Category: ARC Books

Posts in this category are cross-posted with the Book Reviews category. They are book reviews that I write for Netgalley or Partners in Crime about ARC I get thanks to one of the sites. Frequency posting will vary depending of the site approval, but I will publish them on Sundays (for Netgalley) instead of Wednesday and depending on the date availability for Partners in Crime.

Bird in Hand

Laura2 Comments on Bird in Hand
Bird in Hand


, Book # 2
Ruthenia Press
September 3, 2020
ebook
289
English
October 8, 2020 October 26, 2020

ISBN: 0999548743 , ISBN13: 978-0999548745
Purchase Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

When the body of popular local guide Arley Fitchett washes up onto Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Lieutenant Sam Tate, just two months at her new job, is charged with investigating his death. She learns the dead man was searching for a carving he believed had been hidden in the area by pirates in 1718. He’s not the only one. Several others shared Fitchett’s obsession with the bird with the sapphire eye. But which one of them is the murderer—or the next victim? And how long does Sam have to catch a killer before her own past catches up with her?

“The book… allows Tate to more fully come into herown as a formidable character on whose shoulders future procedurals could confidentially be placed.” ~ Kirkus Reviews

“Bird in Hand will have prior Sam fans and newcomers thoroughly engrossed, all the way to the unexpected end.” ~ D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

“Even better than the first…leaving this reader eager for a third.” ~Teri Case, author of the award-winning TIGER DRIVE

About the book

The author of this new chapter of the series takes us on a mysterious search of a treasure, mixed with death and disappearance.

We meet again the investigator Sam Tate, already met in the first book. She is also a bit mysterious, she has a particular past and due to this past she has changed her name. Sam has just moved from Tennessee where she concluded a case of a serial killer who for years had been called the Wedding Crasher, resolved together with her boyfriend, an FBI agent, met on that occasion.

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The Liar’s Sister

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The Liar's Sister
, ,

Bookouture
September 24 2019
ebook
298
English
August 25, 2019 August 28, 2019

Ten years ago Samuel Murray went missing from the small village of Buckthorpe and was never found again. A quiet boy who loved walking in the woods and tending the animals on his parents’ farm. Family, friends and neighbours all say they didn’t see him on the dark, rainy night he disappeared. But surely someone in the close-knit community must know something?

Rosie Sharpe cried for weeks after. But her little sister Heather knows that Rosie’s tears hide the truth. Because the night their friend Samuel was last seen, Heather saw her older sister climbing back into the window of their childhood bedroom. Her jacket torn, her eyes wild and her body trembling with fear.

Heather has never told anyone what she saw, but secrets can’t stay buried forever…

When Rosie and Heather are forced to return to the home they grew up in, to spend the last days with their dying mother, they must confront what really happened a decade ago. But the people of Buckthorpe make it clear they are unwelcome – they’ve always suspected the girls knew more than they said about the night Samuel went missing. And as the shocking lies of the past begin to unravel, they have the power to put the lives of both sisters in terrible danger…

This twist-filled, page-turning psychological thriller will keep you hooked until the final, jaw-dropping pages.

About the book

I would like to thank NetGalley and the author for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Liar’s Sister talks about the conflict between two families in a small, narrow-minded village. The two families are the Sharpes and the Murrays, who have known each other for a lifetime, but the secrets that exist between the various members lead to a split that has lasted for ten years. On one side there are two sisters, the main characters of the book Heather and Rosie and on the other side Samuel and his adopted brother Peter. Ten years ago something happened, something serious and obscure enough that will put the two sisters in danger.

The book starts with a letter that Heather writes to her older sister Rosie and here we discover a fact that will be the main theme of the whole book. In fact, ten years ago Samuel disappeared and Heather is sure her sister knew something. Both return to bid farewell to the dying mother and at the funeral the two are treated coldly, but Heather wonders why she, too, is treated poorly and knows that everything started by Samuel’s disappearance and therefore wants to shed light on what happened. But will it be a smart move? Or will she only endanger herself?

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The Quiet Ones

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The Quiet Ones
,

, Book # 3
Aria
September 12th 2019
ebook from NetGalley
262
English
June 12, 2019 July 26, 2019

If only someone had listened...

When the supposed suicide of famous Scottish football coach Harry Nugent hits the headlines, the tabloids are filled with tributes to a charitable pillar of the community that gave so much back to sport and to those less fortunate.

