Curd david patrick (32 Ergebnisse)

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - A man buried as gentle.A son who remembers something else.A doorframe that kept the truth.The funeral home ran out of chairs an hour before the service. Sixty mourners came to grieve Arthur Hale, a quiet man everyone praised as kind, humble, and gentle - the kind of man who never took up more room than he needed.But when Marcus Hale returns to his childhood home, he finds a record carved into the family doorframe that makes every kind word feel wrong.The marks begin impossibly high.Nine feet.Then they descend.Year after year. Generation after generation. Until the final mark sits eleven inches off the floor, dated nine days before his father's heart stopped.As Marcus searches for answers, his mother begins telling the truth the Hale family spent decades sanding down, hiding away, and burying: a grandfather who disappeared into a casket too small for a man, a cellar board cut from an older house, and a family inheritance that does not make men larger.It measures what fear, silence, and love have taken from them.Marcus has his father's hands. People have told him so his whole life.Now he has a daughter of his own - and a choice his father never gave him.Keep the family record hidden.Or hand her the pencil.Nine Feet of Father is a Southern Gothic horror novel about inheritance, silence, family myth, and the terrifying cost of making yourself small enough to survive.Some legacies shrink with every generation.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Grief can be extracted. Bottled. Sold.In the river town of Draye Hollow, sorrow is a commodity. It can be drawn out of the bereaved, sealed in wax, purchased through the Registry, and carried in the bodies of those paid to hold it. For fifteen years, Ames Corteel has brokered other people's grief. She is very good at it. She feels none of it. She has always believed she was simply built that way - configured correctly for a life that holds loss without keeping it.Her father's death is supposed to change nothing.Then, buried inside forty-one years of his settlements, Ames finds seven vials he labeled in his own hand - all from the same week, thirty-two years ago, all bearing the same name.Hers.The grief inside them is wrong-colored. It doesn't belong to the dead. And the deeper Ames follows it - through suppressed records, a torn-out ledger, a brokerage built on a buried crime, and a town that has trained itself not to ask - the closer she comes to a loss she was never told she suffered, and a question she has spent her whole life avoiding: what grief belongs to her, and who decided she would never carry it A haunting, slow-burn literary mystery - atmospheric, intelligent, and quietly devastating. For readers who love speculative fiction with real emotional weight, small-town secrets that take their time unraveling, and an ending that pays off every patient page. A story about the machinery of denial, the bureaucracy of loss, and the cost of finally opening the vial.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - A sourdough baker. A rival vendor. A farmers market full of secrets.Charisma Finnegan came to Cypress Bend, Florida, for a quieter life, a fresh start, and enough Saturday mornings to rebuild herself one loaf at a time.With her almost six-year-old sourdough starter, Vincent VanDough, riding shotgun in the cooler and her sunflower-scored boules earning a loyal following at the local farmers market, Charisma is finally beginning to feel like she belongs. The market has its own rhythm: gossip tucked between tomato crates, grudges hiding under polite smiles, and vendors who know far more than they admit.Then rival vendor Rick Callahan is found dead behind the market tents.The timing could not be worse. Earlier that morning, half the market witnessed Rick threatening Charisma over stolen customers and sourdough rumors. When one of her own baking tools goes missing, suspicion rises faster than overproofed dough, and Charisma's hard-won new life starts to collapse around her.To clear her name, she'll have to read Cypress Bend the same way she reads bread: by watching pressure, timing, texture, and the small signs everyone else overlooks. But the deeper she digs, the more she realizes Rick's death may be tied to something bigger than a vendor feud.In a town where secrets travel faster than gossip and every friendly face may be hiding a grudge, Charisma has one choice.Find the killer before someone else decides she is the perfect recipe for blame.Sourdough and Secrets is a warm culinary cozy mystery filled with small-town charm, slow-burn intrigue, market gossip, fresh-baked bread, and one very opinionated sourdough starter. Perfect for readers who love clever amateur sleuths, close-knit communities, and mysteries with heart.