Every month Amazon releases a new selection of Kindle books priced $3.99 or less.
We've looked through the September books and listed below those in the "mystery/suspense" category; we've added one written for young adults that we think may be of interest to our readers … and left another, though we're not quite sure it is actually a mystery or thriller.
All of the books listed below are currently priced at either $1.99 or $2.99 for the month of September 2012 only.
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An Agatha Raisin Mystery (1st in series)
Putting all her eggs in one basket, Agatha Raisin gives up her successful PR firm, sells her London flat, and samples a taste of early retirement in the quiet village of Carsely. Bored, lonely and used to getting her way, she enters a local baking contest: Surely a blue ribbon for the best quiche will make her the toast of the town. But her recipe for social advancement sours when Judge Cummings-Browne not only snubs her entry — but falls over dead! After her quiche's secret ingredient turns out to be poison, she must reveal the unsavory truth …
Agatha has never baked a thing in her life! In fact, she bought her entry ready-made from an upper crust London quicherie. Grating on the nerves of several Carsely residents, she is soon receiving sinister notes. Has her cheating and meddling landed her in hot water, or are the threats related to the suspicious death? It may mean the difference between egg on her face and a coroner's tag on her toe …
A Judy Cooper, "Black Stiletto" Mystery (1st in series)
Could Martin Talbot's elderly, Alzheimer-stricken mother, Judy, really have been the Black Stiletto?
When Martin discovers several volumes of her diaries hidden by his mother, he is stunned beyond all imagination. His mother, the underground heroine of yesteryear? The famed, still unidentified woman who battled Communist spies, took on the Mafia, and preyed on common crooks? The woman who exacted punishment on evildoers without mercy?
But it is all described, in great detail, in the diaries. What caused her to begin her quest for justice. Her decision to act outside the law. Her feats as the famed and feared vigilante. How her reputation exploded. In short, how it all played out. Could it be true?
Talbot is filled with doubt and disbelief. But the reappearance of one of the Stiletto's old enemies with a thirst for merciless revenge makes the story more than real and could imperil the life of not only the Stiletto, but her son and granddaughter as well.
Avid hunter Jake Crosby is thrilled that his nine-year-old daughter Katy shares his love of the outdoors. His wife, Morgan, on the other hand, does not, which means Jake and Katy enjoy an abundance of hunting, fishing, and camping trips together. So when they head off into the Alabama woods for a spring turkey hunt, Jake expects nothing out of the ordinary. But even his worst nightmares could not prepare him for what befalls them that evening, when a band of drug dealers attempts to break into their remote camp. Desperate to protect his daughter and himself, Jake makes a gut-wrenching decision. His quick thinking enables him and Katy to escape … but brings the gang of vengeful criminals hot on their trail. Gambling on his knowledge of the land and hunting skills, he leads their bloodthirsty pursuers on a perilous cat-and-mouse game deep within the Noxubee River swamp. Jake knows they all won't come out alive — but he will do whatever is necessary to make sure Katy does.
Mike is a tattoo artist running his own shop, and Deb is the piercing artist he hires to round out the motley crew at his studio of four. The last thing either expects is romance, but that's exactly what happens when they follow their off-kilter careers and love lives into complete disaster.
When Mike follows a growing trend and tattoos the ashes of deceased loved ones into several customers' tattoos, he has no idea that it will one day provide the solution — and solace — he will sorely need. And when the life of a serial killer tragically collides with the lives of those in the tattoo shop, Mike and Deb will stop at nothing in their quest for revenge, even if it means stepping outside the known boundaries of life and death.
Ink that is full of crematory ashes, a sociopathic killer, and pain in its most raw form combine for one of the most imaginative, haunting thrillers in recent memory.
A Mythos Academy Mystery (1st in series)
My name is Gwen Frost, and I go to Mythos Academy — a school of myths, magic and warrior whiz kids, where even the lowliest geek knows how to chop off somebody's head with a sword and Logan Quinn, the hottest Spartan guy in school, also happens to be the deadliest.
