The problem: his billionaire boss actually winds up murdered. And the whole world thinks he did it.
When globetrotting tech billionaire Barron Fisk is found dead on the floor of his swanky Silicon Valley office, all evidence points to Alan.
Alan must venture into the glitzy, treacherous world of tech billionaires to clear his name by sorting through a long list of suspects with motive aplenty. If he can’t find the real culprit, Alan’s going down.
The clock is ticking.
Who killed Barron Fisk? The truth will shock— and change— the entire world.
Fans of Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club series, Carl Hiaasen’s tales of high-stakes hijinx, or Ruth Ware’s page-turning mysteries will love Death of a Billionaire.
Tucker May was raised in southern Missouri. He attended Northwestern University where he was trained in acting and playwriting. He now lives in Pasadena, California with his wife Barbara and their cat Principal Spittle. He is an avid reader and longtime fan of the Los Angeles Rams and Geelong Cats. Death of a Billionaire is his debut novel.
My thoughts: Alan Benning is probably the least likely murderer in the world. A quiet unassuming man, happiest dealing with numbers (he is an accountant) and when his boss is found dead in his office, the police don’t seem that interested in looking further.
His fingerprints are in the office, his shoe print outside and there’s CCTV of him going up to the floor. But Alan knows he didn’t do it. Luckily so does Sharla, formerly PA to Barron Fisk, and she wants to find the real killer. The unlikely duo team up to solve the case and keep Alan out of prison.
Funny and entertaining, voiced by a rather condescending narrator (all will be revealed), this is very 21st century, tech mogul murder.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
We’re celebrating the release of The Shadowless this week! Make sure to grab a copy of this beauty right away!
The Shadowless (At the corner of Eden and Darkness Book One)
Release Date: November 26, 2025
Genre: Dark Romantasy
🥀 Modern faery tale vs real-life suspense
🥀 White and black magic
🥀 Family dysfunction
🥀 Hidden realms
🥀 He falls first
🥀 Twists and turns
Mae Dawson returns to her family’s cabin to look for her missing sister. One night, she goes to sleep only to awaken in the depths of the woods surrounded by eerie and indiscernible voices, which lead her to her sister’s grave.
Trying to piece her life back together, Mae juggles college and a romance with her best friend-turned-boyfriend, Benji. Yet, everything unravels when strange late-night calls come from beyond, and a malevolent force begins to invade her friends.
Adding to her unease is the presence of a mysterious stranger, Brandon Sills, who seems to lurk in the shadows, watching her every move. Despite the warning bells ringing in her mind, Mae feels an inexplicable attraction to him.
As mortal and magical forces conspire against her, Mae must trust Brandon to uncover the secrets of the fae—secrets that could change her life forever, if she is able to survive.
The last thing Penny Carmichael expected when she joined the local bellringing group was for her debut to be thwarted by the discovery of a body just yards from the belfry door.
As her husband and his loyal team painstakingly sift through the evidence and delve deep into the dead man’s past, it’s clear that solving Peter Mackenzie’s murder may prove a challenge, even for someone with DCI Carmichael’s renowned detective prowess.
What was a man who’d lived for decades in North London doing in Moulton Bank? Was his chequered past a factor? And what about the other members of Penny’s bellringing group. Did any of them have a reason to do Peter harm?
As the case unfolds, DCI Carmicheal and his trusty team seek answers to a complex puzzle which leads them along various paths and, at times, way outside the comfort zone of their rural Lancashire surroundings.
This fast-paced, cleverly crafted whodunit is the eleventh murder mystery in the gripping Carmichael series from the pen of Ian McFadyen.
Ian McFadyen was born in Liverpool and enjoyed a successful career in marketing before becoming a writer. Ian’s titles are available in Italian and Czech and, although the author isn’t totally convinced it’s true, he’s been favourably compared with Wilkie Collins and Colin Dexter. He lives in Hertfordshire with his wife but spends a great deal of his time writing in his bolthole retreat on the Norfolk / Suffolk border. The Corpse Bell is the eleventh in his series featuring DCI Carmichael.
