[Manabi]

This month's Kindle First selections are out, they are:

Blood on the Tracks (Sydney Rose Parnell Series Book 1) by Barbara Nickless [Genre: Police Procedural]

A young woman is found brutally murdered, and the main suspect is the victim’s fiancé, a hideously scarred Iraq War vet known as the Burned Man. But railroad police Special Agent Sydney Rose Parnell, brought in by the Denver Major Crimes unit to help investigate, can't shake the feeling that larger forces are behind this apparent crime of passion.

In the depths of an icy winter, Parnell and her K9 partner, Clyde―both haunted by their time in Iraq―descend into the underground world of a savage gang of rail riders. There, they uncover a wide-reaching conspiracy and a series of shocking crimes. Crimes that threaten everything Parnell holds dear.

As the search for the truth puts her directly in the path of the killer, Parnell must struggle with a deadly question: Can she fight monsters without becoming one herself?

From the Editor:

Spoiler:

There’s not much that beats the thrill of discovering a great new writer, character, or story. Reading Blood on the Tracks was one of those lightning bolt experiences that made me want to share this book with everyone I know. From the electrifying first pages, I was completely enthralled by Special Agent Sydney Rose Parnell, her investigation into the disturbing murder of a young woman, and the gritty yet close-knit community created by Barbara Nickless in this astounding debut.

An orphan and former Marine turned railroad cop who is still coming to terms with her time at war, Sydney is complicated, rough around the edges, and singly dedicated to giving a voice to the voiceless, from the dead soldiers she tended in Iraq to the homeless rail riders whose Denver camps she now patrols. Sydney’s extraordinary history and her relationships, particularly with her K9 partner, Clyde, also an Iraq War veteran, give this mystery a rare emotional depth and kept me riveted as her murder investigation veers into dangerous and very personal territory.

Blood on the Tracks is so well written, so engrossing, and so startling that it’s very difficult to believe it’s Barbara Nickless’s first novel. Luckily for us, it won’t be the last we see of Sydney and Clyde. I absolutely can’t wait for their next case.

- Gracie Doyle, Editor

Who We Were Before by Leah Mercer [Genre: Family Life]

Zoe knows that it wasn’t really her fault. Of course it wasn’t. But if she’d just grasped harder, run faster, lunged quicker, she might have saved him. And Edward doesn’t really blame her, though his bitter words at the time still haunt her, and he can no more take them back than she can halt the car that killed their son.

Two years on, every day is a tragedy. Edward knows they should take healing steps together, but he’s tired of being shut out. For Zoe, it just seems easier to let grief lead the way.

A weekend in Paris might be their last hope for reconciliation, but mischance sees them separated before they’ve even left Gare du Nord. Lost and alone, Edward and Zoe must try to find their way back to each other—and find their way back to the people they were before. But is that even possible?

From the Editor:

Spoiler:

I read the opening chapters of Who We Were Before on my commute home almost a year ago, and I still remember it as vividly as if it were yesterday—I was left reeling from the sheer force of the story, the clarity of the author’s prose, and the poignancy of her words.

The novel starts two years after an unspeakable tragedy befalls a married couple. Zoe has let grief overcome her, and Edward is at a loss as to how to pick up the fragments of their relationship. The narrative spans two days, during which they travel to Paris in an attempt to find each other again.

Intense and haunting, the story switches back and forth between Zoe’s and Edward’s points of view and is interspersed with moments of light and tenderness in flashbacks to their life before, when they first met and fell in love. The alternating points of view are handled with confidence and sincerity, and I found myself marveling at how every gesture, every look and silence rang true. As they are both left to deal with the rawness of their emotions, I couldn’t help but feel sympathetic to each character’s perspective, and it struck me that there is no right or wrong in situations like this, no best way to cope and no judgment to be cast.

Who We Were Before is a remarkable portrait of modern love and a couple’s journey through the most shattering of losses. I won’t forget it any time soon.

