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“Like Flannery O’Connor, but with toxic mermaids and body horror.” Dare swim these waters? Backwaters by Lee Rozelle
“Like Flannery O’Connor, but with toxic mermaids and body horror.” Dare swim these waters? Backwaters by Lee Rozelle
What if your life worked out perfectly . . . for someone else? Escape to sun-soaked Corfu with this must-read romance: The Summer Trip by Isabelle Broom
What if your life worked out perfectly . . . for someone else? Escape to sun-soaked Corfu with this must-read romance: The Summer Trip by Isabelle Broom
6-in-1 New Release BOXED SET ALERT! Chronicles of an Urban Elemental Complete Series Boxed Set by Auburn Tempest and Michael Anderle
6-in-1 New Release BOXED SET ALERT! Chronicles of an Urban Elemental Complete Series Boxed Set by Auburn Tempest and Michael Anderle
Nash must rise to the challenge to get his fortune back in this captivating romantic suspense series…. Nash: The Secret Billionaire Society by Nancy Pennick
Nash must rise to the challenge to get his fortune back in this captivating romantic suspense series…. Nash: The Secret Billionaire Society by Nancy Pennick
Can truth and passion outshine vengeance? The Wallflower’s Secret: Revenge of the Wallflowers Book 9 by Rose Pearson
Can truth and passion outshine vengeance? The Wallflower’s Secret: Revenge of the Wallflowers Book 9 by Rose Pearson
It’s Giveaway time! Get a free bonus entry into our weekly raffle and check out Legacy: A Novel by Nora Roberts
It’s Giveaway time! Get a free bonus entry into our weekly raffle and check out Legacy: A Novel by Nora Roberts
It is lonely on the hills, alive or dead… LAST MAN ALIVE: a classic British murder mystery (Detective Chief Inspector Jack Harris Book 9) by John Dean
It is lonely on the hills, alive or dead… LAST MAN ALIVE: a classic British murder mystery (Detective Chief Inspector Jack Harris Book 9) by John Dean
Two brothers awakened a desire she’d never known… But it’s only one who steals her heart. Taking the Lead (Kinklink Book 1) by Tara Eldana
Two brothers awakened a desire she’d never known… But it’s only one who steals her heart. Taking the Lead (Kinklink Book 1) by Tara Eldana
Take a comical look at the current state of the Grand Old Party and how their Tea Party conservatives are missing the truth behind the numbers. Stupidparty Math v. Myth: Unmasking the Destructive Forces Eroding American Democracy (StupidpartyLand Book 1) by Patrick M. Andendall
Take a comical look at the current state of the Grand Old Party and how their Tea Party conservatives are missing the truth behind the numbers. Stupidparty Math v. Myth: Unmasking the Destructive Forces Eroding American Democracy (StupidpartyLand Book 1) by Patrick M. Andendall
One man’s desperate ploy to protect his family involves turning nature into a deadly ally against a merciless enemy. The Lone Family: A Small Town Post Apocalypse EMP Thriller Boxset by Robert J Walker
One man’s desperate ploy to protect his family involves turning nature into a deadly ally against a merciless enemy. The Lone Family: A Small Town Post Apocalypse EMP Thriller Boxset by Robert J Walker
Will the Navajo heroes that stud the starry sky help them find justice—and the truth they seek? Stargazer: A Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito Novel by Anne Hillerman
Will the Navajo heroes that stud the starry sky help them find justice—and the truth they seek? Stargazer: A Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito Novel by Anne Hillerman
An addictive, edge-of-your seat crime thriller with a twist you will not see coming The Girl Who Survived: A totally unputdownable crime thriller (Leigh Brody FBI Mystery Book 1) by Nichole Severn
An addictive, edge-of-your seat crime thriller with a twist you will not see coming The Girl Who Survived: A totally unputdownable crime thriller (Leigh Brody FBI Mystery Book 1) by Nichole Severn
With nearly a million books in the Kindle Store, it’s no wonder that one Kindle Nation citizen recently channeled Erasmus with a Facebook status update that said, in so many words, “So many books, so little time!”
But we are here to help with a new batch of quality 99-cent reads from some terrific authors. Each of the following 99-cent books has received at least 4 Amazon reader reviews with an average rating of 4 stars or better. No sponsorship or fee is required for a book to be included in these bargain listings: it is totally free for authors and readers, and each post is sponsored by one title from (usually) another author … which of course we hope you will consider.
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We’ve got a great new batch of highly rated 99-centers to share with you today….
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What happens when a local hero – a firefighter and paramedic – finds his personal world at the short end of a vicious crime? Chart Paul Kelly’s transformation from a good guy to a man descending into darkness, searching for an explanation of this evil….
“This is what horror wants to be when it grows up, a vision of tragic inevitability rooted in character, ruthless and inexorably unfolding, yet shot through with the possibility of grace.” –Peter Straub
Please note: The author and his publisher will be donating 25 percent of all proceeds to Parents of Murdered Children (POMC) for all of April and May.
Click here to downloadA Question of Will (or a free sample) to your Kindle, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, Android-compatible, PC or Mac and start reading within 60 seconds!
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And now, let’s get started with a brand new batch of 99-cent specials, just added today!
Ariana’s Pride
by Margaret Lake
Genre: Historical Romance
Price: $0.99
Reviews and Ratings: 4.25 stars out of 16 reviews Follow Ariana on her dark and dangerous journey to a destiny she couldn’t have foreseen.
No Cure for the Broken Hearted
By Kenneth Rosenberg
B004EEPOY0
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Price: $0.99
R & R: 4.4 stars from 11 reviews Long ago he broke her heart. Now he’s back, but should she forgive him?
