I thought I had saved the link to the blog on cover design, but apparently I didn't. I searched the net, and couldn't find it. So. Here's my guide to cover design.

Use only three colors. There can be variety in the lightness and darkness, but stick to the three colors.

Use only two fonts. I have seen this in a couple places.

Have only one written focal point. The author name should not compete with the title. Neither should the series name or subtitle, if you have either one. Keep the title the main attraction.

Have only one visual focal point. That can be a cluster, say two people close together, but have only one visual focal point. And center it!

Draw the eye toward the center. You want folks to give the book attention, so be very careful what goes off the cover. Background stuff like mountains or trees can be chopped off, but not animals or people. Also, we tend to look where others are looking, so don't have anyone, or any animals, looking off to the side. Everyone should look toward the center, or out at the reader.  This is true for pictures within the book, as well.


I think that's all the tips I have. At least at present.  Hope this helps others.

Sounds like a series that I would have enjoyed reading - I have read a lot of that kind of themed mysteries and I have always loved them - the chase - the who-is-it - the reveal!

I recall the blog I read did set a limit for the number of fonts. It might have been two. I hadn't broken that rule, so I didn't commit it to memory. If I find it again, should I post a link to it? I found it helpful, so others might as well.

Thanks for the info!

This sounds like a series I would enjoy.

The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn


Release date - 2, January, 2018


Synopsis -


What did she see?
It’s been ten long months since Anna Fox last left her home. Ten months during which she has haunted the rooms of her old New York house like a ghost, lost in her memories, too terrified to step outside.


Anna’s lifeline to the real world is her window, where she sits day after day, watching her neighbours. When the Russells move in, Anna is instantly drawn to them. A picture-perfect family of three, they are an echo of the life that was once hers.


But one evening, a frenzied scream rips across the silence, and Anna witnesses something no one was supposed to see. Now she must do everything she can to uncover the truth about what really happened. But even if she does, will anyone believe her? And can she even trust herself?


Link - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34848682-the-woman-in-the-window

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Beneath the Mountainby Luca D’Andrea


Release date - 2 January, 2018


Synopsis -


New York City native Jeremiah Salinger is one half of a hot-shot documentary-making team. He and his partner, Mike, made a reality show about roadies that skyrocketed them to fame. But now Salinger’s left that all behind, to move with his wife, Annelise, and young daughter, Clara, to the remote part of Italy where Annelise grew up—the Alto Adige.


Nestled in the Dolomites, this breathtaking, rural region that was once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire remains more Austro than Italian. Locals speak a strange, ancient dialect—Ladino—and root for Germany (against Italy) in the world cup. Annelise’s small town—Siebenhoch—is close-knit to say the least and does not take kindly to out-of-towners. When Salinger decides to make a documentary about the mountain rescue group, the mission goes horribly awry, leaving him the only survivor. He blames himself, and so—it seems—does everyone else in Siebenhoch. Spiraling into a deep depression, he begins having terrible, recurrent nightmares. Only his little girl Clara can put a smile on his face.


But when he takes Clara to the Bletterbach Gorge—a canyon rich in fossil remains—he accidentally overhears a conversation that gives his life renewed focus. In 1985, three students were murdered there, their bodies savaged, limbs severed and strewn by a killer who was never found. Although Salinger knows this is a tightlipped community, one where he is definitely persona non grata, he becomes obsessed with solving this mystery and is convinced it is all that can keep him sane. And as Salinger unearths the long kept secrets of this small town, one by one, the terrifying truth is eventually revealed about the horrifying crime that marked an entire village.


Link - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33385444-beneath-the-mountain?ac=1&from_search=true

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A Map of the Dark (The Searchers 1) by Karen Ellis


Release Date - 2, January, 2018


Synopsis -


FBI Agent Elsa Myers finds missing people.
She knows how it feels to be lost...


Though her father lies dying in a hospital north of New York City, Elsa cannot refuse a call for help. A teenage girl has gone missing from Forest Hills, Queens, and during the critical first hours of the case, a series of false leads hides the fact that she did not go willingly.


With each passing hour, as the hunt for Ruby deepens into a search for a man who may have been killing for years, the case starts to get underneath Elsa's skin. Everything she has buried - her fraught relationship with her sister and niece, her self-destructive past, her mother's death - threatens to resurface, with devastating consequences.


Link - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35605410-a-map-of-the-dark?ac=1&from_search=true

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Unbound: A Stone Barrington Novel by Stuart Woods


Release date - 2, January, 2018


Synopsis -


Stone Barrington is pulled along for the ride when a friend pursues a perilous course of vengeance in the newest novel from #1 New York Times–bestselling author Stuart Woods.


In the wake of a personal tragedy, former CIA operative Teddy Fay—now a successful Hollywood film producer known as Billy Barnett—takes a leave of absence to travel and grieve, and lands in Santa Fe in the company of his friends Stone Barrington and Ed Eagle. There, fate hands him an unexpected opportunity to exact quiet revenge for his recent loss, from a man who helped to cover up the crime.


