Start saving money today with our FREE daily newsletter packed with the best FREE and bargain Kindle book deals. We will never share your email address!
It’s Giveaway time! Get a free bonus entry into our monthly raffle and check out Random Acts: A Joanna Brady and Ali Reynolds Novella by J.A. Jance
It’s Giveaway time! Get a free bonus entry into our monthly raffle and check out Random Acts: A Joanna Brady and Ali Reynolds Novella by J.A. Jance
What would you do if your past came back to kill you? Assassins Hunted: An explosive edge of your seat assassin thriller (Eva Delacourt thrillers Book 1) by Rachel Amphlett
What would you do if your past came back to kill you? Assassins Hunted: An explosive edge of your seat assassin thriller (Eva Delacourt thrillers Book 1) by Rachel Amphlett
A true Vietnam War saga based on 50 interviews with veterans who were there and relatives of those who didn’t come home. Swift Sword: The True Story of the Marines of MIKE 3/5 in Vietnam, 4 September 1967 by Doyle Glass
A true Vietnam War saga based on 50 interviews with veterans who were there and relatives of those who didn’t come home. Swift Sword: The True Story of the Marines of MIKE 3/5 in Vietnam, 4 September 1967 by Doyle Glass
A Duke disgraced by whispers. A Lady drawn to his side. Can they silence the rumors and find love at last? The Undesirable Duke: A Sweet Regency Romance (Christmas in London Book 2) by Rose Pearson
A Duke disgraced by whispers. A Lady drawn to his side. Can they silence the rumors and find love at last? The Undesirable Duke: A Sweet Regency Romance (Christmas in London Book 2) by Rose Pearson
A fast-paced, hilarious new entry into the middle school (and beyond) genre! Zip Zilch: Nobody’s a Nothin’ Book 1 by Paul Maitland
A fast-paced, hilarious new entry into the middle school (and beyond) genre! Zip Zilch: Nobody’s a Nothin’ Book 1 by Paul Maitland
It’s Giveaway time! Get a free bonus entry into our monthly raffle and check out Arkangel: A Sigma Force Novel by James Rollins
It’s Giveaway time! Get a free bonus entry into our monthly raffle and check out Arkangel: A Sigma Force Novel by James Rollins
Freebie Friday! Here’s your free Kindle book!
Freebie Friday! Here’s your free Kindle book!
Over 1,100 rave reviews say “Grab this children’s favorite while it’s absolutely FREE! Take the Dog Out! by Lynne Dempsey
Over 1,100 rave reviews say “Grab this children’s favorite while it’s absolutely FREE! Take the Dog Out! by Lynne Dempsey
FREE Today in Occult Horror! The Witch Box by Laura Ellison
FREE Today in Occult Horror! The Witch Box by Laura Ellison
When dark days threaten humanity’s future, will Apollo play the reluctant hero? Siphon: Power Comes With A Price by Jason Fox
When dark days threaten humanity’s future, will Apollo play the reluctant hero? Siphon: Power Comes With A Price by Jason Fox
Rediscover Christmas’s real beauty and profound meaning… Unwrapping Christmas: Stories behind The Story by Rick McKinney and Jane McKinney
Rediscover Christmas’s real beauty and profound meaning… Unwrapping Christmas: Stories behind The Story by Rick McKinney and Jane McKinney
It’s Giveaway time! Get a free bonus entry into our monthly raffle and check out Silent Prey (The Prey Series Book 4) by John Sandford
It’s Giveaway time! Get a free bonus entry into our monthly raffle and check out Silent Prey (The Prey Series Book 4) by John Sandford
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-“
Here’s big news from Amazon – the company is working with Overdrive to launch “Library Lending for Kindle Books” later this year on all Kindles including the new $114 Kindeal as well as free Kindle apps for Android, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, PC, Mac, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone.
“We’re doing a little something extra here,” Marine continued. “Normally, making margin notes in library books is a big no-no. But we’re extending our Whispersync technology so that you can highlight and add margin notes to Kindle books you check out from your local library. Your notes will not show up when the next patron checks out the book. But if you check out the book again, or subsequently buy it, your notes will be there just as you left them, perfectly Whispersynced.”
