FREE/BARGAIN — Mystery, Suspense & Thrillers

[ZodWallop]

True Fiction by Lee Goldberg is $2.49 at Amazon US.

Fun backstory: Lee Goldberg is a long time mystery author who wrote the Monk and Diagnosis Murder books, a series with Janet Evanovich as well as working in film and television. Ian Ludlow was a pseudonym he used to write some men's adventure books. It's like if Stephen King wrote a thriller starring Richard Bachman using many details of King's life.

When a passenger jet crashes onto the beaches of Waikiki, bestselling thriller writer Ian Ludlow knows the horrific tragedy wasn’t an accident.

Years before, the CIA enlisted Ian to dream up terrorism scenarios to prepare the government for nightmares they couldn’t imagine. Now one of those schemes has come true, and Ian is the only person alive who knows how it was done…and who is behind the plot. That makes him too dangerous to live.

Ian goes on the run, sweeping up an innocent bystander in his plight—Margo French, a dog walker and aspiring singer. They are pursued by assassins and an all-seeing global-intelligence network that won’t stop until Ian and Margo are dead. Ian has written thrillers like this before, but this time he doesn’t know how it’s going to end—or if he will be alive to find out.

[sufue]

If you missed this at £0.99 a while back, it's now on sale for £2.99, which is still not bad for three books. And it's a great series...

The link below is still good.

Originally Posted by sufue

If you haven't yet tried Martin Walker's excellent IMO Bruno series, now an omnibus of the first three books is on sale for £0.99 at Kindle UK. The books are: Bruno, Chief of Police (apa Death in the Dordogne); The Dark Vineyard; and Black Diamonds.

The Dordogne Mysteries: The Early Cases
Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B076PL92NK
{edited Smile link}

[sufue]

Evan Help Us is the second in Rhys Bowen's first series - the extremely cozy, but still fun, Constable Evan Evans series. Per SYKM, it was a finalist for the 1999 Barry Award for Best Novel, and it's free right now at Kindle UK. (And sadly, insanely, $11.99 with a different publisher at Kindle US...)

Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0B5V3ZVDW

Spoiler:

Constable Evan Evans leaves behind the big city for the sleepy Welsh village of Llanfair. But murder follows him . . .

Evans is settling into his role as constable of Llanfair, a small village nestled in the beautiful mountains of North Wales.

He just wants a quiet life, but the village’s most notorious resident, Ted Morgan, has returned from London after twenty years. He’s planning to build a huge theme park to attract tourists — much to the horror of the local folk.

Then the body of eighty-eight-year-old widower Colonel Arbuthnot is found with a suspicious head wound.

Right after he discovered an ancient ruin on the very site that Ted Morgan wants to build his theme park . . .

Evans investigates, but a second death throws the village into turmoil. One death may be an accident, two is definitely murder.

Constable Evan Evans has his work cut out in this charming cozy Welsh village mystery.

[sufue]

Mother Midnight is £0.99 at Kindle UK right now: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08WYH3F7K

Originally Posted by sufue

Mother Midnight is the 22nd and most recent (2021) in Paul Doherty's Hugh Corbett series. It has dropped to $0.99 at Kindle and Kobo US, but, oddly enough, in a reversal of how things usually work with most-recent-in-series books, not in the UK.

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08XQBMNFZ
Kindle US/Smile: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B08XQBMNFZ
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/mot...h-corbett-22-1


ADD: I just figured out that this is part of Kindle's Pre-Black Friday limited time deal, supposedly good through 11/21/21. Still, I wouldn't wait until the last minute if you want it...

[sufue]

A Conspiracy Of Violence is £0.99 at Kindle UK right now: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004BDOKBC

Originally Posted by sufue

The first two titles in Susanna Gregory's Thomas Chaloner series have dropped in price at Kindle and Kobo US.

A Conspiracy Of Violence, #1, $1.19
Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/Conspiracy-Vi...dp/B00GW4QAWA/
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/a-c...-of-violence-1


{edited other books}

[Tarana]

The Girl Next Door - Ruth Rendell $1.99 Amazon, Kobo and B&N
Suspense

[sufue]

A year-and-a-half later, The Coldest Case is again £0.99 at Kindle UK. The link below is still good...

Originally Posted by sufue

Woo-hoo! Martin Walker's latest (2021) in his Bruno, Chief of Police series has dropped to £0.99 at Kindle UK. I like this series a lot, although the last couple have been a little more thriller-ish than the series has traditionally been.

