2009: #107 – The Fury (Jason Pinter)

Am I my brother’s keeper?

If I’d known I had a brother, I might have been. But he’s dead—shot point-blank in a rat-hole apartment, wasted by hunger and heroin. Stephen Gaines, a man with whom I shared nothing…except a father.

For some reason this stranger who shared my blood came to me for help…and I blew him off thinking he was just some junkie. Now I’m forced to question everything I ever knew…and figure out why this man was murdered in cold blood.

All I can do for Stephen Gaines now is find his killer—and with the help of Amanda Davies uncover the whole, hard truth. If it means tracking down a vicious drug kingpin—who may or may not exist—then so be it…

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2009: #106 – Full Bloom (Janet Evanovich)

The temperature’s on “sizzle” again in Beaumont, South Carolina, where peach trees are in season and ripe for the picking. So is its newest entrepreneur, Annie Fortenberry, who has inherited her grandmother’s B&B (and its eccentric handyman Erdle Thorney). According to a local psychic she also inherited a spirit from its glory days as a brothel-not the kind of publicity the Peach Tree Bed & Breakfast needs if it’s hosting millionaire Max Holt’s upcoming wedding! If rumors of a naughty, prank-playing ghost aren’t stressful enough, a mysterious man has arrived with an eye on Annie and her master suite. Wes Bridges is all leather and denim, sporting a two-day beard, straddling a Harley, and sending the B&B’s testosterone level through the roof. Annie’s cool demeanor may be dropping as fast as Wes’s jeans, but leave it to her missing ex-husband to dampen the passion! Turns out someone has done him in, and all evidence points to Annie! Wrapped up in a murder plot, Annie must find the killer, save her own neck, and get back to where she was-wrapped up in Wes’s strong loving arms…

We guarantee that you’re going to have as much fun reading Full Bloom as we had writing it! (Even if we were surprised by the ending!) And you won’t want to miss the hair-raising shenanigans when Fleas, the hound dog, meets the most cantankerous, snooty, bad-tempered, twenty-two pound orange cat….

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2009: #105 – The Spire (Richard North Patterson)

Mark Darrow grew up in a small Ohio town with no real advantages beyond his intelligence and athletic ability. But thanks to the intervention of Lionel Farr—a professor at Caldwell, the local college—Darrow became an excellent student and, later, a superb trial lawyer. Now Farr asks his still-youthful protégé for a life-altering favor. An embezzlement scandal has threatened Caldwell’s very existence—would Darrow consider becoming its new president?

Darrow accepts, but returning to his alma mater opens old wounds. Sixteen years ago, on the night of his greatest triumph as Caldwell’s star quarterback, he discovered the body of a black female student named Angela Hall at the base of the Spire, the bell tower that dominates the leafy campus. His best friend, Steve Tillman, was charged with Angela’s murder and ultimately sent to prison for life. But now, even as Darrow begins the daunting task of leading Caldwell, he discovers that the case against his friend left crucial questions unanswered. Despite his new obligations—and his deepening attachment to Farr’s beautiful though troubled daughter—Darrow begins his own inquiry into the murder. Soon he becomes convinced that Angela’s killer is still at large, but only when another mysterious death occurs does he understand that his own life is at risk.

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