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - A windy day. One runaway red ball. Two best friends on a farmyard adventure.Maisie and Jasmine are ready to play when a sudden gust of wind sends their favorite red ball bouncing across the pasture. Off they go, racing through the farmyard, past clucking chickens, curious animals, sunny fields, and tall green grass.But as the ball rolls farther and farther away, Maisie and Jasmine begin to notice something surprising. Hidden in the grass are balls of every size and color: big ones, small ones, striped ones, spotted ones, and bright ones they never expected to find.With cheerful rhyming pages and colorful illustrations, Maisie and Jasmine's Great Ball Adventure is a sweet picture book about friendship, curiosity, and the joy of finding a surprise where you least expect it.Perfect for young readers who love dogs, farm animals, playful rhymes, and happy adventures.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Dive into a bright, bubbly undersea adventure with Maisie and Jasmine!When two curious puppies put on their clear bubble helmets and head beneath the waves, they discover a magical ocean world filled with color, wonder, and new friends. From playful dolphins and gentle sea turtles to tiny seahorses, pufferfish, starfish, jellyfish, and a sweet purple octopus guarding a treasure chest, every page brings a new surprise.Written in playful rhyme and brought to life with colorful illustrations, The Cow Pasture Gang: Maisie and Jasmine's Great Undersea Adventure is a heartwarming story about friendship, courage, curiosity, and the joy of exploring together.Perfect for bedtime, read-alouds, early readers, and children who love puppies, ocean animals, treasure hunts, and sweet adventures under the sea.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - The Seven-Thirty Bell always rings late. This year, it rang too soon.The Cypress Bend Founders' Day Bread Exchange is Charisma Finnegan's kind of event - dough to tend, demonstrations to run, and the familiar rhythm of people arguing about hydration while Marlene Jenkins redirects volunteers by sheer force of organization. It should have been a good day.Warren Castellan has been a fixture at Founders' Day for years - the judge who actually knows what he's talking about, the man who gives young bakers a fair chance, the one who borrows Charisma's water and never quite apologizes. When Cal Denny finds Warren dead in the rear supply corridor shortly after the Seven-Thirty Bell, the event stops and so does Charisma.The corridor was busy. Chairs moved, carts disappeared, volunteers crossed back and forth, and nobody was watching anything closely enough. Warren had spoken with Charisma before the Bell. He had intervened in an argument she hadn't fully witnessed. And someone, before his body was found, had already begun quietly rewriting the story of what Warren had decided to do next.As Charisma works backward through the afternoon - the preserves woman who saw Warren pass, the contestant Warren had quietly defended, the missing cart and the blue tape on its handle - a pattern takes shape. Not a crime of calculation, but something harder to name: the slow accumulation of pride, obligation, and a version of help that turned into a debt the other person never agreed to carry.Bitter Dough and Deadly Lies is the ninth book in the Charisma Finnegan Sourdough Mystery series - a mystery about mentorship, what we owe the people who helped us, and whether generosity can quietly become its own kind of control.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Some people need forgiveness. Nora Voss sells them the words to ask for it.In Savannah, Nora has built a quiet career as an apology artist, writing letters for people whose guilt has outlived their courage. Cheating spouses. Disgraced executives. Families cracked by old lies. They come to her when remorse is real but language fails.Nora listens. Nora researches. Nora writes the apology no one else can bear to write.Then Daniel Marsh walks into her office.He wants a letter written to Cecile Webb, the widow of Marcus Webb, a man killed twelve years earlier in a hit-and-run that was ruled an accident and quietly forgotten by almost everyone except the people it left behind. Daniel says he saw something before Marcus died. An argument. A warning sign. A moment he failed to report. He says he wants no forgiveness, no absolution, only the act of finally telling the truth.But as Nora begins shaping Daniel's confession, the case starts reaching back toward her own carefully locked past. A cold-case detective is asking questions. An old name resurfaces. And the death of Marcus Webb may not have been an accident after all.Nora has spent eleven years helping other people say what they did.Now someone wants her to remember what she refused to say.Sharp, atmospheric, and morally gripping, The Apology Artist is a psychological suspense novel about guilt, silence, and the terrible cost of finding the right words too late.