But when his enemy wises up to Teddy’s machinations, a discreet game of sabotage escalates to a potentially lethal battle. From the arid splendor of the New Mexico desert to the glamour of Hollywood’s rolling hills, it will take all of Stone Barrington’s diplomacy and skill to maneuver for Teddy’s advantage while keeping innocents out of the crossfire.


Link - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34911601-unbound

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Robicheaux by James Lee Burke


Release date -  2, January, 2018


Synopsis -


Between his recurrent nightmares about Vietnam, his battle with alcoholism, and the sudden loss of his beloved wife, Molly, his thoughts drift from one irreconcilable memory to the next. Images of ghosts at Spanish Lake live on the edge of his vision.


During a murder investigation, Dave Robicheaux discovers he may have committed the homicide he’s investigating, one which involved the death of the man who took the life of Dave’s beloved wife. As he works to clear his name and make sense of the murder, Robicheaux encounters a cast of characters and a resurgence of dark social forces that threaten to destroy all of those whom he loves. What emerges is not only a propulsive and thrilling novel, but a harrowing study of America: this nation’s abiding conflict between a sense of past grandeur and a legacy of shame, its easy seduction by demagogues and wealth, and its predilection for violence and revenge. James Lee Burke has returned with one of America’s favorite characters, in his most searing, most prescient novel to date.


Link - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35297186-robicheaux

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Operator Down (Pike Logan 12)by Brad Taylor


Release date -  9, January, 2018


Synopsis -


Former Delta Force Officer and New York Times bestselling author Brad Taylor delivers a heart-pounding thriller where Pike Logan's search for a Mossad agent and ally puts him on a collision course with a ruthless military coup in Africa—and tests his loyalties to the Taskforce.


It was to be a simple mission. Nothing more than assessing whether a merchant in the fabled Israeli Diamond Exchange was involved in a scheme that could potentially embarrass the state of Israel. But nothing is ever simple in the world of intelligence, as Aaron Bergman—a former leader of an elite direct action team under the Mossad—should have known. Executing the operation as a contractor, a cutout that gave the State of Israel plausible deniability, he disappears without a trace.


Pike Logan and his team know none of this, but he’s tracking an American arms dealer in Tel Aviv who may—or may not—be attempting to sell sensitive nuclear weapons components to the highest bidder. When Pike’s team breaks up an attempt at killing Shoshana, Aaron’s partner, they stumble upon much more than they expected—a concerted conspiracy to topple a democratic African country.


Beginning to untangle a web that extends through both the American and Israeli intelligence community, Pike is forced to choose between his Israeli friends and his Taskforce mission, even as the execution of the coup begins to form. At the heart of it is Aaron, and his disappearance is the one mistake the plotters made. Because Shoshana is the greatest killing machine the Mossad has ever produced, and she will stop at nothing to help Aaron, even if it means killing Pike Logan.


Link - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34844955-operator-down?from_search=true

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The Chalk Man by C.J. Tudor


Release date -  9, January, 2018


Synopsis -


In 1986, Eddie and his friends are just kids on the verge of adolescence. They spend their days biking around their sleepy English village and looking for any taste of excitement they can get. The chalk men are their secret code: little chalk stick figures they leave for one another as messages only they can understand. But then a mysterious chalk man leads them right to a dismembered body, and nothing is ever the same.


In 2016, Eddie is fully grown and thinks he's put his past behind him, but then he gets a letter in the mail containing a single chalk stick figure. When it turns out that his friends got the same message, they think it could be a prank--until one of them turns up dead. That's when Eddie realizes that saving himself means finally figuring out what really happened all those years ago.


Link - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35356382-the-chalk-man?ac=1&from_search=true

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Two Girls Down by Louisa Luna


Release date -  9, January, 2018


Synopsis -


When two young sisters disappear from a strip mall parking lot in a small Pennsylvania town, their devastated mother hires an enigmatic bounty hunter, Alice Vega, to help find the girls. Immediately shut out by a local police department already stretched thin by budget cuts and the growing OxyContin and meth epidemic, Vega enlists the help of a disgraced former cop, Max Caplan. Cap is a man trying to put the scandal of his past behind him and move on, but Vega needs his help to find the girls, and she will not be denied.


With little to go on, Vega and Cap will go to extraordinary lengths to untangle a dangerous web of lies, false leads, and complex relationships to find the girls before time runs out, and they are gone forever.


Link - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36136030-two-girls-down?ac=1&from_search=true

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City of Endless Night (Pendergast 17) by Douglas Preston


Release date -  9, January, 2018


Synopsis -


What begins as a manhunt for the missing daughter of a wealthy tech billionaire becomes something altogether different when the young woman's body is discovered in an abandoned warehouse in Kew Gardens, Queens, the head nowhere to be found. It appears there may be two killers on the loose--one responsible for the young woman's death, another responsible for the mutilation. A pair of such dastardly killers requires a team of equally talented investigators. Luckily, both Vincent D'Agosta and Special Agent Pendergast are back in town.