Here’s Amazon’s press release:
Amazon to Launch Library Lending for Kindle Books Customers will be able to borrow Kindle books from over 11,000 local libraries to read on Kindle and free Kindle reading apps Whispersyncing of notes, highlights and last page read to work for Kindle library books
SEATTLE, Apr 20, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) — (NASDAQ: AMZN)– Amazon today announced Kindle Library Lending, a new feature launching later this year that will allow Kindle customers to borrow Kindle books from over 11,000 libraries in the United States. Kindle Library Lending will be available for all generations of Kindle devices and free Kindle reading apps.
“We’re excited that millions of Kindle customers will be able to borrow Kindle books from their local libraries,” said Jay Marine, Director, Amazon Kindle. “Customers tell us they love Kindle for its Pearl e-ink display that is easy to read even in bright sunlight, up to a month of battery life, and Whispersync technology that synchronizes notes, highlights and last page read between their Kindle and free Kindle apps.”
Customers will be able to check out a Kindle book from their local library and start reading on any Kindle device or free Kindle app for Android, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, PC, Mac, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone. If a Kindle book is checked out again or that book is purchased from Amazon, all of a customer’s annotations and bookmarks will be preserved.
“We’re doing a little something extra here,” Marine continued. “Normally, making margin notes in library books is a big no-no. But we’re extending our Whispersync technology so that you can highlight and add margin notes to Kindle books you check out from your local library. Your notes will not show up when the next patron checks out the book. But if you check out the book again, or subsequently buy it, your notes will be there just as you left them, perfectly Whispersynced.”
With Kindle Library Lending, customers can take advantage of all of the unique features of Kindle and Kindle books, including:
Paper-like Pearl electronic-ink display
No glare even in bright sunlight
Lighter than a paperback – weighs just 8.5 ounces and holds up to 3,500 books
Up to one month of battery life with wireless off
Read everywhere with free Kindle apps for Android, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, PC, Mac, BlackBerry and Windows Phone
Whispersync technology wirelessly sync your books, notes, highlights, and last page read across Kindle and free Kindle reading apps
Real Page Numbers – easily reference passages with page numbers that correspond to actual print editions
Amazon is working with OverDrive, the leading provider of digital content solutions for over 11,000 public and educational libraries in the United States, to bring a seamless library borrowing experience to Kindle customers. “We are excited to be working with Amazon to offer Kindle Library Lending to the millions of customers who read on Kindle and Kindle apps,” said Steve Potash, CEO, OverDrive. “We hear librarians and patrons rave about Kindle, so we are thrilled that we can be part of bringing library books to the unparalleled experience of reading on Kindle.”
Kindle Library Lending will be available later this year for Kindle and free Kindle app users. To learn more about Kindle go to www.amazon.com/kindle.
At this special time of year for many spiritual seekers, we top this morning’s latest addition to our 250+ Free Book Alert listings with 10 free books — both fiction and nonfiction — in which spirituality plays a special role….
But first, a word from … Today’s Sponsor
Today, more than ever, people feel disconnected. They find themselves isolated from each other, from their churches and from their God. Larry Davies takes a fresh look at what it means to be a Christian, to be a church and to be in ministry…
Is your prayer life dull or non-existent? Is your church active and alive or dead in the water? Have you lost direction and purpose? Today, more than ever, people feel disconnected. They find themselves isolated from each other, from their churches and from their God. In “Live the LIGHT: Five Weeks to a Life that Shines,” Larry Davies takes a fresh look at what it means to be a Christian, to be a church and to be in ministry.
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.
“The thinking man’s thriller,” says bestselling author Lisa Gardner: “Jacob Christianson, aspiring doctor and cult elder’s favored son, questions everything, including the nature of God and the sexist politics of polygamy [as he] tracks down a killer whose grisly crimes threaten his community, family, and his own life.”