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Charisma Finnegan didn't want to take her sourdough starter on a cruise. Vincent VanDough had opinions about maritime life, and none of them were favorable.But when the Gulf Heritage Sourdough Cruise offered Eye of the Sunflower Bakery a featured spot on a floating competition sailing toward New Orleans - and when Riley Mercer looked at the invitation like it was an unlocked door - Charisma said yes.She should have brought more flour.Before the Belle Mariette clears the Gulf Coast, the cruise's celebrated food historian is found dead in the ship's proofing room. The temperature was wrong. The door had been opened at the wrong hour. And the evidence points directly at the one person aboard who had the least reason to be guilty: a young Louisiana baker named Lena Baptiste, whose family starter carries the only authentic proof of a theft that happened before she was born.Someone studied how Charisma works. Someone built a trail that rewards exactly the kind of attention she pays.And somewhere aboard the ship, a podcaster named Camille Graves is asking questions about Charisma that have nothing to do with sourdough.The sea doesn't have streets. It doesn't have Donna with coffee or Tom within a phone call. What it has is water in every direction, a dead woman's unfinished work, and a starter that went flat before Charisma found the body.Vincent knew first.He always does.A Matter of Loaf and Death is the fifth book in the Charisma Finnegan Sourdough Mystery series. Each book is a complete, standalone mystery.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - THE DEVIL'S WEDDING MAPA Curd & Cutlass Adventure, Book OneRafe Calder used to be the most wanted pirate captain in the southern trade. These days, the only battles he fights are with his wife over kitchen knives, and the only treasure he's after is a quiet breakfast.Retirement was supposed to be the reward. Instead, it's the setup.When a dead man's ledger washes ashore bearing the Calder name, Rafe learns that his mother signed away a debt thirty years before he was even born - one that's been waiting, patiently, for him to grow into the man who'd finally have to pay it.To keep it buried, he'll need everything he swore he'd left behind: his old instincts, his wife Angelia's sharper ones, and a brother he never knew existed, who's about to become impossible to ignore. Because the man calling in the debt didn't just write the rules of the old compact - he taught Rafe every trick Rafe ever used to survive it.Some debts don't die with the people who made them. This one just found the one man left standing who has everything to lose.A married-couple pirate adventure with teeth - this isn't a courtship story. Rafe and Angelia are already each other's whole world; the question isn't whether they'll fall in love, it's what a thirty-year marriage is actually made of when the past comes to collect. Expect banter as sharp as the blades, family secrets that reshape everything you thought you knew, and a villain whose philosophy is more dangerous than his sword arm.Perfect for readers who love their pirate adventures with a marriage at the center instead of a meet-cute, their found-family reveals earned instead of convenient, and their folklore left just mysterious enough to still feel like magic.The door is never fully closed. Some debts are just getting started.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Tatterwell and the Borrowed WinterAt nineteen minutes past two, Tess Farrow had nowhere to sleep and a perfect view of a wall.Then the wall became a door.Twelve years old and newly unplaced, Tess is offered only what the county can prove: one night, one address, no promises past tomorrow. The house is Tatterwell - mismatched roofs, a kitchen slate that won't stay blank, children who keep working while the world arrives. It isn't a school, or a sanctuary, or anywhere trying to look magical. It's a place that has learned, over generations, not to give up on things too soon.The door should not be there. The warmth of the nearby town should not be disappearing. And in Tatterwell, Tess learns, winter is something you can borrow - carried, held, and returned, the way everything else in this house is.But someone has stopped returning it.As the cold deepens and old records surface secrets older than Tess's arrival, she has to decide how far to trust a place that has never promised her forever - and whether belonging is something you're given, or something you choose to risk.Tatterwell and the Borrowed Winter is a quiet, atmospheric middle-grade fantasy about placement, permanence, and the particular ache of loving a place you might have to leave. For readers who want their magic to feel lived-in rather than spectacular, and their found families to be built out of chores, arguments, and small kept promises rather than speeches.If you remember to put it back. …

