OCEAN’S 8 meets Janet Evanovich, this fast-paced crime caper features one badass mother, with a certain set of skills who is forced to come out of retirement to protect her son, and teach a few men a few lessons!
Ex-con artist Bee Cardello is going legit. Divorced from her mafia boss husband, she is determined to stay on the straight and narrow. So, when ex-hubby Charlie steals $37.5 million from a dangerous kingpin, who puts out a hit on Bee and her ten-year-old son Oliver, she finds herself pulled back into the life she’s worked so hard to escape.
Part of that old life being one Adam Gage – an old flame and all-round sexy badass who Charlie’s now employed to keep her and Oliver safe . . . well, that’s what he tells her. Bee has been in this game long enough to know that everyone is in it for themselves, and she’d be stupid to trust Adam . . . again.
When Oliver is snatched from right under their noses, rather than risk losing him forever, Bee gathers her old team, dusts off all her old grifting tricks, and comes out of retirement to get her son back!
Author Bio
S.K. Golden writes cozy mysteries and crime capers. Born and raised in the Florida Keys, she married a commercial fisherman. The two of them still live on the islands with their five kids (one boy, four girls — including identical twins!), two cats, and a corgi named Goku. Sarah graduated from Saint Leo University with a bachelor’s degree in Human Services and Administration and has put it to good use approximately zero times. She’s worked as a bank teller, a pharmacy technician, and an executive assistant at her father’s church. Sarah is delighted to be doing none of those things now.
An enthralling murder mystery with a vividly realised future world, forcing readers to grapple hard hitting questions about the climate crisis, our relationship with Artificial Intelligence and the price we would be willing to pay, as a species, to be saved. Perfect for fans of Blake Crouch, Neal Stephenson, Philip K Dick, Kim Stanley Robinson and RR Haywood.
It’s 2050, a decade after a heatwave that killed four hundred million across the Persian Gulf, including journalist Marcus Tully’s wife. Now he must uncover the truth: was the disaster natural? Or is the weather now a weapon of genocide?
A whistleblower pulls Tully into a murder investigation at the centre of an election battle for a global dictator, with a mandate to prevent a climate apocalypse. A former US President campaigns against the first AI politician of the position, but someone is trying to sway the outcome.
Tully must convince the world to face the truth and make hard choices about the future of the species. But will humanity ultimately choose salvation over freedom, whatever the cost?
Perfect for fans of JD Kirk, Val McDermid, Peter James, Rachel Mclean
Operation Wonderland
It’s 1989 – the so-called Second Summer of Love
The days are endlessly hot, and ravers are riding on a hedonistic wave of Acid House and MDMA. It’s the biggest youth movement since the 60’s and it’s out of control. Rave organisers mix with underworld gangsters who don’t care about the devastating consequences. But when ravers start dying, undercover cops are sent to infiltrate the chaotic, deadly scene. Little did anyone know that their actions in those heady days would come back to haunt them nearly a decade later.
Was it really the Second Summer of Love, or a deadly Summer of Death?
And can the instigators be caught twice?
Author bio
Catherine Yaffe is the author of crime thrillers that readers and reviewers frequently describe as compulsively readable. A graduate of Curtis Brown Creative academy, Catherine wrote her first crime thriller, The Lie She Told in 2020 whilst the UK was in Lockdown. On its release it debuted in the top 10 hot new releases on Amazon and to date has accrued hundreds of five-star reviews.
We had a wonderful time learning more about Polly Bodine’s court trials, especially the one that took place in Newburgh in the building where the book event took place. Unfortunately, the inside no longer resembles a court house, but the front of the building is original. Stay tuned for my book review.
Upcoming event hosted by @newburghhistoricalsociety. Author @alexhortis5 will be discussing his new book, The Witch of New York. Below, you will find more information on this upcoming Sundays event. I will also share a post on my blog. You can find the link in my bio. #bookevent #booksigning #thewitchofnewyork #alexhortis #booklover #booknerd #nybookevents
Come to this FREE presentation on the 1846 Newburgh trial of Polly Bodine–the “Witch of New York”–for the murders of her sister-in-law and niece. America’s attention was focused on Newburgh for this sensational trial, including Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman. This event is being held inside the historic old courthouse where the original trial took place in April 1846. See you there at 3:00 pm, Sunday, April 21, 2024!
Goodreads Blurb
Before the sensational cases of Amanda Knox and Casey Anthony—before even Lizzie Borden—there was Polly Bodine, the first American woman put on trial for capital murder in our nation’s debut media circus.
