Well it’s time to choose my Amazon First Read again. Every month Amazon Prime Members can choose one of eight books that are due to be published the following month. This months choices are:
Psychological Thriller
Trance (Alex Madison) by Adam Southward. Pages: 332. Publication Date: 1 July 2019
Synopsis: His victims are powerless. He is in control. This is his revenge—and he’s only just begun.
Three university scientists are found dead in a gruesome murder-suicide, and the only suspect in the case, Victor Lazar, is quickly captured. When the spate of violent suicides follows him to prison he is moved to solitary confinement, reserved for the highest-risk inmates. And then his assigned psychologist inexplicably takes his own life.
Alex Madison, a former forensic psychologist turned private therapist, is brought in to interview Victor. He suspects that Victor is controlling his victims, somehow coaxing them into a suggestive trance. It seems like science fiction, but as Alex digs deeper he uncovers a frightening reality of secret research and cruel experimentation—and the perpetrators are closer to home than he could ever have imagined.
Too late, Alex learns the true extent of what Victor is capable of—and who he’s after. With everything he holds dear at risk, can Alex take control of a dangerous mind—before it takes control of him?
Suspense
False Step by Victoria Helen Stone. Pages: 278. Publication Date: 1 July 2019
Synopsis: Stay calm, keep smiling, and watch your step. In this marriage of secrets and lies, nothing is what it seems.
For days, all of Denver, Colorado, has worried over the fate of a missing child, little Tanner Holcomb. Then, a miracle: handsome, athletic Johnny Bradley finds him, frightened but unharmed, on a hiking trail miles from his wealthy family’s mountain home.
In a heartbeat, his rescuer goes from financially strapped fitness trainer to celebrated hero. The heat of the spotlight may prove too much for Johnny’s picture-perfect family, however. His wife, Veronica, despises the pressure of the sudden fame, afraid that secrets and bitter resentments of her marriage may come to light. And she’s willing to do anything to keep them hidden.
But when a shocking revelation exposes an even darker side to Tanner’s disappearance, Veronica realises that nothing in her life can be trusted. And everything should be feared.
Contemporary Fiction
The Ingredients of Us by Jennifer Gold. Pages: 293. Publication Date: 1 July 2019
From debut author Jennifer Gold comes a delicious novel about the sweet and sour ingredients of life and love.
Synopsis: Elle, an accomplished baker, has a recipe for every event in her life. But when she discovers her husband’s infidelity, she doesn’t know what to make of it. Jam, maybe? Definitely jam.
Fed up with the stale crumbs of her marriage, Elle revisits past recipes and the events that inspired them. A recipe for scones reminds her of her father’s death, cinnamon rolls signify the problematic courtship with her husband, and a batch of chocolate cookies casts Elle in a less-than-flattering light. Looking back, Elle soon realizes that some ingredients were missing all along.
After confronting her husband, Elle indulges her sweet tooth in other ways, including a rebound that just leaves her more confused. As secrets from the past collide with the conflicts of the present, Elle struggles to manage her bakery business and maintain the relationships most important to her. In piecing her life back together, will Elle learn to take the bitter with the sweet?
Domestic Suspense
Mother Dear: A Thriller by Nova Lee Marie. Translator: Jozef der Voort. Pages 415. Publication Date: 1 July 2019
Synopsis: There’s only one thing worse than doing the unthinkable: what you’re willing to do to hide it.
Helen lives a decent, uncomplicated life. Satisfied in her career, she’s raising three happy teenagers, and her family has the most envied house on the street. Admittedly, she’s growing just a little disenchanted with her marriage to her workaholic husband, Werner. But that’s nothing she can’t fix. Then one day Helen comes home to something completely unexpected that threatens to shatter her carefully cultivated world.
For disaffected, young petty criminals Ralf and Brian, it was a scheme to make some cash: a quick home invasion. The targets they’ve chosen are Helen and Werner. With Ralf as lookout, Brian disappears into Helen and Werner’s house. But he never comes out.
And Helen’s nightmare is just beginning. She can’t possibly imagine how much worse it can get or just how far she’ll need to go to protect her family.
Historical Fiction
Along the Broken Bay by Flora J Solomon. Pages: 393. Publication Date: 1 July 2019
From the bestselling author of A Pledge of Silence comes a story of resistance, intrigue, and risking it all in the WWII Philippines.
