Indie Crime Fiction of the Month for July 2024
Welcome to the latest edition of “Indie Crime Fiction of the Month”.
So what is “Indie Crime Fiction of the Month”? It’s a round-up of crime fiction by indie authors newly published this month, though some June books I missed the last time around snuck in as well. The books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. So far, most links only go to Amazon.com, though I may add other retailers for future editions.
Our new releases cover the broad spectrum of crime fiction. We have cozy mysteries, small town mysteries, animal mysteries, historical mysteries, Jazz Age mysteries, 1930s mysteries, paranormal mysteries, crime thrillers, legal thrillers, medical thrillers, adventure thrillers, police officers, FBI agents, private investigators, amateur sleuths, lawyers, missing children, prison breaks, the opioid crisis, deadly caves, crime-busting witches, crime-busting socialites, crime-busting cats, murder and mayhem in Boston, Philadelphia, Indiana, Louisiana, the Cayman Islands, the French Riviera and much more.
As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.
And now on to the books without further ado:
First Class train travel never looked so deadly….
France 1926
Penelope “Pen” Banks and friends are finally headed to Paris aboard the famous Blue Train. No sooner has the train left the station than one of their group is accused of theft by another First Class passenger. The situation is quickly resolved thanks to the timely (yet rather suspicious) intervention of a fellow female passenger.
When the victim of the supposed theft is found dead later that evening, a surprising number of suspects are uncovered. There may have been more to the victim’s travel plans than a simple tryst along the French Riviera with his young female companion.
Unfortunately, the accusation of theft has Penelope’s friend Lulu accused as one of the suspects. Can Pen find the real culprit before the cuffs are placed when they reach the next station?
When ambitious attorney Claire Hewitt is asked to represent the Satoris, one of Philadelphia’s most prominent families, in a lawsuit over the death of their daughter, she is thrust into an opioid nightmare with deadly impact—and not for the first time. Claire’s guilt for not saving her sister, Molly, has not subsided in the twenty years since Molly’s almost certainly opioid-related death. Now, with this new assignment, her guilt comes full circle. Who was really at fault in Molly’s death? And who is at fault now?
What begins as a quest for truth becomes infinitely more complicated as Claire struggles to balance her desire for justice with the Satoris’ thirst for revenge. She knows she needs to expose the greed that transforms legal opioid production into illicit fabrications and the neglect that is the breaking point between physicians and their patients. But there are powerful people who will seemingly stop at nothing to prevent these truths from seeing the light of day, and she is sabotaged at every turn. Can she push past the obstacles in her way to build a winning case?
Based on true events, Side Effects Are Minimal is about a corrupt pharmaceutical industry, the guilt of physicians prescribing the opioids that kill, and the pain experienced by families who’ve lost loved ones to an epidemic that has brought the United States to its knees.
Shootings, prison break, carjackings, and murders…
Just another Monday at Blake Wilder’s office.
With the dissolution of the Black Cell unit, it seems that the change that FBI agent Blake Wilder dreaded has been forced upon her.
Still reeling from the aftermath of the shakeup, Blake packs up and attempts to adjust to her new reality. Upon arrival at the new office, the team receives an alert about escaped convicts from a prison transport traveling from Indiana.
At the scene of the crime, the team finds one dead guard and a ton of bullet casings. Three inmates have escaped, and the rest of the prisoners in the transport have been rounded up. While searching for the missing convicts, the team follows a trail of car-jackings, murders, and full-blown chaos. What’s the connection between the prisoners and who were the masked men that helped them escape?
Deception, betrayal, murder, and full-blown mayhem.
It seems there’s simply no rest for the wicked.
Serenity Springs is a picturesque small town where everyone knows your name.
Well, that was the case until one phone call changed everything...
PI Bridget Hartley is obsessed with all things mystery. She even has a reputation for being Serenity’s go-to detective.
With the exception of small-town drama and the occasional crime, life in Serenity is serene. Until a call from panicked parents searching for missing teens sets off a chain of events that no one could have foreseen.
Could hormones and young love be the reasons for their abrupt disappearance?
While searching for the missing lovebirds, Bridget stumbles upon a string of bizarre and unfortunate events. Events with potential connections to other missing teen couples.
With odd circumstances surrounding all the disappearances, it seems breathtaking views and idyllic springs aren’t the only things Serenity is serving. As the dominoes that kept the town together begin to fall, Bridget finds her own life spiraling out of control.
Sometimes life hits you like a tsunami, and the only way to survive is to hold on for dear life.
Will the girl in the Springs discover what she’s truly made of and save the town?
Hali Waverly is in a holding pattern following hip surgery. She’s getting better, but she still has to be careful…especially living so close to the beach. Still, she thinks it’s safe enough to go out for dinner with her boyfriend Gray Hunter…right up until they’re swarmed by escaped prisoners.