DOUBLEBACK
Libby Fischer Hellmann
B002SG7OWG
Mystery/thriller
Price: $0.99
4.0 Stars from 18 Reviewers Georgia Davis and Ellie Foreman tackle the farreaching case of a little girl who’s kidnapped, returned, then left motherless.
HER OWN BEST ENEMY
By Cynthia Justlin
B004RVN1AO
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Price: $0.99
Reviews and Ratings: 4 stars from 4 reviewers When a woman’s son goes missing she has nowhere to turn–except to the man who once ruined her life.
The Other Side
By E. Thomas Finan
B004O0U9X0
Genre: Short Story Collection
Price: $0.99
Reviews and Ratings: 4.3 Stars from 10 Reviewers From extramarital affairs to bus trips to voicemail obsessions, this collection looks at when we grow—and when we don’t.
Julius Katz Mysteries
By Dave Zeltserman
B004KAA9LQ
Genre: Mystery
Price: $0.99
Reviews and Ratings: 4.75 Stars from 4Reviewers Two awardwinning mystery stories featuring the brilliant detective Julius Katz and his most unusual sidekick, Archie.
DAEMON: Night of the Daemon
By Harry Shannon
B003CN6K4W
Genre: Horror/Thriller
Price: $0.99
4.8 stars from 11 reviews A mysterious creature from Iraq. A Special Op leader and his team. Someone or something is stalking Las Vegas.
The Journey
By Laura Lond
B004HILRLM
Genre: Fantasy
Price: $0.99
Reviews and Ratings: 4.8 Stars from 20 Reviewers A story of faith, friendship, courage, and staying true to one’s calling.
THE DEAD MAN #1: FACE OF EVIL
By LEE GOLDBERG & WILLIAM RABKIN
B004NNV48W
Genre: Action/Horror
Price: $0.99
Reviews and Ratings: 4.5 stars from 28 reviewers Matthew Cahill is an ordinary man who, after a terrible accident, can see evil before it strikes. First in a new monthly series.
Nice Girl Does Noir, Vol. 1
By Libby Fischer Hellmann
B003NE6E32
Genre: Crime Fiction Short Story Collection
Price: $0.99
Reviews and Ratings: Excellent reviews from 5 sources, including PW, Mystery Scene, Meritorious Mysteries, Mystery Scene Magazine A collection of 5 mystery short stories featuring amateur sleuth Ellie Foreman and Chicago PI Georgia Davis
Nice Girl Does Noir, Vol. 2
By Libby Fischer Hellmann
B003NHT4UE
Genre: Crime Fiction Short Story Collection
Price: $0.99
Reviews and Ratings: Excellent reviews from 5 sources, including PW, Mystery Scene, Meritorious Mysteries, Mystery Scene Magazine A collection of 10 dark crime fiction stories, some historical, some foreign, some awardwinners too.
Besserwisser: A Novel
By Steve Anderson
B002NU5LCW
Genre: Humor, Mystery, Satire, Thriller
Price: $0.99
Reviews and Ratings: 4.75 Stars from 4 Reviewers Munich, 1990: An American expat poses as a Hitler scholar and finds himself the target of wannabe NeoNazis.
Wrecker
By Dave Conifer
B004IEA8GK
Genre: thriller
Price: $0.99
Reviews & Ratings: 4.7/5 stars over 19 reviewers: Currently #248 in Amazon Kindle store. Jane thought a loveless marriage was as bad as it could get. Steve thought life was perfect with a hired man to do his chores. They were both wrong.
Catherine and the Captain
By Margaret Lake
Genre: Historical Romance
Price: $0.99
Reviews and Ratings: 4 stars out of 5 reviews Can Catherine escape the destiny of a doomed king or will she choose duty and honor over love?
Demonspawn
By Glenn Bullion
Genre: Horror / Paranormal
Price: $0.99
Reviews and Ratings: 4 stars from 8 reviewers Join Alex as he discovers his demonic powers and battles the supernatural
Foxy’s Tale
By LB Gschwandtner & Karen Cantwell
B004R1Q4JE
Genre: women’s fiction
Price: $0.99
Reviews and Ratings: 4 stars from 11 revieiwers A comic, chick lit, comingofage, vampire tale (sort of) where family triumphs over adversity and mother and daughter learn how to face the world as grownups – together.
The Eye of the Idol
By Paul Dayton
B003Z0D1MG
Genre: Adventure / Murder Mystery / Treasure hunt
Price: $0.99
Reviews and Ratings: 6 reviews, 4.5 stars Follow the trail as an SIS agent and a professor piece together the mystery of the Box and its incredible contents.
Reining In
By Dawn Judd
B003I851OG
Genre: Paranormal Fantasy
Price: $0.99
Reviews and Ratings: 4.5 stars from 13 reviewers How does a vampire keep her identity hidden from a world where social security numbers, licenses, passports and credit cards are a must? She builds the Network.
Rock Charisma
By Joan P. Cooley
B004ELANTO
Genre: Fantasy Romance
Price: $0.99
Reviews and Ratings: 4.5 stars from 10 reviewers A ruthless rock star with a secret meets his match, when a beautiful blonde reporter is assigned to interview him.
Bound by Blood
By Danielle Bourdon/Kimberly Hoyt
B0042JTP1U
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Price: $0.99
Reviews and Ratings: 4.5 stars from 6 reviewers. Laurel must decide between her vampire Prince and the mortal man he once was.
The Donzerly Light
By Ryne Douglas Pearson
B0042FZQBM
Genre: Paranormal Suspense
Price: $0.99
Ratings: 4.8 from 8 reviews A young stock broker, given psychic powers by an enigmatic transient, learns the dark side of his gift.
Anathema
By Megg Jensen
B004MDLN66
Genre: YA fantasy
Price: $0.99
Reviews and Ratings: 4.6 Stars from 10 reviewers A sheltered slave girl, surrounded by magic and manipulation, must learn to believe in herself and save her people.