D'Agosta hopes that working a case back on his home turf for the first time in years will reinvigorate the FBI Special Agent and give him an opportunity to flex his investigative might. But neither is prepared to face a killer--or killers--as diabolical as this. It will take all of Pendergast and D'Agosta's intelligence and strength simply to match wits--let alone stay alive.


Link - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34517346-city-of-endless-night?ac=1&from_search=true

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The Take by Christopher Reich


Release date -  16, January, 2018


Synopsis -


From New York Times bestselling author Christopher Reich, an international spy thriller featuring Simon Riske: one part James Bond, one part Jack Reacher


Riske is a freelance industrial spy who, despite his job title, lives a mostly quiet life above his auto garage in central London. He is hired to perform the odd job for a bank, an insurance company, or the British Secret Service, when he isn't expertly stealing a million-dollar watch off the wrist of a crooked Russian oligarch.


Riske has maintained his quiet life by avoiding big, messy jobs; until now. A gangster by the name of Tino Coluzzi has orchestrated the greatest street heist in the history of Paris: a visiting Saudi prince had his pockets lightened of millions in cash, and something else. Hidden within a stolen briefcase is a secret letter that could upend the balance of power in the Western world. The Russians have already killed in an attempt to get it back by the time the CIA comes knocking at Simon's door.


Coluzzi was once Riske's brother-in-arms, but their criminal alliance ended with Riske in prison, having narrowly avoided a hit Coluzzi ordered. Now, years later, it is thief against thief, and hot on their trail are a dangerous Parisian cop, a murderous Russian femme fatale, her equally unhinged boss, and perhaps the CIA itself.


In the grand tradition of The Day of the Jackal and The Bourne Identity, Christopher Reich's The Take is a stylish, breathtaking ride.


Link - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33784305-the-take?ac=1&from_search=true

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Light It Up: A Peter Ash Novel by Nick Petrie


Release date -  16, January, 2018


Synopsis -


"Lots of characters get compared to my own Jack Reacher, but Petrie's Peter Ash is the real deal."--Lee Child


In the newest action-packed thriller starring war veteran Peter Ash, a well-planned and flawlessly executed hijacking reveals the hidden dangers of Colorado's mellowest business, but Ash may find there's more to this crime than meets the eye.


Combat veteran Peter Ash leaves a simple life rebuilding hiking trails in Oregon to help his good friend Henry Nygaard, whose daughter runs a Denver security company that protects cash-rich cannabis entrepreneurs from modern-day highwaymen. Henry's son-in-law and the company's operations manager were carrying a large sum of client money when their vehicle vanished without a trace, leaving Henry's daughter and her company vulnerable.


Then, when Peter is riding shotgun on another cash run, the cargo he's guarding comes under attack from hijackers and he narrowly escapes with his life. As the incidents mount, he has to wonder: for criminals as sophisticated as these, is this money really worth the risk? And if not, what about his cargo is worth more?


Link - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35105892-light-it-up

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Walking the Bones (Ryan DeMarco Mystery 2) by Randall Silvis


Release date [size=78%]-[/size][/b]  23, January, 2018


Synopsis - When long-buried secrets come back to the surface...


The bones of seven young girls, picked clean and carefully preserved, discovered years ago... that's all Sergeant Ryan DeMarco knows about the unsolved crime he has unwittingly been roped into investigating during what is supposed to be a healing road trip with his new love, Jayme.


DeMarco is still reeling from the case that led to death of his best friend months ago and wants nothing more than to lay low. Unfortunately, the small southern town of Jayme's idyllic youth is not exactly a place that lets strangers go unnoticed--especially strangers who have a history of solving violent crimes. And if there's anything DeMarco knows, it's that a killer always leaves clues behind, just waiting for the right person to come along and put all the pieces together...


Walking the Bones is a story about things buried--memories, regrets, secrets, and bodies. Acclaimed author Randall Silvis delivers another heart-stopping investigation as DeMarco finds himself once again drawn into a case that will demand more of himself than he may be willing to give.


Link - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34974117-walking-the-bones?ac=1&from_search=true

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The Mitford Murders by Jessica Fellowes


Release date -  23, January, 2018


Synopsis -


It's 1919, and Louisa Cannon dreams of escaping her life of poverty in London, and most of all her oppressive and dangerous uncle.


Louisa's salvation is a position within the Mitford household at Asthall Manor, in the Oxfordshire countryside. There she will become nurserymaid, chaperone and confidante to the Mitford sisters, especially sixteen-year-old Nancy - an acerbic, bright young woman in love with stories.


But then a nurse - Florence Nightingale Shore, goddaughter of her famous namesake - is killed on a train in broad daylight, and Louisa and Nancy find themselves entangled in the crimes of a murderer who will do anything to hide their secret . . .


Link - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34612673-the-mitford-murders?ac=1&from_search=true