Readers are hooked on Edgar-winning author Julie Smith and for good reason! Fans love her fun, action packed novels, which keep you wanting more. And she delivers! As a special treat today you can get the first in the Paul Mcdonald series, True-Life Adventure, and book number 7 in the Skip Langdon series, Crescent City Connection, for free! Enjoy!
True-Life Adventure (Paul Mcdonald mystery #1) (The Paul Mcdonald Series)
Julie Smith
Genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
FREE for a limited time
Things were going lousy for ex-reporter Paul Mcdonald: No money, no girl friend, no bright new career as a mystery novelist … and then along came PI Jack Birnbaum with an offer. He’d detect, and Paul would write the client reports. It wasn’t much, but it would keep Spot the cat in Kitty Queen tidbits. And then this:
“That stuff’ll kill you.”
“What? Your coffee?” Jack was just doctoring his second cup.
“No. All that sweetener. You’re poisoning yourself.”
“We’ve all gotta go sometime.”
Jack went right about then. His eyes rolled back and he let go of the cup. Coffee sloshed all over my rug. His big body fell forward in the chair.
A day that begins with a body in your living room really ought to get better, but next comes burglary and after that, assault-by-cop. And Paul’s got a feeling that’s just the beginning. There must have been something someone didn’t want him to know in one of those client reports. But what?
These were the facts: I was thirty-eight. I’d spent fifteen years on one major metropolitan daily or another. I’d written six unpublished detective novels. Unpublished in spite of my name.
John D. MacDonald did it daily. Ross Macdonald did it deeper. Gregory Mcdonald did it with dash.
Wrote thrillers and got them published.
But not Paul Mcdonald.
I just wrote them, supporting my habit with clients like Jack.
I had about two hundred bucks to last me the rest of my life.
My only client was dead.
The market for mysteries was terrible.
I didn’t get out enough.
The only thing I’d ever done successfully was write newspaper stories.
And I was sitting on a great story.
A story he can sell, if he can catch the murderer before the murderer catches him.
Birnbaum’s last report concerned a kidnapped child, so Paul begins there. The trail leads him to the laboratory of a Nobel laureate geneticist, and then to City Hall, where an extremely nasty surprise awaits. But there’s an upside—lovely witness Sardis Kincannon. Nothing like falling in love while you’re running for your life!
Click here to get this book for FREE
(also available from Amazon. DE FR IT ES )
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Huckleberry Fiend (Paul Mcdonald Mystery #2) (The Paul Mcdonald Series 2)
Julie Smith
Genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
THE BOOK THAT CORRUPTED HALF OF BERKELEY…
Paul Mcdonald has a book—and he really shouldn’t have it! In between much-needed therapy sessions, his neurotic friend Booker the burglar stole it from his dad’s girl friend’s roommate Beverly, and now wants sometime-sleuth Paul to find its rightful owner. Because he’s pretty sure Beverly’s not it.
Paul is so awed he can hardly bring himself to touch it. It’s none other than the missing holograph of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, possibly the most priceless American manuscript in existence. And Beverly’s no librarian, she’s a flight attendant, so Booker suspects chicanery. He’s only too right: Beverly, it turns out, is dead. Murdered for the manuscript, if Paul’s guess is right.
He finds out it’s in high demand from a zany collection of collectors, Huckleberry Fiends of all stripes of crazy, every single one of them capable of murder.
Suddenly he’s the protagonist of A Literary Nightmare, surrounded by Mysterious Strangers, playing out A Double-Barrelled Detective Story involving A Stolen White Elephant and pretty much Roughing It with Homicide Inspector Howard Blick. It’s truly, A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage….no, not a marriage, a manuscript! But Paul does have his eye on tough and savvy Sardis Kincannon…
The liberally-sprinkled Mark Twain quotes and references make this witty yarn a treat for the literary-minded, and better yet, the twisty plot will satisfy the pickiest mystery fiend.
Click here to get this book for $0.99
(also available from Amazon. CO.UK IT ES )
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Crescent City Connection: An Action-Packed New Orleans Mystery; Skip Langdon #7 (The Skip Langdon Series 7)
Julie Smith
Genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
FREE for a limited time
Crescent City Connection (formerly Crescent City Kill) is the SEVENTH book in the Edgar Award-winning Skip Langdon series by Julie Smith.
SPICY SUSPENSE, DELICIOUS SURPRISES, AND GRITTY REALISM IN A POWERFUL TALE OF JUSTICE GONE AWRY…
Sure, New Orleans is known for corruption, but suddenly the good guys get a break—an honest police chief. And then someone guns him down. When a terrifying organization called The Jury takes out the cop-killer, Detective Skip Langdon’s on the case. But no one cares! After all, the guy was a cop-killer.
