate is a search for answers. She must uncover the truth before another catastrophe strikes Herron Pond — one that could end her life.
Saffron Street: Island Danger
By Sherrill Joseph
Watch out! There’s trouble–even in paradise . . .
A Tahitian black pearl necklace, missing for over eighty years, takes the thirteen-year-old Botanic Hill detectives—Lanny, Lexi, Moki, and Rani—from California to Oahu in one of the squad’s most baffling cases yet!
The teens’ famous elderly neighbor Mr. Itsuki Yamada hires them to find his family’s valuable heirloom necklace. Soon, they become embroiled in a complex mystery wrapped around the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor, World War II Japanese internment camps, an international surfing competition, sea caves, kidnappings, more thefts, an island cult inspired by a Japanese legend, and strange goings on in an abandoned pineapple shack.
Can the detectives prevent more crimes, avoid injury, and locate Mr. Yamada’s pearl necklace before it’s too late? Time matters—even in laid-back Hawaii!
A Scape Goat for Murder
Jacqueline Vick
Frankie Chandler’s upcoming nuptials suffer a devastating setback when her fiancé, Detective Martin Bowers, is injured on the job. How badly injured? The doctors are mum on his condition, and his colleagues are just as evasive, telling her they don’t know what he was doing on the lonely hillside where he fell.
Convinced that the key to Bowers’ recovery lies in finding out what happened, the pet psychic’s only hope for clarity is a gourmand goat who demands payment in pastries before he’ll reveal his secrets. When he does, his responses are confusing…and terrifying.
Then Bowers’ very mysterious, possibly dangerous, and definitely skeptical sister, Edith, arrives, and every step forward becomes a battle. As the dysfunctional duo maneuver through suspects, witnesses, and the occasional corpse, the pet psychic decides to go it alone, because Frankie is determined her groom will make it to the church on time…if the killer doesn’t get her first.
Nunzio’s Way
By Nick Chiarkas
In Weepers (Book 1), Angelo and his gang, with a bit of help from his beloved “uncle” Nunzio Sabino, defeated the notorious Satan’s Knights. Now, in this standalone sequel to Weepers, it’s 1960 and Nunzio is still the most powerful organized crime boss in New York City, protecting what’s his with political schemes and ‘business’ deals.
Against this backdrop of Mafia turf wars, local gang battles, and political power-plays in the mayoral election, the bodies begin stacking up. An unlikely assassin arrives fresh from Naples after killing a top member of the Camorra to avenge the murder of her family. She blends seamlessly into the neighborhood and with the focus on the threat from the Satan’s Knights, no one suspects that Angelo’s father and Nunzio are next on her hit list. Nunzio has lived his entire life by the mantra; Be a fox when there are traps and a lion when there are wolves. Will Nunzio be a lion in time?
SEPTEMBER 2022 NEW RELEASES
Crystal Blue Murder
By Saralyn Richard
In the heart of tranquil Brandywine Valley, Detective Parrott confronts a meth lab explosion, a dismembered corpse, and an intricate trail of secrets that shake up many lives — including his own. When celebrity hostess Claire Whitman’s renovated barn explodes into flames, Parrott delves into the backgrounds and relationships of all who are affected. Tension from Parrott’s personal life crosses over into the case, and soon secrets, deceptions, and crimes create an even bigger explosion. Third in the Detective Parrott Mystery Series, Crystal Blue Murder explores the complexities of life in a privileged world where many of America’s wealthiest people have their own struggles to bear.
AUGUST 2022 NEW RELEASES
The Contract: Mina’s Choice Book 2
By Karissa Knight
Chicago’s hottest legal star is the lawyer of choice for wealthy offenders, but Mina’s courtroom victories increasingly conflict with her sense of right and wrong. When she can’t ease her guilt with her self-punishing extreme sport, she seeks to relieve it in other ways. Billionaire Jonathon Thomas Heun is happy to oblige as they take their relationship to the next level with Mina surrendering control and embracing her dark, dangerous desires.
As their lives intertwine in and out of the bedroom, past deeds haunt them both, catapulting them into the perilous territory of the Russian mob, money laundering, and blackmail. When Mina’s life is threatened, Jonathan’s secrets shake Mina’s trust in him, putting their relationship on uneasy ground.
Even if her enigmatic lover proves his loyalty and saves her, can Mina forgive him and accept his growing affection?
JULY 2022 NEW RELEASES
The Devil and Daniela Webster
By Laurie Stevens
When the devil answers lonely Jake’s ad for a roommate, both Jake and the devil get more than they bargained for!
JUNE 2022 NEW RELEASES
The Malice Domestic anthology series returns with a new take on mysteries in the Agatha Christie tradition – original tales with a devilish bent. Sharon Lynn’s story The Professor’s Lesson, tells of Elizabeth, a newly hired professor who is plagued by accidents until she uncovers the sinister force rotting the foundations of the university’s English department.
