Red Adept Publishing Book Review: Hush, Delilah by Angie Gallion

On the surface, Delilah Reddick’s life looks perfect. Her husband is a pillar of the community, and with her as his quietly supportive wife, they appear to be the picture of success and happiness. But there are deep cracks in the foundation, dark secrets Delilah has never shared with anyone.

Delilah knows what her husband is capable of when the evil inside him finds its way to the surface, but running would only delay the inevitable. Chase would hunt her to the ends of the earth before allowing her to take his only son from him. Delilah would rather die than leave her fourteen-year-old behind, but when her son begins displaying his father’s violent tendencies, she knows she must act.

In her quest to save her son, Delilah sets off a chain of events that could rock the community and reveal the darkest secret of them all. After years of staying quiet, Delilah must find her voice before her husband silences her forever.

When We Were Friends ~ Book Review

They were best friends. Sisters of the heart. Partners in crime. Until they got caught…

Five years ago, Frannie Willets committed grand larceny to help her best friend, Lexi Maddox, escape an awful situation. Now paroled and prospectless, Frannie needs to disappear from her dead-end life. To do so, she’ll need her share of the stolen money that Lexi has been hiding all these years. But Lexi has other plans.

By all appearances, Lexi is thriving, but in truth, nothing in her life is going according to plan. She can’t carry a pregnancy to term, her sweet stepdaughter hates her, and even the family’s new rescue dog knows she’s a failure. Lexi’s only path to happiness is making amends with the friend she dearly misses. But the only thing Frannie wants from Lexi is cash.

Out of desperation, Lexi offers Frannie all the money, with one catch: Frannie must stick around for one month. Stranded in their suffocating small town, Frannie gets tangled up in Lexi’s issues, her mother’s questionable dating life, a lonely kid’s desperate attempts to find friends, and a high-school crush’s fantasies about what could have been. Suddenly, leaving doesn’t look as easy as it once did. But when an old enemy surfaces, Frannie realizes her staying endangers everyone she loves. And even though she might have found her heart’s true home, there’s no guarantee she can keep it.

Hidden Fury ~ Book Review

As a former cop turned private investigator, Annie Fitch hopes to never be in the line of fire again, so she’s expanded her business to include installing security systems. She’s thrilled to be hired by Preston Farr, a farmer with a vandalism problem on his family’s historic apple orchard and farm.

Preston’s roots in the community run deep. His family has held the same property in Leesburg, Virginia, since the 1700s. The two get to know each other over the course of the job. When Preston asks her out after the work is done, she accepts. After all, Annie’s on-again, off-again love affair with her childhood best friend, Ford, is currently off. Why should she mope until he decides it’s on again?

What she intended to be a fun, casual romp with Preston turns serious quickly when Annie’s newly installed security cameras record startling footage. Family secrets begin to unravel, echoing over two hundred years of heartache and violence.

Last Place Seen

 

In the aftermath of her husband’s life-altering mistake, Tiana Williams grapples with lingering resentment while working full-time and raising their toddler. But when Jay becomes a person of interest in the kidnapping of ten-year-old Zoe Miller, Tiana is torn between trusting her husband and believing the growing pile of evidence. After she gets dragged further into the mystery and discovers her connection to the missing girl, the shaky ground beneath her crumbles.

With the odds stacked against him, Jay does everything in his power to prove his innocence. Racing against the clock, he must uncover the truth about Zoe’s kidnapping before he loses everything he loves—including his freedom.

During a sweltering heat wave and a raging California wildfire, Tiana and Jay will stop at nothing to find Zoe, even if it means tearing apart their marriage and risking their own lives in the process.

Love and Pirates

Hardy Hanlon’s big dream is to sail a boat on the high seas. Freshly graduated from college, he gets his wish… sort of.

He accidentally stows away on a yacht being transported across America on the back of a truck bed. It’s a pirate’s life for Hardy as he views the country through portholes on the way to San Diego. Ditching his college days, dead-end jobs, and even Ivy Palmer, the girl who has a crush on him, he is off on the travel adventure of a lifetime.

Hardy soon discovers he hasn’t left everything—or everyone—behind. He also learns that life on today’s highways in the divisive and complex place America has become is far from easy sailing.

Warped Allegiance

When Lieutenant Jo Riskin investigates the brutal murder of the pastor of New Life Church, she discovers that the beloved preacher may not be the man his congregation believes he is. The deeper Jo dives into his life, the longer the suspect list grows, including members of his congregation and even his own family.

While dealing with her current homicide, Jo has the opportunity to talk face-to-face with the man responsible for her husband’s murder. When he tells her he wants to cut a deal, she battles between her need for revenge and her desire to honor her husband’s legacy.

As the investigation continues and ensnares more lives in lies and scandal, Jo realizes that to untangle her own life, she has to let go and move forward.

To solve both cases, Jo must balance her need for answers with her desire for justice.

Pest Cemetery

Bradley Langston, college dropout and drifter, is at a dead end. His last stop before living out of his car with a wet dog and a murderous ball of fluff is a caretaker’s job at Pottsville East Shady Terraces cemetery.

