Rick Acker

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• 

  I Think I Was Murdered

  $18.99

  A grieving young widow. The AI program that allows her to continue to “talk” to him. And a message she never expected: “I think I was murdered.”

  Just a year ago, Katrina Berg was at the pinnacle of her career. She was a rising star in the AI chatbot start-up everyone was talking about, married with an adoring husband, and had more money than she knew how to spend. Then her world combusted. Her husband, Jason, was killed in a fiery car crash. Her CEO was indicted and, as the company’s legal counsel, Katrina faces tough questions as the Feds take over and lock her out of her office. The final blow is the passing of her beloved grandmother.

  Her most prized possession is the beta prototype for a new, ultra-sophisticated chatbot loaded onto her phone. The contents of Jason’s email, social media backups, pictures, and every bit of data she could find were loaded into the bot, and Katrina has “talked” to him every day for the past six months. She has been amazed at how well it works. Even the syntax and words the bot uses sound like Jason. Sometimes, she imagines he isn’t really dead and is right there beside her. She knows it’s slowing her grief recovery, but she can’t stop pretending.

  On a particularly bad day, she taps out: Tell me something I don’t know. The cursor blinks for several moments and seems frozen before the reply flashes quickly onto the screen: I think I was murdered.

  Distraught, Katrina returns to her cozy Norwegian-flavored hometown in the northern California redwoods and enlists the help of Seb Wallace, local restaurateur and longtime acquaintance, to try to parse out the truth of what really happened. They must navigate the complicated paths of grief, family dynamics, and second chances, as well as the complex questions of how much control technology has. And staying alive long enough to do that is far more difficult than either of them dreamed.

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• 

  What We Hide

  $18.99

  Family secrets. Historical wrongs. And the truths that refuse to stay buried.

  Savannah Webster is trying to find her way forward. She and her husband, Hez, have been separated since tragedy tore them apart and he began numbing his grief and guilt with alcohol. She returned to Tupelo Grove University, which her family helped found over a century ago, to teach history.

  When Hez turns up in her classroom asking for a second chance, she rejects the idea immediately. But twenty-four hours later she’s under suspicion for murder, and since Hez is the best attorney she knows, she reluctantly asks him for help. They suspect the murder is tied to someone selling off the university’s pre-Columbia artifacts, but the secrets go much deeper than they realize.

  The only hope they’ve got is each other, and they’re going to have to put their past behind them if they’re going to stay alive long enough to uncover all that’s hidden.

  in stock within 3-5 days of online purchase

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