October 19th, 2026
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On Top Shelf
📚 New Books This Week 📰 Latest News 🎪 Reader Games 👻 🎃 Halloween Contest Giveaways 🎃

October Reads Worth Falling For

Danger, desire, second chances, and unexpected romanceβ€”discover this month’s Fresh Fiction Featured Books.

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A poisoned cousin, a five-year-old's life, and a family with too many secrets.


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Supernatural sparks fly
between a bookseller
& her hard-boiled ghost.


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If Her Highness thinks I’ll let another man claim her and my child, she’s lost her royal mind. Sophaya’s mine.


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She found a body. Then she started asking the wrong questions.


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He ghosted her ten years ago. Now she’s stuck with him for Christmas.


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She’s the lady everyone overlooks. He’s the prince who can’t look away.

The Fitzgerald Ruse by Mark de Castrique

Purchase

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Also by Mark de Castrique:

Dangerous Women, November 2023
Trade Paperback / e-Book
Secret Lives, October 2022
Trade Paperback / e-Book
Fatal Scores, March 2021
Trade Size / e-Book
Murder in Rat Alley, January 2020
Hardcover / e-Book
Hidden Scars, October 2017
Hardcover / e-Book
A Specter of Justice, November 2015
Hardcover / e-Book
Risky Undertaking, November 2014
Hardcover
A Murder in Passing, July 2013
Hardcover / e-Book
The 13th Target, July 2012
Hardcover / e-Book
The Fitzgerald Ruse, October 2011
Trade Size / e-Book
Blackman's Coffin, October 2011
Trade Size / e-Book
The Sandburg Connection, September 2011
Trade Size / e-Book
Fatal Undertaking, October 2010
Hardcover
Grave Undertaking, March 2006
Paperback

THE FITZGERALD RUSE
By: Mark de Castrique

Blackman Agency Investigations #2
Poisoned Pen Press
October 2011
On Sale: September 30, 2011
Featuring: Sam Blackman
254 pages
ISBN: 1590588045
EAN: 9781590588048
Kindle: B07VLBRLLD
Trade Size / e-Book
Add to Wish List

Mystery Private Eye

Former Chief Warrant Officer Sam Blackman lost a leg in Iraq and emerged from the V.A. hospital in Asheville, NC, as a bitter civilian without a job or a future. But when he solved a series of local murders, Sam found new meaning for his life. Now he and his partner, Nakayla Robertson, are opening a detective agency. They have high hopes that the thriving mountain region will provide a steady stream of cases.

Their first client, a quirky elderly woman in a retirement community, makes a strange request. She wants Sam to right a wrong she committed more than 70 years ago. Her victim: F. Scott Fitzgerald. Her crime: stealing a manuscript. Sam's task seems simple enough: retrieve the woman's lockbox and deliver the manuscript to Fitzgerald's heirs.

But nothing is simple for Sam. The lockbox is sealed with a swastika, a symbol his client insists predates the Nazis and reflects a scene from The Great Gatsby. Then a security guard is killed and the lockbox disappears. Not only has this investigation triggered a murder, but Sam's final military case has followed him from Iraq and neither he nor anyone close to him is safe....

Blackman Agency Investigations

Blackman's Coffin
BLACKMAN'S COFFIN
#1.0 β€’ October 2011
The Fitzgerald Ruse
THE FITZGERALD RUSE
#2.0 β€’ October 2011
The Sandburg Connection
THE SANDBURG CONNECTION
#3.0 β€’ September 2011
A Murder in Passing
A MURDER IN PASSING
#4.0 β€’ July 2013
A Specter of Justice
A SPECTER OF JUSTICE
#5.0 β€’ November 2015
Hidden Scars
HIDDEN SCARS
#6.0 β€’ October 2017
Murder in Rat Alley
MURDER IN RAT ALLEY
#7.0 β€’ January 2020