Important Note: This post is dated Friday, April 13, 2012, and the titles mentioned here may remain free only until midnight PST tonight.

In the fall of 1999, psychologist Sophia Beckman is compelled by the court to give testimony on behalf of a death row inmate that results in his sentence being overturned. Haunted by secrets from her past, she avoids the media spotlight as much as possible, but soon, other prisoners’ families come seeking her assistance. One family in particular, the wife, children, and brother of Jarrett Capshaw, is especially insistent. Forty-one days ago Jarrett’s request to die was granted by the State of Texas, and he became a dead man walking, a man they call a volunteer.

Jarrett’s crimes were unusual, involving the theft of precious Mayan antiquities. Murder was never part of the plan, but murder is what happened. He pulled the trigger, and as little as he feels prepared for it, as much as he struggles with matters of the soul, he’s ready to die. It is the only way his family and the families of his victims will be free to move on. While Jarrett labors to find the words to say good-bye to those he has loved, Sophia finds herself drawn into a relationship with his wife and oldest son. It is Jarrett’s family she can’t resist and there will be a price to pay. But not even Sophia could have foreseen the outcome when the brutal truth is exposed, the unalloyed facts that, incredibly, will deliver Jarrett’s fate straight into her hands.

The Volunteer is a story about families, how they are made, and how in one single, horrifying instant, they can be broken. It is a story about mothers and the lies they tell to protect their children, to keep them from being hurt. But what happens when the truth comes out anyway and nothing and no one is spared? Sometimes the truth has the power to break your heart, and in Sophia’s case it will also endanger her freedom and threaten everything she has ever believed about her life.

The announcement that the plague has left some survivors with paranormal side-effects, has left the world reeling. You’d think solving murders would be easy for Claire, a telepath, and Colin, who can turn into a spirit wolf, but you’d be dead wrong. Not everyone is willing to talk to Survivors so it is a good thing you can’t tell who’s normal and who isn’t.

Updated edition 12/9/2011

Fans of Robert B. Parker’s Spenser books should try this one. Hallinan, a 2011 Best Novel Edgar finalist, began his six-book Simeon Grist series with this white-knuckle mystery. Simeon Grist knows L.A. inside and out–the sex for sale, the chic seductions, every rip-off from City Hall to Venice. So when he’s hired by a Hollywood recording company to shadow one Sally Oldfield, suspected of embezzlement, Grist discovers she’s entangled in The Church of the Eternal Moment–a million-dollar religious scam built around a 12-year-old channeler and the voice of a man who has been dead for a millennium. When Sally turns up dead, Simeon knows he’s become the next target of a very flesh-and-blood entity waiting in the back alleys of sin and salvation to give him a brutal look at the four last things: death, judgment, heaven and hell–revelations he could definitely live without…

What happens when fate chooses an ordinary man for an extraordinary mission?

Arnab Bannerjee has little excitement in his life other than tracking down missing books as the Assistant Librarian in a small college in Delhi. All that changes one day when he is beaten and left for dead after a robbery. Arnab awakens to discover that he has developed fantastic superhuman powers and he tries to master his new¬found powers and to use them for good. As a hooded superhero he takes to the streets on a one-man crusade against injustice. However he soon realizes that in a society where the only power that matters comes from having money or the right connections, one man, even a superhero, can make little difference.

When he embarks on a final, desperate mission, he realizes that to succeed, he has to become a part of the very system he loathes by tapping into a motley set of allies such as the Minister who wants to use his powers to rig elections, the corrupt policeman who shot Arnab for exposing him and the corporate tycoon who wants to sign him up as a brand ambassador!

At one level, Heroes R Us seeks to entertain with a delightfully contemporary take on the superhero genre, and at another level it asks the provocative question of whether in the dark and corrupt times we live in, there is any place left for heroes. Slumdog Millionaire meets Spiderman in this exciting novel that will entertain and make you think at the same time.

Or check out the Audible.com version of ONE SMALL VICTORY
in its Audible Audio Edition, Unabridged!

Life can change in just an instant. That’s the harsh reality that Jenny Jasik faces when her son is killed in an automobile accident, but never in her wildest dreams did she ever expect to be working undercover as a member of a drug task force. She is, after all, just a mom. But don’t discount what a mom can do when the safety of her children is at stake.
This book was inspired by a true story of a woman who did this in a small rural town, and while that may appear unbelievable, the basic facts of how she worked undercover as an informant are true. The rest is fiction.

(This is a sponsored post.)