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - THE NAME IN THE DISCARDA Charisma Finnegan Sourdough MysteryCharisma Finnegan can turn anything into something worth keeping. Leftover starter. A skeptical town. Even a killer, apparently - but that part comes later.When the Cypress Bend Community Kitchen puts Charisma on the committee deciding who gets its new second-chance job placement, she figures it's one meeting, maybe two. Then Annie Mercer walks in late with a toddler on her hip and the best chicken hand pies Charisma's ever tasted - and gets passed over anyway.By Saturday, the woman who passed her over is dead in the cold storage room.Now Charisma's got a missing hand pie, a locked cart wheel that shouldn't be locked, a freezer sheet with a stranger's name pressed into the back of it, and a very short list of people who had both the motive and the mustard for it. Somebody in this kitchen has spent years keeping score. And somebody just decided it was time to collect.With her sourdough starter Vincent judging silently from the counter and her whole town watching to see what she does next, Charisma has to sort out who's guilty, who's just guilty-feeling, and who deserves the chair nobody's offered them yet - before the real killer decides who else needs discarding.Warm, funny, and sharper than it looks, The Name in the Discard is cozy mystery with a little bite. Bring your appetite. Bring your suspicions. Maybe don't bring the potato salad - Donna's very particular about that.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Here is your Amazon product description, ready to paste directly into KDP: When a respected baking judge is found dead at Cypress Bend's first sourdough competition, the evidence points straight at the young baker Charisma Finnegan has been quietly mentoring. The clues are clean. The trail is clear. And Charisma has never been more certain she's looking in the wrong direction.Because someone has studied how she solves cases.Someone knows that Charisma notices the tiny thing everyone else ignores - and they've made sure she notices exactly what they want her to find.As suspicion spreads through the market like flour dust and the town turns against an innocent young baker, Charisma must stop asking what the evidence says and start asking a harder question: who benefits from her reading it correctly The answer leads back fifteen years - to a stolen technique, a buried name, and a woman who built an entire identity on work that wasn't hers. Martin Vale came to Cypress Bend to finally set the record straight. He didn't live long enough to do it.Now it falls to Charisma, her sourdough starter Vincent VanDough, and the sharp eyes of everyone at Eye of the Sunflower Bakery to finish what Martin started - before the killer plants one more perfect clue.A loaf can look ready before it is.A lie can too.Final Proof is the fourth book in the Charisma Finnegan Sourdough Mystery series. Each book is a complete, standalone mystery.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Mortimer Tinkerbottom wanted a quiet retirement.Unfortunately, the dead had other plans.At seventy-eight years old, Mortimer has bad knees, worse patience, and a deep personal hatred of group activities. Life at Shady Palms Retirement Village is already hard enough with fake grass, cafeteria tuna surprise, and neighbors who treat bingo like a blood sport. Then the residents start turning into zombies.At first, Mortimer assumes the apocalypse is just Florida finally being honest.Armed with a cane, a foul mood, and absolutely no interest in leadership, he accidentally becomes the last thing standing between the residents of Shady Palms and the undead shuffling through the courtyard. Soon, his ragtag army of retirees is fighting back with golf carts, walkers, knitting needles, oxygen tanks, hearing aids, scooter horns, denture adhesive, and one deeply controversial cafeteria menu.But the dead are not the real enemy.When Mortimer discovers that a corporate 'wellness' company has been using Shady Palms residents as test subjects in a secret longevity experiment, his irritation turns into something much more dangerous. The outbreak did not just reach the retirement village.It started there.Now Mortimer and the Early Bird Specials must survive the dead, expose the living villains, and prove that old does not mean helpless.Cranky, outrageous, fast-moving, and full of heart, Senior Discount of the Damned is a comic zombie survival novel about the people society underestimates most finally getting the last word.Retirement is over.And Mortimer Tinkerbottom is not done complaining.