Poisoned Pen Press - Mysteries

[NightBird]

One for Sorrow: A John, the Lord Chamberlain Mystery (John, the Lord Chamberlain Series) Eric Mayer, Mary Reed

Quote:
Byzantium, capitol of the 6th century Roman Empire, simmers a rich stew of creeds, cultures, and citizens with a sprinkling of cutthroats and crimes. John the Eunuch, Emperor Justinian's Lord Chamberlain, orders a Christian court while himself observing the rites of Mithra. Thomas, a knight from Britain, Ahasuerus, a soothsayer, and two ladies from Crete stir up events and old memories for John, who must ask how the visitors link to the death of Leukos, Keeper of the Plate. An Egyptian brothel keeper and a Christian stylite know more than they are telling....

In due course, John gets his man - and a love scene....

Now free at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/One-Sorrow-Cha...one+for+sorrow

[NightBird]

Dangerous Undertaking: A Buryin' Barry Mystery is free at Apple, $.99 at Amazon and B&N.

Barry Clayton has a job he doesn’t want. When his father became stricken with Alzheimer’s, Barry left the Charlotte police force for the small mountain community of Gainesboro, North Carolina, where his family runs the local funeral home. “Buryin’ Barry” reluctantly assumed the mantle of town undertaker, trying to fit his life into this somber profession.

Almost at once it turns deadly. At the graveside service for an elderly woman, a grieving grandson strides in clad like Clint Eastwood in a duster, rips out a shotgun, and murders his family. Then the shooter turns the weapon on Barry. “Take a message to my grandmother,” Dallas Willard shouts. “Tell her they tried to take the land. Tell her I love her.” The blast hits Barry in the shoulder.

Barry is not cut from the same black cloth as his father, and his irreverent wit and independence have already won him the friendship of the county sheriff, one-eyed war hero Tommy Lee Wadkins. Besides, Barry’s a police pro.

Trusting his wounds to the hands of local surgeon Susan Miller, Barry begins a search for both the killer and the reason for his crime. It isn’t long before a second shooting occurs—but when Dallas Willard’s body is discovered at the bottom of a quarry pond, it becomes clear that Gainesboro is caught in the grip of something more than a deadly family quarrel...

[NightBird]

Originally Posted by NightBird

More $.99ers:

Concrete Desert:A David Mapstone Mystery by Jon Talton.

Also $.99 at B&N.



Embrace the Grim Reaper by Judy Clemens.

B&N

Now free at Amazon also.

[NightBird]

Originally Posted by NightBird

Dangerous Undertaking: A Buryin' Barry Mystery is free at Apple, $.99 at Amazon and B&N.

Now free at Amazon.

[NightBird]

Two new free at iTunes.

Mew is for Murder Theda Krakow #1 by Clea Simon.

Description
Theda Krakow is in a funk. Her sometime boyfriend’s gone for good. The death of her beloved cat opened a bigger void. And the career leap she’s made from copy editor to freelance writer has left her financesand her spiritflat. She desperately needs a headline to get her life back on track. One day, out for a stroll in her Cambridge neighborhood, Theda spies an adorable stray kitten. This charmer leads Theda to an old woman holed up in a decrepit house full of cats. Is this one of those “crazy cat ladies,” a classic hoarder, or is the old woman a neighborhood do-gooder More important, is this the story to catapult Theda out of the dumps But when she returns to interview Lillian Helmhold, Theda finds her fascinating subject dead of an apparent accident. The neighbors are celebrating, the police aren’t interested, and the cats are removed to a shelter. End of story Not for Theda—one or two things don’t compute. So Theda marshals her investigative journalism skills to turn gumshoe.

The Heat of the Moon: A Rachel Goddard Mystery #1 by Sandra Parshall.

Description
Young veterinarian Rachel Goddard’s world begins to crumble when a client rushes into the animal hospital with a basset hound struck by a car during a thunderstorm. The dog owner’s terrified tot, drenched with rain, loses sight of her mother in the flurry of activity and screams, “Mommy! I want Mommy!” Instantly Rachel is hurled back in time to a day in her own childhood when her baby sister Michelle uttered the same cry while thunder crashed and rain poured down on them. The unearthed memory feels like a fragment from a nightmare, and Rachel doesn’t understand its meaning or the anguish it stirs up in her. When she seeks answers she learns nothing from Michelle or from Judith, their loving but manipulative mother. Judith is a psychologist who is only too happy to have her adult daughters still living in her elegant Tudor house outside Washington, DC. But their apparently serene home is a house of secrets where Judith’s unspoken rules forbid questions about the family history or the daughters’ long-dead father. As more baffling memories surface, Rachel begins to suspect that nothing about her family is what it seems. Fighting her mother’s attempts to control her, Rachel embarks on a quest that takes her deep into her own memory as well as halfway across the country. The heartbreaking truth she uncovers will shatter her world and force her to make an unthinkable choice. The Heat of the Moon is Sandra Parshall’s first novel.

