[NightBird]

$.99 each:

Love, Honour, and O’Brien: A Holly Love Mystery #1 by Jennifer Rowe.

Description
She stared into the speckled mirror, wondering how she had come to this. How could she, Holly Love, apple of her parents’ eye, competent manipulator of invoices in Gorgon Office Supplies, have ended up alone and starving in a dead man’s flat? How indeed? Most reluctant heroines would throw in the towel at this point. But Holly Love is made of sterner stuff. She’s sworn to track down the cheating swine who ripped her life apart, and make him pay. But as she tries to keep her head in the face of a bizarre mystery, a gloomy old house, a hearse-driving Elvis impersonator and a gang of vengeful thugs – not to mention a garrulous and possibly possessed parrot – Holly is forced to come to terms with a great truth. However bad things seem, they can always get worse.

The Saint Valentine’s Day Murders: A Robert Amiss Mystery #2
by Ruth Dudley Edwards.

Description
Life in a dismal bureaucratic cul-de-sac is not what Robert Amiss expects when the British civil service lends him for a year to the British Conservation Corporation. In fact, he finds himself condemned to a non-job in a backwater, managing disgruntled and demoralized time-servers who deeply resent him. Morale is not improved by the arrival of Melissa, a radical feminist lesbian separatist. Only Amiss’s sense of humour and the joys of visiting Rachel, his new love in Paris, keep him sane.

The malice, envy and anger that burgeons among the filing cabinets is first expressed in pettiness and then in unpleasant practical jokes. Then it escalates and finally culminates in callous murder by means of boxes of poisoned chocolates sent to the bureaucrats’ wives.

With the help of Ellis Pooley, a young detective obsessed with fictional sleuths, Amiss and his friend, Superintendent Milton, search for motives in an office where marital discord and broken dreams might drive anyone to murder.

Looking for Chet Baker: An Evan Horne Mystery #5 by Bill Moody.

Description
Pianist Evan Horne’s European interlude lands him a gig in Amsterdam, where the old jazz clubs are alive and well. But here he unexpectedly finds himself reliving the last days of legendary trumpeter Chet Baker, who died under mysterious circumstances. Did Baker fall from a hotel balcony or was he pushed? The answers lead Horne on an odyssey into one of the greatest mysteries of the jazz world—and beyond.
Horne’s longtime buddy Ace Buffington, in Amsterdam researching the late jazz great’s life and tragic death, has disappeared. Ace’s trail parallels that of Baker’s last days, so Horne does what he does best: improvise. He finds himself following the same path into Baker’s dark—even dangerous—past and confronting his own deep-rooted melancholy. In the smoky clubs and on the mean, exotic streets of Amsterdam, Horne hits all the right notes in a world where playing it by heart can make you a legend as easily as it can get you killed.