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - A poisoned pastry. A perfect hostess. And a baker who knows her own bread. Charisma Finnegan has finally found her footing in Cypress Bend, Florida - a stall at the Saturday farmers market, a growing reputation, and a sourdough starter named Vincent VanDough who is, frankly, insufferable about it. When the town's most powerful woman invites Charisma to cater the exclusive Sunflower Charity Brunch, it feels like an arrival. Old money. Donor tables. White linen and orchids. The kind of room that decides who belongs in Cypress Bend and who doesn't. Then Eleanor Waverly collapses after dessert. And Charisma's pastries are on the table. Except Eleanor never touched sugar. Her private plate was prepared separately - Charisma's written instructions made that clear. And when Charisma examines the crumb structure of the brioche Eleanor ate, she knows immediately: the texture is wrong. Mixed too fast. Proofed too short. Someone altered that plate after it left Charisma's hands. Now Charisma is navigating a world of charity boards, inheritance disputes, and social gatekeeping - where everyone smiles beautifully and someone in that room committed murder with a sugar-free glaze. The killer isn't the obvious suspect. It's the indispensable one. The woman who runs every room so smoothly that nobody thinks to watch her hands. In Cypress Bend, people rarely throw you out directly. They simply rearrange the room until you understand you were never meant to stay. Kneaded for Murder is a warm, witty, and emotionally satisfying culinary cozy mystery featuring: - An amateur sleuth who solves crimes through baker logic - timing, texture, pressure, and the forensics of dough- A richly inhabited small-town Florida setting with a cast of recurring characters readers will want to visit again and again- A fair-play mystery with a fully planted clue chain - everything you need to solve it is on the page- A slow-burn romance, found community, and a sourdough starter with serious attitudePerfect for fans of Joanne Fluke, M.C. Beaton, and Richard Osman. Part of the Charisma Finnegan Sourdough Mysteries series. Each book is a complete, standalone mystery.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Some secrets refuse to stay buried.Eye of the Sunflower is the second book in The Sunflower Reckoning TrilogyFormer Force Recon Marine Dylan Sharpe is seventeen days off Oxycodone, broke, and estranged from his twelve-year-old son when a dying CIA remote viewer named Camille Becker offers him fifty thousand dollars to investigate a series of deaths at assisted living facilities in Destin, Florida. The victims are elderly men. The cause of death in every case is listed as natural. But Camille has spent forty years tracking patterns no one else can see - and she is certain these deaths are murders.In Destin, Dylan teams with his old Marine brother Jerome Jackson and begins working the case. The more he digs, the more he finds himself drawn to a well-connected local volunteer named Bella Donna Bannister - a woman who knows every facility, every resident, and seemingly every move Dylan makes before he makes it.As Dylan closes in on the truth, he is forced to confront questions the law cannot answer: the difference between murder and mercy, the limits of justice, and how far a person will go to protect someone they love.Eye of the Sunflower is a psychological crime thriller about guilt, control, and the cost of finally seeing what the world chose to ignore.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Some secrets don't stay buried.In Mercy Cross, the dead are not always the ones who linger.After her mother's death, Maren Laveau receives a parish notice for an old rite known as the second burial: bring an object, speak the true thing, and the dead may finally be laid to rest.But grief has not finished with her house.A chair holds warmth when it should not.A pair of glasses keeps returning.A medicine cup refuses to disappear.And Maren's teenage daughter begins to show signs that what was left unfinished may not stay with the dead.To save her daughter, Maren must face the one moment she has spent years refusing to name and uncover the truth her family buried to survive.Set in a Southern town where memory clings like moss and every old house keeps its own account, The Second Burial is a haunting Southern novel about grief, inheritance, mercy, and the secrets that refuse to rest.