FacebookWebsite Twitter / X : @ianMcFadyen1 Instagram : @ianwmcfadyen
My thoughts: The victim might have been murdered in Moulton Bank but he lived near me in North London, so that made me smile.
This is a cleverly plotted, slightly convoluted to keep the detectives on their toes, story, where incidents in the past come to matter a great deal. The deceased, Peter MacKenzie, wasn’t a very nice man, a convicted embezzler, he ran a heir finding business and returned to Moulton Bank, where he’d grown up, for reasons unknown.
Found outside the church bell tower by two bellringers, the police are puzzled, why was he there? Was he meeting someone, and if so, who? His wife thought he was in Yorkshire, at a conference, but clearly that wasn’t the case.
And when one of the bellringers who had found him is also murdered, the plot thickens. What was this man’s connection to it all?
As DCI Carmichael and his team look into the lives of both victims, they uncover some unpleasant things, and slowly piece together the puzzle of who killed them.
I love a carefully constructed, slow burn case, where the tiniest details help bring things together, where the police are looking for the mistakes the killer has made, the things they’ve overlooked, much as in this case.
Really enjoyable (can I really say that about murder? I think I can!) and peopled with interesting characters. That’s another series I now need to read all the backlist books for!
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
We’re celebrating the release of All the Dark Souls by A.M. Dunnewin, the first book in a new COMPLETED trilogy!
All the Dark Souls (The Dark Souls Trilogy #1)
Release Date: November 11, 2025
Genre: Dark Gothic Romantasy
Strong FMC
Morally grey MMC
Found family
Slow burn
He falls first
Gothic romance
The first book in a new trilogy set in the same world as The Benighted Saga.
Joss Brevyn is the last heir in a long line of executioners. Although a woman, the same rules still apply: kill the condemned within three tries, or be tortured and killed. Joss has yet to miss her mark, and even though she spends her free time as a healer, the town views her only as a deathsman. So when she and her assistant, Henrik, stumble upon a beaten man on the way home, both are hesitant to reveal who they really are. The only problem is, so is he.
Aric Kayden has seen better days. After failing to assassinate his last victim, he’s left bleeding on the side of the road until he’s found and taken in by Joss and Henrik, two seemingly innocent locals. Healing from his wounds, Aric is still haunted by the target he didn’t kill, especially by those who paid him. Despite the undeniable attraction between him and Joss, Aric can’t bring himself to tell the truth: that the masked figures who hired him knows where he is, and his original target is the mysterious prisoner who was recently sentenced to death. Forced to uphold the deal, Aric’s only job now is to make sure the execution goes as planned and eliminate whoever intervenes.
Bound by their duties, both Joss and Aric assume this next kill will be easy. But then one of them has a change of heart, sparking a chain reaction that could leave one-or both-of them dead.
MEET DETECTIVE NICKI HARDCASTLE IN THIS GRIPPING SUFFOLK-BASED CRIME SERIES.
One broken body. Seven missing teeth. A killer who’s only just begun.
Detective Nicki Hardcastle is midway through painting her living room — she’s supposed to be off-duty — when the call comes in. ‘You might want to see this one, boss.’
Minutes later, she’s standing at the foot of a four-storey townhouse in the heart of Bury St Edmunds. A man lies impaled on a black iron spike, his body blood-soaked and broken.
It appears Jacob Towers took his own life. But the details don’t add up. Why was the dead man carrying seven of his own teeth in his pockets?
Then a chilling voicemail surfaces: ‘It’s time to pay for what you did.’
Two days later, there’s another death. Just as sudden. Just as brutal. And once again — seven teeth.
Someone is dealing out justice, one gruesome death at a time. And they’ve only just begun . .