- Emilie Marneur, Editor

The Unbroken Line of the Moon (The Valhalla Series Book 1) by Johanne Hildebrandt (Author), Tara F. Chace (Translator) [Genre: Historical Women's Fiction]

In this grand saga of love, war, and magic set in the tenth century, young Sigrid is destined to be the mother of the king of the Nordic lands that would become Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and England.

A devout believer in the old Nordic gods, Sigrid is visited regularly in her dreams by the goddess Freya, who whispers to her of the future. Though Sigrid is beautiful, rich, arrogant, and matchlessly clever, her uncanny ability to foresee the future and manipulate the present guides her through dangerous politics as a bloody war between Vikings and Christians rages on.

Sigrid’s father wants her to marry Erik, a local king, to secure the peace between the Goths and the Swedes. Thinking she is doing Freya’s will, she accepts the marriage offer, only to find that her destiny lies not with Erik but with Sweyn, a warrior who dreams of dethroning Harald Bluetooth, the legendary ruler of Denmark. Will Sigrid sacrifice her will for the greatest Viking kingdom of all time, or will she follow her heart at the risk of losing everything?

From the Editor:

Spoiler:

As an avid Game of Thrones fan and someone with an abiding interest in Vikings, I was mesmerized by the story of Sigrid and her scheming relatives, riveted to see how she’d navigate the intrigues of medieval kingmaking and how her Norse gods and goddesses would fare in their struggle against encroaching Christianity.

What the story lacks in dragons, it makes up for in deities, Fates, and vengeful spirits, all of whom conspire to bring Sigrid together with a man who not only is her true love but is destined by the gods to father future kings and queens.

By turns dramatic, magical, violent, and shocking, The Unbroken Line of the Moon thoroughly transported me to a time we know little about but that was seminal in the foundation of Northern Europe. Author Johanne Hildebrandt’s well-researched world shimmers on the page, history made living and unforgettable, with a mystical sheen. I hope that you’ll want to finish the book in one sitting as I did, and that you’ll be excited to read the next installment of The Valhalla Series, arriving in 2017.

- Elizabeth DeNoma, Editor

Exhume (Dr. Schwartzman Series Book 1) by Danielle Girard [Genre: Psychological Thriller]

Dr. Annabelle Schwartzman has finally found a place to belong. As the medical examiner for the San Francisco Police Department, working alongside homicide detective Hal Harris, she uncovers the tales the dead can’t tell about their final moments. It is a job that gives her purpose—and a safe haven from her former life at the hands of an abusive husband. Although it’s been seven years since she escaped that ordeal, she still checks over her shoulder to make sure no one is behind her.

Schwartzman’s latest case is deeply troubling: the victim bears an eerie resemblance to herself. What’s more, a shocking piece of evidence suggests that the killer’s business is far from over—and that Schwartzman may be in danger. In this pulse-pounding thriller from award-winning writer Danielle Girard, a woman must face her worst nightmare to catch a killer.

From the Editor:

Spoiler:

We’ve all had that moment: You see a face across a room and do a double take. For a brief second, you could swear it was your own reflection staring back at you. Encountering your double—a stranger who looks just like you—can be jarring even in the best of circumstances. But for Annabelle Schwartzman, the encounter isn’t at a party or in the grocery store. That unsettlingly familiar face that’s looking blankly at her belongs to a corpse on her examining table.

As I read Danielle Girard’s forensic thriller Exhume, I feared for Annabelle. Seven years after leaving her abusive ex, she’s buried her past and settled into her life as a medical examiner in San Francisco. But then she’s confronted by the sickening familiarity of this dead body. The woman on her table doesn’t just look like Annabelle; the victim’s life mirrors the life Annabelle was sure she left behind.

Following in the footsteps of Kathy Reichs’s Temperance “Bones” Brennan and Tess Gerritsen’s Maura Isles, Annabelle is a well-drawn character who is driven by a passion for her work and justice for the victims she encounters. I gasped more than once when reading this book—a testament to Danielle Girard’s ability to deliver a story that surprised me and create characters about whom I cared deeply.