Medical student Jacob Christianson is sent by church elders to investigate a murder within the polygamist enclave of Blister Creek, Utah. He brings his young sister Eliza, who must choose a husband from three old men jostling for power within the church hierarchy.
Jacob discovers that the murdered woman has been killed in accordance with secret blood oaths taken within the polygamist temple. Together with his sister, he uncovers a plot to overthrow the church leadership, with murders that reach beyond the community and into the “gentile” world.
The Righteous is a heart-pounding suspense-thriller with a depth that will haunt the reader long after the last page is turned.
But here’s even better news! Once you finish The Righteous, you can pick up the sequel, Mighty and Strong, and keep right on going!
From the reviewers:
“Wallace authoritatively and unsparingly tears open the veil shrouding a Utah polygamist community and its secret oaths of blood atonement, temple sacrifice, and angels with drawn swords. Inside we find a riveting thriller that recaptures everything lost from the original American religion.” — Jeffrey Anderson, National bestselling, International Thriller Award nominated author of SLEEPER CELL.
Michael Wallace has trekked across the Sahara on a camel, ridden an elephant through a tiger preserve in Southeast Asia, eaten fried guinea pig, and been licked on the head by a skunk. In a previous stage of life he programmed nuclear war simulations, smuggled refugees out of a war zone, and milked cobras for their venom. He speaks Spanish and French and grew up in a religious community in the desert.
And here, in the comfort of your own browser, is your free sample:
Earlier this month we launched a new feature to help readers find 99-cent books that have 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.
Authors and Fans: To suggest a title please follow the format at the end of this post (or in the first comment), please follow instructions, and be patient!
We’ve got a great new batch of highly rated 99-centers to share with you today….
But first, a word from … Today’s Sponsor
A threesome. Past tragedies. Lust for revenge. From France to Massachusetts, there are enough plot twists and turns to embroil Randy, Charlies and Dierdre in some seriously twisted complications … and no limits on how far they will go to get what they want.
“I can absolutely see why a movie company optioned this thriller..”
Roxanne Mchenry, Top 50 Reviewer
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.
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.
Genre: Mystery
Price: .99
Reviews and Ratings: 4.5 stars from 20 reviewers Sometimes writing mysteries can be murder…
Where’s Billie? A Skeeter Hughes Mystery by Judith Yates Borger
Mystery
Price: $.99
Reviews and Ratings: 4.8 Stars from 18 Reviewers A reporter looking for a missing girl at the Mall of Ameria learns her own daughter may also be in danger.
Kissing Kelli by Kathy Carmichael
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Price: $.99
Reviews and Ratings: 4.3 Stars from 7 Reviewers Romantic Comedy set in Texas.
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.
Class Collision: Fall From Grace 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.
Empty Chairs
Stacey Danson
Biography
$0.99
4.5 Stars from 12 reviewers
A marvelous story of grit and the determination to survive in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Journey with her.
A Kiss Before You Leave Me
James Hulbert
Genre: Literary Fiction/Upscale Commercial Fiction
Price: $0.99
Reviews and Ratings: 4.9 Stars from 7 Reviewers Three master manipulators–and a woman in love–clash in the worlds of surveillance, voyeurism, and art.
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.
Marcus Wynne
Genre: Thriller, War/Terrorism
Price: $0.99
Reviews/Ratings: 5 star average out of 21 The aviation security novel the TSA doesn’t want you to read.
Beyond Nostalgia Tom Winton
Genre: Contemporary Romance/Literary Fiction
Price: $.99
Reviews and Ratings: 5 Stars from 16 Reviewers Two underclass teenagers sharing a world-class love affair are ripped from each other’s arms and reuntied 24 years later.
JOHNNY WYLDE Marcus Wynne
Genre: Thriller, Mystery & Crime – ADULTS ONLY
Price: $0.99
Reviews/Ratings: 5 star average out of 9 THE WIRE meets PULP FICTION. Except with guns instead of drugs.
Wet Desert, a Novel Gary Hansen
Genre: Technothrillers
Price: .99
Reviews and Ratings: 4.6 Stars from 172 Reviewers A race against an environmental terrorist blowing up dams
More to come on Thursday!