Michelle Kidd is a crime fiction author best known for the DI Jack MacIntosh and DI Nicki Hardcastle series. Michelle qualified as a legal executive in the early 1990s, spending ten years practising civil and criminal litigation. But the dream to write was never far from her mind and in 2008 she began writing the first book in what would later become the DI Jack MacIntosh series. Michelle now works full time for the NHS and lives in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. She enjoys reading, wine and cats — not necessarily in that order.
My thoughts: I’m not a fan of teeth, I hate going to the dentist, I go but it really sets my anxiety levels to sky high. There was a task in the last series of Taskmaster involving teeth that made me feel sick. And there’s a very disturbing scene in this book that I really didn’t like.
Having said that, it’s a very clever case, the team are often completely stumped because there’s nothing the victims have in common, beyond the seven teeth.
Whoever is behind these deaths, that at first glance appear to be suicides or accidents, is clever, manipulative and possibly a sadist.
Their motive is so well hidden, and without a key piece of evidence, they might never get the answers. It’s very well done, with plenty of shocking moments and twists. Michelle Kidd really knows how to hook you and keep you hooked.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
A conspiracy that will test Art Marvik to the limit.
Meet Art Marvik. A battle-hardened commando with the scars to prove it. He’s used to high-stakes operations. But nothing has prepared him for what awaits in the coastal town of Ballycotton, Ireland . . .
Marvik receives a disturbing call from the Garda. His friend and former comrade, Shaun Strathen, is missing. His yacht’s been found drifting in Ballyandreen Bay. But there’s no sign of Strathen.
A cryptic note is discovered onboard: Art, sorry it’s come to this. Look after things for me. Per Mare, Per Terram.
Marvik wastes no time. He heads straight for Ireland, determined to find his friend. His search leads him to a cottage by the sea. A decomposing body is discovered inside. It’s not Strathen.
If the body isn’t his comrade’s, then who is it? And where the hell is Strathen?
As Marvik digs deeper, the truth begins to unravel, but so do the dangers.
Can Marvik survive this lethal storm long enough to expose a network of criminal masterminds, and save his friend?
Adventure, mystery and heroes have always fascinated and thrilled Pauline, that and her love of the sea has led her to create her exciting and gripping range of crime novels.
Born and raised in the coastal city of Portsmouth in the UK, Pauline Rowson draws her inspiration for her crime novels from the area. When she isn’t writing (which isn’t often) she can be found walking the coastal paths on the Isle of Wight and around Langstone and Chichester Harbours looking for a good place to put a body!
Pauline is the author of twenty-four crime novels — sixteen featuring the rugged and flawed Portsmouth detective, Inspector Andy Horton; four in the mystery thriller series featuring Art Marvik, the troubled former Royal Marine Commando now an undercover investigator for the UK’s National Intelligence Marine Squad (NIMS); two standalone thrillers, the award-winning In Cold Daylight and In For the Kill, and the 1950 set mystery series featuring Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Alun Ryga, who makes his debut in Death in the Cove with his second investigation Death in the Harbour.
Her crime novels have been highly acclaimed in the UK, USA and Commonwealth and they have been translated into several languages. Multi-layered, fast-paced, and compelling, they are full of twists and turns and are played out against the dramatic and powerfully evocative British marine landscape of the south coast of England. Pauline is a member of the Crime Writers’ Association and the Society of Authors.
Before becoming a full-time writer, she was a renowned marketing and training guru, with a collection of ‘how to’ business books and a successful marketing, media and training career behind her.
My thoughts: Art Marvik finds himself in the middle of a complete nightmare situation after his friend Shaun goes missing in Ireland. His boat is at anchor in the bay, a strange thing to do if he really committed suicide. The clues lead Marvik to an old cottage and a dead body – which thankfully isn’t his friend.
But it all seems to be part of something much larger – a conspiracy that leads to murder, where Marvik can’t be sure who to trust, where a friend may not be quite who they seem to be.