The Bottom Feeders and Other Stories
By Aaron Polson
B003F777TW
Genre: Horror
Price: $0.99
Reviews and Ratings: 4.6 stars from 5 Reviewers Witness hotels with shifting rooms, carnivorous beetles, a ghostly Marine on his return from Iraq, and more…
Monster in the Mirror
By M.J.A. Ware
B003TXS9CQ
Genre: MG/YA Horror
Price: $0.99
Reviews and Ratings: 4.4 Stars from 7 Reviewers Nate and friends stumble upon a hidden room during a sleepover. What they find inside is anything but friendly.
Raven’s Heart: A Tale from the World of Secramore
Matthew & Stefanie Verish
B003V8BH8M
Genre: Fantasy
Price: $.99
Reviews and Ratings: 4.8 Stars from 6 Reviewers An unlikely cast is assemble for a quest, but it might be each other they must survive.
THE SHOP
J. Carson Black
B004SY5RVG
Genre: Thriller
Price: $0.99
Reviews and ratings: 4.8 stars from 6 reviewers Who’s killing celebrities, and why? Smalltown homicide detective Jolie Burke’s murder investigation leads to the highest reaches of government.
Hard Day’s Knight
By John G. Hartness
B004GB17G0
Genre:Urban Fantasy/Comedy
Price: $0.99
Reviews and Ratings: 4.5 Stars from 12 Reviewers Wisecracking nonsparkling vampire detectives try to save the world and get the girl. They usually manage the first half.
The Quest for Nobility
By Debra L Martin & David W Small
B003CC1KI4
Genre: Science fiction
Price: $0.99
Reviews and Ratings: 4.0 over 8 reviews Royal twins, Darius and Dyla Telkur, fight to save their throne from an evil mastermind bent on eliminating the Telkur line of succession.
BORROWED TIME
By Maureen A. Miller
B004E3X9CK
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Price: $0.99
Reviews and Ratings: 4.0 from 10 Reviewers A beautiful engineer fights to prevent her savant brother from becoming a military pawn.
SILENT COUNSEL
By Ken Isaacson
B003EOAC6G
Genre: Legal Thriller
Price: $0.99
Reviews and Ratings: 4.6 over 19 reviews (from hardcover edition) Suppose your child were killed in a hitandrun, and the one person who knew the driver’s identity – his lawyer – couldn’t tell you his name because the court held it was privileged information?
Genre: Time Travel/Paranormal Romance
Price: $.99
Reviews and Ratings: 4.4 Stars from 88 Reviewers Time travel romance (1929 New York City) with a paranormal twist.
Genre: historical, espionage, war, thriller
Price: $0.99
Reviews and Ratings: 4.5 Stars from 12 Reviewers A German actor is forced to join a desperate WWII mission in which he must impersonate an enemy American officer.
Genre: apocalyptic fantasy romance
Price: 99 cents
Reviews and Ratings: 4.3 Stars from 15 Reviewers During an environmental apocalypse Jake and Char battle eco-goons, bureaucrats and a goddess while falling in love.
D.D. Scott
Romantic Comedy
Price: $.99
Reviews and Ratings: 5 stars from 8 reviewers Romantic Comedy with a chick-lit, gone-country twist. Think Sex and The City meets Urban Cowboy.
The Sex Club
L.J. Sellers
Mystery/Suspense
$.99 (Kindle)
4 stars, 64 reviews A dead girl, a ticking bomb, a Bible study that’s not what it appears to be, and a detective who won’t give up.
Libby Fischer Hellmann
Mystery
$.99
4.5 stars from 13 reviewers Chicago PI Georgia Davis, investigating a murder, finds out how far high school girls will go to gain acceptance from their peers.
Annette Mackey
YA Historical FIction
$.99
Reviews and Ratings: 13 reviews averaging 4.85 stars. (eleven 5 star, two 4 star) A story that explores the heart of human emotion. You’ll hate the boy, but fall in love with the man.
AFTER THE FIRE
Kathryn Shay
Contemporary Romance
$.99
4 stars from 7 reviews Follow the firefighters of Hidden Cove, a remarkable team of heroes like you’ve never seen before.
The Secret Diary of Alice in Wonderland, Age 42 and Three-Quarters
Barbara Silkstone
Genre: Mystery
Price: 99 cents
Reviews and Ratings: 4.6 out of 5 stars / 36 five star reviews out of 45 reviews Contemporary spin on a classic tale. This criminally funny fable reads like My Cousin Vinny meets A Fish Called Wanda.
We Interrupt This Date
L.C. Evans
Genre: Chick lit/women’s fiction
Price: 99 cents
Reviews and Ratings: 4.1 stars from 42 reviews. When a divorcee tries to remake her life and start a new romance, her needy family decides she’s crisis central.
Take the Monkeys and Run
Karen Cantwell
Genre: Humorous Mystery
Price: 99 cents
Reviews and Ratings: 4.2 stars from 84 reviewers A soccer mom and movie lover sticks her nose into some monkey business and finds herself in the middle of her own cinematic action adventure – only these bullets are real.
The Father’s Child Mark Adair
Genre: suspense/thriller
Price: 99 cents
Reviews and Ratings: 4.6 Stars on 7 Reviewers John Truman, a bright, introverted, college student belongs to the New Dawn…he just doesn’t know it yet.
Nicole Baxter’s life changes with an afternoon phone call from the harbor. During a scuba dive, her husband disappears. Neither his diving instructor nor the Coast Guard can find him. Is he still alive? Or is grief making her believethe impossible? Rachel Howzell’s The View from Here – Now just 99 cents on Kindle!
