Hidden in Plain View ($0.99), the second in the Darryl Billups Mysteries series by Blair S. Walker, is today's Kindle Deal of the Day. You'll probably want to start with the first, though, and it's on an unannounced sale, at $2.99: Up Jumped the Devil. These are published by AmazonEncore, so I don't expect to see them elsewhere.Up Jumped the Devil
A five-year veteran of the Baltimore Herald’s police beat, Darryl Billups is one of the paper’s top reporters. He earned the distinction the hard way, combining a nose for news, innate writing ability, and the timeless art of persuasion. Never one to shy away from the dangers of the job, he has chronicled the trajectories of some of Baltimore’s most compelling—and lethal—characters. So when an anonymous source tips him off to a domestic terrorist plot to bomb the NAACP’s national headquarters, Darryl knows this story could be the biggest of his career. But what he soon comes to realize is that though his dogged pursuit of the truth may make his name, it could also cost him his life. Complicating matters is Darryl’s deepening affection for Yolanda and Jamal, a young mother and son he has taken under his wing to shield them from domestic abuse. As a veteran journalist, he knows better than to insert himself into a story, but sometimes it just can’t be helped. Up Jumped the Devil weaves a thrilling mixture of suspense, romance, and comedy, expertly juggled by a memorable new hero for fans of contemporary detective fiction.
Hidden in Plain View
In the second installment of Blair S. Walker’s Darryl Billups series, the intrepid reporter has left his blue-collar Baltimore roots for a new gig in New York. But life in the big city isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Luckily for Darryl, the Baltimore Herald is only too happy to welcome its star reporter back home, as are Darryl’s girlfriend Yolanda and her young son Jamal. Darryl is promoted to editor, but before long is itching to return to his former crime beat. He gets his chance when the nude bodies of African-American professionals begin turning up around town, their faces ominously marked with Confederate-flag decals. At a loss for suspects, homicide detective Phillip Gardner calls on his old friend Darryl for help unraveling the case. Darryl eagerly reconnects with Baltimore’s seedy underbelly and is soon hot on the trail of a killer who will transform his notions about gender, race, and the workings of the criminal mind. To break this story, Darryl must learn to look at the world in a totally different way—or become the killer’s most high-profile victim yet!
Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides, narrated by Kristoffer Tabori, is today's $7.95 audiobook at Audible.Book Description
A dazzling triumph from the bestselling author of The Virgin Suicides--the astonishing tale of a gene that passes down through three generations of a Greek-American family and flowers in the body of a teenage girl.
In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls' school in Grosse Pointe, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry blond clasmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them--along with Callie's failure to develop--leads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls. In fact, she is not really a girl at all.
The explanation for this shocking state of affairs takes us out of suburbia- back before the Detroit race riots of 1967, before the rise of the Motor City and Prohibition, to 1922, when the Turks sacked Smyrna and Callie's grandparents fled for their lives. Back to a tiny village in Asia Minor where two lovers, and one rare genetic mutation, set in motion the metamorphosis that will turn Callie into a being both mythical and perfectly real: a hermaphrodite.
Spanning eight decades--and one unusually awkward adolescence- Jeffrey Eugenides's long-awaited second novel is a grand, utterly original fable of crossed bloodlines, the intricacies of gender, and the deep, untidy promptings of desire. It marks the fulfillment of a huge talent, named one of America's best young novelists by both Granta and The New Yorker.