A tangled web, full of dead ends, lies, and a knotty mess that Marvik must unravel before he ends up dead too.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
A love that will change them forever A treasure that will bring them home
West Mercia, AD 873 – Merewen’s settlement is on guard against the outside threat of the ‘Heathen’ Norsemen. But for Merewen, the real threats come from within, as her future is cruelly snatched away from her.
Eirik, a Norseman, finds himself abandoned and injured after his uncle’s plunder of Mercian land goes wrong. He thinks his fate is sealed – until Merewen saves his life.
Hereford, Present Day – Left reeling after a huge betrayal, Alix moves to her grandfather’s farm in Hereford to heal her broken heart. There, after being given a family heirloom, she soon finds herself haunted by memories of a life she never lived, a relationship she never had, and a time in which she never existed.
Local farmer Noah is being hounded by the police to find the Viking hoard that his sister and her criminal boyfriend stole from his farm. Noah must prove his own innocence while struggling to decipher the curious connection he has to newcomer Alix – a bond that seems to transcend their own reality.
As they search for the lost treasure, Alix and Noah start to feel the whispers of a love they never expected, one powerful enough to echo through history.
Christina Courtenay writes historical romance, time slip/dual time and time travel stories, and lives in Herefordshire (near the Welsh border) in the UK. Although born in England, she has a Swedish mother and was brought up in Sweden – hence her abiding interest in the Vikings. Christina is a Vice President and former chairman and of the UK’s Romantic Novelists’ Association and has won several awards, including the RoNA for Best Historical Romantic Novel twice with Highland Storms (2012) and The Gilded Fan (2014) and the RNA Fantasy Romantic Novel of the year 2021 with Echoes of the Runes. RIPPLES THROUGH TIME (dual time historical romance published by Headline Review 21st November 2025) is her latest novel. Christina is a keen amateur genealogist and loves history and archaeology (the armchair variety).
My thoughts: I really enjoy these dual timeline romances, this one set in early Britain during the time of the Saxons and Viking raids and modern day Herefordshire.
As farmer Noah and his neighbour Alix grow closer and search for the missing hoard of gold that his sister and her rubbish boyfriend stole from his land, in 873, Viking raider Eirik is injured and healer Merewen helps him and takes him back to her village, where her father is in charge.
The two couples, separated by hundreds of years, are similar in many ways, they are all good, genuine people who deserve happiness and good fortune. Noah works hard, looks after his sheep and is a good neighbour, Alix has been disappointed in love, and having moved to Hereford to be nearer her grandfather and start again. Eirik is also starting over, having been left for dead by his uncle, Merewen is another hard worker, acting as healer to her community and dealing with her jealous sister.
A necklace Alix’s grandfather gives her seems to connect to the past, both she and Noah have seen glimpses of another life, and are both confused and fascinated by this. Noah’s farm seems to be the same place the Eirik and Merewen meet, the land contains an ancient stone structure, which acts as a conduit between time periods.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
Something is terribly wrong at Angiras, a family-owned medical start-up. Neddy Emory and her brother Charles are about launch a revolutionary life-saving therapeutic device. But they’ve hit a major snag. Critical research is unraveling and, to their shock and horror, one-by-one, team members are falling mysteriously ill.
Neddy and Charles race to move the project forward, while struggling to keep their employees safe. Failure is not an option. Without the device, their younger brother Daniel will die. But Neddy begins to suspect the company’s innovative research methods are being tampered with. When probed, Charles gaslights her. He refuses to slow down, claiming he is Daniel’s only hope.
Torn between loyalty to her family and the welfare of the staff, Neddy desperately searches for the truth. Then the unspeakable happens. A fatality. Charles appears to finally be persuaded. But his next move shocks her, and she realizes: the danger is only beginning. And she is on her own.
For fans of THE MAIDENS who will appreciate Neddy’s determination and perseverance as she fights to keep her family together despite fractured relationships, greed, and treachery.