Genre: Thriller
Price: 99 cents
Reviews and Ratings: 4.5 Stars from 6 Reviewers Don’t worry about the so-called Shadow Government. It’s the guy pulling THEIR strings that should terrify you.
More to come next week!
To suggest a title please follow the format below (or in the first comment), and include the information in a comment below.
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A brand new freebie has just tumbled onto our radar, and it could help you bring your business to the next level….
But first, a word from … Today’s Sponsor
Why are the children of the security force on Mars disappearing? Once they take her brother David, teenage techo-geek Shamira uses her hyper-senses and amazing technology to search out the criminals…
“The Pack is a fun-filled sci-fi, fantasy ride that will have you cheering for more.” –Cheryl Koch, Top 1000 Reviewer
THE PACK by L.M. Preston 4.1 out of 5 stars 15 Reviews
“The Pack reinforces the adage – never underestimate an underdog”
Here’s the set-up:
Shamira is considered an outcast by most, but little do they know that she is on a mission. Kids on Mars are disappearing, but Shamira decides to use the criminals most unlikely weapons against them the very kids of which they have captured. In order to succeed, she is forced to trust another, something she is afraid to do. However, Valens, her connection to the underworld of her enemy, proves to be a useful ally. Time is slipping, and so is her control on the power that resides within her. But in order to save her brother’s life, she is willing to risk it all.
What the Reviewers Say
“LM Preston is back with a vengeance with her second young adult novel, ‘The Pack.’ The action-packed drama takes place on a colonized Mars where children are disappearing at an alarming rate. But the kidnappings are not random. The perpetrators are targeting the sons and daughters of the planet’s security force. Their goal is to create chaos on a global scale in order for their illegal drug trade to flourish. The children are merely pawns in an intergalactic game. Until they take Shamira’s brother, David..” –Nicole Langan, Tribute Books Reviews
“Some unusual crimes require unusual solutions. “The Pack” tells of a future where the kids on Mars are being kidnapped, and it’s up to Shamira to find the root of the matter, Her campaign to find them comes with many ideas, and an exciting fast-paced story, making “The Pack” a treasure for young science fiction readers.” –Midwest Book Reviews
“I was most impressed by the author’s world building abilities. Mars felt real right from the beginning… LM Preston did this masterfully.” –Kerstein Howell, Vine Voice
L.M. Preston was born and raised in Washington, DC. An avid reader, she loved to create poetry and short-stories as a young girl. With a thirst for knowledge she attended college at Bowie State University, and worked in the IT field as a Techie and Educator for over sixteen years. She started writing science fiction under the encouragement of her husband who was a Sci-Fi buff and her four kids. Her first published novel, Explorer X – Alpha was the beginning of her obsessive desire to write and create stories of young people who overcome unbelievable odds. She loves to write while on the porch watching her kids play or when she is traveling, which is another passion that encouraged her writing.
Click here to downloadTHE PACK (or a free sample) to your Kindle, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, Android-compatible, PC or Mac and start reading within 60 seconds!
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Interested in learning more about sponsorship? Just click on this link for more information.
Free Contemporary Titles in the Kindle Store
HOW TO USE OUR NEW FREE BOOK TOOL:
Just use the slider at right of your screen below to scroll through a complete, updated list of free contemporary Kindle titles, and click on an icon like this one (at right) to read a free sample right here in your browser!Titles are sorted in reverse chronological order so you can easily see new freebies.
When Gina wakes up from a two-year coma, she realizes someone tried to kill her and make it look like suicide. Detective-in-training Lara Evans is assigned the case, but when she discovers who the main suspect is, she fears she’s in way over her head.
Meanwhile Detective Jackson learns the man in prison for murdering his parents is innocent of the crime and another officer coerced the detainee into a confession. As the two investigators work the cold files, members of their own department come under suspicion and their cases begin to overlap. Can they find the killers before the crimes of the past explode in the present?
From the reviewers:
Another Home Run: I have loved all of LJ Sellers books & this one is another home run. I am not going to give it an overview because others already have. However, this is why I love her books – the characters are developed well, the story itself is top notch, you are always surprised by the ending, the story is not too long but not too short, and you just don’t want to put the book down.
Another Great Read: Det Jackson series just keeps getting better. What can I say…read em, you’ll like em. Real easy and smooth and each book offers substantial character development…which just makes me hungrier for the next.
Great Addition To The Series: What can I say without giving away too much? Only this is a darned good police procedural involving characters you love to follow. I think L.J. Sellers gives us as good as J.D. Robb ever did. Maybe it’s something to do with using two inits instead of a first name. Whatever it is, it’s working.
Might Be The Best Yet: Detective Jackson, who we’ve come to love in other Sellers’ mystery novels, is back in a big way in Dying For Justice and this time the case gets very personal. And when detective-in-training Lara Evans is assigned the case, the reader is treated to a yet another of Sellers’ richly satisfying characters. One can’t help but love the drama that ensues.
I’m an award-winning journalist and the author of the Detective Jackson mystery/suspense series: The Sex Club, Secrets to Die For, Thrilled to Death, Passions of the Dead, and Dying for Justice. My novels have been highly praised by Mystery Scene and Spinetingler magazines, and all five are on Amazon Kindle’s bestselling police procedural list.
I also have two standalone thrillers: The Baby Thief and The Suicide Effect. When not plotting murders, I enjoy cycling, social networking, and attending mystery conferences. I’ve also been known to jump out of airplanes.
And here, in the comfort of your own browser, is your free sample:
Before he gave up suits for underwear as work garb, author Paul Levine was a lawyer for a high-powered, high-priced firm.
He tried hundreds of cases and handled appeals at every level, up to and including the Supreme Court.
He has won the John D. MacDonald fiction award and has been nominated for an Edgar, a Macavity, the International Thriller Writers Award, and the James Thurber Humor Prize.
