Mailbox Monday is still on tour, with January’s spot being at Rose City Reader.
This week has been good 🙂 On Tuesday I received 6 books! Five were from a PBS Box-of-Books, and the other was an ARC courtesy of Simon & Schuster UK as a welcome to the Book Chick City’s Mystery & Suspense Challenge 2011!
From Simon & Schuster UK:
In his first hour back from a six-month leave of absence, Detective Jacob Striker’s day quickly turns into a nightmare. He is barely on scene five minutes at his daughter’s high school when he encounters an Active Shooter situation. Three mean wearing hockey masks – Black, White, and Red – have stormed the school with firearms and are killing indiscriminately. Striker takes immediate action. Within minutes, two of the gunmen are dead and Striker is close to ending the violence. But before Striker can react, Red Mask flees – and escapes. Against the clock, Striker investigates the killings for which there is no known motive and no suspect. Soon his investigation takes him to darker places, and he realizes that everything at Saint Patrick’s High is not as it appears. The closer he gets to the truth, the more dangerous his world becomes. Until Striker himself is in the line of fire.
Every Move She Makes by Robin Burcell
Gruesome slasher murders are spreading terror in San Francisco. The pressure is on the police force to track down the killer before another young woman is found, throat cut, body abandoned. Homicide Inspector Kate Gillespie is picked to lead the search with her partner, old-timer Sam Scolari. This is the case that could make Kate’s career. But the next victim stops her in her tracks – and all evidence points to her partner. He goes underground, leaving Kate alone to prove his innocence, or guilt. Kate has to find the killer before the cops find Sam. Complicating matters is Mike “Torrid” Torrance, the sexiest Internal Affairs officer ever to carry a badge. He’s watching Kate, an assignment that brings them far closer than they expected. Without a partner she can trust … with a killer and a cop watching her every move … can Kate find the truth before it’s too late?
Messiah by Boris Starling
The first victim was found hanging from a rope. The second, beaten to death in a pool of blood. The third, decapitated. Their personal backgrounds were as strikingly different as the methods of their murders. But one chilling detail linked all three crimes. The local police had enough evidence to believe they were witnessing a rare – and disturbing – phenomenon: The making of a serial killer… Investigator Red Metcalfe has made national headlines with his uncanny gift for tracking killers. Getting inside their heads. Feeling what they feel. He’s interviewed the most notorious serial killers in the world. He knows what makes them tick. But not this time. The killer’s motives and methods are so elusive, so brilliant, that Red is forced to search the darkest corners of his own soul – and face the guiltiest secrets of his past – to see the truth. This time, the life he saves could be his own…
The Devil’s Footprints by Amanda Stevens
In 1922 a farmer in Adamant, Arkansas, awakes to a noise on his roof and finds his snow-blanketed yard marked with thousands of cloven footprints. The prints vanish with the melting snow … only to reappear seventy years later near the gruesome killing of Rachel DeLaune. Years after her sister’s unsolved murder, New Orleans tattoo artist Sarah DeLaune is haunted by the mysteries of her past. Sarah has always believed that her sister was killed by a man named Ashe Cain. But no one else had ever seen Ashe. He had “appeared” to Sarah when she needed a friend the most, only to vanish on the night of her sister’s murder. The past bleeds into the present when two mutilated bodies are found near Sara’s home, the crime scene desecreated by cloven footprints.
Cold as Ice by Anne Stuart
The job was supposed to be dead easy – hand-delivery some legal papers to billionaire philanthropist Harry Van Dorn’s extravagant yacht, get his signature and be done. But Manhattan lawyer Genevieve Spenser soon realizes she’s in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that the publicly benevolent playboy has a sick, vicious side. As he tries to make her his plaything for the evening, eager to use and abuse her until he discards her with the rest of his victims, Genevieve must keep her wits if she intents to survive the night. But there’s someone else on the ship who knows the true depths of Van Dorn’s evil. Peter Jensen is farm more than the unassuming personal assistant he pretends to be – he’s a secret operative who will stop at nothing to ensure Harry’s deadly Rule of Seven terror campaign dies with him. But Genevieve’s presence has thrown a wrench into his plans, and now he must decide whether to risk his mission to keep her alive, or allow her to become collateral damage…
Until the Day You Die by Tina Wainscott
When Maggie Fletcher’s sister is murdered, presumably by stalker Colin Masters, Maggie is left devastated – and furious. There isn’t enough evidence to prove that Masters did it – unless Maggie falsely claims, under oath, that she saw him leaving the scene of the crime. Maggie’s testimony puts Masters behind bars – but also wrecks Maggie’s life. When she and her son moves to a small New Hampshire town to start a new life, Maggie can’t help but feel that she’s being shadowed. Someone is slowly, stealthily invading every part of Maggie’s world, turning everything and everyone against her. Now Maggie fears that a faceless, merciless pursuer wants to make her pay for her lie -with her life.