Judy Kroll worked for over twenty years in large and small corporations, including four years in the pharmaceutical industry, as a human resources professional and later as a career counselor. She provided job search assistance to hundreds of individuals, including physicians, pharmacists, medical device developers, chemists, and other scientists impacted by mergers and downsizings. She is a practicing yogi (twenty-three years.)
Both corporate experiences as well as many years ‘on the mat’ inspired her book, Breakthrough. Specifically, in both of these very disparate worlds, she observed the same phenomenon: the devastation wrought when a much-respected boss or mentor turns out to be unethical, and one must find a new path forward, seemingly alone.
She lives in northern New Jersey, and in addition to writing, gardening, and practicing yoga, Judy co-chairs a not-for-profit conservation organization.
My thoughts: Neddy and her older brother Charles are developing a revolutionary medical device that might help younger brother Daniel, as well as millions of others, their company is due to complete a merger with another firm and raise some more capital, but then Neddy realises something very wrong is going on at the company.
As she investigates the strange things that have happened to their engineers, she risks destroying everything they’ve built, but is that a risk worth taking?
Clever, intriguing and compelling, this might be the author’s first book but I couldn’t tell, it’s such a well plotted and enjoyable read.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
Suzannah is pregnant with her third child. The first is in prison. The second is dead. How far will she go to keep her unborn baby safe?
When Suzannah learns she is pregnant, she feels like safety and happiness are finally within reach. Her handsome, successful fiancé, Alec, is over the moon about the baby. He proposes and pampers her. He thinks this is Suzannah’s first marriage and first child, but she’s keeping a few secrets. Actually, a lot of secrets. And they are dangerous…putting Suzannah in a position where she must choose who and what she’s willing to sacrifice to keep her baby and her freedom.
Drowning in her lies, Suzannah is desperate to bury her past, but her ex-husband, who abandoned her years ago, returns, stalking her and demanding to know what really happened to their daughter.
When the imprisoned serial killer who lured and groomed her son, threatens to sell his story to the press, Suzannah feels like the life she’d built and the precious one she’s growing, teeter on a precipice. Now the two children she’s hidden from Alec may be the least of her worries.
Heidi Field was raised in the beautiful countryside of the South of England with her parents and her two sisters. In her twenties she was a freelance Sports Massage Therapist. She achieved a Degree in Zoology at the age of thirty and then went on to raise two boys and became the stepmother of three more young children.
She still lives near her family home with her partner, their Great Dane and the children that have yet to fly the nest. In her early forties Heidi completed a Masters in Creative Writing at Winchester University. She entered the course hoping she would become a children’s fantasy writer and left with a burning desire to write contemporary mysteries and thrillers. Heidi wanted to put relatable people in extraordinary situations, challenge them, push them to their limits and watch them fight for their sanity.
The Other Mother is Heidi’s second novel, the next book in The Peasedale Woods Killers series.
FaceBook page: Heidi Field Author Insta: Heidi.field.75 Tiktok: @fieldheidi11
My thoughts: Suzannah’s whole relationship with her fiancé is about to fall apart because of the many, many secrets she’s been keeping. She hasn’t told him about her previous marriage, her children, their fathers, or where she goes every few weeks.
She’s hoping she won’t have to, until an unwelcome blast from the past forces her to. Now things are falling apart completely, because she just can’t seem to tell the whole truth, and Alec’s patience is getting short, he’s worried about her mental state and whether their baby’s safe.
Suzannah’s an unreliable narrator, even to herself she keeps up the pretence and doesn’t share the full truth.
There are plenty of shocking things that come out and more that happen as Suzannah scrambles to stop some of the secrets from spilling out and destroying her life.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
A sweeping tale of secrets and survival set against the mystical backdrop of Nepal, and the tropical heat of 1940s Malaya.