Today’s Free Kindle Nation Short is a 6,300-word excerpt luring you to the full novel, Flesh & Bones, which grew out of a real-life murder case involving a legal defense based on the resurrection of repressed memories.
Flesh & Bones is the latest Jake Lassiter mystery, and Paul says it is his best yet. And speaking of underwear, please accept our apologies for teasing you with this line from the very first page of Flesh & Bones:
According to the A-Form later filled out by a bored female cop, the tall blond woman wore three items of clothing that night, and the Charles Jourdan shoes were two of them.
The idea for “Flesh & Bones” came from a real murder case involving the controversial notion of repressed memory syndrome.
Here’s how it started. A 29-year-old California woman reported to police that she suddenly remembered seeing her father rape and kill a schoolmate twenty years earlier. Were the memories real? Or dreams? Or outright fabrications?
The D.A. thought they were real. And so did the jury which heard the case of the previously unsolved child killing. The father was sentenced to life in prison and served seven years before a federal court determined that the daughter’s testimony had been tainted by hypnotic therapy.
Out of that grew my notion of a troubled young model, Chrissy Bernhardt, who walks into a Miami Beach bar and shoots her father in front of dozens of witnesses…including linebacker-turned-lawyer Jake Lassiter. Chrissy claims that, under hypnotic regression therapy, she recovered memories repressed long ago: her father’s sexual abuse.
As I did while researching the book, Lassiter interviews a skeptical psychiatrist who tells him that memories are “malleable” by therapists.
“We can thank Freud for the theory that all our experiences are stored away somewhere in the brain, just waiting to be recovered by therapy,” Dr. Santiago said. “A huge number of his patients seemed to recall terrible memories of childhood incest. Initially, Freud accepted the stories as true. Later, he concluded they were ‘screen memories,’ fantasies hiding primitive wishes. Others believe they’re just false memories.”
“So what’s the truth?” I asked.
“Oh, memories may be repressed and then recovered, but does that make them true? I’m sure you remember many events in your life that are absolutely false.”
“I don’t get it. If I remember them, they’re true.”
“Not necessarily. You may try to store memories like a librarian shelving books. But each of us constructs a personal myth about what we think is true. We may exaggerate. Good times in the past become even better, hard times even worse. Individuals who were bad become outright demons. And some of our memories might simply be dreams that never took place at all.”
Lassiter soon discovers that his client’s shrink might have his own motive for wanting Chrissy’s father dead. So might her brother, for purely financial reasons. All of that plays out against the very real debate about the science of the mind. Are the memories dug out of the subconscious through hypnosis real or imagined?
The psychiatrist tells Lassiter:“Memory suppression is hardly unknown. In one study, researchers found that thirty-eight percent of adult women who had been treated for sexual abuse as children had no memories of the incidents. The difficulty is to recover the memories without contamination by post-event occurrences or suggestions by therapists, whether innocent or malevolent.”
That’s the heart of “Flesh & Bones”and every murder trial. Separating the innocent from the malevolent.
“I was sitting at the end of the bar sipping single-malt Scotch when I spotted the tall blond woman with the large green eyes and the small gray gun.”
The next thing Jake Lassiter knows, the woman pumps three bullets into the man on the next barstool.
And Jake, the linebacker-turned-lawyer, has a new client.
She’s stunning model Chrissy Bernhardt, and the dead man is her wealthy father.
The defense? Chrissy claims that she’s recently recovered repressed memories of having been sexually abused by her father.
Jake wants to believe her but suspects that the memories were either implanted by a shady psychiatrist or fabricated by Chrissy herself.
Complicating the situation, Jake falls for his client, clouding his judgment. Is she an anguished victim or a cold-blooded killer? And what about her brother, who stands to inherit a fortune if Chrissy goes to prison?
Jake wades into a quagmire of dirty water deals, big money, and family corruption, all leading to an explosive finale.
Copyright 2011 by Paul Levine and reprinted here with his permission.
1
Loaded Dice
I was sitting at the end of the bar sipping single-malt Scotch when I
What Page One Would Look Like, If This Were a Picture Book
spotted the tall blond woman with the large green eyes and the small gray gun.
Not that I knew she had a gun. Not that I even saw her at first, even though she was five feet eleven barefoot, and at the moment was wearing black stiletto heels. According to the A-Form later filled out by a bored female cop, the tall blond woman wore three items of clothing that night, and the Charles Jourdan shoes were two of them. The third was a scooped-back, low-cut, black tank minidress. Nothing more. No rings, necklaces . . . or underwear. She did carry a beaded black Versace handbag, which apparently held the gun, until she pulled it out and . . .
But I’m getting ahead of myself. When she walked in, I was twirling a snifter, admiring the golden liquid inside, trying to catch the smoky scent that had the Yuppies all atwitter, and likewise trying to figure out why I wasn’t home drinking beer, eating pizza, and watching ESPN, as is my custom. Life in the no-passing lane.
“Do you sense the reek of the peat?” Rusty MacLean asked me, while twirling his own glass. “Do the pepper and the heather transport you to the Highlands?”
At the moment we were five feet above sea level, two blocks from the ocean on South Beach, with palms swaying and a Jamaican steel band playing, so you’ll pardon me if the outdoor club called Paranoia didn’t feel like Inverness or the Isle of Skye. “Can we drink it now, or are you going to keep blowing smoke up my kilt?” I asked.
“Patience, Jake, patience. Did you clear your palette of the Royal Lochnagar?”
“Palette clear, throat dry. Can we drink it now?”
“Did you appreciate the Lochnagar’s muscular, oaky flavor? The hint of sherry?”
“Okee? As in Okefenokee? As in swampy?”
Rusty gave me his exasperated, why-do-I-put-up-with-you look. “Jake, I’m trying to civilize you. I’ve been trying for years.”
