Auntiemwrites Crime-Mystery Author M K Graff

Matthew Quirk brings a former Secret Service agent on the run in the fast-paced thriller Hour of the Assassin.

Nick Averose has a most unusual job. He fiction as a ‘red teamer’, someone who tests the security used around high officials and those in the limelight at risk. Looking for holes in the security, he’s a mock killer, and part of his job is to try to slip past the elaborate defense already in place.

His newest assignment finds him trying to infiltrate security at the Washington DC home of the former CIA director. Suddenly Nick finds himself convincingly framed, and as he runs from the very people he is supposed to protect, he must figure out who is framing him to clear his name.

It’s a high-octane tale of power and corruption; of secrets held and exposed. And Nick is at the center of it all.

Inspired by real-life assassins Quirk knew in his former career as a DC reporter that insider knowledge lends tremendous credibility and reality to the novel.

Leave a Response »

Simone St. James will have pulses racing with her supernatural thriller, The Sun Down Motel.

“Mystery with Ghosts” could be the subtitle, with the story alternating between Viv in 1982, and her nice Carly, in 2017.

Fell, NY, is the setting, where Carly Kirk has come to town to investigate her aunt’s disappearance years ago. The town has seen its share of murders to young women. To do so she’s left college after her mother’s death leaves her a small inheritence and the drive to do this.

Carly takes a job working the night shift at the same motel where Viv worked in 1982, searching for clues. The motel is a throwback to that era, still using a handwritten guest book and keys instead of cards to open doors.

But soon the same kind of weird things that Viv witnessed happen to Carly: the prank calls to the front desk with no one on the other end; doors that open; lights go out. Creepiest is the smell of cigarette smoke with no one there.

Carly soon finds she has more in common with Viv than she imagines as she finds out what’s been happening in Fell, NY. Deliciously creepy.

Leave a Response »

Sarah Pinborough captures the sleepy grandeur of Savannah, Georgia, and gives a lesson in greed and passion in her newest suspense thriller, Dead to Her.

Two women are the center of the story. Marcie hides her background when she becomes the second wife of Jason Maddox. His world of old money and friendships is one Marcie has always yearned to be a part of.

She strikes up an uneasy friendship with Keisha, the new second wife of Jason’s widowed boss. Definitely of the old money scheme in Savannah, William has returned from a London trip surprisingly remarried to the slender, gorgeous black hostess who hides her own secrets.

This is sly suspense builds on itself and the main characters, as the story advances with the two women at the center of the storied circle that men travel in. Other members of that elite circle have varied reactions to Keisha and her exotic looks. There’s a whirl of lust and greed that swirls around all of the characters until a tragedy strikes and suddenly new and old friendships are tested.

The hanging Spanish moss is not the only elusive thing in Savannah. There are the dark mysteries that lurk in the shadows, following both women, and in the secrets they hide. But they are not the only ones with secrets.

An intricate plot enhances the thrills, with a sinister surprise for almost everyone involved.

One Response »

Will Carver’s Nothing Important Happened Today brings a dark and highly original thriller to the pages when nine people jump off Chelsea Bridge, leaping to their deaths at the exact same time in a mass hanging.

Thirty-two people on a train witness the incident, and two of them will soon die.

The book follows the victims and their individual stories, all very different, yet all have received a suicide note and another page with only four words typed: Nothing important happened today.

That’s the key phrase that sets off this suicide cult, notifying people they have been chosen to be part of The People of Choice, whose leader remains mysteriously silent. As the movement spreads, it suddenly has thousands of followers on social media, and the suicides start to spread across the world, too.

Detective Sergeant Pace is a man haunted by dark demons, currently seeing a police therapist to be cleared of PTSD, while determined to ignore the black flames he sees over his shoulder. He needs to find the leader as people keep dying–or before he becomes one of the cult.

It’s a race to the death as the events pile on. Auntie M found her hand gripping the edge of the book as she flipped the pages furiously near the climax.

Chilling and shocking, this is unlike any book you’ll read this year.

Leave a Response »

SJI Holliday’s Violet is psychological thriller that revolves around two English women who meet in a foreign country and decide to travel together.

Violet has broken up with her boyfriend in Thailand and needs a ticket to leave to travel to Russia. Carrie has come on her around-the-world trip alone, after her best friend’s accident means she’s back home in a cast.

Traveling alone has lost its glamour for Carrie, and when the two women meet at a hotel in Beijing, Carrie invites Violet to use her friend’s ticket on the Trans-Siberian Express.

The women travel through Mongolia to find their way into Russia, having adventures fueled by alcohol and drugs and something more as they become closer to each other and the intensity of their relationship changes.

But which one is the master of manipulation when things spiral out of control?
And spiral out they do, until the reader can’t see how either of the women can survive.

Holliday brings the various exotic places the women visit to life in a way that drops the reader into the midst of their journey. You’ll feel you’ve been to these exotic places, but maybe not traveling the way you personally would choose to.

A cautionary tale about trusting strangers, and perhaps not even trusting the people you love.

Leave a Response »