Winner of the 2007 Agatha Award for Best First Novel.

[mitford13]

If anybody picked up Mary Anna Evans' "Artifacts" free from Poisoned Pen, the author has another freebie right now on Amazon US [although not part of this series/PP Press]:

Wounded Earth by Mary Anna Evans

An environmental thriller from a recipient of Red Adept's Red Adept's Annual Indie Award--

Larabeth McLeod has beauty, money, several patents, a Ph.D., a successful environmental firm, and some very old secrets. When a man with the uncomfortable name of Babykiller begins stalking her, terrorizing her with stories of her darkest days in Vietnam, stories no one else knows, she feels compelled to fight back...until he exposes her most tender secret of all by threatening the daughter she has never met.

She turns to private detective J.D. Hatten for help, breaking five years of separation and silence between quarreling friends. And then Babykiller shows his true capabilities. He is the head of an illicit business offering but one service--moving cargo worldwide for criminals who need their drugs or cash or smuggled goods shipped safely and anonymously--so he is capable of putting anything anywhere. He quietly explains to Larabeth, a well-known environmental executive, that he can even put defective gauges in nuclear power plants, and he will, just to get her attention. If she goes to the police for protection, people will die. Lots and lots of people will die. And one of them will be her daughter.

Larabeth and J.D. are just a normal man and woman, up against a babykiller. But then, Babykiller doesn't know who he's dealing with...

WOUNDED EARTH is the first thriller by Mary Anna Evans, winner of the Benjamin Franklin Award, the Florida Literature Award, and a Florida Book Awards Bronze medal Her Faye Longchamp archaeological mysteries, ARTIFACTS, RELICS, EFFIGIES, FINDINGS, and FLOODGATES, are also available.

[NightBird]

Originally Posted by NightBird

The Heat of the Moon: A Rachel Goddard Mystery #1 by Sandra Parshall.

Now free at Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Heat-Moon-Godd...4984524&sr=1-7

[NightBird]

Done Deal:A John Deal Mystery #1 by Les Standiford free at iTunes, $.99 at Amazon.

Description
Done Deal is the first in the series featuring reluctant sleuth John Deal, a South Florida building contractor who has a penchant for stepping into the path of the wrong people. Here, Deal is struggling to rebuild the once formidable DealCo, a development company once headed by his flamboyant father Barton Deal–but little does he know that the piece of land upon which he plans to build a small apartment complex is coveted by a ruthless businessman intent on making a fortune off Major League Baseball’s arrival in South Florida.

[melmac]

Blind Switch #1 in the Jack Doyle series by John McEvoy is free on itunes, 99c on Amazon

Desperate Jack Doyle accepts a sketchy job which leads to a deadly game of fixing horse races and murder—of the four-legged kind…. One-time amateur boxer Jack Doyle, an irreverent and rebellious advertising account representative, goes to work one fine Chicago day and finds his desk—and his job—both gone. A two-time loser at the marriage game as well, Doyle, usually ultra-confident, fishes himself out of a bottle to take stock, realizing, “with a thumping finality, that Life sure as hell did have his number and was crunching it.” At loose ends, Doyle accepts a most unusual offer from an acquaintance, Moe Kellman, “furrier to the Mob,” to fix a horse race. The context of making the deal, a Cubs game at storied Wrigley Field, sets the tone for the drama that follows. Thus begins a chain of events that will lead the FBI to Doyle’s door where they “coopt” him into a quest after people who are maiming or killing thoroughbred horses for their insurance values. Their number one target is a loathsome media mogul who can’t bear to lose at anything. Built upon recent factual events, spiced with satire and peppered throughout with engaging loonies, Blind Switch is a noteworthy first novel with a hero forced to ask in its ultimate line, “Where have I gone right?”