The cemetery is a mess, and it’s going to take a lot of work to make right, which is more than Brad bargained for when he took the job. To complicate matters, the long-term residents of Shady Terraces turn out to be a little restless. And needy.

For starters, a murdered woman appears and implores Brad to help find her killer. In days, Brad has a crowd of ghosts invading his space, including one evil spirit bent on possessing him and using him to perpetrate her revenge on the world.

Brad’s default setting is to run away when things get tough. Can he make a stand on the grounds of Shady Terraces, or is he doomed to repeat the failures of his own haunted past?

Last Liar Standing

Vonny Kwan wakes up in a Nevada hospital, the victim of a hit-and-run accident she doesn’t remember. As she struggles to recover from her injuries, she learns that she also has no memory of the past nine years, including her marriage and what she was even doing in the West.

While she’s still reeling from the shock of her amnesia, two detectives visit and inform her that her husband, John, was recently murdered. As more information comes to light, Vonny grows increasingly suspicious of everyone around her.

Vonny realizes she must piece together the last decade to uncover the truth. The missing chunk of time holds secrets about the person she became, the mysterious man she fell for, and the life she never wanted.

Whispers of Innocence

The baby is quiet. Too quiet.

When Madeline checks on her seven-month-old daughter, she discovers the reason for the baby’s silence. Abigail is dead. Madeline is soon living every mother’s worst nightmare amid a cacophony of sirens and police interrogations.

Accusations and old resentments can’t stay contained under the pressure of guilt, tears, and the horror of picking out a baby-sized coffin. A line is drawn through Madeline and Brian’s marriage, and a battle begins.

But defining heroes and villains is as difficult as untangling the truth from the web Madeline and Brian have created to protect themselves. Abigail’s killer isn’t the only monster hiding in the shadows. And among the dark secrets, everyone will crumble under the consequences.

Unbalanced

 

By-the-book Detective Asante Royo can only clean up Fall River’s filth for so long without getting dirty. When he’s called to an apparent suicide at an apartment complex notorious for its prostitution and drug trade, he doesn’t shed a tear for the life wasted. Yet something about the scene haunts him, and when his investigation gets swept under the rug, he has a hard time living with the stain.

Jaden Sanders is an unstable loner who lives across the hall from the crime scene. When three men break into his apartment, Jaden is ready for a fight. He kills two of his attackers in self-defense then stalks and stabs the third in the back. Jaden is soon arrested for murder.

With no clear motives for the home invasion or Jaden’s violent response, Royo must uncover the true story before more people get hurt. His only leads are derived from the version of events extracted from a truly unbalanced mind. Is Jaden a victim being steamrolled by cold justice or a murderer capable of killing again?

Kiss and Kill in Texas

Al Quinn turns down a musician friend’s request to stay at Al’s home, which is now filled with his recent bride, Fergie, his brother’s, wife and child, and a dog. Al’s refusal has consequences that lead to the musician being murdered.

The trail to make things right takes Al and his family down to the Texas coast, where they face their most dangerous mission. The small Gulf town of Port Dexter is as prickly as the cactus-filled countryside. Every law enforcement officer appears to be corrupt, and an elite killer team is loose in the area. Even worse, they are all out to erase Al and his entire family.

Ending Forever

Axel Rivers can’t get his head above water. Throughout his life, he’s worn many hats — orphan, musician, veteran, husband, father—but a year ago, a horrific event he now calls The Bad Day tore down everything he’d built. Grief-stricken, unemployed, and drowning in debt, Axel needs cash, however he can find it.

Enter Kindred Eternal Solutions. Founded by the world’s six wealthiest trillionaires and billionaires, Kindred promises to create eternal life through mastering the science of human resurrection. With the technology still being developed, Kindred seeks paid volunteers to undergo tests that will kill and resurrect their body—again and again—in exchange for a check.

Axel signs up willingly, but when he undergoes the procedure—and comes back, over and over—what will he find on the other side of death? 

Words We Cannot Say

Labor and delivery nurse Penelope is an expert at her job but a complete mess when it comes to her personal life. After her boyfriend dumps her in favor of saving his marriage, Penelope discovers she’s pregnant. Now Penelope must face motherhood, her greatest fear, or consider the alternatives.

Jesenia, a first-generation American, made her mark as a model then quit the business in favor of a nine-to-five and wedded bliss. After three years of fertility treatments and pressure from her family, trying to become a mother is her full-time job. But when her past mistakes threaten her chances, Nia will have to confront her youthful choices and over-involved family’s opinions on bloodlines if she wants to become a mother.

If choosing a homebirth and nursing a toddler don’t make Lotus unconventional, growing up in a commune and choosing a polyamorous marriage certainly do. After her grandfather’s unexpected death and the inheritance of his Victorian home, Lotus just wants to run her business, take care of her family, and live in her version of normal. That peace is threatened by her husband’s former lover, the end of his sobriety, and a new love interest, all of which will turn her world upside down.