From the blurb, this one, The Coldest Case, looks as if it may be a little more back to the traditional Bruno, as he helps his boss, J-J, re-investigate J-J's unsolved (and now very cold) first case. Fingers crossed!

This is probably on sale as part of that weird (but much appreciated) UK thing where they put most-recent-in-series titles on sale for £0.99 very briefly, usually only one day, shortly after publication. So go grab it now if you want it - I actually grabbed it before doing this post, which I don't do very often .

Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08C7NTSTY/
{removed Smile link}

[sufue]

River of Fallen Angels is the seventh and most recent (10 Jan 2023, which may or may not cause issues for Kindle download/format shifting) in Laura Joh Rowland's Sarah Bain/Victorian mystery series.

I STILL haven't read any of this series, but have really liked the books I've read in her Sano Ichiro series - which don't go on sale often enough! River, however, is on sale in the US ($2.99) and UK (£1.60) right now.

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09XM4XZMG
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/river-of-fallen-angels
Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09XM4XZMG

Spoiler:

Award-winning author Laura Joh Rowland is back with the seventh in her critically acclaimed Victorian mystery series in which Sarah Bain Barrett is pitted against a true-crime serial killer who may have ties to Jack the Ripper.

London, April 1891. When the severed torso of a woman washes up on the bank of the river Thames, London believes a serial killer from the past has struck again. Crime photographer and investigator Sarah Bain Barrett is on the scene with her friends Mick O’Reilly and Lord Hugh Staunton. This is their chance to solve a grisly cold case and deliver a monster to belated justice, with help from Sarah’s husband Detective Sergeant Thomas Barrett; her sister Sally Albert, an intrepid newspaper reporter; and Hugh’s psychologist, Dr. Joshua Lewes, who’s a pioneer in the new science of criminal profiling. But the opportunity brings troubles galore: Sarah and her husband can’t agree on what direction their inquiries should take. Barrett favors concentrating on two shady characters he knows from his days a a patrol constable in Whitechapel, while Sarah suspects the charismatic leader of a polygamous religious sect from which at least one woman has gone missing. Their discord threatens not only the investigation but their marriage.

To complicate matters, Sarah’s bitter enemy, Inspector Reid, is leading the police’s hunt for the killer they’re calling the Torso Murderer. Obsessed with the Ripper case and his own failure to solve it, he thinks the Ripper and the Torso Murderer are one and the same person—a notion that could steer the police investigation disastrously off course. Hot in pursuit of the killer, Reid is also hell-bent on discovering what Sarah and company have been hiding about the Ripper.

The Torso Murder case threatens to expose a dangerous truth, tear apart Sarah’s close-knit band of comrades, and send them to the gallows before they can put the killer out of action.

[ZodWallop]

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett is $1.99 at Amazon, B&N and Kobo US.

I read this years ago and loved it. I liked the film as well.

The new cover is kinda awful though. It almost looks self published. I see what they were trying to do. But in the end it looks cheap.

Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award • Winner of the Orange Prize • National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist

"Bel Canto is its own universe. A marvel of a book." —Washington Post Book World

New York Times bestselling author Ann Patchett’s spellbinding novel about love and opera, and the unifying ways people learn to communicate across cultural barriers in times of crisis

Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country's vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of the powerful businessman Mr. Hosokawa. Roxanne Coss, opera's most revered soprano, has mesmerized the international guests with her singing. It is a perfect evening—until a band of gun-wielding terrorists takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening scenario slowly evolves into something quite different, a moment of great beauty, as terrorists and hostages forge unexpected bonds and people from different continents become compatriots, intimate friends, and lovers.

Patchett's lyrical prose and lucid imagination make Bel Canto a captivating story of strength and frailty, love and imprisonment, and an inspiring tale of transcendent romance.

[Tarana]

Louise Penny's Chief Inspector Gamache's series has several discounts. These have all been discounted to $2.99 at one time, but these are the lowest prices for some time according to EreaderIQ.com. Currently Amazon only, but I expect Kobo will match these prices later today.

Bk 1 A Still Life $4.99
Bk 2 A Fatal Grace $5.99
Bk 3 The Cruelest Month $5.99
Bk 4 A Rule Against Murder $5.99
Bk 5 The Brutal Telling $4.99
bk 17 The Madness of Crowds $4.99

[sufue]

The ninth and twelfth books in Elizabeth Lemarchand's Pollard & Toye series are $0.99/£0.99 each at Kindle US/UK, as Countdown deals good for about six more days...