[kg3]

--These 2 are FREE at Amazon US:

(1) AN EYE FOR MURDER (The Ellie Foreman Suspense Mysteries #1) - Libby Fischer Hellmann

--This Book was originally published by Poisoned Pen Press/Berkley in 2002


(2) The Day Miriam Hirsch Disappeared (Ellie Foreman Series Prequel) - Libby Fischer Hellmann


___________
(1) AN EYE FOR MURDER (The Ellie Foreman Suspense Mysteries #1) - Libby Fischer Hellmann

Book Description:

August, 1944, Prague is where the story begins with a seemingly casual exchange of information. But in wartime, is any act, any one thing, trivial? Decades later, in contemporary Chicago, the consequences emerge through the medium of television. Documentary filmmaker Ellie Foreman gets a letter prompted by the success of her show "Celebrate Chicago." One viewer was the elderly Ben Sinclair. When he suddenly dies, his landlady Mrs. Fleischman finds Ellie's name among his effects and writes to her. Ellie, who hasn't a clue about a connection to Ben, is curious. And she agrees to help dispose of Ben Sinclair's possessions. She became a filmmaker to help people tell their stories. The books and wartime relics Ben left behind--will they be enough to tell his?

All too soon, Mrs. Fleischman dies. Then Ben's things are stolen from Ellie's suburban home. The single mom, working to move past her ex, doesn't know what to think. But she has to scramble for work and is soon embroiled in producing a campaign video for a steel magnate running for a Republican seat in the Illinois Senate. Despite these distractions, Ellie stays focused on her odd link to the dead man and turns to her father, a retired lawyer with deep roots in Chicago's Jewish community, for insights into the mystery of Ben Sinclair. In time, a terrifying scenario develops that reaches back into several pasts. From the political present of the North Shore to the buried memories of the city's ethnic neighborhoods, the components of Ben's story eventually merge into an explosive climax.

AN EYE FOR MURDER is the sequel to the author's award-winning short story "The Day Miriam Hirsch Disappeared." EYE was nominated for an Anthony Award for Best First when it was released; it also won the Best First Readers' Choice Award.

Editorial Reviews:

From Publishers Weekly:

Sharp humor and vivid language distinguish Hellmann's Chicago-set debut. Ellie Forman, a recently divorced suburban mom, supports herself and her daughter by making documentaries, including a historical film, Celebrate Chicago, which has gained her local fame. The discovery of her name on a scrap of paper among the effects of an elderly gentleman, recently deceased in a Chicago rooming house, sets off a sinister chain of events and weaves an ever tightening web of intrigue. Preoccupied with her former husband's mounting stock losses, Ellie fails to put the pieces together until two more deaths and two attempted murders hit close to home. When her ex disappears and leaves her with a staggering amount of debt, Ellie panics, then turns her fear into determination to control her destiny. After taking on a new assignment to produce a campaign video for GOP Senate candidate Marian Iverson, she uncovers coincidences too startling to ignore. Soon Ellie is digging into a legacy of money and murder dating back to WWII and the Holocaust. A masterful blend of politics, history and suspense, this novel is well worth reading despite an overly complicated plot. Ellie is an engaging amateur sleuth whose wisdom grows as she learns the hard way that "Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet." Readers will hope they won't have to wait too long for Ellie's return.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review:

This is Libby Fischer Hellmann’s first novel. It grew out of a story she submitted for the 1999 Bouchercon Short Story contest, which she won. It is a complesx tale of decades’ old secrets."--Mystery News

"A mystery in the great tradition with sins of the past returning to haunt the present." --Barbara D'Amato

AN EYE FOR MURDER is a well-written debut novel that will keep you turning the pages. Hellman delivers her plot at a tempo that keeps the action moving and the reader intrigued. The characters are strong and the mystery demands a solution. I will be looking for the next offering from this talented new author."-MyShelf.Com

“Everything I want in a mystery: characters I care about; credible motivations; a complex plot. A wonderful book. Read it!”—Michael Allen Dymmoch, author of Incendiary Designs

“[A] gutsy heroine. [A] fast-paced, entertaining mystery.”