A taut and suspenseful thriller that kept me turning pages until the very end, Exhume uncovers the pains and triumphs of obsession, love, and life.

- Jessica Tribble, Editor

The Special Power of Restoring Lost Things by Courtney Elizabeth Mauk [Genre: Literary Fiction]

Set against a layered Manhattan landscape, The Special Power of Restoring Lost Things explores a fractured family through the alternating perspectives of the mother, father, and brother of a young woman during the aftermath of her disappearance. A year of silent but collective anguish culminates in the fateful thirty hours after a body with a striking resemblance to hers is found, and we see her buttoned-up Upper West Side family spiral in different, dangerous directions: Her mother, Carol, nearly comatose by day, comes alive at night in a vigilante-like attempt to track down her daughter’s killer. Her brother, Ben, once the “good kid,” adopts her bad habits along with her former friends who may have been complicit in her death. And after failing to keep his family from splitting apart, her seemingly stoic father, Drew, finally allows himself to crack.

In her third novel, Courtney Elizabeth Mauk presents a nuanced character study and offers a jolting and unforgettable portrait of a family’s struggle to survive.

From the Editor:

Spoiler:

Another body. There have been five, though it has been six months, at least, since the last. But, unlike the others, this one bears a striking resemblance to Jennifer, the Bauers’ missing daughter. Atmospheric and unsettling at times, The Special Power of Restoring Lost Things is told from the alternating perspectives of Jennifer’s mother, father, and younger brother a year after Jennifer’s disappearance.

How does one deal with unspeakable grief? Courtney Elizabeth Mauk sets out to answer this question in her poignant novel. Set against the backdrop of New York City, the Bauers’ collective silent anguish culminates in the fateful thirty-hour period after the detectives disclose their findings. As they all spiral in different and dangerous directions, their distress drives them so far away from each other that they may never come back together as a family again. Equally meditative and enthralling, this novel is one of the most jolting portraits of grief I’ve ever read.

- Vivian Lee, Editor

The Age of Daredevils by Michael Clarkson [Genre: Historical Nonfiction]

At the dawn of the twentieth century, a small but determined band of barrel jumpers risked their lives in one of the world’s most wondrous waterfalls. Only a few survived.

By turns a family drama and an action-adventure story, The Age of Daredevils chronicles the lives of the men and women who devoted themselves to the extraordinary sport of jumping over Niagara Falls in a barrel—a death-defying gamble that proved a powerful temptation to a hardy few.

Internationally known in the 1920s and ’30s for their barrel-jumping exploits, the Hills were a father-son team of daredevils who also rescued dozens of misguided thrill seekers and accident victims who followed them into the river. The publicity surrounding the Hills’ spectacular feats ushered in tourism, making Niagara Falls the nation’s foremost honeymoon destination, but ultimately set Red Hill Jr. on a perilous path to surpass his father’s extraordinary leaps into the void.

Like the works of Jon Krakauer and David McCullough, The Age of Daredevils explores the primal force of fear and the thirst for adventure that drive humans to the brink of death to see if they can somehow escape.

From the Editor:

Spoiler:

At first it seemed the stuff of myth—that men and women once routinely risked death by barreling over the breathtakingly beautiful Niagara Falls, just for the sheer thrill of it. But the remarkable story The Age of Daredevils tells is true: at the dawn of the twentieth century, a small but determined band of barrel jumpers made the leap, and only a few survived.

This extraordinary work of nonfiction landed on my desk a year ago, the product of three decades of research by a Niagara Falls journalist who knew the families of these risk-takers firsthand. His epic reporting has resulted in a story that resembles The Boys in the Boat in its historical sweep. Tension pours from every page as we observe the painstaking preparations for these leaps of faith, and the perils of these jumpers’ passions as they pursued the limits of human fear.

The Age of Daredevils is many things: a love story, an adventure tale, and a powerful portrait of danger. But most of all it’s an eloquent and thrilling story of human desire to live life to its fullest, and to survive against all odds.

- David Blum, Editor