FREE/BARGAIN - Mystery, Suspense, Thriller - 2016

[sufue]

Three titles in the Janet and Madoc Rhys series by Charlotte MacLeod (writing as Alisa Craig) have dropped to $1.99 at Kindle US. These prices might be for a really short time - I spotted them this morning, but didn't have time to list them until now.

Murder Goes Mumming, #2
link: https://www.amazon.com/Murder-Mummin...dp/B0099IRBDI/

Spoiler:

In the frigid Canadian north, Madoc and Janet try to keep warm and stay alive

Though he may not look the part, Madoc Rhys is a Mountie—and his keen sense of detection tells him it’s time to ask Janet Wadman to marry him. They have just gotten engaged when Christmas rolls around, and Janet’s boss invites them to his family estate for a last holiday fling before Janet leaves her job. After a long helicopter ride, they are at Graylings, ancestral home of the Condryckes, a family so strange that Canada’s shortest Mountie fits right in.

There is a psychic old woman, an erudite butler, and a family patriarch who is the spitting image of an English country squire. And when the elderly Mrs. Condrycke is found murdered, Janet will be glad she brought Madoc along. Though civilization is far away, when there is a Mountie in the house, justice is close at hand.

A Dismal Thing to Do, #3
link: https://www.amazon.com/Dismal-Thing-.../dp/B0099I92XK

Spoiler:

After witnessing a strange explosion, Janet becomes a murderer’s next target

Janet Rhys is driving through the backwoods of Canada when she sees the truck ahead of her lose control, smash into a snow bank, and flip sideways, completely blocking the road. Springing to action, she darts into a nearby barn, searching for something to use to rescue the person trapped inside. When she hears an explosion, Janet returns to find the truck is nothing but smoking wreckage, and the driver has stolen her car.

Janet takes shelter in an abandoned house, and is waiting for help to come when the truck driver’s accomplices set fire to her hideout. Just before she is engulfed in flames, she leaps through a window and escapes into the snow. The killers think their witness is dead, and if Janet doesn’t move quickly, they will be right.

Trouble in the Brasses, #4
link: https://www.amazon.com/Trouble-Brass.../dp/B0099J3DMK

Spoiler:

While stranded in the wilderness, an orchestra confronts a killer in its ranks

Although he is a decorated officer of the Mounted Police, Madoc Rhys’s tin ear has long been an embarrassment to his musically fixated family. But when his father’s orchestra needs a policeman, the Mountie gets a chance to make daddy proud. It began as pranks among the brass instruments, but something is rotten inside the Wagstaffe Symphony, and is about to graduate to something criminal. Called in to look into the tensions within the group, Madoc arrives just in time to see the French horn player keel over.

The death appears natural, and the orchestra boards the plane to its next engagement. But when a storm forces them to make an emergency landing and take shelter in an eerie old lodge, the extent of the danger becomes clear. Madoc may never understand music, but he has a good ear for murder, and is about to show off his chops.

[sufue]

A Lesson in Secrets is the 8th in the Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear. It has dropped to $1.99 at Kindle US.

link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004FEF6QK

Spoiler:

Private investigator Maisie Dobbs receives her first assignment from the British Secret Service in A Lesson in Secrets, the eighth book in Jacqueline Winspear’s award-winning mystery series. Sent to pose as a junior lecturer at a private college in Cambridge, she will monitor any activities “not in the interests of His Majesty’s government.” When the college’s pacifist founder is murdered, Maisie finds herself in the midst of sinister web of murder, scandal, and conspiracy, activities that point towards members of the ascendant Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei—the Nazi Party—on Britain’s shores. An instant classic, and sure to captivate long-time Maisie Dobbs fans as well as readers of Agatha Christie, Elizabeth George, and Alexander McCall Smith, A Lesson in Secrets is “a powerful and complex novel, one that will linger in memory as a testament to her talent and her humanity” (Richmond Times-Dispatch).