Hali thinks everything is okay until one of the prisoners uses magic on Gray and forces him to attack Hali. She manages to snap him out of it, but Gray no longer trusts himself and Hali is left with a doubting boyfriend as well as a lot of unanswered questions.
Even though most of the prisoners are recovered right away, a few manage to evade capture, including the witch who hexed Gray. Things get worse when the witch approaches Hali with a deal: Help her prove her innocence and she won’t go after Gray again. Otherwise…Gray is going to be her target, and she isn’t shy about what she’s going to do to him.
Hali and Gray have to work together to make sure he’s not taken advantage of. With Hali not at a hundred percent, though, that’s easier said than done.
Not all witches are created equal. Hali is powerful, but what happens when she comes up against a type of magic she doesn’t know how to defeat?
She’s determined to protect Gray at all costs, even if she has to put herself on the line to do it.
A wild storm. A forgotten tragedy. A long hidden secret.
When a violent nor'wester hits Grand Cayman, a cargo ship is caught in the maelstrom, and several containers are lost to the ocean floor… unless AJ Bailey and Reg Moore can recover the precious contents belonging to Reg's wife, Pearl.
Eighty years in the past, at the height of World War II, an Air Transport Auxiliary pilot ferrying planes to RAF airfields in the southern coast of England, becomes the victim of a bold lie in a story missing from the history books. In present day, AJ and Reg search the dangerous depths, unaware that the clues to the long silenced coverup are held in the clutches of one of the containers… along with a more modern and immediate peril.
Drama in the skies of war torn England and a hazardous salvage operation in the Caribbean Sea come crashing together in another action packed AJ Bailey adventure tale.
A new love interest for Laura Lee leads to a mystery she never expected.
Laura Lee's experience at Thornberry Manor revealed her adventurous nature, even if it had been dragged out of her rather reluctantly at times. But that’s okay, because one of those adventures introduced her to Billy, a local electrician. Little did she know that her latest love interest would lead her down a path filled with unexpected mystery.
Billy convinces Laura Lee to join him on an exploration, promising her an extraordinary adventure. She was excited to go, until she learned it involved a local cave. She hated caves. However, as the saying goes, curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought him back, so she tentatively agreed. Little did she know that this decision would plunge her into a web of danger and deception.
With each twist and turn, Laura’s determination to solve the mystery grew stronger. Mary, along with the rest of the secret book club were all determined to unravel the truth behind the cave’s dark history.
Hadley Hunter never saw herself as mayor of Moonstone Bay. Now she has the job, and it seems to be a whole lot of squabbling neighbors and missing foul-mouthed birds instead of the action and adventure she was expecting. All of that changes when a local worker for one of the hotels calls in to report seeing a child wandering in the road in the middle of nowhere. Both the woman and child are missing when units go looking.
Sheriff Galen Blackwood can’t find a record of a missing child. He can’t find a path to follow for the missing woman. All he can find is a spit of desert in the middle of the island and no way across.
Moonstone Bay has a lot of secrets. When Hadley starts digging on this one, she’s confused. How is it that nobody has any information on this specific bit of land? Why has nobody ever bothered to ask? Why is it that everybody just accepts the land can’t be crossed?
Hadley smells a conspiracy, and she may be right. The problem is, there’s nobody around to confirm or deny anything she believes.
That, of course, means her mind is running wild. She’s going to take all of her friends along for the ride, too, whether they want to be dragged into this mess or not.
Some secrets are kept for a reason. When this one blows up, they all might regret it…if they live that long that is.
In this debut thriller, a troubled child psychologist returns to a small Louisiana town to protect her secrets but winds up having to protect her life.
Dr. Willa Watters is a prominent child psychologist at the height of her career. But when a viral video of a disastrous television interview puts her reputation on the line, Willa retreats to Broken Bayou, the town where she spent most of her childhood summers. There she visits her aunts’ old house and discovers some of her unstable mother’s belongings still languishing in the attic?dusty mementos harboring secrets of her harrowing past.
Willa’s hopes for a respite are quickly crushed, not only by what she finds in that attic but also by what’s been found in the bayou.
With waters dropping due to drought, mysterious barrels containing human remains have surfaced, alongside something else from Willa’s past, something she never thought she’d see again. Divers, police, and media flood the area, including a news reporter gunning for Willa and Travis Arceneaux?a local deputy and old flame.
Willa’s fate seems eerily tied to the murders. And with no one to trust, she must use her wits to stay above water and make it out alive.
Death is so cryptic!
In 1932, Boston’s chief medical examiner, Dr. Haley Higgins is called to view bones at the crypt at King’s Chapel. Finding old bones in a crypt isn’t unusual, but finding new bones is! Together with her good friend and investigative journalist Samantha Hawke and in co-operation with the police, Haley works to unravel the mystery behind the lost soul abandoned in the crypt. Who was the victim and why was the body left in the crypt?
As the mystery unravels, it’s clear to Haley that they’re dealing with a sinister mind and a culprit who wouldn’t stop at killing again.
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