To suggest a title please follow the format below (or in the first comment), and include the information in a comment below.
Title:
Author:
ASIN:
Genre:
Price:
Reviews and Ratings: (Example: 4.2 Stars from 5 Reviewers)
Description: 20 words or less
Note: Please do not include any links to your book(s), website, or social media site(s) as it will probably lead your comment to be rejected by Akismet, our spam filter.
A brand new novel from from Alison Strobel and a first-class freebie from Seth Godin top this morning’s latest additions to our 250+ Free Book Alert listings….
But first, a word from … Today’s Sponsor
A threesome. Past tragedies. Lust for revenge. From France to Massachusetts, there are enough plot twists and turns to embroil Randy, Charlies and Dierdre in some seriously twisted complications … and no limits on how far they will go to get what they want.
“I can absolutely see why a movie company optioned this thriller..” Roxanne Mchenry, Top 50 Reviewer
“Fans of Patricia Highsmith and Scott Smith, take note”
Here’s the set-up:
When his knee shatters on the playing field, Charlie Marston is plunged into turmoil. The fallen college superstar joins the family winemaking business, but working alongside his parents is not the future he had planned. He escapes work whenever he can and soon finds a new friend named Randy Black. Randy is part stunt-pilot, part Casanova, and part drunken Pied Piper. Randy introduces Charlie to Deirdre Deudon, the provocative wife of a French farmer. They come together in an ill-conceived stunt that explodes into consequences that chase Charlie and Randy back home to Massachusetts and change Deirdre’s life forever. The after-effects of this tragic mistake bind the three of them together and threaten everything they hold dear.
“The story kept me on the edge of my seat, a page turner for sure, but I especially enjoyed reading as Charlie’s character grows in each scene of adversity. I actually feel like I witnessed Charlie taking the control in his life back, and that was an empowering feeling.” –Destiny Booze, Romantic Suspense/Thriller Author
“The plotting of this book is incredibly involved and detailed, with writing that is appropriately descriptive yet fast-paced… He develops his characters masterfully–particularly Randy Black, and what a complex individual he is. Since I was working with an e-book, I found myself sneaking peeks at it during work yesterday, continued reading it last night and had to finish it this morning. If you like thrillers, then you will definitely enjoy reading Sin & Vengeance and I bet you’ll find it hard to put down.” –Melissa B. Owensof www.Melissas-bookshelf.com
“Charlie Marston is a likable guy who’s recently graduated from college, where he studied oenology and chemistry with a view to joining his father’s winemaking business. But lately Charlie’s been sowing his oats with a troublemaker, Randy Black, who’s exactly the sort of guy Charlie’s father doesn’t approve of: Randy is an amoral hedonist and a thrill seeker who’s almost certainly going to get Charlie in trouble if he continues to hang around with him. One night, something terrible happens, and Charlie’s life turns on a dime. Randy, he comes to understand, is a dangerous friend to have. Just how dangerous becomes increasingly clear over the next months.” –Debra Hamel, Top 1000 Reviewer
About the Author
From CJ West’s publisher: CJ West is a compelling young writer with a unique voice and a talent for breathing life into even his minor characters. He paints his scenes so vividly that we were proud, but not surprised, when this work was optioned for film. West has created a work so fast-paced and a plot so dynamic that readers are too enthralled to stop and unravel the intricacies on their own. Even when readers finally believe they’ve got it all figured out, West ends with a flourish of surprises that forces readers to consider the entire work, all the way back to the opening erotic scene.
Click here to downloadSin And Vengeance (Randy Black Series) (or a free sample) to your Kindle, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, Android-compatible, PC or Mac and start reading within 60 seconds!
UK CUSTOMERS: Click on the title below to download
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.
Here’s the set-up for L.J. Sellers’ Dying for Justice, just $2.99 for Kindle
:
, Secrets to Die For
, Thrilled to Death
, Passions of the Dead
, and Dying for Justice
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.
? 
. 
to download 
he Secret Diary of Alice in Wonderland, Age 42 and Three-Quarters
and 
.