Synopsis: December 1941. War has erupted in the Pacific, spelling danger for Gina Capelli Thorpe, an American expat living in Manila. When the Japanese invade and her husband goes missing, Gina flees with her daughter to the Zambales Mountains to avoid capture—or worse.
Desperate for money, medicine, and guns, the resistance recruits Gina to join their underground army and smuggles her back to Manila. There, she forges a new identity and opens a nightclub, where seductive beauties sing, dance, and tease secrets out of high-ranking Japanese officers while the wildly successful club and its enemy patrons help fund the resistance.
But operating undercover in the spotlight has Gina struggling to stay a step ahead of the Japanese. She’s risked everything to take a stand, but her club is a house of cards in the eye of a storm. Can Gina keep this delicate operation running long enough to outlast the enemy, or is she on a sure path to defeat that will put her family, her freedom, or even her life at risk?
Thriller
The Hallows by Victor Methos. Pages: 350. Publication Date: 1 July 2019
Synopsis: A ruthless lawyer cross-examines his life after a guilty client walks free in this sharp legal thriller from the bestselling author of The Neon Lawyer.
Ruthless defense attorney Tatum Graham has been living large in Miami, but when his recently acquitted client claims another victim, Tatum has a crisis of conscience. Disillusioned, he heads to his small Utah hometown for a simpler life…but that’s not what he finds.
Soon after he arrives, Tatum’s childhood crush offers him a job at the county attorney’s office and assigns him a murder case. The victim is a teenage girl not unlike the victim in the last case he tried. Now a prosecutor, Tatum sees a chance for redemption, but politics, corruption, and a killer defense threaten to thwart justice.
To complicate matters, Tatum’s estranged father has terminal cancer, and the time to reconcile is running out. Tatum moved to Utah to find clarity, but his thoughts swirl with old feelings and present dangers. As the case heats up, so does the risk, threatening to adjourn Tatum’s new life before it begins.
Biographical Fiction
Stars in His Eyes by Marti Gironell. Translator: Adrian Nathan West. Pages: 202. Publication Date: 1 July 2019
Synopsis: From the fascist Franco regime to Hollywood’s glamour—an epic historical novel based on the meteoric rise of one of the world’s most celebrated restaurateurs.
Ceferino Carrión is desperate for a new life—one of opportunity, fortune, and fame. But he knows he’ll never find this life in war-torn Spain. With his home country under the heel of the devastating Franco dictatorship and call-up papers on his doorstep, Cefe knows there’s only one thing he can do: run.
A new life awaits in America, as does a new name—Jean Leon. From the concrete valleys of the Bronx to the sun-soaked hills of California, Jean crosses paths with legendary superstars, political powerhouses, and dangerous mobsters as he flees his past and pursues his dreams. With friends like Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, and James Dean to see him through, Jean soon gets his own taste of stardom, opening his glamorous Beverly Hills restaurant, La Scala, to nightly swarms of celebrities.
But with every new adrenaline rush of celebrity, Jean is further distanced from everyone he loves. Only in searching through his ever-receding past in Barcelona can he find the key to unlock the dream life he has risked so much to build.
Science Fiction
Aftershock (The Palladium Wars Book 1) by Marko Kloos. Pages: ?? Publication Date: 1 July 2019
“A new series that promises to be just as engrossing [as Frontlines]…the action just as exciting, the science just as solid, the tension just as high. I gulped down the first book in a day, and I am already eager for the next one.” —George R. R. Martin
Synopsis: Across the six-planet expanse of the Gaia system, the Earthlike Gretia struggles to stabilize in the wake of an interplanetary war. Amid an uneasy alliance to maintain economies, resources, and populations, Aden Robertson reemerges. After devoting twelve years of his life to the reviled losing side, with the blood of half a million casualties on his hands, Aden is looking for a way to move on. He’s not the only one.
A naval officer has borne witness to inconceivable attacks on a salvaged fleet. A sergeant with the occupation forces is treading increasingly hostile ground. And a young woman, thrust into responsibility as vice president of her family’s raw materials empire, faces a threat she never anticipated.
Now, on the cusp of an explosive and wide-reaching insurrection, Aden plunges once again into the brutal life he longed to forget. He’s been on the wrong side of war before. But this time, the new enemy has yet to reveal themselves…or their dangerous endgame.
*** Which book would you choose? I haven’t been able to choose which book to get this month. So let me know what book you’d choose or recommend to me. ***
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