Unhappy Returns, #9
Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NXC9MMW
Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07NXC9MMW

Nothing To Do with the Case, #12
Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QQBCP5B
Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07QQBCP5B

[sufue]

Dead in the Family is the tenth Sookie Stackhouse book by Charlaine Harris. It's $1.99 in the US right now...

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00329UW8Q
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/dea...ackhouse-novel

Spoiler:

In the tenth novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling series—the inspiration for the HBO® original series True Blood—Sookie Stackhouse learns that not even her psychic abilities can help her solve all the problems in Bon Temps, Louisiana...

After enduring torture and the loss of loved ones during the brief but deadly Fae War, Sookie Stackhouse is hurt and she’s mad. Just about the only bright spot in her life is the love she thinks she feels for vampire Eric Northman. But he’s under scrutiny by the new vampire king because of their relationship. And as the political implications of the shifters’ coming-out are beginning to be felt, Sookie’s connection to one particular Were draws her into the dangerous debate. Also, unknown to her, though the doors to Faery have been closed, there are still some fae on the human side—and one of them is angry at Sookie. Very, very angry.

[sufue]

Joffe's Free Book Friday book this weekend (which I often forget to post) is The Uniform, which is the first in the Detective Helen Carter series by Jodie Lawrance. The Friday free book tends to be available through Sunday, and is still available as of now, but grab it fast if you want it!

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096GC5M5V
Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B096GC5M5V

Spoiler:

MEET THE DETECTIVE
Detective Sergeant Helen Carter is used to getting a rough time of it at work. As one of the few women officers around, she has heard it all before: she’s only there as a box-ticking exercise, or she only got the job because of her father, who was a detective inspector. But she can handle it. She knows she can hold her own against any man on the force. The only thing she can’t handle, however, are the constant fights with her fiancé, Ted.

THE SETTING
Edinburgh CID in the 1970s is on the third-floor of the ugly, modern concrete lump that is the police station. On a sunny day, you can look right out to Arthur’s Seat. And on any day, you can see spotty-faced, bored teenagers coming and going from the local high school across the road. With its historic cobbled streets and fair share of deprivation, Edinburgh police are up against every type of criminal imaginable.

[sufue]

Prophecy is the second in the Giordano Bruno series by SJ Parris. I've very much enjoyed this series, which is based on a quite interesting historical character - see Wikipedia here. Prophecy has dropped to £0.99 at Kindle UK as part of today's Daily Deal.

Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004P1JE3Y

Spoiler:

Autumn, 1583. Under Elizabeth’s rule, loyalty is bought with blood…

An astrological phenomenon heralds the dawn of a new age and Queen Elizabeth’s throne is in peril. As Mary Stuart’s supporters scheme to usurp the rightful monarch, a young maid of honour is murdered, occult symbols carved into her flesh.

The Queen’s spymaster, Francis Walsingham, calls on maverick agent Giordano Bruno to infiltrate the plotters and secure the evidence that will condemn them to death.

Bruno is cunning, but so are his enemies. His identity could be exposed at any moment. The proof he seeks is within his grasp. But the young woman’s murder could point to an even more sinister truth…

[sufue]

More than a year later, most of these Deborah Knott books are $1.99 again, but a couple aren't, and there are two now on sale that weren't then. I really really like this series and was sad when Maron passed away in 2021.

The links below are still good - I've edited out the ones not on sale. And here are the two "new" ones...

The Buzzard Table, #18
Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0076DF7DO
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-buzzard-table

Long Upon the Land, #20
Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00WF8IJVC
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/long-upon-the-land

Originally Posted by sufue

Several titles in Margaret Maron's also excellent IMO Deborah Knott series and one title in her Sigrid Harald series are $1.99 right now at Kindle and Kobo US. Some are older/semi-perm price drops, and I'm just relisting, but some are recent.

Winter’s Child, Deborah Knott #12
Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000QRIH0M
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/winter-s-child-1

Hard Row, Deborah Knott #13
Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000QRIH0W
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/hard-row

Death’s Half Acre, Deborah Knott #14
Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00125L86W
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/death-s-half-acre-1

Sand Sharks, Deborah Knott #15
Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002J05IOM
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/sand-sharks

{edited other books}