Death of an Heiress
It starts when the inheritance that Lavina Gaines was to receive is stolen by her brother Timothy. Then an old Indian healing woman is murdered. Winemaker and physician Maddie Wilcox wants to find the person responsible for Mama Jane’s death, but is also occupied with another killer – the measles.
When Lavina’s friend Julia Carson dies trying to rid herself of a pregnancy, Lavina asks Maddie’s help finding the man responsible for Julia’s child. Soon after, Lavina is killed and her murder bears an uncanny resemblance to that of Mama Jane’s. The only motive Maddie can find involves Julia’s death, which is not the sort of thing one talks about. Not only that, Lavina’s nether garments are missing. How does a proper lady in 1872 get the answers she needs to stop a killer determined to stop her first?
MAY 2022 NEW RELEASES
Burdened by the pressing weight of survivor’s guilt, Sean McPherson, an ex-cop, is desperate for redemption.
At Pines & Quill, a writer’s retreat in the Pacific Northwest, he and his fiancée, Emma Benton, are planning their lives together. He wants to go back into law enforcement. She plans to walk again.
Georgio “The Bull” Gambino, head of a Seattle-based crime family, has a long reach. Like cockroaches, his minions infiltrate even the most inaccessible of places to do his bidding. With Seattle to the south, the Canadian border a stone’s throw to the north, and Bellingham Bay—a gateway to the Pacific Ocean—immediately to the west, Bellingham is the ideal location for the Gambino crime family to traffic drugs, weapons, and humans. But McPherson’s in Gambino’s way, which means he must be eliminated.
The writers in residence at Pines & Quill include an Afghanistan War veteran, a professional photographer, a civil rights attorney, and a gourmet chef. But McPherson suspects that there’s more going on than the joy of creating plot twists. Is one of them conspiring murder outside the pages of their manuscript?
APRIL 2022 NEW RELEASES
Finally, it’s real love… Now what?
Lisa Wycherly’s surprise birthday party ends in a terrifying disaster when she’s kidnapped off the street. Her partner, Sid Hackbirn, is so devastated that he loses his interest in sleeping around – the one thing keeping the two of them apart. The kidnapping gets messy enough when it comes to light that the kidnappers got the wrong target. There’s also a defecting KGB agent playing games with the CIA, who are involved with the Colombian kidnappers.
Then Lisa’s recovery sets in motion a whole other set of challenges as she and Sid deal with her trauma and try to get the KGB agent under control, only to find that Sid’s randy past will continue to haunt them. The only thing worse? Figuring out how to be a couple.
Coming April 15, 2022, book 7 in the Operation Quickline series.
MARCH 2022 NEW RELEASES
Quinn McFarland has grown up around dead bodies…
Quinn’s always joked about death, but this summer, death stops being funny. For one thing, her brother finally undergoes transplant surgery. For another, Quinn’s estranged BFF—her “blood sister”—is brought into the family mortuary, bludgeoned to death.
Quinn is haunted by the past, her friendship gone awry, and the blood oath she’s sworn to keep secret. The police consider her a person of interest, and someone threatens her not to talk. Quinn is the only one who knows enough to bring the killer to justice, but what she’s buried puts her in extreme danger.
Aikido black belt Maddy Marshall is celebrating the completion of her black ops training when news of a military takeover in the South China Sea shocks the world because it was predicted by a sixteen-year-old French student. When intel chatter spells danger to Avril, the young seer, VanOps Director Bowman assigns Marshall and her twin brother, Will Argones, to protect the girl.
Emotions between the siblings are running hot due to their aunt’s recent stroke, which has reminded them of the childhood accident that scarred both his chin and her heart. Tensions ratchet higher when they arrive at Avril’s home to find the instant social media star has been kidnapped, leaving them with only clenched fists and cryptic clues that lead to a formula encoded on an etched-bronze medallion.
While Taiwan fears an invasion that will set off an apocalyptic chain of events, Marshall and Argones race through medieval French towns, Italian cathedrals, and ancient Greek temples attempting to find Avril before their enemies use the girl to discover the Holy Grail of military intelligence. If the team fails, they won’t need a crystal ball to know millions of innocent souls will be destined to join Nostradamus in the afterlife.
A new fiancé, an old boyfriend, and a murder that will change everything.
Frankie Chandler is finally at peace with her life. She’s engaged to Detective Martin Bowers, her pet psychic business is booming, and she’s overcome the emotional residue of a past relationship that destroyed her self-respect.