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Mortimer Tinkerbottom survived retirement, bad knees, worse coffee, and one zombie apocalypse.Now he has to survive the 1980s.When Shady Palms Retirement Village hosts an 80s Throwback Night, Mortimer expects neon decorations, questionable punch, and Carl making a fool of himself near the snacks. What he does not expect is a donated 'memory therapy' pod to explode, fling him and his friends back to 1985, and strand them inside Cypress Bend Mall with a broken return lever.To get home, Mortimer's crew must track down arcade parts, dodge mall security, outwit teenagers with too much hair spray, and avoid a smooth-talking electronics salesman named Blaine Vossler, a man whose shoes are too clean and whose interest in the machine is far too dangerous.But the mall is hiding more than cassette tapes, food court pizza, and bad fashion. Somewhere beneath the neon lights, a false map is being drawn. A red star is being moved. And the future Mortimer knows, including Shady Palms, Carl, Dorothy, Mia, Mr. Buttons, and the whole cranky little family he never meant to need, may vanish if he cannot fix what the past is trying to steal.Armed with a cane, a bathrobe, a suspicious amount of irritation, and absolutely no patience for teenagers, Mortimer must complain, insult, sidestep, and somehow save the people he loves without admitting he loves them.A hilarious time-travel comedy adventure packed with arcade chaos, mall nostalgia, sharp old-man wit, found family, and one deeply reluctant hero who would like everyone to know he is not dancing, no matter what the witnesses claim.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - At the Cypress Bend Farmers Market, rules are supposed to keep things fair.Then Harold Pike turns up dead.Harold was the town's most irritating watchdog: strict, sharp-eyed, and impossible to fool with sloppy paperwork. When baker Charisma Finnegan learns he may have uncovered something troubling before he died, she cannot leave it alone.Between sourdough loaves, missing records, nervous vendors, and a waterfront project everyone suddenly wants to avoid discussing, Charisma follows the crumbs through a town that knows how to smile while keeping secrets.But in Cypress Bend, some lies are filed neatly.And some come with a receipt.Loaf and Order is a warm, small-town cozy mystery filled with fresh bread, market gossip, buried motives, and one determined baker who knows the truth does not always rise on its own.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - They Call Me Crazy EightsAfter years in a Louisiana state hospital, Eli Ray Dugas comes home to Saint Bartholomew Parish - the town that gave him a nickname instead of a name and a story instead of a life.The story goes like this: a poker game, a locked room, a boy who couldn't stop counting things that didn't add up. The town has been telling it for thirty years. Eli has been carrying it longer than that.Then the men from that night start dying. Each body comes with a playing card. Each card points back to him.The sheriff watches too closely. Old records appear before he asks for them. A cassette tape surfaces with voices rehearsing a lie. A locked door in a burned building holds a child's shoe and something that rattles. And somewhere in the gap between what Eli remembers and what Saint Bart insists happened, a dead boy's truth has been waiting in the only place men never thought to look - in the objects women kept, the receipts they saved, the cloth they refused to wash clean.They Call Me Crazy Eights is a Southern Gothic noir about what a town buries when it runs out of places to hide, and what it costs a man to dig with his bare hands.For readers of S.A. Cosby, Tom Franklin, and Nic Pizzolatto.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - A sourdough starter. A stolen family legacy. A murder baked into Cypress Bend history.Charisma Finnegan only planned to sell bread at the Founders' Hearth Festival. Her famous starter, Vincent VanDough, was safely back at the bakery, and the day should have been filled with cinnamon rolls, heirloom recipes, and small-town gossip.Then food historian Dr. Hollis Bramwell publicly challenges the polished story behind Rusk & Root Provisions' 'heritage' starter kit. According to him, the treasured Rusk family starter may not have belonged to the Rusks at all. It may have begun with Tessa Bellroot, a widowed baker whose name was quietly folded out of Cypress Bend's history.Before Hollis can reveal his final proof, he is found dead inside the restored Bellroot summer kitchen.Now the festival's pretty displays turn into evidence. A sealed blue jar, a missing brown folder, a cut archive page, an old feeding note, and a family story too profitable to question all point in different directions. Sissy Bellroot looks guilty. Claudia Rusk looks too composed. Amos Rusk knows more than he wants to say. And someone is dragging Charisma's own beloved starter into the rumor mill.With Deputy Tom Whitaker working the official case and Donna's diner serving as Cypress Bend's unofficial truth counter, Charisma must follow the crumbs through old ledgers, family grudges, online accusations, and the dangerous difference between preserving history and owning it.Because in Cypress Bend, some starters are fed before first light.And some secrets rise whether anyone wants them to or not.The Starters Secret is a warm, clue-rich cozy mystery featuring sourdough, small-town wit, buried family history, clean suspense, and a heroine who knows that what people throw away often tells the truth first.