In the heart of bustling Kathmandu, Chloe Rai’s quaint bookshop is a sanctuary for those seeking solace within the pages of timeworn stories. But when she discovers a collection of letters hidden within the crumbling walls of a forgotten Rana palace, her world begins to intertwine with a narrative from a different time and place.
Penned in the 1940s by a woman named Alice Lacey, the letters tell the story of the Malayan Emergency, a time of turmoil and conflict. As Alice’s life becomes intertwined with that of Anil, a Gurkha officer, their bond is tested by the chaos and violence surrounding them. Chloe’s discoveries not only reveal family secrets, but also mirror her own struggles in the present. As she delves deeper into Alice’s story, she begins to understand the power of the past in shaping the present.
With a rich cultural backdrop and a poignant exploration of friendship, resilience, and truth, ‘The Bookseller of Kathmandu’ is a beautifully woven tale that showcases the enduring power of storytelling. Join Chloe on a journey through time as she uncovers the truth and learns to navigate the complexities of her own life.
If you enjoy captivating storytelling, then you won’t want to miss ‘The Bookseller of Kathmandu.’ And if you loved ‘The Fortune Teller of Kathmandu,’ then you will be enthralled by Chloe and Alice’s intertwined stories…
Ann Bennett is a British author of historical fiction. Her first book, Bamboo Heart: A Daughter’s Quest, was inspired by researching her father’s experience as a prisoner of war on the Thai-Burma Railway and by her own journey to uncover his story. It won the Asian Books Blog prize for fiction published in Asia in 2015, and was shortlisted for the best fiction title in the Singapore Book Awards 2016.
That initial inspiration led her to write more books about WWII in Southeast Asia – Bamboo Island: The Planter’s Wife, A Daughter’s Promise, Bamboo Road: The Homecoming, The Tea Planter’s Club, The Amulet, and The Fortune Teller of Kathmandu. Along with The Lotus House, published in October 2024, they make up the Echoes of Empire Collection.
Ann is also the author of The Oriental Lake Collection – The Lake Pavilion and The Lake Palace, both set in British India during the 1930s and WWII, and The Lake Pagoda and The Lake Villa, set in French Indochina.
The Runaway Sisters, USA Today bestselling The Orphan House, The Child Without a Home and The Forgotten Children are set in Europe during the same era and are published by Bookouture.
Her latest book, The Stolen Sisters, published on 29th November 2024 is the follow-up to The Orphan List (published by Bookouture in August this year) and is set in Poland and Germany during WWII.
A former lawyer, Ann is married with three grown up sons and a granddaughter and lives in Surrey, UK. For more details, please visit her website.
Giveaway to Win a Paperback copy of Fortune Teller of Kathmandu (Open to UK and Europe only)
My thoughts: I really enjoyed this story of love told through letters and a diary, hidden inside a beautiful old palace in Kathmandu. Chloe runs a bookshop, and her husband’s second cousin Rajesh comes to see her, asking if she would take his late father’s books. Inside one of these volumes is a letter from a British woman, Alice, to Anil, Rajesh’s father, a former Gurkha who had been stationed in what was then British Malaya, now Malaysia.
As Chloe looks through the books, she finds more letters, and when Rajesh finds his father’s diary, they piece together a love story set against the backdrop of the Malayan Emergency.
Reflecting on Alice’s life, Chloe works through some of the issues of her own, and as they unravel the secrets of the past, forms a friendship with Rajesh, helping him learn more about his often distant father.
Enjoyable, moving and with a rather lovely ending, this was an interesting love story that illuminated a time not taught in history lessons, at least not in mine, and brings both modern Kathmandu and 1950s Malaysia to life.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
**Terms and Conditions –UK and Europe entries welcome. Please enter using the Gleam box below. The winner will be selected at random via Gleam from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then Rachel’s Random Resources reserves the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over. Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time Rachel’s Random Resources will delete the data. I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.**
ramblingmads 