Posts for 'Mystery' Category

Mystery books come in all different types of categories. Among these mystery book subgenres are: police procedurals, hard boiled, humorous, "cozies" (à la Agatha Christie), and graphic.

Many established authors are adding paranormal cozy mystery books to their repertoires. The last few years has had a rather large increase of paranormal happenings in the Cozy Mystery book world.

Some of the Cozy mystery book paranormal categories are: ghosts, psychics, vampires, witches, and even werewolves! This paper will list several authors who write cozy mysteries with the paranormal vein, with the focus on the ghost sub-category. The paper will also name the cozy mystery book series which the author writes, and give a very brief description of the series.

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When physicist Michael Shelborne mysteriously vanishes, his son Shel discovers that he had constructed a time travel device. Fearing his father may be stranded in time-or worse-Shel enlists the aid of Dave MacElroy, a linguist, to accompany him on the rescue mission.

Their journey through history takes them from the enlightenment of Renaissance Italy through the American Wild West to the civil-rights upheavals of the 20th century. Along the way, they encounter a diverse cast of historical greats, sometimes in unexpected situations. Yet the elder Shelborne remains elusive.

And then Shel violates his agreement with Dave not to visit the future. There he makes a devastating discovery that sends him fleeing back through the ages, and changes his life forever.

My mother used to tell me that you cannot judge a book by its cover. Actually I disagree with her, without even reading a single line of the text you can learn a great deal. Before I delve into a book I always read the stuff that most people do not. It did not take much investigation to figure out that I was going to enjoy this book, there were two things that caught my eye, firstly the dedication:

To all of the warty toads who hopped across my path

None of that mushy stuff to long lost friends and relatives. Byron just tells it the way it is! The other thing that caught my attention was the inscription on the back cover, a piece of real estate usually occupied with gushing one paragraph excerpts of praise from fellow authors. Once again Byron bucks the trend with:

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The toughest case yet for Greywalker and P.I. Harper Blaine, “a great heroine†(New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris), has arrived. Harper Blaine was your average small-time P.I. until she died—for two minutes. Now Harper is a Greywalker—walking the line between the living world and the paranormal realm. And she’s discovering that her new abilities are landing her in all sorts of “strange cases.†But for Harper, her own.

Harper Blaine was your average small-time P.I. until she died—for two minutes. Now Harper is a Greywalker—walking the line between the living world and the paranormal realm. And she’s discovering that her new abilities are landing her in all sorts of “strange cases.

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Baylor University graduate Will Davis Jr. has released another of his “Pray Big” series. In Pray Big for Your Child, the author urges parents to pray boldly, specifically and consistently for their children.

The founding pastor of Austin Christian Fellowship contends that moms and dads should engage in “pinpoint praying” rather than “no-point praying.” He defines pinpoint prayers as those that have “clear purpose, direction and focus.” On the other hand, he characterizes no-point prayers as “too broad,” “too safe” or “too vague.”

In a series of sequential chapters, Davis moves the parent from foundational praying through specific praying for sons and daughters to praying for the child’s mission in life.

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I say, “you may think you’re reading about a different world,” but then you must consider Angel Vidal Mendoza Sr., a Bakersfield man who is currently accused of being high on PCP and eating his son’s eyes and then trying to hack his own legs off with an axe.

There are so many other horrifying examples of things like this… No, Dennis Cooper doesn’t write about a different world, a speculative world of the dark and grotesque: Dennis Cooper writes about the extreme edges of the extant.

When you first open Dennis Cooper’s new collection of stories, Ugly Man, and begin reading the first entry, “Jerk,” you may think that you’re reading about a different world: a world where underage gay sex is tossed in alongside.

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The thirty-fourth novel by Mary Stanton, who also writes under nom de plume Claudia Bishop, Angel’s Advocate is the second release in the Beaufort & Company mystery series.

While the book is part of a series, it certainly functions as a stand-alone read, but when you finish Angel’s Advocate, Angel’s Advocate, you will probably want to rush out to buy other books by Mary Stanton.  It’s original, well-written, and just the type of book that will leave readers turning the pages.

The book’s main character is Brianna “Bree” Winston-Beaufort, the oldest daughter of a wealthy, eccentric South Carolina family, who inherits a haunted law firm smack dab in the middle of a graveyard in Savannah, Georgia.

In Angel’s Advocate, Bree is back to business unusual at Beaufort & Company.
With her most peculiar (a.k.a. “dead”) clientele and her anything-but-angelic staff, Bree finds that money’s a bit tight at Beaufort & Company.  After all, while the dead certainly need Bree’s help in appealing to a higher court, they’re not exactly paying clients.

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Dru Anderson has what her grandmother called “the touch.†(Comes in handy when you’re traveling from town to town with your dad, hunting ghosts, suckers, wulfen, and the occasional zombie.) Then her dad turns up dead—but still walking—and Dru knows she’s next.

Even worse, she’s got two guys hungry for her affections, and they’re not about to let the fiercely independent Dru go it alone. Will Dru discover special she really is before coming face-to-fang with whatever—or whoever— is hunting her?

Sixteen-year-old Dru, raised mostly by her witchy grandmother, lives with her father a hunter of creatures from the Real World. It’s hardly the life of a typical teenager as Dru and her father frequently move around the country, honing their skills while tracking nightmarish creatures.

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Hector Carpentier, the narrator of Louis Bayard's delicious new historical mystery, The Black Tower, is one of those timid souls 'thin and pink and inclined to catch cold''  who is just waiting for a grand adventure to rock his world.

The year is 1818, Hector is 26, and he lives with his maman while nursing a broken heart. You can set your watch by his humdrum routine  until his name and address are discovered on the corpse of a stranger stabbed to death and stripped of his fingernails on a Paris street.

His life is changed by Detective Eugène Vidocq, a real-life crook-turned-cop whose flamboyant history Bayard has embellished with a few juicy new fictional chapters. Depicted here as a shape-shifting, swashbuckling lothario, Vidocq persuades our sad-sack hero to help him solve a mystery: Did Marie Antoinette's son Louis XVII (a.k.a. the Dauphin) really perish in prison in 1795? Or has he survived incognito as a mentally addled country gardener? Bayard's serpentine plot incorporates the long-buried secrets of Hector's late father, a Trojan hobbyhorse, swordplay, and more costume changes than a season of Sex and the City.

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With the typhoon coming, former US Navy SEAL Michael Wright knows his margin of safety is shrinking fast, but decides to see what the Serendipity is doing at sea so he watches from his ship Nemesis. While Michael is alone, the Serendipity contains three people, a crewmember, Arnaud the number one assistant to malfeasant Trevor Church, and Trevor's daughter Tally Cruise. The explosion that destroys the Serendipity surprises Michael who rescues Tally and believes the other two are dead.

Michael and Tally are attracted to one another from the start though he tries to ignore his feelings as he lives solely for vengeance on her father. Michael plans to use Tally as his pawn even though he finds making love with her brings back to life what her father killed in him. As several attempts on Tally's life occur, she and Michael fall in love. He must decide between a life with his beloved or to continue the plot that has kept him breathing for the past year.

Though the actions of others facilitate Michael's decisions, he remains a fresh character dealing with Tally's sparking positive feelings inside him. The story line is action-packed as the lead couple discovers they are IN TOO DEEP in a situation that Michael thought he controlled, but will learn otherwise. Cherry Adair provides readers with a strong romantic suspense thriller starring an anti-hero converted to hero by his intrepid beloved.