Rusty MacLean had been my teammate on the Dolphins about a thousand years ago. He was a flashy wide receiver with curly red hair flapping out of his helmet. A free spirit, the sports-writers called him. Undisciplined, the coaches said. Used to drive Shula crazy. Rusty loved to baby himself, nursing small injuries, sitting out Tuesday practices. It is a given in pro football that by midseason everyone is hurt. I’ve played-though not very well- with turf toe, a broken nose, and a separated shoulder, once all at the same time. Rusty, who had far more natural ability, could make a hangnail seem like a compound fracture.
Rusty MacLean raised his glass and said something that sounded like “Slanjeh. To your health, old buddy.”
I hoisted my glass. “Fuel in your bagpipes.”
He sipped at his Glenmorangie, while I swilled mine, letting it warm my throat. Damn good, but I wouldn’t admit it. No need to spoil my image as a throwback and relentlessly uncool, unhip, and out of it. I am so far behind the trends that sometimes I’m back in fashion, just like the Art Deco buildings in the very neighborhood where we now sat, drinking and swapping lies. I wore faded jeans, a T-shirt from a Key West oyster bar advising patrons to eat ’em raw, and a nylon Penn State windbreaker. I thought I was underdressed until I saw a skinny guy in black silk pants, no shirt, and an open leather vest that couldn’t hide his navel ring. Or his nipple ring. Rusty wore a black T-shirt under a double-breasted Armani suit, his hair tied back in a ponytail.
He savored his drink, eyes closed, a beatific smile on his face. “Mmmm,” he purred. “I’ve screwed girls younger than this Scotch.”
“And you’re trying to civilize me?”
Rusty was signaling the bartender, pointing to another bottle of the single-malt stuff. We were going in some sort of ritualized order, from Lowlands to Highlands to islands, and The Glenlivet was next. “Not Glenlivet,” Rusty had instructed me, “The Glenlivet.”
“I know. Like the Eiffel Tower, The Donald, The Coach.”
“Robust with a long finish,” Rusty said as the bartender poured the liquid gold into fresh snifters. “The marriage of power and finesse.”
A waitress slinked by, offering canapés from a silver tray, smoked salmon curled around cream cheese, caviar on tiny crackers. A long way from the trailer park in Key Largo. I remembered a tavern song my father used to warble after he’d had a few, none of them sips of single-malt Scotch aged in oak casks.
Rye whiskey, rye whiskey,
Rye whiskey, I cry.
If I can’t get rye whiskey,
I surely will die.
Funny thinking about my father at that moment, a knife plunged into his heart, dying on a saloon floor.
I watched her approach the bar, not from some sixth sense that trouble was brewing, though in my experience, tall blondes are trouble indeed. I watched because Rusty MacLean, using the peripheral vision that had always let him know where the safety was lurking, had just gestured in her direction and compared her knees to Dan Marino’s. Unfavorably to Dan’s, I might add.
A few minutes earlier, I had asked him why he’d given up being a sports agent to open SoBeMo, a modeling agency. His answer competed in volume with the Dolby-enhanced nihilistic baritone poetry of Leonard Cohen. Everybody knows that the dice are loaded. Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.
“Forty percent,” Rusty said.
Everybody knows the fight was fixed; the poor stay poor, the rich get rich.
My look shot him a question, so he continued. “Twenty percent from the model, another twenty percent from the company booking the shoot. Compare that to four percent for representing some sixth-round, preliterate prima donna from Weber State, and I’ll take the babes every time.”
“We don’t call them babes anymore,” I corrected him, having been dragged into the nineties, just in time for the millennium.
Now, as I followed his gaze, Rusty said, “Here’s another reason. Whose knees would you rather look at it, Dan Marino’s or Chrissy Bernhardt’s?”
If they’d asked similar questions on the Bar exam, I would have passed the first time.
I watched Chrissy Bernhardt walk the walk, hips rotating with that exaggerated roll forward, the arms swinging gracefully so far back she could have been waving at someone behind her. A stroll down the runway in Milan. Her bare shoulders had the rounded, developed look of hundreds of hours in the gym. Her ash-blond hair slid across those shoulders with each stride, and in her black stiletto heels, she was as tall as me, though a hundred pounds lighter.
Twenty feet away now, headed right for us, Chrissy Bernhardt seemed to look at Rusty. He always got the eye contact before I did. I am not a bad-looking man, despite a nose that goes east and west where it should go north and south. I have shaggy, dirty-blond hair, blue eyes, broad shoulders, and a waist that is just beginning to show the effects of numerous four-Grolsch nights. Rusty has a different look, sleek and feral, and women love it. He always seems to send out sonar waves that bounce off attractive women and back to him. This time, though, when he smiled, she didn’t smile back.
Now I saw she was looking past Rusty at the beefy man on the next barstool. About sixty, a pink well-fed face, a nose that seemed too small for the rest of him, and thick arms with a golfer’s tan peeking out from beneath the short-sleeved guayabera. Earlier, the man had twice asked the bartender for the time. Then he had given me a look and grinned. “I know you. Number fifty-eight for the Dolphins, right?”
“Long time ago.”
“I remember a game against the Jets, you made a helluva hit on the kickoff team, recovered the fumble . . .” He smiled again, then continued in a deep, gravel-voiced rumble, “Then went the wrong way. You ran toward the wrong end zone.”
“I got turned around when I made the hit,” I explained, as I have so many times over the years.
“Lucky for you, your own kicker tackled you.”
Yeah. Garo Yepremian couldn’t tackle me if I was drunk and blindfolded. He had, however, fallen on me after I tripped on the twenty-yard-line stripe.
Everybody knows the war is over. Everybody knows the good guys lost.
