[NightBird]

Two new Apple freebies.

Mad Dog and Englishman: A Mad Dog & Englishman Mystery #1 by J.M. Hayes.

Description
A blend of science and superstition recalls the wacky mysteries of James Doss (The Shaman Signs 0-380-97721-4 and The Night Visitor 0-380-97721-4) and the magical realism of Luis Borges.

Summer in Benteen County, Kansas, is a season possessed of all the gentle subtlety of an act of war. Winter, of course, is no better, but the memory of frosts and blizzards and winds that begin to suck away your life before you walk a dozen steps has grown faint by the early hours of a Sunday morning in late June. While some try to sleep, and some like Sheriff English and his ex-wife try sex, the Reverend Peter Simms takes an early walk in the park and encounters someone counting coup. When the Sheriff’s part-Cheyenne brother, Mad Dog, finds the Reverend’s mutilated corpse, Mad Dog becomes the obvious suspect. Sheriff English widens his net and picks up not only several suspicious characters, but an increasingly dark history for the Simms family. The case grows stormier. So does the weather. As a tornado gathers to hurl its fury on the hapless town, the fury of the killer rises to meet it in an ending that will, literally, blow readers away.

A Case of Imagination: A Madeleine Maclin Mystery #1 by Jane Tesh.

Description
“On this nice July morning in Parkland, North Carolina, the office of Madeline Maclin Investigations might as well have been an Egyptian tomb: hot, dusty, and dead.” It doesn’t help that her landlord Reid Kent, does a brisk business…and briskly hits on Mac to rejoin his agency. He maintains no one will hire a former Miss Parkland as a serious PI. Mac has been friends forever with Jerry Fairweather. Jerry claims to be psychic and is, unlike his two brothers, somewhat screwy. And he refuses to claim a share in the Fairweather fortune. But he shares some good news with Mac—his Uncle Val has died and left him a house. The two friends drive out to Celosia, a half hour away, where they discover a local beauty pageant in trouble and a house just perfect for setting up shop. A Psychic Shop. The arrival of lawyer Olivia, Jerry’s shark-like girlfriend, rouses both Mac’s interest in the mystery at the pageant and the one in her own heart. And then comes the first murder….

A Case of Imagination is Jane Tesh’s playful first mystery, the start of a series by an author who admires Terry Pratchett, Martha Grimes, Carl Hiaasen, and P.G. Wodehouse.