On Christmas night, December 25, 1843, in a serene village on Staten Island, shocked neighbors discovered the burnt remains of twenty-four-year-old mother Emeline Houseman and her infant daughter, Ann Eliza. In a perverse nativity, someone bludgeoned to death a mother and child in their home—and then covered up the crime with hellfire.
When an ambitious district attorney charges Polly Bodine (Emelin’s sister-in-law) with a double homicide, the new “penny press” explodes. Polly is a perfect media villain: she’s a separated wife who drinks gin, commits adultery, and has had multiple abortions. Between June 1844 and April 1846, the nation was enthralled by her three trials—in Staten Island, Manhattan, and Newburgh—for the “Christmas murders.”
After Polly’s legal dream team entered the fray, the press and the public debated not only her guilt, but her character and fate as a fallen woman in society. Public opinion split into different camps over her case. Edgar Allen Poe and Walt Whitman covered her case as young newsmen. P. T. Barnum made a circus out of it. James Fenimore Cooper’s last novel was inspired by her trials.
The Witch of New York is the first narrative history about the dueling trial lawyers, ruthless newsmen, and shameless hucksters who turned the Polly Bodine case into America’s formative tabloid trial. An origin story of how America became addicted to sensationalized reporting of criminal trials, The Witch of New York vividly reconstructs an epic mystery from Old New York—and uses the Bodine case to challenge our system of tabloid justice of today.
Author Biography from his website
Alex Hortis is a constitutional lawyer and historian of crime. He has appeared on
national television as an on-screen personality for AMC’s The Making of the Mob
(2015), Hortis has been interviewed on NPR stations across the country and for true
crime podcasts. He has also been a featured speaker at the New York Public Library, the
Enoch Pratt Free Library, and the Mob Museum in Las Vegas.
Hortis’s first book, The Mob and the City: The Hidden History of How the
Mafia Captured New York (Prometheus, 2014), was praised by Jerry Capeci, the dean
of mob reporters, who wrote: “If there’s a better book on the early history of
Cosa Nostra in America, I haven’t seen it.”
Malcolm Gladwell quoted Hortis’s book in “The Crooked Ladder:
The criminal’s guide to upward mobility” New Yorker, Aug. 3, 2014. The New York
Post also featured Hortis’s groundbreaking work on the Mafia’s control of gay bars, in
“How NYC’s gay bars thrived because of the mob,” New York Post, May 3, 2014.
Hortis is a former federal law clerk for the United States Court of Appeals for the
Eighth Circuit. He is a graduate of New York University School of Law, where he was a
member of the Law Review. His writings have appeared in New York University Law
Review, New York Law School Review, and in book anthologies on crime.
Good Me Bad Me is dark, compelling, voice-driven psychological suspense by debut author Ali Land.
How far does the apple really fall from the tree?
Milly’s mother is a serial killer. Though Milly loves her mother, the only way to make her stop is to turn her in to the police. Milly is given a fresh start: a new identity, a home with an affluent foster family, and a spot at an exclusive private school.
But Milly has secrets, and life at her new home becomes complicated. As her mother’s trial looms, with Milly as the star witness, Milly starts to wonder how much of her is nature, how much of her is nurture, and whether she is doomed to turn out like her mother after all.
When tensions rise and Milly feels trapped by her shiny new life, she has to decide: Will she be good? Or is she bad? She is, after all, her mother’s daughter.
My Review: Rated 5 out of 5 stars
A story that will bring you chills, nightmares, and surprises. What you are taught is what you will learn and do. Annie had been abused at an early life, and when she thought that she left the torment at home, it turns out that a new one has begun. This is a story that the readers will never forget. Will Annie, who is now called Millie, make it through trial, school, and living in a new home with a tormentor? You will have to endure the torture page by page. Do you see the Good Me or the Bad Me?
Author Biography
After graduating from university with a degree in Mental Health, Ali Land spent a decade working as a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Nurse in both hospitals and schools in the UK and Australia. Ali is now a full-time writer and lives in West London.
In the midst of the freezing Arctic winter, seventeen-year-old Lumikki Andersson walks into her school’s dark room and finds a stash of wet, crimson-colored money. Thousands of Euros left to dry—splattered with someone’s blood.
Lumikki lives alone in a studio apartment far from her parents and the past she left behind. She transferred into a prestigious art school, and she’s singularly focused on studying and graduating. Lumikki ignores the cliques, the gossip, and the parties held by the school’s most popular and beautiful boys and girls.