Now the woman reached into the little beaded black handbag she was carrying. The deep-voiced man next to us seemed to recognize her, too, and a thin smile creased his face. When it disappeared, I glanced back at Chrissy Bernhardt, who now was holding a Beretta 950, a silly little handgun that shoots .22 shorts out of a two-inch barrel. It’s a lousy weapon for killing someone, but it weighs only ten ounces and leaves room for cigarettes and makeup in a tiny handbag.
With a single tear tracking down her face-navigating the contours of those granite cheekbones-Chrissy Bernhardt held the small pistol in both hands and squeezed off the first shot. The pop was no louder than a champagne cork’s, and anyone in the bar who heard it probably thought it was just another celebratory bottle of the middling California hiccupy stuff the management was serving to the SoBe, chi-chi crowd of opening-night freebie-glomming party freaks.
Of course, the beefy man with the pale, thinning hair didn’t think it was a champagne cork. Not after the red stain appeared on the right side of his chest, armpit high. He sat there a second in disbelief, watching the blood dribble down the front of his creamy guayabera. Then, speechless, he looked up toward the tall young woman.
And so did I.
A second tear rolled down her lovely face, now illuminated by the spotlights set into the recessed ceiling of the outdoor bar. Potted palms rustled gently in the soft evening breeze, carrying the scent of the ocean mixed with jasmine and a hint of locally grown high-grade marijuana. There was something faintly Hollywood about the whole scene, except if this were a movie, I would have dived from my barstool and knocked the gun from the woman’s hand, after which she would have fallen in love with me.
But I didn’t. And she didn’t. Or did she?
Mouth agape, like the cop holding on to Lee Harvey Oswald as Jack Ruby plugged him, I just watched as she fired the second shot, this one lower, plinking the tip of the man’s pelvis and ricocheting toward the dance floor, where the police would later find it and slip it into a little plastic bag, as they are inclined to do.
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking. Everyone knows the captain lied.
Frozen to my barstool, I watched Chrissy Bernhardt lower the gun slightly, aiming at the man’s crotch.
Everybody got this broken feeling like their father or their dog just died.
The man tried covering his groin with his hands, and the third bullet slipped between his spread fingers, nicked his penis, then entered his thigh, lodging in but not breaking his femur.
All of this took just a few seconds. Rusty never moved, except to lean toward me and away from the line of fire. In games, he’d always head for the bench during brawls, and I’d be out there busting my knuckles against the top of some gorilla’s helmet.
As she took aim again, I finally leaped from the barstool and dived for the gun, knocking it away. Chrissy Bernhardt fainted, and I caught her, just scooped her up and held her there, her cheek resting on my shoulder, her flowing hair tickling my neck. Which is how my picture came to be plastered on page one of The Miami Herald, a beautiful, unconscious woman in my arms, a dumb, gaping look on my face. Beneath the photo, the caption “Lawyer disarms gun-toting model-too late.” Story of my life: a step too slow.
2
Concussion Zone
“Patricide,” Doc Charlie Riggs said with distaste. “A crime of biblical dimensions.”
“And mythical,” I added.
“Oedipus, of course,” Charlie said. “And let’s see now . . .”
Talking to the retired coroner is like playing poker with ideas, and today it was my turn to deal. “Orestes,” I told him. It isn’t often I get the upper hand on Charlie, so I milked it. “Orestes beheaded his mother, Clytemnestra, for plotting the death of his father, Agamemnon.”
“Yes, of course. Very good, Jake. Very good, indeed.”
He gave me his kindly teacher look. It’s fun proving that I didn’t spend five years at Penn State for nothing, if you’ll pardon the double negative. My freshman year, I was drafted by the Thespian Club to play Big Jule in a student production of Guys and Dolls, mostly because the other actors had the physique of Michael J. Fox. It was fun, and it prompted me to switch my major from phys. ed. to drama, where I specialized in playing large, dumb guys. Yeah, I know, type casting. My favorite part was Lennie in Of Mice and Men, and I still remember hearing sobs in the audience when I asked George to tell me about the little place we’d get, and there was George pulling the gun out of his pocket. “And I get to tend the rabbits,” I said, and George was pointing the gun at the back of my head, and the people in the audience were sniffling and bawling. I wish Granny could have been there.
Anyway, here I was-two careers later-still acting, but this time for judges and juries. At this precise moment, I was listening as my old friend told me about the autopsy report, which his friends at the county morgue had slipped him last night.
The gunshots should not have killed Harry Bernhardt, Doc Riggs told me. Would not have killed him if he hadn’t had a heart condition. Seventy-five percent blockage of two coronary arteries due to a lifetime of Kentucky bourbon, Cuban cigars, and Kansas beef.
“The shock of the shooting set loose a burst of adrenaline,” Charlie said, leafing through the report. “Combined with the blockage, that could have killed him instantly.”
“But it didn’t,” I protested. “He survived. The surgery was supposedly successful.”
“Sure, the bullets were removed, the bleeding stopped. But, between the shooting and the surgery, the system had taken some brutal shocks, especially for a man with damaged arteries. While recovering in the ICU, the unfortunate Mr. Bernhardt went into spontaneous ventricular fibrillation. The muscle fibers of the heart weren’t getting enough oxygen.” Charlie opened and closed his fist rapidly to demonstrate. “The heart was literally quivering, but no blood was being pumped. Cardiac arrest followed. The Code Blue team attempted to resuscitate and defibrillate but was unsuccessful. Death was imminent.”
“But he was fine when they put him into the ambulance,” I said.
