TATRANEWS - Extraordinary Newsletter
Dear Friends:
In this, my first Extraordinary Newsletter, I wanted to highlight ten new releases by ten of my fellow authors that would make fun summer reading. The books are in several different genres below, so there will be something here for everyone. Enjoy!
I also wanted to announce that finally all three books in my 'Twisted' trilogy of thrillers (Twisted Reasons, Twisted Traffick and Twisted Fates) are available as audiobooks, wonderfully narrated by Brad Holbrook, an actor and Emmy Award winning former TV journalist and program host. A tour de force! Available now on Audiobooks, Amazon and ACX -- and for the first three among you getting back to me, I can send free coupons to download the books.
And here are the ten books by author friends:
Murder at the Menger: A Sydney Lockhart Mystery by Kathleen Kaska
Release date: June 24, 2022. Available for pre-sale now.
It’s 1953, and detective Sydney Lockhart finds herself solving another murder in another famous hotel. The victim is a slick bookie named Johnny Pine who had his dirty fingers in pies from Texas to Florida. Sydney tracks Pine to the Menger Hotel in San Antonio where she discovers he’s been murdered in the room next to hers. And as usual, Sydney is a suspect. With her partner, Ralph Dixon, handling the case from Austin; or so she believes, Sydney is working alone in unfamiliar territory. A string of illicit deeds that trails from San Antonio to New Orleans, leads to more murder. Uncertain of whom she can trust, Sydney’s only choice is to find the killer before the killer finds her.
Reaching For Forever by Tara Eldana
Flora Hargrove is a school teacher, a normal kind of gal who is all about family and friends. So when her best friend needs undercover help to save a teen that’s gone missing, she’s all in — stripper pole and all. Mandy wasn’t totally straight with Flora, so when she donned her outfit, or ‘took off her clothes’, she was more embarrassed until it let loose something inside of her she never knew she had. Then one thing led to another and now she’s pregnant.
Rex Reddington is struggling with his new life. He’s literally a jack-of-all-trades and now finds himself helping his PI friend moonlight on a kidnapping case that’s about to come down. Problem? The criminals were onto them and they needed to take cover — so they each took one of the dancers for a lap dance in one of the private rooms. And it should have stopped there. But it didn’t…it went too far. But no regrets. Even when they met months later and he found out he was a soon-to-be dad.
Trail Through Time ~ Liberty Valley Love, Book 5 by Jose Malone
When a suspected murderer escapes from the Junction City jail, the marshal’s younger brother, Kyle Morgan feels honor bound to follow him from 1888 Liberty Valley to the 21st century. From what his new sister-in-law, former homicide detective Beth Chambers-Morgan has shared, Kyle knows a woman he’s only seen in pictures is in mortal danger. Somehow, he must convince her that he’s traveled more than a hundred years to protect her. The survivor of a horrendous attack, horse rescuer, Nina Armstrong blames herself for the death of her best friend who pursued her assailant and vanished in Mount Baker National Forest. Now, a battle-scarred stranger arrives determined to guard Nina from the serial killer planning to eliminate the sole witness to his crimes. Intelligent, brave, Kyle Morgan talks like an old-time cowboy, but Nina wonders about his claims to be from a distant place and time. Why is she so drawn to him?
Love may prove to be the biggest threat of all when survival is on the line. Will they create a future together in Liberty Valley or will Kyle abandon her and return to the days of yesteryear? What is home and where will they find it?
Educating Aviva by Rebecca Marks
Beautiful Aviva Stern never dreamed she would leave her strong Hasidic community, nor does she ever imagine meeting and falling in love with a stranger from a completely different background. Nevertheless, a frightening incident in her life makes her feel she has no choice but to escape, although she has no real place to go. But her chance meeting of handsome, kind David Delgado, a Colombian musician, enables her to make the difficult transition and to have confidence that she can be loved and succeed in a very different world from the one in which she grew up.
Bad Blood Sisters by Saralyn Richard
Quinn McFarland has grown up around dead bodies. Quinn’s always joked about death, but this summer, death stops being funny. For one thing, her brother finally undergoes transplant surgery. For another, Quinn’s estranged BFF, her “blood” sister, is brought into the family mortuary, bludgeoned to death. Quinn’s haunted by the past, her friendship gone awry, and the blood oath she’s sworn to keep secret. The police consider her a person of interest, and someone threatens her not to talk. Quinn is the only one who knows enough to bring the killer to justice, but what she’s buried puts her in extreme danger.
Fans of Lisa Jewell, Shari Lapena, and “Six Feet Under” will stay up late reading BAD BLOOD SISTERS.
When Lt. Everett T. Pope is notified of an explosion in downtown Denver close to the judicial buildings, his first instinct is gas leak. No such luck. As Incident Command and Pope’s own Major Crimes unit move in, he discovers he knows the intended victims — an Assistant U. S. Attorney — and Pope’s former partner, now a private investigator, has died shielding the injured AUSA with his body.
As ATF and the FBI take over investigating the bombing and unraveling motives behind the murder attempt, Pope is relegated to a peripheral role. But the injured AUSA’s aunt is a United States senator used to getting results. She turns to the team that solved the Black Pearl Killer murders with a very big ask — find her answers and locate the bomber.
