The Butchered Man ~ The Northminster Mysteries, book 1

The Butchered Man (The Northminster Mysteries, Book 1)

Harriet Smart

Northminster, 1840: Dr. Felix Carswell, young and fresh from Edinburgh University, is keen to make his reputation and to get away from his father Lord Rothborough’s influence. Accepting the post as medical officer to the City of Northminster Constabulary Felix comes under the command of the Chief Constable, Major Giles Vernon—and is immediately plunged into a murder investigation. Workmen have discovered a mutilated corpse in a ditch beyond the old city walls. The body appears to be that of a man of means, but who is he?

Vernon’s theories on modern policing become practice as he and Carswell attempt to identify the victim and catch his murderer. Their quest takes them into the seedy world of card sharps, clerical politics, and broken promises in a once beautiful cathedral city turned industrial powerhouse. When Carswell is called to leave the case momentarily to treat a girl in a model asylum for reformed prostitutes, he senses all isn’t as it seems. There may be a connection with the dead man. His discovery puts him at loggerheads with Vernon who finds his authority and personal integrity threatened by a potentially scandalous relationship. Can they put aside their differences and bring justice to the Butchered Man?

In The Butchered Man, Smart has created an elegant murder mystery set in the vibrant time when the Regency was giving way to the Victorian era. Vernon and Carswell have their virtues, failures and foibles, and fully inhabit their world in an intricate case sure to please the mystery lover. 

 

How to Hack a Heartbreak

How to Hack a Heartbreak

Kristin Rockaway

Graydon House

Mel Strickland works the help desk in Hatch, a NYC tech incubator company. It’s a soul-destroying job in an atmosphere of toxic masculinity. Nobody appreciates Mel’s coding skills and her love life’s a mess. Luckily she has her great friends Lia, Dani, and Whitney to back her up. When yet another loser sends her a dick pic on the dating app Fluttr, Mel decides enough is enough. Figuring out she can’t be the only woman who’s sick of the whole internet dating scene, Mel sets up her own site—JerkAlert—where women can share information and warnings about ghosters, smash-and-dashers, and dick pic senders.

Mel’s instincts prove right. JerkAlert becomes the new internet sensation and her little project soon attracts interest from the management of Fluttr itself. But nothing in Mel’s life is ever straightforward. She falls hard for Alex, one of the incubator crowd, apparently a true gentleman—but is he leading a double life? Fluttr’s once in a lifetime offer for JerkAlert has dollar signs dancing in front of Mel’s eyes, but the offer’s full of hidden snags. And maybe her ownership of JerkAlert isn’t as solid as she thinks. Mel’s personal and professional life seem headed for disaster when inspiration strikes, and she goes out on a limb with a new project, one that’ll alter the internet dating scene forever. Will it be enough to get her career and love life back on track?

By turns smart, funny, and always engaging, How to Hack a Heartbreak’s tale of a modern Big Apple woman taking on the world will have you rooting for Mel all the way.

A Gentleman's Murder

A Gentleman’s Murder

Christopher Huang

Inkshares

November 1924. Great War veteran Lieutenant Eric Peterkin comes from an old British army family, which helped him gain membership of the prestigious Britannia Club for ex-military men. There have always been Peterkins in the Britannia Club. As the last of his line following the Great War’s slaughter, Eric was made welcome—after a fashion. There are some who count Eric’s half-Chinese blood against him, and he’s subjected to numerous casual swipes on the matter of his heritage.

Still, Eric counts as an officer and a gentleman, and he’s called upon to referee a bet between two club members, one of them newcomer Albert Benson. When Benson is found murdered in the club’s vault the following day, Eric’s instincts for justice are aroused—especially when it seems the police detective investigating has concealed evidence. Benson announced he would ‘soon right a great wrong.’ What did he mean? As Eric follows the trail from rural West Sussex to London’s Chinatown, danger takes shape on all sides. It soon looks like the murderer is uncomfortably close to home, and Eric must risk all he holds dear to bring the killer to justice.

AGentleman’s Murder introduces a new detective on the scene. Huang brings the world of the 1920’s to life, and Eric Peterkin is a great character with foibles, failings and bags of pluck who inhabits that world to the fullest.

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life (A sortabiography)

Eric Idle

Crown Archetype.

Comedian, actor, author, singer, playwright, director and songwriter. Eric Idle has turned his hand to all these with enormous success. The name Monty Python is known all over the world, and millions have taken the absurdist and so-typically British silliness to their hearts. Much has been written about the Python phenomena over the years, but there’s always something to add. Most of the Python crew have written memoirs, and Eric Idle adds to the knowledge by producing his own sortabiography.

Idle was born on March 29, 1943 in South Shields, County Durham, England. His early life was touched by tragedy when his RAF veteran father died in a road accident on Christmas Eve 1945 while hitchhiking home on leave to his family. Idle was sent on a charitable basis to the Royal Wolverhampton School, a tough boarding school where bullying was rife. As he writes of the establishment, “It was a physically abusive, bullying, harsh environment for a kid to grow up in. I got used to dealing with groups of boys and getting on with life under unpleasant circumstances and being smart and funny and subversive at the expense of authority. Perfect training for Python.”

