Today's Featured Book:

 48 Hours to Kill

by Andrew Bourelle

Crooked Lane Books

Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

Serving a ten-year sentence in a Nevada prison for armed robbery, Ethan Lockhart hopes that he can one day become a productive, law-abiding member of society. But society has other plans for Ethan. When he’s given a forty-eight-hour furlough to attend his sister Abby’s funeral, he learns that her body was never found—just enough blood to declare her dead instead of missing—and he begins to suspect that there’s more to her death than was reported. Ethan decides to use his forty-eight-hour window to find out what happened. But to get to the bottom of the mystery, he’ll have to return to his unsavory past.

Ethan teams up with his sister’s best friend Whitney in a search for the truth. United in their shared grief, their chemistry—both emotional and physical—also begins to heat up. But romance goes on hold as the suspects mount. Ethan’s old boss, Shark, a mid-level loan shark now heads a criminal empire. As Ethan and Whitney uncover more clues, they become convinced that Shark is responsible for the murder, but they have no proof.

If Ethan is going to solve his sister’s murder in forty-eight hours, he will have to become the criminal he swore he would never be again.

Today's Featured Book:

Fadeaway Joe

by Hugh Lessig

Crooked Lane Books

Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Sixty-four-year-old Joe has known violence his entire life. For forty years, he’s worked as an enforcer for loan shark and close friend Maxie Smith, breaking more than a few bones along the way. When Maxie abruptly fires him, Joe isn’t sure where to lay the blame—on Maxie, the man he once considered his brother, or on the early-onset Alzheimer’s that made Maxie lose faith in him in the first place.

To keep his head above water, he begins to operate a food truck that’s barely getting by. Desperate to regain some purpose in his life, Joe makes a life-altering decision: he’s going to take down Maxie Smith by any means necessary, once and for all. However, his plan of revenge is sidelined when he meets twenty-two-year-old Paula Jessup, a wise-cracking amateur detective with a few scheming cards up her sleeve, who’s on the run from a trafficking ring she’s been investigating. The two form an unlikely bond: Paula needs some protection and Joe needs a purpose.

With the stakes running high and the clock ticking down—will this gamble pay off?

On My Radar:

I Know What You Did

by Cayce Osborne 

Crooked Lane Books

Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Petal Woznewski is content with her quiet, introverted life in New York City: she has her junk food, her movies, and her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Gus. That peace is shattered when her name appears on the dedication page of an anonymously written thriller with a cryptic note: “I know what you did, Petal Woznewski. And now everyone else will, too.”

As she reads, Petal realizes the story is rooted in a secret she buried thirty years earlier, when she was fourteen. A secret involving the tragic death of her friend, Megan. A secret that only one other person knows—their old friend, Jenny. Armed with a copy of the book and her own suspicions, Petal returns to her hometown of Madison, Wisconsin. There, she discovers more questions than answers. Jenny has disappeared, and Petal’s old high school crush, Ben, doesn’t know anything about the book—at least not anything he’s telling.

As sinister clues pile up, and the thriller’s plot detours dangerously from the facts, Petal has no choice but to confront her past and solve the mystery of who wrote it — before her very real life ends as tragically as the novel.

On My Radar:

Murder at Hotel 1911: An Ivy Nichols Mystery
by Audrey Keown
Crooked Lane Books
Hardcover


From the book publicity:

If you want to spend a night amid the luxury and charm of the early 20th century, book a room at Hotel 1911. You’ll find 28-year-old Ivy Nichols behind the reception desk. The hotel is Ivy’s only link to the family that abandoned her when she was a small child. Now, plagued by panic attacks, she pedals her sea-green Schwinn bicycle to work every evening, hoping desperately to hold on to her job.

When wealthy, imperious Ms. Swain arrives at the hotel and belittles Ivy, the young woman seeks consolation in the welcoming kitchen of George, the hotel’s chef. Despite her tormentor’s barbs, she dutifully informs George that Ms. Swain has a deadly allergy to shellfish. So when Ms. Swain collapses at dinner and dies, the police suspect that the chef made a tragic, inexcusable error. Desperate to save George’s career, Ivy sets out sleuthing. She learns that numerous people in and around the hotel had motives to contaminate Ms. Swain’s plate. Among them are Jeffrey Swain, the victim’s son and heir; painter Rose Jewett; and British expat Hemal Sandeep.

Even after the police find traces of shellfish in George’s kitchen, Ivy is determined to clear her friend’s name. But the stress of the investigation, in a hotel filled with suspects, threatens to precipitate another terrifying panic attack...or something more deadly.