[sufue]

A Fine Summer's Day is a fairly recent title in the Inspector Ian Rutledge series by Charles Todd, but per SYKM, it's a prequel. It has dropped to $1.99 at Kindle US.

link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JTYLZI4

Spoiler:

New York Times bestselling author Charles Todd takes readers into Scotland Yard detective Ian Rutledge’s past—to his perplexing final case before the outbreak of World War I.

On a fine summer’s day in June, 1914, Ian Rutledge pays little notice to the assassination of an archduke in Sarajevo. An Inspector at Scotland Yard, he is planning to propose to the woman whom he deeply loves, despite intimations from friends and family that she may not be the wisest choice.

To the north on this warm and gentle day, another man in love—a Scottish Highlander—shows his own dear girl the house he will build for her in September. While back in England, a son awaits the undertaker in the wake of his widowed mother’s death. This death will set off a series of murders across England, seemingly unconnected, that Rutledge will race to solve in the weeks before the fateful declaration in August that will forever transform his world.

As the clouds of war gather on the horizon, all of Britain wonders and waits. With every moment at stake, Rutledge sets out to right a wrong—an odyssey that will eventually force him to choose between the Yard and his country, between love and duty, and between honor and truth.

[sufue]

The Blind Man of Seville is the first in the Javier Falcón series by Robert Wilson. It has dropped to $1.99 at Kindle US. I haven't read this series, but read and quite enjoyed Wilson's Gold Dagger winning A Small Death in Lisbon way back in DTB days, so I may give this one a try.

link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003WJQ6IG

Spoiler:

Called to a gruesome crime scene, Inspector Javier Falcón is shocked and sickened by what he finds. Littered like flower petals on the victim's shirt are the man's own eyelids, evidence of a heinous crime with no obvious motive. When the investigation leads him to read his late father's journals, he discovers a disturbing and sordid past. Meanwhile, more victims are falling. While Falcón struggles to solve the case, he finds the missing section of his father's journal-and becomes the murderer's next intended victim.
Combining suspenseful storytelling with a thoughtful exploration of the human psyche, The Blind Man of Seville confirms bestselling and award-winning author Robert Wilson as one of the greatest literary mystery writers working today.

[sufue]

A Deceptive Clarity is the first in the Chris Norgren series by Aaron Elkins, better known for his much longer Gideon Oliver series. It has dropped to $1.99 at Kindle US and Kobo US (couponable). This series focuses on the art world, and, IMS, there are no bones...but it's IMO still quite an enjoyable series.

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J84L382
Kobo US: https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/eb...tive-clarity-1

Spoiler:

Chris Norgren, museum curator and Renaissance art expert, heads to Berlin to assist in mounting a sensational exhibit: The Plundered Past—twenty priceless Old Masters looted by the Nazis, thought for decades to be lost forever, and only recently rediscovered. But things quickly get out of hand when Chris’s patrician, fastidious boss, after smelling a forgery in the lot, turns up dead the very next day—on the steps of a dismal Frankfurt brothel, of all places. Now Chris faces two daunting tasks: finding a fake painting among the masterpieces and a real killer whose sights are now set on him.

[sufue]

The Rising of the Moon is the 18th (if I counted properly at SYKM) in the extremely loooong Mrs. Bradley series by Gladys Mitchell. It has dropped to $0.99 at Kindle US.

link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IEIIOA8

Spoiler:

Could there be a Jack-the-Ripper copycat in the sleepy village of Brentford? Two women have been found brutally murdered, each under the light of a full moon. When a third mutilated body is identified, brothers Simon and Keith Innes discover that their brother Jack was mysteriously absent from their home on that last moonlit night. After Jack’s snob’s knife goes missing from his tool box, Simon and Keith have no choice but to investigate and clear his name. With the help of the peculiar amateur detective Mrs. Bradley, the brothers race to find answers…before the rising of another full moon.

The belovedly eccentric Mrs. Bradley and her ingenious sleuthing are sure to impress in this cleverly woven classic. You’ll never guess who lurks in the shadows—and why.

[sufue]

A Free Man of Color is the first in the Benjamin January series by Barbara Hambly. It has dropped to $0.99 at Kindle US.

link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004HFRJBW

Spoiler:

A lush and haunting novel of a city steeped in decadent pleasures...and of a man, proud and defiant, caught in a web of murder and betrayal.

It is 1833. In the midst of Mardi Gras, Benjamin January, a Creole physician and music teacher, is playing piano at the Salle d'Orleans when the evenings festivities are interrupted--by murder.

Ravishing Angelique Crozat, a notorious octoroon who travels in the city's finest company, has been strangled to death. With the authorities reluctant to become involved, Ben begins his own inquiry, which will take him through the seamy haunts of riverboatmen and into the huts of voodoo-worshipping slaves.

But soon the eyes of suspicion turn toward Ben—for, black as the slave who fathered him, this free man of color is still the perfect scapegoat....

[sufue]

Tool & Die is the eighth in the Jacobia Tiptree series by Sarah Graves. It has dropped to $0.99 at Kindle US.

link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC2O5C

Spoiler:

Jacobia “Jake” Tiptree traded her power-broker life for a run-down dream house in peaceful Eastport, Maine. But the do-it-yourself enthusiast is learning that no matter how carefully you build your home, murder has a way of slipping in through the cracks….

It’s a bright June afternoon and old-house-fixer-upper Jake Tiptree is driving through downeast Maine on an unusual errand. She’s getting ready to interview a large, angry man with a criminal history. Jim Diamond may or may not be harassing his ex-wife with life-threatening letters, but Jake promised her new housekeeper, Bella Diamond, she’d look into the matter. An ex-con and a deadbeat, Jim Diamond doesn’t have a history of violence…that is, not until Jake arrives at his apartment and discovers that a killer has been there first.

Suddenly Jake and her best friend, Ellie White, find themselves at the center of a murder with too many suspects and too few clues. And as if that’s not enough, Jake is now saddled with the manic Bella, whose certainty that she’ll be the next victim is fueling a supercompulsive neatness–one that threatens to clean Jake and her long-suffering husband, Wade, out of house and home.

Add to that a moose in her kitchen, a rebellious son with a habit of dumping Miss Right for Miss Wrong, and a troublesome ex of her own, and Jake is already at wit’s end. Then she gets word that a horde of her dad’s long-lost relatives mean to descend on Eastport, intending to be put up at her far-from-fixed-up fixer-upper.
When the killer does strike again, it’s not where Jake expects…and the victim couldn’t be more of a surprise. For this is a case bigger than the usual angry—ex-spouse variety, and now that Jake and Ellie have gotten themselves involved, they’ve each won a special place in a ruthless murderer’s master plan of greed, deception, and death. And the prize? A pair of eternally private rooms–six feet under!

[sufue]

Aunt Dimity's Death is the first in the Aunt Dimity series by Nancy Atherton. It has dropped to $1.99 at Kindle US. I really enjoyed the first several titles in this series back in DTB days, but then felt they got too saccharine. But I would recommend this one as one of the early ones...

link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0063OCXY8

Spoiler:

Lori Shepherd thought Aunt Dimity was just a character in a bedtime story...

...Until the Dickensian law firm of Willis & Willis summons her to a reading of the woman's will. Down-on-her-luck Lori learns she's about to inherit a siazable estate--if she can discover the secret hidden in a treasure trove of letters in Dimity's English country cottage. What begins as a fairy tale becomes a mystery--and a ghost story--in an improbably cozy setting, as Aunt Dimity's indominable spirit leads Lori on an otherworldly quest to discover how, in this life, true love can conquer all.

Watch out for Nancy Atherton's latest, Aunt Dimity and the Widow's Curse, coming in May 2017 from Viking!

[sufue]

And for the truly saccharine...A Sheetcake Named Desire is the first in the Piece of Cake series by Jacklyn Brady. It has dropped to $1.99 at Kindle US.

link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004XFYRKC

Spoiler:

New Orleans pastry chef Rita Lucero is out to bake her way to the top. But when she finds her almost-ex-husband killed with a chef's knife in his back, she becomes suspect number one. Now it's up to her to find the real killer before she winds up as the next victim served.

[GA Russell]

Calamity Town - Ellery Queen - $1.99
https://www.amazon.com/Calamity-Town...dp/B005TUN21A/

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by sufue

A Free Man of Color is the first in the Benjamin January series by Barbara Hambly. It has dropped to $0.99 at Kindle US.

link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004HFRJBW

Thank you

In the UK too (90p) but full price in Canada

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004HFRJBW/

[sufue]

Two titles in the Deborah Knott series by Margaret Maron have dropped to $5.99 at Kindle US. This isn't much of a sale, but this series is quite popular, her books rarely go on sale at all and they are mostly pretty pricey. And these are the two most recent titles in the series (2104 and 2015), so they're not totally ancient backlist either.

Designated Daughters (2014) has been on sale for less somewhere in the past (because I have it), but here's the info:
link: https://www.amazon.com/Designated-Da.../dp/B00H25FJ66

Spoiler:

When Judge Deborah Knott is summoned to her ailing Aunt Rachel's bedside, she assumes the worst. Thankfully when she arrives at the hospice center she learns that Rachel hasn't passed; in fact, the dying woman is awake. Surrounded by her children, her extended family, and what seems like half of Colleton County, a semi-conscious Rachel breaks weeks of pained silence with snippets of stories as randomly pieced together as a well-worn patchwork quilt. But the Knott family's joy quickly gives way to shock: less than an hour later, Aunt Rachel is found dead in her bed, smothered with a pillow.

Who would kill a woman on her deathbed? Was it an act of mercy, or murder? As Deborah and her husband, Sheriff's Deputy Dwight Bryant, investigate they cross paths with an unlikely set of suspects: Rachel's longtime minister; her neighbor, the respected local doctor; the friendly single father who often sought her advice; and perhaps the most puzzling party of all, the Designated Daughters, a support group for caregivers that Rachel's own daughter belongs to.

Soon Deborah and Dwight realize that the key to solving this case is hidden in Rachel's mysterious final words. Her mixed-up memories harbored a dark secret-a secret that someone close to them is determined to bury forever.

Long Upon the Land is the most recent (2015).
link: https://www.amazon.com/Long-Upon-Deb...dp/B00WF8IJVC/

Spoiler:

On a quiet August morning, Judge Deborah Knott's father Kezzie makes a shocking discovery on a remote corner of his farm: the body of a man bludgeoned to death. Investigating this crime, Deborah's husband, Sheriff's Deputy Dwight Bryant, soon uncovers a long-simmering hostility between Kezzie and the slain man over a land dispute. The local newspaper implies that Deborah's family may have had something to do with the murder-and that Dwight is dragging his feet on the case.

Meanwhile, Deborah is given a cigarette lighter that once belonged to her mother. The cryptic inscription inside rekindles Deborah's curiosity about her parents' past, and how they met. For years she has wondered how the daughter of a wealthy attorney could have married a widowed, semi-illiterate bootlegger, and this time she's determined to find the answer.

But why are Deborah's brothers so reluctant to talk about the dead man? Is the murder linked to Kezzie's illegal whiskey business? And could his courtship of Deborah's mother have something to do with the bad blood between the two families? Despite Deborah's promise not to interfere in Dwight's work, she cannot stop herself from doing everything she can to help clear her brothers and her father from suspicion . . .

[maddz]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

Thank you

In the UK too (90p) but full price in Canada

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004HFRJBW/

Thanks, got it! Now for the rest...

[issybird]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

Calamity Town - Ellery Queen - $1.99
https://www.amazon.com/Calamity-Town...dp/B005TUN21A/

One of the best Ellery Queens.