—Rochelle Krich, award-winning author of Dead Air

(2) The Day Miriam Hirsch Disappeared (Ellie Foreman Series Prequel) - Libby Fischer Hellmann

Description:

In 1938 sixteen year old Jake Foreman spends his free time with his friend Barney Teitleman in Lawndale, a prosperous Jewish community on Chicago’s near west side. Jake develops a crush on Miriam Hirsch, an actress in the Yiddish theater who lives at the Teitleman’s boarding house, but Miriam only has eyes for Skull, who might or might not be a gangster. THE DAY MIRIAM HIRSCH DISAPPEARED was the first short story I wrote. Little did I know then that the story would become the “prequel” to my Ellie Foreman series. Or that the Ellie Foreman series would be the prequel to the Georgia Davis series. The story, which won the Bouchercon short story contest in 1999, was first published in the Bouchercon Program book. It was later published in ANTHOLOGY TODAY, where it also won a contest, and in the now defunct FUTURES MAGAZINE.

[NightBird]

Mew is for Murder Theda Krakow #1 by Clea Simon. Now free at Amazon.

Quote:
Description
Theda Krakow is in a funk. Her sometime boyfriend’s gone for good. The death of her beloved cat opened a bigger void. And the career leap she’s made from copy editor to freelance writer has left her finances and her spirit flat. She desperately needs a headline to get her life back on track. One day, out for a stroll in her Cambridge neighborhood, Theda spies an adorable stray kitten. This charmer leads Theda to an old woman holed up in a decrepit house full of cats. Is this one of those “crazy cat ladies,” a classic hoarder, or is the old woman a neighborhood do-gooder More important, is this the story to catapult Theda out of the dumps But when she returns to interview Lillian Helmhold, Theda finds her fascinating subject dead of an apparent accident. The neighbors are celebrating, the police aren’t interested, and the cats are removed to a shelter. End of story Not for Theda—one or two things don’t compute. So Theda marshals her investigative journalism skills to turn gumshoe.

http://www.amazon.com/Mew-Murder-Kra...+is+for+murder

[NightBird]

Two new iTunes freebies:

A Famine of Horses: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery #1 by P.F. Chisolm.

Description
In the year 1592, Sir Robert Carey, a handsome courtier, comes north to Carlisle to take up his new post as Deputy Warden of the West March. He has wangled his appointment to be nearer his true love, a married woman, and farther from the gimlet eyes of his creditors and the disapproving eye of his father (the Queen’s cousin—possibly her half-brother). And of course, he can use the money….

Sir Robert is quick to realize he won’t see a profit from the perks if he fails to keep the peace. Alas, he is quickly challenged by the murder of a local lad, the possible betrayal of a disappointed rival, the ire of the lady’s husband, and the question of the horses—the hundreds of horses being stolen from all over the neighborhood. It’s hard to say whether the greater danger lies without the city walls amidst the scheming Scots—or within, amidst the unruly English garrison.

Rich in atmosphere and packed with vivid real and fictional characters, few novels are as well imagined or as much fun as this r1omp through roguish courtiers, rival gangs, rustling, treason, and high ambition.

The Coffin Trail: A Lake District Mystery #

Description
What is meant as a fresh start in the English Lakes District begins to reek of buried secrets…. Oxford historian and TV personality Daniel Kind and his new lover, Miranda, both want to escape to a new life. On impulse they buy Tarn Cottage in Brackdale, an idyllic valley in the Lake District that Daniel knew as a boy. He is still fascinated by a place so remote that the dead had to be carried out over the peaks on pack animals along the ancient Coffin Trail. But though the couple hope to live the dream of downsizing, the past has a way of catching up. Tarn Cottage was once home to Barrie Gilpin, an autistic youth suspected of a savage murder-what looks like the ritualistic killing of a young woman visitor to the valley. She was found laid out on the Sacrifice Stone, an ancient pagan site up on the fell. Barrie fell to his death near the crime scene before he could be questioned. All these years later, Daniel retains his belief in Barrie’s innocence and questions his own policeman father’s handling of the case. When DCI Hannah Scarlett and her squad launch a cold case review, Brackdale’s skeletons begin to rattle. The wild geography of the Lakes District plays against local literary references, all backdrop to the lives of villagers and outsiders drawn to this beautiful spot – but for what reasons? The Coffin Trail launches a new series by a master British hand.

The Coffin Trail was nominated for the 2006 Theakston Prize.

[koland]

Originally Posted by melmac

Blind Switch #1 in the Jack Doyle series by John McEvoy is free on itunes, 99c on Amazon

Now free on Kindle - http://www.amazon.com/Blind-Switch-M.../dp/B003VD22AE

[NightBird]

Originally Posted by NightBird

Done Deal:A John Deal Mystery #1 by Les Standiford free at iTunes, $.99 at Amazon.

Now free at Amazon.

[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.