Idle went on to Cambridge University under a scholarship, where he met John Cleese and formed a lifelong friendship that expanded over the swinging Sixties to include all the future Pythons. Idle’s induction to the famous Footlights saw him blossom as a sketch-writer, which segued into a varied career which has seen him travel the world almost as much as fellow Python, Michael Palin. Idle got to know and love such great stars as Beatle George Harrison, comic geniuses Robin Williams and Billy Connolly, as well as countless other stars of stage, screen and TV. His tributes to Harrison and Williams are especially moving.

Named after his greatest hit, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, which became the top request at British funerals, this sortabiography is a laugh aloud insider account into the Python crew at their best and worst, and one man’s incredible journey into the world consciousness. 

 

Guilt

Guilt

by Amanda Robson

Avon Books

Miranda and Zara Cunningham are twins, different in both looks and personality. Zara is a flighty, outgoing and artistic soul with a history of self-harm. Miranda, more stable and grounded, worries for her sister. She offers Zara support and a home to get over her last bout of cutting, but her plans for a secure life come off the rails when Zara meets Sebastian Templeton.

From the get-go Zara seems obsessed by Sebastian. When Miranda meets him for the first time she feels she can’t trust the guy. Sebastian has swarthy good looks, but something behind his cavalier over-friendly attitude toward her strikes Miranda as all wrong. Matters don’t improve when he gets a position in the tax department at the firm where Miranda works as an accountant and begins to affect her good standing with her employer. As the relationship between Zara and Sebastian deepens the warning bells in Miranda’s mind sound all the louder. What is it in Sebastian’s past that drives his present behavior? Why is he doing all he can to drive a wedge between the twins? An act of sexual assault and a terrible betrayal leaves one twin dead and the other fighting for her freedom. The survivor has to put her life on the line before she can win justice for them both.

Robson put a lot of heart, soul and hard-won experience into Guilt to create a harrowing page-turning read from start to finish. Miranda, Zara and Sebastian pop off the page as real characters with believable drives and reasons all their own.

True Fiction

TrueFiction

by Lee Goldberg

Thomas & Mercer

Waikiki Beach, Hawaii is the scene of an horrific airplane crash that kills hundreds aboard the flight and the hotels off the beach. In Seattle, best-selling thriller writer Ian Ludlow is aghast when he sees the TV news feeds – because he knows he was the inspiration behind the crash. Three years before, Ludlow and a number of other writers were recruited by the CIA. Their brief was to create scenarios for terrorist atrocities to help the government prepare for the worst. Now it looks like someone in the CIA enacted Ludlow’s scenario. He discovers that someone has already killed the other writers – now they want him dead too.

Ludlow goes on the run with the reluctant help of his author’s escort, Margo French. They soon realize the scope of government surveillance in everyday life as attempt after attempt is made to kill them. Escaping by the skin of their teeth, Ludlow and Margo know they have to identify their pursuer and stop him before their luck runs out. Only one man can help – former TV star turned survivalist recluse Ronnie Mancuso. When the three team up they have a chance to turn the tables on their pursuer – but it’ll mean going into the lion’s den. Can Ian Ludlow channel his fictional hero and save the day in a plot worthy of one of his books?

Humorous, thrilling and scary, True Fiction is a great caper story of the little guys taking on the all-encompassing secret state in a knock-down drag-out fight to the finish.

The Devil's Triangle

TheDevil’s Triangle

by Catherine Coulter and J T Ellison

Simon & Schuster Pocket Books Fiction

Covert Eyes is a crack FBI team headed by Special Agent Nicholas Drummond, with a flexible brief to act against crime anywhere in the world. Drummond gets a phone call from notorious art thief Kitsune, known as The Fox. He and Kitsune have a history and mutual respect, so when she tells him she’s in deep trouble, Drummond listens.

Kitsune took a commission to steal the Staff of Moses from the Topkapi museum in Istanbul. Her theft leads Covert Eyes to Venice, Italy and a firefight in the Piazza San Marco. It seems Kitsune’s mysterious employers want to ensure she never gets to expose them. Drummond and his team find a trail that leads to the Genesis institute headed by twins Ajax and Cassandra Kohath – megawealthy, sociopathic and lethal. The twins are themselves on the trail of the Ark of the Covenant, an immensely powerful artifact which they claim as their family’s birthright. Drummond discovers the Kohaths already have an uncanny century-long ability to control weather to their own advantage. Beijing was hit by a vicious sandstorm which killed thousands. Now a colossal hurricane is heading right for Washington DC. Can Drummond track the Kohaths to their secret lair and avert a major disaster?

TheDevil’s Triangle is a blend of Dan Brown and Tom Clancy with a fast plot, great characters, hissable villains and a gripping climax. One for thriller lovers.