But finding the blood-stained money changes everything. Suddenly, Lumikki is swept into a whirlpool of events as she finds herself helping to trace the origins of the money. Events turn even more deadly when evidence points to dirty cops and a notorious drug kingpin best known for the brutality with which he runs his business.
As Lumikki loses control of her carefully constructed world, she discovers that she’s been blind to the forces swirling around her—and she’s running out of time to set them right. When she sees the stark red of blood on snow, it may be too late to save her friends or herself.
My Review: Rated 5 out of 5 stars
This was a thriller, crime novel, and fairy tale all in one. Lumikki was a teenager who was constantly bullied by two classmates. She started to learn how to fight and was able to use scents, noise, and movements in order to hide from her perpetrators. I was shocked at the things she went through and how easy just changing her walk would make others not realize her. At times, she was like a ghost not seen but very much there. I enjoy the fairy tale of Snow White that was throughout the book. Was happy that she fought hard and was over to live. Can’t wait to see what the next book brings. She got herself involved in a crime that was committed, and she was the undercover detective that with smarts, strength, and will was able to figure out the whole scheme.
Author Biography
Salla Simukka is Finnish writer and translator who lives in Tampere. She has studied Nordic philology, Finnish language, general literature, creative writing and women’s studies at the University of Turku.
Besides books, Simukka writes book reviews for the newspapers Helsinkin Sanomat and Hämeen Sanomat.
In their isolated country house, a mother and her two children prepare to wait out a blinding snowstorm. Two violent predators walk through the door. Nothing will ever be the same.
When the two strangers turn up at Rowena Cooper’s isolated Colorado farmhouse, she knows instantly that it’s the end of everything. For the two haunted and driven men, on the other hand, it’s just another stop on a long and bloody journey. And they still have many miles to go, and victims to sacrifice, before their work is done. For San Francisco homicide detective Valerie Hart, their trail of victims-women abducted, tortured and left with a seemingly random series of objects inside them-has brought her from obsession to the edge of physical and psychological destruction. And she’s losing hope of making a breakthrough before that happens. But the murders at the Cooper farmhouse didn’t quite go according to plan. There was a survivor, Rowena’s ten-year-old daughter Nell, who now holds the key to the killings. Injured, half-frozen, terrified, Nell has only one place to go. And that place could be even more dangerous than what she’s running from.
In this extraordinary, pulse-pounding debut, Saul Black takes us deep into the mind of a psychopath, and into the troubled heart of the woman determined to stop him.
My Review: Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Won this book from Goodreads. My mind twisted and tricked me as I read through this book. To have a serial killer having a killing spree will make even the strongest weak. I just couldn’t comprehend why Leon had no feelings and killed like it was a natural thing to do. As I listened to the audio book, I felt like I traveled to Leon’s world and had a front row seat of all his personal tortures and the killing sprees. Just having to listen to the first chapter, I knew my perspective of life would be changed forever. This book teaches us all that we need to cherish life and protect everyone around you. Valerie would be inches away from figuring out the killer and catching him, but she never gave up. The author did an amazing job of writing a story that I know will become a movie someday. It played with your mind and took you to a world where the world froze, and only death can set you free. If you are looking for a book that will keep you up at night and having you gripping your seat, then look no further.
Author Biography
SAUL BLACK is a pseudonym used by Glen Duncan, a British author born in 1965 in Bolton, Lancashire, England to an Anglo-Indian family. In 1994 he visited India with his father before continuing on to the United States, where he spent several months travelling the country by Amtrak train, writing much of what would become his first novel, Hope, published to critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic in 1997. Duncan lives in London. Recently, his 2002 novel I, Lucifer has had the film rights purchased, with actors such as Ewan Mcgregor, Jason Brescia, Jude Law, Vin Diesel, and Daniel Craig all being considered for roles in the forthcoming movie.
Frankie Elkin is an expert at finding the missing persons that the rest of the world has forgotten, but even she couldn’t have anticipated this latest request—to locate the long-lost sister of a female serial killer facing execution in three weeks’ time.
She has called herself “death,” but people called her the devil.
The case was sensational. Kaylee Pierson had confessed from the very beginning, waived all appeals. Despite the media’s chronicling of her tragic circumstances—the childhood spent with a violent father—no one could find sympathy for “the Beautiful Butcher” who had led eighteen men home from bars before viciously slitting their throats. Now, with only twenty-one days left to live, Pierson has finally received a lead on the whereabouts of the sister who was kidnapped over a decade ago, and she needs Frankie’s help to find her. The Beautiful Butcher’s offer:
When was the last time your search ended with finding the living?