Just when everything’s going swell, trouble strolls through her front door. Jeffrey Ross, the ex-boyfriend who betrayed her, needs Frankie’s help. To get rid of him, she agrees to retrieve the keys he left with yet another hostile ex-girlfriend, a masseuse. Unfortunately, when Frankie shows up early at Friendly Fingers Spa, Jeff’s latest fling is face down in the new Jacuzzi. Murdered right in front of her Fiji Crested iguana.
The reptile refuses to tell what he knows, and when Frankie’s involuntary entanglement in the investigation threatens to ruin Bowers’ chances for promotion, she takes steps. After calling an uneasy truce with Jeff, the two form a crime-solving team that will either solve the mystery or bring an end to everything she’s worked for.
NOVEMBER 2021 NEW RELEASES
Librarian Carrie Singleton sleuths a murder at her best friend’s wedding in Agatha Award nominee Allison Brook’s fifth Haunted Library mystery.
Clover Ridge librarian Carrie Singleton is thrilled to attend her best friend Angela’s wedding, but Angela’s family can be a bit…much. Angela’s wealthy cousin Donna hosts an extravagant bridal shower at her resplendent home, but the celebrations turn to gossip as the guests notice Donna’s surgeon husband, Aiden, spending a bit too much time with Donna’s cousin Roxy. At the wedding reception, the sweet occasion turns darkly bitter when Aiden topples into the chocolate fountain–dead.
The suspect list is as long as the guest list, and as difficult to sort out as the seating chart. A few of the top contenders on Carrie’s suspect list are the flirtatious Roxy, emotionally unstable since her recent divorce; Angela’s grouchy brother, who feels Aiden betrayed him; and Roxy’s scorned ex-husband. Even Donna may have had reason to want her husband dead. And Aiden’s gossipy office manager has plenty to say about them all.
Then another member of Angela’s family is murdered, making Carrie more determined than ever to find the killer. Can library ghost Evelyn and library cat Smoky Joe help Carrie solve the murders before she becomes the next of Angela’s wedding guests to head to the grave?
OCTOBER 2021 NEW RELEASES
Summer in Deep Lakes sprouts a homegrown murder on the O’Connor farm. Frankie Champagne’s hunt for clues lands her deep in sheep doo-doo, especially after rare stones surface in unexpected places. Crime-solving is no picnic for the baker/vintner as she hops from farm to field to bakery, trying to keep up with the tourist season and track a killer, too.
SEPTEMBER 2021 NEW RELEASES
A deadly secret is buried in the Colorado high country–and murder is only the beginning in the seventh gripping installment of Margaret Mizushima’s Timber Creek K-9 mysteries.
He was suspect number one–the man who tried to kill Deputy Mattie Cobb and may have killed her father thirty years earlier. But when Mattie and cold case detective Jim Hauck reach the Colorado state prison where they will finally get to interview him, he’s found dead in his cell. There’s only one clue: a map leading to Timber Creek and rugged Redstone Ridge.
Though she usually works with veterinarian Cole Walker, Mattie’s K-9 partner Robo has just sired a litter of pups, who require special, time-consuming care at Cole’s clinic. Left to explore the map’s clue without him, Mattie and Robo journey into the burned forest surrounding Redstone Ridge. But before they can finish their search they’re called to help investigate the death of a young woman found in a campground filled with elk hunters. Identification of the deceased points to her having recently given birth, but the infant is nowhere to be found.
As a deadly storm descends upon the mountains, covering everything with a layer of ice and snow, Mattie and her team search for the missing newborn. The storm batters the area, taking its toll on the team and forcing the sheriff to call in reinforcements. When new evidence surfaces, they decide that finding the woman’s killer will lead them to her baby, making them even more desperate to solve the case.
Then Cole goes missing, stranded alone in the high country with a person that Mattie now suspects is the mastermind behind several murders, including her father’s. She and Robo take to the trail to find Cole–but the killer has a cold-blooded plan that threatens them all.
AUGUST 2021 NEW RELEASES
Hungover from celebrating the latest win for his best-selling book, Bartholomew Beck is in no mood to deal with a pesky reporter. Especially one who is sleeping with his co-author, working for his enemy, and taking great pleasure in letting Beck know that his days as a free man are numbered.
U.S. Representative Paul Schuhmacher wants to avenge the death of his son, Paul, and he holds Beck responsible. But focusing on Beck leaves him vulnerable to his enemies, both political and personal.
Meanwhile, a clue in a twenty-year-old federal murder case drops in Beck’s lap. In solving the murder, might save himself. Or seal his doom. All he knows is that he’s not sure he can pay The Price of Silence.
A heart-pounding hunt begins when Claudia Rose’s young niece goes missing with an archaeologist whose shady past spills into the present. The frantic search takes Claudia to Egypt, Gibraltar, and the UK, where her skills as a forensic handwriting expert of international renown are needed to help foil a deadly terrorist plot—if only she can find Monica before she becomes a casualty