A Life Unraveled

Kindergarten teacher Lily Gallo is a happily married mother of three who considers her life perfect… until the day she’s brutally assaulted while out on a run. When the town’s high school football hero is arrested for the attack, Lily’s family suffers retaliation from local sports fans.

Recovering from her injuries, Lily wraps herself in an opioid cloud. Later, a barely avoided tragedy motivates her to flush the narcotics. But her return to sobriety is overshadowed by unnerving memory lapses and her husband’s growing mistrust.

As unremembered events become more disturbing, Lily is convinced that she’s being stalked. Though her attacker started the destruction of her life, someone else is determined to finish it.

These Numbered Days

 How do you ask forgiveness for the unforgivable?

When Annie Wolff’s ex-husband dies unexpectedly, she breaks her self-imposed exile and returns home to Snohomish, Washington. Annie hasn’t seen her children, Grace and Connor, in eight years, and now, her in-laws are making a bid to adopt them. She only hopes the depression that once sent her running will remain in check.

Annie is quickly drawn back into the lives of her now-teenage kids, under the skeptical supervision of their aunt. While Connor welcomes his estranged mother with open arms, Grace wants nothing to do with her. Annie is determined to be patient, even though her daughter’s behavior raises red flags.

As Annie sets out on this new, treacherous road, she stumbles into the path of Wic Dubray—the handsome but annoyingly honest woodworker who leases her a room. Not used to anyone caring for her, she finds his presence is both an unanticipated gift and a complication.

Annie must navigate old memories, hostile relatives, her wavering mental health, and a growing fondness for Wic. Only then will she have a chance to win back her children and her life and maybe find love.

The Sun, the Moon, and Maybe the Trains

What would it take to convince you that the woods you just left is a hundred and forty-four years distant from the one you entered?

Ten years have passed since the Civil War broke up John Bartley’s family. Living with his aunt and uncle in the tiny village of Greendale, Vermont, isn’t filled with excitement for a seventeen-year-old.

Until John walks into the woods one day and stumbles into 2009…

Fortunately, he chances upon the outspoken Tess McKinnon. To earn her trust, he must first convince her that he is neither a lunatic nor a liar. The proof he needs is buried at the end of a mountain road, where the ruins of Greendale lie just beneath a layer of dead leaves and moss.

What became of his home? Why is there no record of its existence?

Strangled by Simile

 

Southern transplant Emma Lovett and her best friend, Leslie Parker, can hardly believe it’s Emma’s third year at Thomas Jefferson High School. In addition to an amazing year with Emma’s boyfriend, Hunter Wells, and Leslie’s brand-new love interest, they’ve gotten all the way through Homecoming with no one dying.

Oops!

At the end of October, Emma discovers the strangled body of Charlie Foreman, one of Leslie’s favorite nemeses. But the first clue implicates Leslie in the crime. To make things worse, Emma’s feeling a little oogy. She’s tired and dizzy and something’s wrong with her eyes.

All Emma and Leslie are trying to do is find new methods for teaching the youth of America, hopefully using lessons from the Great Bard, their hero, William Shakespeare.

But someone has a different idea: more schooling in murder.

Poison by Punctuation

 

High school teacher Emma Lovett is finally recovering from her first year of teaching when she discovers another dead body. As if that wasn’t bad enough, this time, someone has killed a student, Kisten Hollis.

Emma and her best friend, Leslie, are desperate to solve this murder. But suspects abound. The perpetrator could be a teacher, an administrator, a member of Kisten’s zealous church community, or even another student.

Emma must juggle her teaching responsibilities, her new romance with handsome Hunter Wells, and interest from a hunky second suitor, all while searching for evidence to bring a killer to justice before someone else dies.

Darkest Corners of Texas

 

Scream Away, But No One Cares...

Austin's urban sprawl is crowding in on Al Quinn's once wilderness lakefront house. Yet he is tugged away from his cozy retirement, his quirky housemates, and even his promise to marry Fergie by a string of seemingly petty crimes that are starting to seem organized.

Houses may be springing up around where he and his family live, but Al knows from his years as a sheriff's department detective that there are still some quite dark corners in Texas. He finds himself drawn right out into the darkest of them.

The trail he follows gets even more sinister when he and Fergie must confront the Aryan Brotherhood. There is no backing away, though, when the lives of his brother Maury, Bonnie, Little Al, and even Al's dog, Tanner, are at stake.

If She Had Stayed

Kaley Kline is thrilled to have landed a job as director of the new Tesla Museum in Colorado Springs. To make the museum successful, she searches for undiscovered works to display. When she finds an old safe that might have been Tesla’s, she’s shocked to find some diary pages supposedly written by the inventor himself.

Kaley initially thinks either that the journal is a fraud or Tesla was experiencing a nervous breakdown when he wrote it. However, if his experiments were real, the world will never be the same. She decides to secretly build Tesla’s time machine and attempt to go back into her own life to change a decision she has always regretted.

She prepares for a trip to the past, not knowing whether she will electrocute herself or travel back to the Boulder of her sophomore year in college. But an old boyfriend might have hidden some secrets from her—secrets that could have her fighting for her life.