Unable to resist the chance for a rescue, Frankie takes on Pierson’s request. Twelve years ago, five-year-old Leilani went missing in Hawaii. The main suspect? Pierson’s tech mogul ex-boyfriend, Sanders MacManus. Now, on a remote island in the middle of the Pacific—the site of MacManus’s latest vanity project—fresh evidence has appeared. In order to learn the truth and possibly save a young woman’s life, Frankie must go undercover at the isolated base camp. Her challenge: A dozen strangers. Countless dangerous secrets. Zero means of calling for help. And then the storm rolls in…
My Review: Rated 4 out of 5 stars
This thriller will keep you up at night. The reader will have to worry about surviving a serial killer, coconut crabs, crab dens, and living in an isolated atoll with a murderer. The female characters in this story are strong-willed and ready to fight to survive. The beautiful butcher Kaylee is a heartless serial killer who gets gusto from butchering men. Her childhood with her father was a torment that helped shape her into what she became. Kaylee is in jail and will be executed in a few weeks. Her last request is to find her sister Leilani and save her from her ex-boyfriend, Sanders McManus. Kaylee and her lawyer hire Frankie, who specializes in searching for missing people and has succeeded every time she seeks to find someone. Frankie doesn’t know that you should never trust a serial killer. Frankie lands on an island filled with dangers. Her investigative skills will get her closer to the truth, but it might be too late to solve this twisted mystery. Don’t let the innocent Leilani and serial killer sister, or are they sisters? You will have to pick up this thrilling novel to find the truth yourself. Get ready to fight for your life.
Author Biography
Lisa Gardner is the #1 New York Times bestselling thriller author of the Frankie Elkin series, as well as the Detective D.D. Warren, the FBI Profilers and the PI Tessa Leoni series.
Her current suspense novels feature Frankie Elkin, an everyday, average person who specializes in finding missing people. When the locals have given up, when the media has never bothered to care, Frankie takes on the challenge. From looking for a missing teen in inner city Boston to searching for a missing hiker in the wilds of Wyoming to rescuing a possibly kidnapped girl on a remote island in the Pacific, Frankie is on the case!
Lisa lives in the mountains of New Hampshire with two crazy pups. When not writing, Lisa loves to hike, play cribbage, and, of course, read!
Frankie Elkin is an expert at finding the missing persons that the rest of the world has forgotten, but even she couldn’t have anticipated this latest request—to locate the long-lost sister of a female serial killer facing execution in three weeks’ time.
She has called herself “death,” but people called her the devil.
The case was sensational. Kaylee Pierson had confessed from the very beginning, waived all appeals. Despite the media’s chronicling of her tragic circumstances—the childhood spent with a violent father—no one could find sympathy for “the Beautiful Butcher” who had led eighteen men home from bars before viciously slitting their throats. Now, with only twenty-one days left to live, Pierson has finally received a lead on the whereabouts of the sister who was kidnapped over a decade ago, and she needs Frankie’s help to find her. The Beautiful Butcher’s offer:
When was the last time your search ended with finding the living?
Unable to resist the chance for a rescue, Frankie takes on Pierson’s request. Twelve years ago, five-year-old Leilani went missing in Hawaii. The main suspect? Pierson’s tech mogul ex-boyfriend, Sanders MacManus. Now, on a remote island in the middle of the Pacific—the site of MacManus’s latest vanity project—fresh evidence has appeared. In order to learn the truth and possibly save a young woman’s life, Frankie must go undercover at the isolated base camp. Her challenge: A dozen strangers. Countless dangerous secrets. Zero means of calling for help. And then the storm rolls in…
Author Biography
Lisa Gardner is the #1 New York Times bestselling thriller author of the Frankie Elkin series, as well as the Detective D.D. Warren, the FBI Profilers and the PI Tessa Leoni series.
Her current suspense novels feature Frankie Elkin, an everyday, average person who specializes in finding missing people. When the locals have given up, when the media has never bothered to care, Frankie takes on the challenge. From looking for a missing teen in inner city Boston to searching for a missing hiker in the wilds of Wyoming to rescuing a possibly kidnapped girl on a remote island in the Pacific, Frankie is on the case!
Lisa lives in the mountains of New Hampshire with two crazy pups. When not writing, Lisa loves to hike, play cribbage, and, of course, read!
I will post my review once I am done reading this thrilling novel that will be released on March 12, 2024.
FabulousReader4Ever 