FBI Special Agent Brian DiPietro must recall his entire cold case team from their far-flung assignments knowing he’s being asked to do the impossible. The senator, however, doesn’t know the meaning of the word. All too soon, DiPietro finds his team working alongside ATF on a red-hot mission. One that uncovers a decades’ old cold case.
Donnell Ann Bell is an award-winning author of four romantic suspense novels, all of which have been e-book bestsellers.
www.amazon.com Blind Date by Brenda Chapman
True crime podcaster Ella Tate is shaken to her core by the horrific assault and murder of Josie Wheatly, a teacher she has never met … because not only had Josie moved into Ella’s vacated apartment three months earlier, but her Facebook photos reveal a striking resemblance between the two women. Within days, two people close to Ella are harmed, and she fears that she’s become the target of twisted revenge from her crime-reporting days. Reluctantly teaming up with her neighbour Tony, a hairdresser who loves the finer things in life, and Liam Hunter, the persistent detective assigned to the cases, Ella struggles to stay one step ahead before she becomes the target of the final kill.
Brenda Chapman is a Canadian crime fiction author with over twenty published novels. In addition to short stories and standalones, she has written the lauded Stonechild and Rouleau police procedural series, the Anna Sweet mystery novellas for adult literacy, and the Jennifer Bannon mysteries for middle grade. Brenda’s latest release is Blind Date: A Hunter and Tate Mystery is the first in a new series. Her work has been shortlisted for several awards including four Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence. Brenda studied English literature at Lakehead and Carleton universities and earned a Bachelor of Education from Queen’s University. She taught for fifteen years in the field of special education followed by a Communications career in the federal government. She currently writes full-time and makes her home in Ottawa.
Kindle:
Amazon Print:
Grant’s Crossing Series — Death of the Alder by Jamie Tremain
Twenty-eight-year-old Alysha Grant has inherited a large, rural family property — Leven Lodge. A converted farmhouse is now home to a small, but eccentric group of retirees. She feels overwhelmed and totally unprepared for this responsibility but dives in. Her arrival coincides with a body found floating in the Alder River. The suspicious death brings attention to some of the home’s residents and may be connected to a proposed casino. Opinion is divided on whether the development, to be built on a former sawmill location once belonging to Alysha’s family, will be a good thing for Grant’s Crossing.
Alysha and her life partner, Jeff Iverson, settle into their new duties, learning about the home’s residents and what makes them tick, when another body is retrieved from the river. Coincidence? Alysha and new friends, voice their suspicions regarding the town’s shady naturopath — Dr. Reid Harrison — and vow to keep him away from those who live at the lodge.
Despite their best intentions, Alysha finds her own life threatened, when true motives around the casino are revealed.
Stitch, Bake, Die! An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery
With massive debt, a communist mother-in-law, a Shakespeare-quoting parrot, and a photojournalist boyfriend who may or may not be a spy, crafts editor Anastasia Pollack already juggles too much in her life. So she’s not thrilled when her magazine volunteers her to present workshops and judge a needlework contest at the inaugural conference of the New Jersey chapter of the Stitch and Bake Society, a national organization of retired professional women. At least her best friend and cooking editor Cloris McWerther has also been roped into similar duties for the culinary side of the 3-day event taking place on the grounds of the exclusive Beckwith Chateau Country Club.
The sweet little old ladies Anastasia is expecting to meet are definitely old, and some of them are little, but all are anything but sweet. She’s stepped into a vipers’ den that starts with bribery and ends with murder. When an ice storm forces Anastasia and Cloris to spend the night at the Chateau, Anastasia discovers evidence of insurance scams, medical fraud, an opioid ring, long-buried family secrets, and a bevy of suspects.
Can she piece together the various clues before she becomes the killer’s next target?
Crafting tips included.
USA Today and Amazon bestselling author Lois Winston began her award-winning writing career in 2006 with the humorous novel Talk Gertie to Me.
The Bug Diary by Amber Fraley
Set mostly on the KU campus and around Lawrence, The Bug Diary is a coming-of-age novel about freshman Kymer Charvat’s struggles and triumphs in learning to break away from home and adjust to campus life in a new state. Kymer hopes to be an entomologist someday, and luckily, her dad’s alma mater, the University of Kansas, has a great insect collection and entomology program. With her new best friends Siren and Mattie—and occasionally a little harmless experimentation—Kymer explores the iconic University of Kansas campus. But when the ghost of Carrie Watson, first librarian and namesake of KU’s Watson Library, hands Kymer an old insect field journal created by KU’s first female graduate in 1873, Kymer must figure out why she’s been gifted the bug diary.
Amber Fraley is your typical Gen Xer suburban Kansas wife and mom of one who grew up a book nerd in a dysfunctional family and now writes about those experiences as hilarious therapy. She’s the author of the darkly humorous essay collection From Kansas, Not Dorothy, and the viral essay Gen X Will Not Go Quietly, as well as numerous human interest articles in regional magazines. The Bug Diary is her first new adult novel.
Enjoy some or all of these books this summer. My very best wishes, Geza