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - A proof-of-life video is supposed to answer one question.Is the victim still alive For Elena Voss, the answer is never that simple.Elena is a specialist at reading hostage videos. She studies posture, lighting, breath, background noise, and the tiny mistakes captors do not realize they have made. Her job is to decide whether a victim is alive, coerced, injured, drugged, scripted, or already being used as leverage by people who know exactly how fear looks on camera.Then a new video lands on her desk.The woman in the chair says the correct words. She gives her name. She gives the date. She says she is alive.But hidden inside the recording is a private childhood code Elena has not heard in fifteen years. A code known only to Elena and her missing brother, Gabriel, who vanished after leaving behind a trail of damaged files, buried warnings, and questions Elena helped turn into an official story.The room is dry.Those four words pull Elena back into the disappearance she has spent her adult life trying to survive. As she follows the clues through old proof recordings, erased names, family receipts, corrupted transcripts, and the polished machinery of a crisis-response firm built to make human lives manageable, Elena begins to see the pattern Gabriel died, disappeared, or lived long enough to expose.A woman sent back to the family she feared.A child counted once and erased twice.A welfare video Elena signed before the victim was found dead.And now Liora Bell, alive on camera, running out of time.With a loyal former reporter at her side and powerful people moving fast to rewrite the record, Elena must decide what proof is really worth when the truth itself has been edited, bought, and weaponized.Because some victims are not meant to be rescued.They are meant to become evidence.And some rooms are never safe just because someone says they are.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - In Pale Orchard, the dead don't announce themselves. They leave footprints.At 6:14 on a Tuesday morning, Corra Thatch finds her own bare footprint in a drift of spilled flour - heel, arch, ball, five toes, the crooked second toe she broke as a girl.Corra has not had feet in twelve years.The prints cross her locked kitchen and lead through the sleeping town to a freshly dug grave in the church cemetery - her name on the stone, tomorrow's date on the marker.Pale Orchard has always called Corra its living saint. Its miracle. The woman who survived Route 9 and raised the child God sent her. The town has built its kindness around her silence.The Saint of Pale Orchard is a Southern Gothic mystery about a wheelchair-bound woman who cannot walk and cannot stop following the trail - through forged records, a cassette tape no one was meant to hear, a reverend without mercy, and a community that confused silence with grace.Some towns build their saints out of what they buried.Corra intends to find out what Pale Orchard buried - and whose child is living with it.A haunting small-town mystery - atmospheric, precise, and quietly devastating. For readers who want their secrets unearthed slowly, their endings earned, and their protagonists impossible to put down.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - The adults were supposed to build the future. Instead, their children built one without them.Two hundred years after the colony ship Ardent Dawn reached a new world, the mission crew still sleeps beneath the hull, waiting for the day they are meant to wake and lead humanity into its second chance.Above them, First Hill has already become a world of its own.Raised by Mother Arc, old records, hard laws, and the people who survived the first generations, Ilya has grown up in the shadow of a ship she never chose. She knows the rules of First Hill. She knows no person owns another person's body, labor, origin, memory, or future.Then she learns the truth of her own origin.Her source is Mara Keene, the mission commander still frozen below the ship, a woman the old world remembers as a leader and the child-born world knows as one of the First Mistakes.As awakening draws near, Ilya must face a question no law can answer cleanly: what does she owe the woman who helped begin her life but never chose her, raised her, or knew she existed The Children of the Quiet Star is a haunting science fiction novel about origin, consent, inherited power, and the children who built a future while the adults slept.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware.