Children of the Fog by Cheryl Kaye Tardif
280 pages, 107 of 119 reviews are 4 or 5-star, Lending Enabled
Sadie O’Connell is a bestselling author and a proud mother. But her life is about to spiral out of control. After her six-year-old son Sam is kidnapped by a serial abductor, she nearly goes insane. But it isn’t just the fear and grief that is ripping her apart. It’s the guilt. Sadie is the only person who knows what the kidnapper looks like. And she can’t tell a soul. For if she does, her son will be sent back to her in “little bloody pieces”.
When Sadie’s unfaithful husband stumbles across her drawing of the kidnapper, he sets into play a series of horrific events that sends her hurtling over the edge. Sadie’s descent into alcoholism leads to strange apparitions and a face-to-face encounter with the monster who abducted her son–a man known only as…The Fog.
Morning Star by Desiree Finkbeiner
426 pages, 67 of 69 reviews are 5-star, Lending Enabled
It started with a mushroom, from another world… never before touched by a human hand, until Brianna… but life continued as normal… until a near fatal accident almost a decade later, reveals to Brianna… she’s… different…
Unexplained lab results, unusually fast healing, and recent sightings of Jurassic sized dragonflies… What is happening to her?
When a peculiar man delivers her from a violent assault, she becomes enchanted by his heroism and inhuman abilities. Her rescuer, Kalen, is sworn to protect the powerful secret she has yet to realize, from an ancient foe with evil designs…
With the secret exposed, our world is no longer safe. Kalen takes Brianna to Ethos, his home, unprepared for what happens next… An ancient prophecy unfolds and they must make make a choice… Give into their forbidden love, or sacrifice their heart’s desire for a chance to save their worlds.
252 pages, 27 of 31 reviews are 5-star, Lending Enabled, Previously Free
Ace is on the run from everyone, it seems. He’s running from a busted Witness Protection Program assignment, an international collection of gangsters and arms merchants he pissed off working undercover, and worst of all—from his own scarred self-image and the nightmares that haunt him.
After two lonely years on the road he risks a short visit with his old friend, Granville Tubbs, who lives in the sleepy small town of Ferris’ Bluff, Arkansas. He hasn’t even had a tingle that anyone has been on his trail for almost a year. What could go wrong in a few days?
Plenty, it turns out. But some things go right, too…shotgun ambushes aside.
The ultimate loner, Ace is soon brought under the spell of the quirky small town and its residents. As he tries to help Tubbs, all the while jealously guarding his alias, the friendliness of the townsfolk chips away at the wall of solitude he’s built. It’s as if Leets and Dicky and Art Drury are determined to become his new friends. And the pretty widow, Annie Travers—well, try as he might he can’t deny the growing mutual attraction between the two of them.
He runs smack up against the dark side of Ferris’ Bluff in no time. The greedy lawyer, Tremont, and his slutty wife, Reena, are after something in Tubbs’ estate. The local mechanic, Pink, is out to mess him up, too. Ace is soon enmeshed in a battle of wits and wills with some of the locals.
And if that ain’t thorny enough, Russian arms dealers who Ace hurt badly on his last assignment have been keeping a loose watch on Tubbs. When he discovers that Annie’s husband’s accident wasn’t an accident at all and Dicky Stover, the victim of a brutal beating, is killed while in the hospital, hitting the road is no longer an option.
Ferris’ Bluff, a thriller with a smokin’ hot romance tucked inside!
296 pages, 99 of 131 reviews are 4 or 5-star, Lending Enabled, Previously Free
For 13-year-old Ronnie Day, life is full of problems: Mom and Dad have separated, his brother Tim is a constant pest, Melanie Ward either loves him or hates him, and Jesus Christ won’t stay in his heart. Plus he has to walk past the red church every day, where the Bell Monster hides with its wings and claws and livers for eyes. But the biggest problem is that Archer McFall is the new preacher at the church, and Mom wants Ronnie to attend midnight services with her.
Sheriff Frank Littlefield hates the red church for a different reason. His little brother died in a freak accident at the church twenty years ago, and now Frank is starting to see his brother’s ghost. And the ghost keeps demanding, “Free me.” People are dying in Whispering Pines, and the murders coincide with McFall’s return.
The Days, the Littlefields, and the McFalls are descendants of the original families that settled the rural Appalachian community. Those old families share a secret of betrayal and guilt, and McFall wants his congregation to prove its faith. Because he believes he is the Second Son of God, and that the cleansing of sin must be done in blood.
