[sufue]

Several Open Road Media titles are on sale for $1.99, and one (indicated) at $2.99. Note that Open Road tends to be couponable at Kobo, so if you have some Kobo coupon codes, and are okay with ePub, you can try there as well. Mostly first in series, and mostly sale repeats, but a few I hadn't seen on sale before.

An Owl Too Many is the eighth title in the Peter Shandy series by Charlotte MacLeod.
link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009S33L9C

Spoiler:

When a nocturnal hike turns deadly, Professor Peter Shandy takes an interest in owl spotting

Emory Emmerick comes to Balaclava Agricultural University as a scout for a television station. Although the faculty and students are hardly ready for prime time, Emmerick’s interest is in environmental programming—a subject that inspires even the driest Balaclava professor to wax poetic. In his search for material, Emmerick joins Peter Shandy and a few of his colleagues on the annual owl-count. And though the television producer’s loud mouth and heavy feet make him a dismal birdwatcher, none of the academics expect him to make a fatal blunder.

Chasing what appears to be a badly lost snowy owl, Emmerick stumbles into a trap that yanks him into a tree. By the time the professors reach him, he’s been stabbed to death. Discovering that the snowy owl was nothing more than a handful of feathers attached to a fishing pole, Shandy concludes that Emmerick was murdered. Plenty of people might like to kill a television producer, but which would-be killer had the gall to make the helpless Nyctea scandiaca an accomplice?

The Turret Room by Charlotte Armstrong is a non-series title.
link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00729PV2O

Spoiler:

A spurned husband confronts the family of the girl who threw him out

The walk from the mental hospital takes Harold Page three days. After two years inside, he cannot start his new life until he confronts the family who put him away. He was poor when he married Wendy Whitman, and their wealth still terrifies him. When their first child was born deaf, the Whitmans tricked Harold into a divorce, saying that he assaulted Wendy. She got the baby; he got a straitjacket. Now that he’s out he has come to say goodbye, but the Whitmans are not through with him yet.

The night before he arrives, Wendy’s mother is attacked by a man who she swears is Harold. Wendy’s brother vows to kill him, but Harold does not run. It is time to put the Whitmans in their place.

Rolling Thunder is the sixth in the John Ceepak mystery series by Chris Grabenstein. It's on sale at $2.99.
link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007RJ9J1S

Spoiler:

There’s more fireworks down the Jersey Shore in Chris Grabenstein’s sixth fast-paced John Ceepak mystery.

A prominent citizen suffers a heart attack on the opening day of a brand-new boardwalk roller coaster in the seedy seaside resort town Sea Haven, New Jersey. Initially ruled a tragic accident, it isn’t long before there are suspicious hints of foul play—especially after the corpse of a stunning young beach beauty is discovered.

Fortunately for mystery lovers, the straight-arrow cop John Ceepak and his wisecracking young partner Danny Boyle are on the case, a detective/sidekick duo critics have compared to Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin.

The Cater Street Hangman is the first in the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt historical mystery series by Anne Perry.
link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0052ZEI60

Spoiler:

The first book in Perry’s bestselling Victorian crime series, bringing together Inspector Thomas Pitt and Charlotte Ellison

Panic and fear strike the Ellison household when one of their own falls prey to the Cater Street murderer. While Mrs. Ellison and her three daughters are out, their maid becomes the third victim of a killer who strangles young women with cheese wire, leaving their swollen-faced bodies on the dark streets of this genteel neighborhood. Inspector Pitt, assigned to the case, must break through the walls of upper-class society to get at the truth. His in-depth investigation gradually peels away the proper veneer of the elite world, exposing secrets and desires until suspicion becomes more frightening than truth. Outspoken Charlotte Ellison, struggling to remain within the confining boundaries of Victorian manners, has no trouble expressing herself to the irritating policeman. As their relationship shifts from antagonistic sparring to a romantic connection, the socially inappropriate pair must solve the mystery before the hangman strikes again.

Rich with authentic period details, The Cater Street Hangman hooks readers from the moment the sparks first fly between Charlotte and Thomas.

A Morbid Taste for Bones is the first in the Brother Cadfael series by Ellis Peters (pen name for Edith Pargeter). What can I say...awesome series...one of my absolute favorites...
link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LUZNVQO

Spoiler:

On an expedition to acquire a saint’s remains, Brother Cadfael instead finds intrigue and murder

It is 1137, and the ambitious head of Shrewsbury Abbey wishes to acquire the remains of Saint Winifred for the glory of his Benedictine order. Brother Cadfael is part of the expedition sent to the saint’s final resting place in Wales, where he finds the villagers divided over the Benedictines’ quest.

When the leading opponent to moving the grave is shot dead with a mysterious arrow, some believe Winifred herself delivered the blow. Brother Cadfael knows that an earthly hand did the killing. But he doesn’t know that his plan to root out a murderer may dig up a case of love and justice, where the waves of sin may be scandal—or his own ruin.

The Transcendental Murder is the first in the Homer Kelly series by Jane Langton.
link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007OZ57VQ

Spoiler:

In an intellectual hamlet, century-old love letters give rise to murder
The citizens of Concord, Massachusetts, never tire of their heritage. For decades, the intellectuals of this little hamlet have continued endless debates about Concord’s favorite sons: Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, and their contemporaries. Concord’s latter-day transcendental scholars are a strange bunch, but none is more peculiar than Homer Kelly, an expert on Emerson and on homicide. An old-fashioned murder is about to put both skills to the test.

At a meeting of the town’s intellectuals, Ernest Goss produces a cache of saucy love letters written by the men and women of the transcendentalist sect. Although Homer chortles at the idea that Louisa May Alcott and Ralph Waldo Emerson might have had a fling, Goss insists the letters are real. He never gets a chance to prove it. Soon after he is found killed by a musket ball. The past may not be dead, but Goss certainly is.

Just Desserts is the first in the Savannah Reid series by G.A. McKevett.
link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J90ELMU

Spoiler:

Private detective Savannah Reid isn’t your average crime-fighting heroine. Middle-aged and overweight—at least by society’s skinny-winnie standards—Savannah has the audacity to love herself anyway. If there’s anything the sassy Dixie belle enjoys more than cooking soul-satisfying food for her friends and family, it’s nabbing bad guys and plopping them on the scales of Lady Justice. Having relocated to Southern California, this unconventional Georgia peach and the equally eccentric members of her Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agency live to take a tasty bite out of crime in the sleepy, seaside town of San Carmelita.

This book started it all! First in the Savannah Reid Mysteries, JUST DESSERTS is pure vintage Savannah, recalling the days when she’s still a cop on the San Carmelita Police Force. But not for long. Savannah is determined to untangle a dark web of murder, dirty politics and ultimate betrayal to find out who killed a city councilwoman’s husband. Solving the case may cost her everything she holds dear…including her badge.

The Crocodile Bird is a non-series title by Ruth Rendell.
link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AG8G14A

Spoiler:

A young woman, sheltered from the outside world, comes to terms with her deluded, murderous mother—and what she must do to survive

When the police come to the door at the gatehouse of a remote British estate, sixteen-year-old Liza and her mother know that their lives are about to change forever. After all, Liza watched her mother kill a man—well, more than just one. Having lived as a virtual hermit on the estate, Liza knows nothing of the outside world, but she sets off to find her way with the help of a newly won lover. As she learns about those around her, she begins to discover herself—and just how alike she and her mother might be.

Rendell carefully unravels this tale of an obsessive bond between mother and daughter and of hope for a new life in a strange land.