But lately, things have been weird, even for Mythos. First, mean girl Jasmine Ashton was murdered in the Library of Antiquities. Then, someone stole the Bowl of Tears, a magical artifact that can be used to bring about the second Chaos War. You know, death, destruction and lots of other bad, bad things. Freaky stuff like this goes on all the time at Mythos, but I'm determined to find out who killed Jasmine and why — especially since I should have been the one who died …
A Leo Waterman Mystery (7th in series)
Hard living collects its fair share of casualties, but somehow Leo Waterman avoided becoming one of them. Destined for a trust fund that was taking too damn long to kick in, he spent years eking out a living in Seattle as a private investigator. Along the way he managed to survive countless run-ins with murderers, drug dealers, and jealous wives. But when Rebecca, the love of his life, dumped him to marry someone else … that was a different story. Still, he took it like a man, eventually collecting his family money and slipping into semi-retirement—until the day an unwelcome visitor brings him the worst possible news.
Rebecca has vanished and no one, not even her manipulative, overprotective mother, can find a trace of her. Together with his band of informers and sidekicks (in truth a rather motley crew of homeless drunks and reprobates), Leo wades back into the game, determined to save Rebecca once and for all.
But her trail is a twisted one, thick with deception and depravity that winds from the rain-swept streets of Seattle to the murky depths of the great North Woods. The stink of it all seems to emanate from none other than Rebecca's new husband, Brett Ward, whose tangle of lies will cast Leo into the path of a ruthless gang that will stop at nothing — not even murder — to protect what's theirs.
Will Givens was one of two survivors of the 1981 explosion that killed 52 Eastern Kentucky men in the Harlan #7 Coal Mine. But Will carries a terrible secret hidden from all about the tragedy that occurred after the explosion under Black Mountain. When he comes home 20 years later to face his past, he tips a delicate balance that will result in a second disaster worse than the first.
As his life entwines with a grandmother whose grief has imprisoned her, a beautiful young woman who carries a terrible secret of her own and a mentally handicapped boy who carves coal statutes, he's unaware of the danger — or that the boy holds the key to it all. Will he figure that out before it's too late?
Yasuko Hanaoka is a divorced, single mother who thought she had finally escaped her abusive ex-husband Togashi. When he shows up one day to extort money from her, threatening both her and her teenaged daughter Misato, the situation quickly escalates into violence and Togashi ends up dead on her apartment floor. Overhearing the commotion, Yasuko's next door neighbor, middle-aged high school mathematics teacher Ishigami, offers his help, disposing not only of the body but plotting the cover-up step-by-step.
When the body turns up and is identified, Detective Kusanagi draws the case and Yasuko comes under suspicion. Kusanagi is unable to find any obvious holes in Yasuko's manufactured alibi and yet is still sure that there's something wrong. Kusanagi brings in Dr. Manabu Yukawa, a physicist and college friend who frequently consults with the police. Yukawa, known to the police by the nickname Professor Galileo, went to college with Ishigami. After meeting up with him again, Yukawa is convinced that Ishigami had something to do with the murder. What ensues is a high level battle of wits, as Ishigami tries to protect Yasuko by outmaneuvering and outthinking Yukawa, who faces his most clever and determined opponent yet.
One perfect shot will change the course of history. Christine Palmer, a young American doctor sailing solo across the Atlantic, makes an incredible discovery - a man narrowly clinging to his life in the frigid waters. But there is much more to this desperate survivor than meets the eye.David Slaton is a Kidon — a highly-trained, highly-precise, and highly-dangerous assassin. The Kidon is both the hunter and the hunted, and he and Christine are in grave danger. Will they win in this race against time?
A Natalie Barnes Mystery (3rd in series)
It's springtime on Cranberry Island — and love is in the air. It seems like every woman has the hots for buff trainer Dirk De Leon. He and his equally-gorgeous business partner, Vanessa Black, are leading a weight-loss retreat at the Gray Whale Inn — forcing innkeeper Natalie Barnes to lighten up her butter-laden breakfast menu.
The mood on the island darkens when two grisly discoveries are made. The first is a skeleton walled up at the island's lighthouse. The second is a corpse of the fresh variety — the handsome Dirk! Could the spirit that once embodied the skeletal remains — perhaps the lighthouse keeper who disappeared a century ago — be responsible for Dirk's death?
The police pin the blame on Natalie's boyfriend who — to her dismay — had a long-ago fling with Vanessa. To find the true killer and ease her own aching heart, Natalie must untangle the knot of jealous girlfriends and spurned admirers that once surrounded the hunky trainer.
Dr. Richard Draman is trying desperately to discover a cure for a disease that causes children to age at a wildly accelerated rate — a rare genetic condition that is killing his own daughter. When the husband of a colleague quietly gives him a copy of the classified work she was doing before her mysterious suicide, Draman finally sees a glimmer of hope. The conclusions are stunning, with the potential to not only turn the field of biology on its head, but reshape the world. Soon, though, he finds himself on the run, relentlessly pursued by a seemingly omnipotent group of men who will do whatever it takes to silence him.