But something isn't right. Normally celebrities are queuing up to claim to have had a very special relationship with the deceased, but investigative journalist Oonagh O'Neil is getting the distinct impression that people are trying to distance themselves from Harry.

Oonagh's investigation leads her to uncover a heartbreakingly haunting cover-up that chills her to the core... and places her in mortal danger from those willing to protect their sadistic and dark secrets at any cost...

About the book

I would like to thank NetGalley and the author for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Yes, I admit it, it took me quite a while to read this book. Over a month. Because one, I found it slow and second in the meantime I read other books.

In this book a well-known football coach is found by his wife Sarah, hanged from the balustrade of his house. After investigating the fact, detectives find that it is not all as it seems and disturbing facts about the past of the coach come to the surface.

Oonagh is the journalist who follows the case even if not officially, but stubbornly she will manage to find the whole truth.

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Girl From the Tree House

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Girl From the Tree House
,

, Book # 1
BooksGoSocial
May 30, 2019
ebook from NetGalley
279
English
May 30, 2019 June 7, 2019

It all unraveled at the funeral...

Horace Reid's death opened the door to our freedom. His widow, Elizabeth, exists only on paper. She disappeared thirty years ago. It's us, the Tribe, who live in her body now. But nobody knows that. Us are Elise, the reluctant host, Lilly the closer, Ama, the proverbial mother, Sky, our wise guide, Amadeus, the warrior, and Luke, the man around the house. There are others, but we make sure they stay hidden and away from harm.

After Horace's funeral, they tried to lock us in a mental hospital. Our sister-in-law had it all carefully planned. Thanks to quick thinking—yes, being a multiple has its advantages—we escaped to New Zealand's South Island. Tucked away in the West Coast wilderness we... well, the plan was to continue our healing. We didn't expect that monsters from our past still had us on their radar. When the police accuse us of murder we have to run again. Where to go, which way to turn? Our neighbor Scott appears helpful, but can we trust him? Can we trust ourselves? Can we trust anyone?

The GIRL FROM THE TREE HOUSE is the first of a series of psychological thrillers set in current day New Zealand. It describes how Elizabeth, a thirty-two-year-old woman with multiple personalities (Dissociative Identity Disorder, DID), fights for her sanity and freedom. Four core personalities tell the story from the inside out, giving a touching insight into the workings of the dissociated mind. There are no graphic descriptions of abuse.

About the book

I would like to thank NetGalley and the author for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is a different reading for me, I like psychological thriller and this is quite so. The book category is Mystery & Thrillers and Women’s Fiction on NetGalley website, but I have to say that the “thriller” part, isn’t about a crime as I thought when I read the synopsis. There isn’t even a “real crime” and with that I mean that the murder isn’t the “protagonist” or the main thing that needs to be solved. There is a murder but the protagonist’s tale is the main subject of the book.

The book is told by different points of view, but those points of view belong to the same person. This woman, because of the trauma endured when she was a child, has developed a dissociative identity disorder so the book is told by these multiple personalities that live inside her.

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The Wedding Crasher

Laura4 Comments on The Wedding Crasher
The Wedding Crasher
, ,

, Book # 1
Ruthenia Press
May 8, 2019
ebook
340
English
May 14, 2019 May 19, 2019

ISBN13: 9780999548738
Purchase Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble

A brunette in a bridal gown turns up in Pickett County, Tennessee, throat slit and ring finger missing. She’s the latest victim of the Wedding Crasher, a serial killer who murders women just weeks before their weddings.

Samantha Tate is Picket County’s yoga-loving, poker-playing new sheriff, a former Nashville homicide detective who struggles with her inner demons. To catch the meticulous murderer, Sam will have to follow her instincts and ignore her worst impulses. Can she stop the Wedding Crasher before another bride-to-be dies?

About the book

The Wedding Crasher begins immediately with the discovery of the body, a woman is found under a white oak, with a fairly dated wedding dress. Sheriff Samantha Tate knows that the “wedding crasher” is back. He didn’t make many casualties, “only” five, in Florida, in Georgia and then in Tennessee, but this is the second murder in the area and Samantha wants to solve the case.

With Samantha, Special agent Terry Sloan investigates, out of Tampa FBI that during the first investigation seems to have approached the new sheriff a little too much only then to return to Florida when the case became cold. Will they be able to solve it together? And what is hiding in Samantha’s past?

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