“Sacrifice is the currency of God,” McFall preaches, and unless Frank and Ronnie stop him, everybody pays.
The Universal Mirror by Gwen Perkins
179 pages, 25 of 28 reviews are 4 or 5-star, Lending Enabled
On the island of Cercia, the gods are dead, killed by their followers and replaced with the study of magic. Magicians are forbidden to leave their homeland. Laws bind these men that prevent them from casting spells on the living—whether to harm or to heal.
Quentin, a young nobleman, challenges these laws out of love for his wife. His best friend, Asahel, defies authority at his side, unaware that the search for this lost magic will bring them both to the edge of reason, threatening their very souls. The Universal Mirror shows how far two men are willing to go for the sake of knowledge and what they will destroy to obtain it.
The Sable City by M Edward McNally
475 pages, 27 of 28 reviews are 4 or 5-star, Lending Enabled
Tilda Lanai has trained for years to take her place among the Guilders of the Miilark Islands, but now the Trade House she is to serve is imperiled by the absence of a legitimate Deskata heir. Scenting blood in the water, rival Houses begin to circle. The desperate search for an exiled heir takes Tilda across a war-torn continent and to the gates of the Sable City, where centuries ago dark magic almost destroyed the world. Along with a sinister sorceress, a broken-hearted samurai, and a miscreant mercenary long on charm but lousy with a crossbow, Tilda must brave the demon-infested ruins. Only then can she find John Deskata, who may not want to be found at all.
(Only one thing worse than reading short blurbs for long books, writing short blurbs for long books. 
The above is very nuts and bolts: “Tilda must go here to do this,” but of course it is all a lot more complicated than that. I love the fantasy genre and respect its classic elements. That said, this series is to some extent about playing with what might be expected, and bringing some humor, mystery, and a bit of flirty banter to what can easily turn only too grim, when the stakes are so “fantastically” high. It isn’t “Dark” fantasy, but nor is it slapstick. It’s basically a character piece about Tilda Lanai, trying to hold down a job, help out her friends, and survive the day-to-day. With a couple dragons thrown in, of course. – Ed McNally)
447 pages, 27 of 30 reviews are 4 or 5-star, Lending Enabled
Present Day Wall Street. Where intelligence agencies and the financial industry are strange bedfellows, and the two worlds are often intertwined in disturbing ways.
In this chillingly plausible scenario of a military/industrial/financial complex run amok, Zero Sum pits Dr. Steven Archer Cross against powerful financier Nicholas Griffen in a conflict that raises troubling questions about our markets and our government.
Racing against the clock in a chase that spans continents, one man’s battle to expose the Machiavellian machinations of a ruthless Wall Street marauder forces him into a financial jungle populated by every variety of unscrupulous sociopath – rogue intelligence agencies, Russian mafia oligarchs, drug cartels, and terrorist networks.
As a white-collar game of chess transitions into a lethal real world cage-fight, Steven finds himself in a deadly showdown, where hunters can quickly become the hunted, and blood is the ultimate currency.
Cut, Crop & Die by Joanna Campbell Slan
336 pages, 13 of 16 reviews are 5-star, Lending Enabled
All it took was one scone. When the hot-tempered (and widely hated) hobbyist Yvonne Gaynor eats a tainted pastry at Kiki’s scrapbooking crop party, it triggers an allergy that leads to Yvonne’s death. Even worse, the police suspect foul play when they realize that someone tampered with the treats and swiped the victim’s allergy medication.
An expert at stealing design ideas, Yvonne had enough enemies to fill a memory album. Soon, the scrapbooking community pins her murder on Kiki’s friends and our ace scrapper finds herself dealing with anti-Semitic threats at the shop, a quarrelsome pre-teen daughter at home, a meddlesome mother-in-law, and constant financial pressure. Despite help from the handsome yet annoyingly coy Detective Detweiler, Kiki has her work cut out for her in solving the crime.
Includes innovative scrapbooking tips and a coupon for 50 free digital prints!
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I have not read any of these books, so they may not be any good. Some of the books from previous Free Book posts are still available for free. If you want to see all free books as they come out you should follow Books on the Knob on their RSS or Twitter Feed. Or Ireaderreview or the many free book threads on Amazon’s Message Boards.
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