Skip cares really a lot—because she suspects The Jury’s the brainchild of her old nemesis, self-described preacher Errol Jacomine. And because other lives are at stake—those of Jacomine’s granddaughter Lovelace and his younger son Isaac. Eager to add Lovelace to his maniacal fold, Jacomine has Lovelace kidnapped, but she escapes and flees to the bohemian home of her Uncle Isaac, an artist and true eccentric known as The White Monk. Isaac’s taken a vow of silence, but uncle and niece manage to communicate and form a bond that could save both their lives. And Langdon comes up with a plan so clever even the FBI can’t shout her down.
Excerpt:
When she visited the first time, Aunt Alice had talked candidly about a relative she thought was dangerous, though everyone else in the family had decided to find him amusing—Earl Jackson, aka Errol Jacomine.
Skip came and sat down. She was presented with a writing pad—Aunt Alice could talk to you, but you had to write to her.
“Did you get my letter?”
Skip nodded. She wrote, “Thank you. That was sweet of you.”
Skip’s encounter with Jacomine was national news. Aunt Alice had written to say she knew Skip was just doing her job even though Earl Jackson was a blood relative, and she, for one, not only applauded, she was real sorry the bastard got away.
“It’s good to see you again, honey. What can I do for you this time?”
“I know it’s stupid to ask,” Skip wrote, “but has Jacomine been in touch with anyone in the family?”
“Now, honey, you know I would have let you know.”
“Just thought I’d ask,” she wrote, and pulled out a list of the things she’d already done to trace Jacomine: looked for his wife, looked for his son, badgered the Christian Community. “Can you think of anything else I could do?”
Aunt Alice’s index finger, under a layer of ladylike pink nail polish, flicked at the list. “Didn’t even know he’d married again.”
Skip’s stomach flipped over. Blood pounded in her ears: this was something. She wrote, “Again? You mean this wasn’t his first marriage?”
“Oh, lordy, lordy. How would you know? Yes, ma’am, he was married, and thereby hangs a tale. Now where’d I put that thing?” She got up and left the room. Skip wanted to chase her, grabbing at the flapping folds of her purple windsuit.
But there was nothing to do but wait, drumming her fingers, swinging her leg, all but biting her nails.
Click here to get this book for FREE
(also available from Amazon. DE FR IT ES )
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Death Turns A Trick : A Romantic and Humorous San Francisco Cozy (Rebecca Schwartz Mystery Series Book 1) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series 1)
Julie Smith
Genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
A rollicking tale of murder, romance, and a bordello…
The first book in the Rebecca Schwartz mystery series by Edgar Award Winner Julie Smith
Rebecca Schwartz, nice Jewish lawyer with a few too many fantasies, is happily playing the piano in a whorehouse when she suddenly finds herself assigned to make sure a near-naked state senator escapes a police raid. That dirty job done, a lovely evening turns even more delightful when she’s picked up by the cops and spends the next two hours at the Hall of Justice. Could this day get any worse? Of Course! Guess who arrives home to find a dead hooker on her living room floor!
Handsome Parker Phillips, Rebecca’s new beau and the most attractive man she’s met in ages, is arrested for the murder. (Worse, she suspects he might actually have done it.)
On the plus side, another very attractive man is following the case–reporter Rob Burns of the San Francisco Chronicle, a possible ally. And there are other possibilities.
Click here to get this book for $1.99
(also available from Amazon. CO.UK IT ES CA )
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Louisiana Lament : A Humorous New Orleans Mystery; Talba Wallis PI Series #3
Julie Smith
Genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense | United States
Louisiana Lament is the THIRD book in the Talba Wallis mystery series by Edgar-winning author Julie Smith.
Nobody knew who she really was … but her parties were to die for!
They’d be Queen Latifah and Danny DeVito if this were a movie. In Louisiana Lament, they’re P.I.s Talba Wallis and Eddie Valentino—Talba’s young, African-American, computer-brilliant, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and a noted poet by night; Eddie’s pushing seventy, white, hopelessly tech-challenged, and pretty much burned out. Somehow, they make it work—with Talba’s tech-and-street smarts, and Eddie’s old-school hard-earned savvy, they even complement each other.
One stormy day Talba gets an emergency call from Janessa, the sister she barely knows, and arrives to find a body floating in a swimming pool—the mortal husk of Allyson Brown, known in New Orleans literary circles as the Girl Gatsby. Like Gatsby, Allyson was one of those mysterious rich people who move to town, give amazing parties, and seem made of moonbeams.
Investigating, Talba finds the reality behind the Gatsby glamour. Allyson was a con artist who neglected her children, ignored her bills, and lied like a rug. But she wasn’t the only bad actor on the local literary scene. Fellow poet Rashad leads Talba a merry chase, leaving a trail of clues in the form of poetry, while novelists engage in fisticuffs, unseemly preening, and unforgivable arrogance.
Before it’s all over, Talba finds out just how seamy, petty, and downright murderous her fellow literati can be.
Click here to get this book for $0.99
(also available from Amazon. CO.UK IT ES CA )
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