An Atticus Fish Mystery (1st in series)
Take one sea-loving captain, a drug-smuggling first mate, and a novice deckhand with a secret, and you have the motley crew of the Wahoo Rhapsody, a ramshackle fishing charter plying the Pacific's waters off the coast of Cabo San Lucas. Captain Winston Weber makes an honest, if lean, living running fishing charters between Mexico and California, with no inkling of the fact that his first mate, Weevil Ott, is smuggling marijuana inside the yellowfin tuna stacked in the boat's hold. But when Weevil decides to skim a small fortune for himself, goons under orders from the mysterious drug lord known only as "La Cucaracha" descend upon the Wahoo Rhapsody.
Jake Reese is a writing teacher at an American university. He lives in a small brick Tudor close to campus with his art buyer wife, Diane. His life is quiet-Ordinary even. And he likes it that way. But it wasn't always quiet. Jake's distant past was a life on the streets, inflicting damage and suffering on more people than he can count. And now someone from his past, it seems, has come looking for him.
When two men attack Jake in a parking lot and cut off his ring finger, he tries to dismiss it as an unlucky case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But when events take a more sinister turn and Diane goes missing, Jake knows he can no longer hide from the truth.
As he embarks on a mission to find his wife, he realizes his dark past is refusing to stay buried, and that his future is about to unfold in ways he could never have imagined.
When the much-despised Marbury Marfan senior partner Simon Rafer turns up dead, with an ornate dagger buried between his shoulder blades, it comes as a surprise to no one. Simon was an abusive boss and had recently been on the warpath, clearing the "dead wood" from the legal firm he treated as his personal fiefdom. Nearly a thousand attorneys and associates, scattered across four continents, had good reason to want Rafer dead, but homicide Detective Spritz has his eye trained on Marbury Marfan partner Robert Tarza, in particular. Tarza and his friend and colleague — and maybe a bit more — Jenna are soon forced to play detective themselves, in a race to find the real killer or killers before Spritz finishes assembling a collection of evidence that will make a very credible case against Tarza.
Sasha Davis, smart and pretty, was once an all-American teenage beauty queen. Full of potential, she was the only student at her midwestern high school to attend college on the East Coast. But soon her promise begins to falter. After starting graduate school in New York, Sasha gets married and drops out of school to take a clerical job. Consigned to the role of trophy wife, and already feeling old at twenty-four, she lives in fear of turning thirty — the year, in her mind, when her beauty will fade and life as she knows it will end. While she still has time, she embarks on an adventure of self-discovery and sexual exploration. Only after entering a second marriage and finding herself trapped by her responsibilities as a mother, does she finally begin to figure out what's gone wrong.
A Paul Chang Mystery (2nd in series)
For former NYPD and Delaware State Police detective Paul Chang, retiring to open his own agency with former partner Nelson Rogers should mean leaving behind politics and scapegoating. Instead, corrupt Colonel Byrd of the state police and his lackey Clyde Foley harass Chang at every turn, and their unwanted attention puts his fledgling business on the brink of bankruptcy.
With the police on his back and the agency taking sleazy cases he never thought he'd have to, Chang erupts under the job's pressures and sees his personal demon, an alter ego he calls the dragon, emerge. Only the training from his martial arts teacher and old friend Shu can keep Chang sane. But when someone tries to frame him for the stalking of his ex-wife and a journalist, the harassment turns deadly and the lives of everyone close to him are in danger. Unable to wait for events to take their course, Chang must unleash the dragon.
A Butch Karp and Marlene Ciampi Mystery (9th in series)
Back as head of the district attorney's homicide bureau, Butch Karp comes up against one of his most bizarre cases yet. A series of racially motivated murders in Harlem prove to be the work of a wealthy suburbanite out to relive a twisted episode from his childhood. The killer's showboating defense attorney will stop at nothing to derail Karp's prosecution — even if it means igniting a race war. But while Karp relentlessly pursues the guilty, his wife, Marlene, risks everything when standing up for victims of domestic abuse and crosses into vigilantism.
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Important Note: Any prices mentioned above were correct as of the date and time of this post. Prices are subject to change without notice. The price displayed on the vendor website at the time of purchase will be the price paid for the book. Please confirm the price of the book before completing your transaction.