“Fine?” Charlie raised a bushy eyebrow. It was a look he’d used hundreds of times to tell jurors that the lawyer questioning him was full of beans. Charlie Riggs had been medical examiner of Dade County for twenty-five years before retiring to fish the Keys and drink Granny Lassiter’s moonshine. Now, he was sitting in my office high above Biscayne Boulevard, giving me the benefit of his wisdom, without charging me a fee, except for a promised Orvis graphite spinning rod. A small bandy-legged man with an unruly beard, he wore eyeglasses fastened together with a bent fishhook. A cold meerschaum pipe was propped in the corner of his mouth. “Fine?” he repeated. “Mr. Harry Bernhardt was leaking blood from three bullet wounds. Four, if you count both the thigh and the penis, which were hit with the same bullet.”
“Let’s count the penis. I would if it were mine.” I riffled through the paramedics’ report and the hospital records. “But he survived the surgery, which stanched the bleeding and removed the bullets. He was in critical but stable condition in the ICU for two hours after he was patched up.”
“What are you getting at, counselor?”
“The heart attack could have been independent of the shooting. Maybe I can get Socolow to charge her with aggravated assault, instead of-“
“You can’t represent her! You’re a witness.”
“Me and a hundred others, plus a security videotape that caught the whole thing. I already talked to Socolow. He said he’d rather have me as an opposing lawyer than a witness.”
“If I were you, I wouldn’t take that as a compliment.”
“Socolow’s been wrong before. Besides, Ms. Christina Bernhardt asked me to represent her.”
“What’d you do, slip your card into her bra when she was passed out?”
“Wasn’t wearing a bra, Charlie. Panties, either.”
“Good heavens!”
“It’s a model thing. Interferes with the smooth flow of fabric on skin.”
Charlie Riggs looked at me skeptically. “Just when did you become an expert on models?”
“Rusty MacLean taught me a few things. Actually, he’s the one who retained me. He’s her agent, promises to pay the tab.”
“Better get a hefty retainer from that weasel,” Charlie advised, “or you’ll never see a dollar.”
“Hey, Rusty’s an old friend. He introduced me to every after-hours watering hole in the AFC East and many of the women therein.”
“Even in Buffalo?”
“Especially in Buffalo. What else is there to do?”
Charlie harrumphed his displeasure. “I never trusted a receiver who didn’t like going over the middle.”
Like coaches and generals, Doc Charlie Riggs had remarkable tolerance for other people’s pain.
“Charlie, believe me, no one likes going over the middle. It’s a concussion zone.”
It’s true, of course. No one wants to run full speed into Dick Butkus, Jack Lambert, or even little old me, Jake Lassiter, linebacker with a tender heart and a forearm smash like a crowbar to the throat.
“It’s not just that he short-armed it,” Charlie said. “It’s that he never gave a hundred percent. With you, Jake, it was different. You had no business being out there. You just gave it everything and overachieved.”
“It was either that or drive a beer truck,” I said. In those days, I hadn’t thought about law school, still confining myself to honest work. But Charlie Riggs was right about one thing. Rusty had talent he never used.
Rusty MacLean was a natural. A four-sport star at a Chicago high school, he was an All-American at Notre Dame and a first-round draft choice with the Dolphins. I was a solid, if unspectacular, linebacker at Coral Shores High School in the Florida Keys, a walk-on at Penn State, and a free agent with the Dolphins. I hung on as a pro because of a willingness to punish myself-and occasionally an opponent-on kickoff teams. I played linebacker only when injuries to the starters were so severe that Don Shula thought about calling Julio Iglesias to fill in.
Rusty could do anything-pole-vault, high-jump, play tennis with either hand. The first time he touched a golf club, he shot a 79. But he hated practice and loved parties. Blown knee ligaments ended his career when he didn’t have the discipline to suffer through a year of painful rehabilitation. My career ended differently. I fought back after knee surgery, numerous fractures, and separated shoulders, but was simply beaten out by better, younger players. I enrolled in night law school because it left days free for windsurfing.
Charlie grumbled something else about my old teammate, then went back to the autopsy report, pausing once to tap tobacco into his pipe and then light it. I stood up and paced, stopping in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the bay, Key Biscayne, and the ocean beyond. From the thirty-second floor, I could make out tiny triangles of colorful sails on the waters just off Virginia Key. Windsurfers luxuriating in a fifteen-knot easterly. Beats murder and mayhem any day.
“What about it, Charlie? Will you testify that the heart attack was an intervening cause?”
“But it wasn’t!” he thundered. “The shooting was the proximate cause of the coronary.”
“Not so fast,” I cautioned. “At his age, with the condition of his arteries, Harry Bernhardt could have had a coronary at any time, right?”
“But he didn’t have it any time. He went into cardiac arrest three and a half hours after your client-if that’s what she is- plugged him, her own father, for God’s sake.”
“How about just helping me out at the bond hearing, Charlie? Maybe give a little song-and-dance to get her out of the can.”
Charlie raised his bushy eyebrows at me. “Are you suborning perjury?”
“No, I was just saying-“
“That I lie at the bond hearing, as if that would be a lesser evil than at the trial.” His look was a dagger. “Jake, an oath is an oath.”
I remembered what a writer once said about another lawyer, the disgraced and now deceased Roy Cohn: “He only lies under oath.” Well, why not? That’s when it counts.
“Veritas simplex oratio est,” Charlie said. “The language of truth is simple. But lies, prevarications, calumnies, they’ll catch you in their web.”
I hate arguing with Charlie Riggs because he’s always right, and he keeps me semihonest with his damned Yankee rectitude. “The grand jury meets tomorrow,” I said. “I was hoping to talk Abe Socolow into a plea to a lesser-“
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was the beginning of her obsessive desire to write and create stories of young people who overcome unbelievable odds. She loves to write while on the porch watching her kids play or when she is traveling, which is another passion that encouraged her writing.
, 
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, and 
and 
. When not plotting murders, I enjoy cycling, social networking, and attending mystery conferences. I’ve also been known to jump out of airplanes.
and 
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