Julia Flang is a twenty-something former semi-professional gamer. Out of the blue, her estranged mother offers her a temp job with a payday she can’t refuse. One sham interview later, she’s offered the job: to chaperone a man in a vegetative state --- one with proprietary AI implanted in his head --- from California to the East Coast. A middle-aged man wakes within a disorienting hellscape filled with monstrous grotesqueries. He has no memory of who he is, but he knows that he must find a certain person. Using a cell phone modeled after a video game controller, Julia fumblingly navigates the man she calls “Bernie” from the company campus and onto planes and through one of the largest airports in America. All the while, the man endures an ever-changing and worsening nightmare that offers clues as to who he was --- and who he must track down.

Max Radinsky thought he was living the perfect life in Athens. But when his girlfriend, Yasmine, is forced to flee the city, Max joins her on a desperate journey across Greece. What begins as an escape becomes a fight for survival as the young couple are targeted by an international manhunt. Lachlan Kite, head of covert intelligence service BOX 88, hasn’t seen his former lover, Martha Raine, for more than 20 years. But when Martha begs his help in finding her missing son, Kite has no choice but to act. It turns out that Yasmine is carrying a secret that could destabilize the Middle East for a generation --- and a team of merciless Israeli intelligence agents have been given orders to kill her on sight. To save Max --- and stop a global crisis --- Kite and Martha must reach the young couple before their pursuers close in.

It all started with a simple yet sneakily difficult challenge from global bestselling author Harlan Coben: Pick a bird of prey, then use it as the inspiration for a brand-new story. The response from some of the best writers on the planet: Game on! The result: Eleven stories that are twisty, scary, surprising and bursting with imagination. An egg worth more than its weight in gold. A mysterious operative known only as Owl. An eagle-watcher who sees more than she should. Even a story that somehow places the Maltese Falcon in a nursing home. Commissioned by International Thriller Writers, BIRDS OF PREY is a highly bingeable anthology that is a treat for thriller fans.

Deputy Sheriff Alicia Moore is thrust into the center of a chilling murder investigation when she discovers a victim identifiable only by his hauntingly familiar tattoo --- her name inked onto the knuckles of her ex-fiancé, Jake. Years earlier, Alicia’s father had arrested a teenage occultist for a nearly identical murder, believed to be driven by the suspect’s worship of demonic entities. Now, with Jake’s murder mirroring that past crime, doubts arise about whether the true culprit was ever caught. The mystery deepens with the arrival of Lucas Masterson, a Criminology PhD student studying the confluence between religious trauma and occult crime. As Lucas delves into the case, his profound knowledge of the town’s grim history and his outsider perspective strain the local social fabric, while Alicia grapples with her suspicion towards his unsettling familiarity with the crimes.

Rebecca and Mark Higgins are doing their best to hold their family together. She’s healing from the pain of a miscarriage, he’s drowning in pressure at work, and their neurodivergent daughter, Maddy, needs all the care she can get. So when a cutting-edge tech company offers the perfect solution, they jump at the chance. And they welcome “Mr. Man” --- a humanoid AI companion --- into their home. Designed to anticipate their needs, he’s like a miracle at first. But when inexplicable tragedies start to strike the neighborhood, Rebecca glimpses a darker pattern at play. Each incident is an answer to an unspoken fear, each kindness shadowed by violence. Mr. Man isn’t just following instructions. He’s anticipating what they want. Even the things they never dared to say.

In THE FRENZY, Joyce Carol Oates plunges us into the lives of her characters at moments of crisis and confusion, when much of what they understand about themselves and those they love comes undone. A young woman on a supposedly romantic weekend trip to Cape May, New Jersey, turns the tables on her older, married lover. A freak bicycle accident on a bridge haunts one family for decades. A girl jealous of her popular cousin discovers she is the lucky one. A widow waits at her riverside house for her dead husband's return. A young man hiking in the woods comes upon a couple in a heated, possibly violent argument. Should he intervene?

Reeling from a very recent divorce, Frankie has moved into a glamorous London neighborhood. This is a new chapter in her life. She’s decided to put down roots with her beautiful Persian cat, Blue. But little doubts about her perfect new life start to grow, and when Blue returns one night from slipping into places he shouldn’t, Frankie’s concerns solidify. Two words are roughly scratched into his collar: help me. Unsettled and unwilling to ignore the incident, Frankie roots out an old unused “cat cam” collar. What slowly begins as a voyeuristic fascination with her neighbors and the secrets they’re hiding soon turns into a perilous quest for the truth that threatens to bring untold terrors to her doorstep.

Valencia receives troubling news that her brother has gone missing. Her fellow Assassins Anonymous members --- Mark, Astrid and Booker --- offer to watch her baby girl, Lucia, while she's gone. Shortly after Valencia leaves, Mark is summoned to the lair of Zmeya, a Russian mob boss calling in a deadly favor. She wants him to kill Astrid. Mark refuses, but Zmeya reveals that she knows the identity of Mark’s ex-girlfriend…and his son. Either Astrid goes, or they do. Meanwhile, Lucia spikes a dangerously high fever, and when Booker and Astrid take her to urgent care, they realize too late that their fabricated identities are a real liability. Suddenly the splintered group is on the run from both the Russian mob and the police as they try to find refuge in a city full of surveillance cameras --- all without killing anyone.

Jane Trevally is walking her dogs on her country estate when a small white terrier appears, alone and with no sign of the teenage girl he’d been staying with nearby. When the teenager is reported missing, Jane offers to return the dog to his registered owner, hours away in London. Arriving at a run-down house called Thornwood in the deepest backwaters of Hampstead, she is immediately on alert --- because Jane has a dark history with this house. The man who answers the door is not the man Jane remembers from her past. Then, through the window of the house, Jane catches a glimpse of a haunted-looking woman. Conjuring her memories from 25 years ago, Jane knows this unsettling house holds the key --- to the missing teenager, to her own traumatic story, and to the dark secrets of the past.

Gretchen Falk, a Park Avenue sophisticate born into great wealth and blessed with a storybook marriage, tried to convince her devoted husband, Richard, not to join his old college friends on an expedition to the imposing peak of Mount Kilimanjaro. Frankie Callahan’s dream of artistic success is within reach, with her career-making exhibition at a celebrated New York gallery only weeks away. To mark this new beginning, she is going to climb Kilimanjaro, but she certainly didn’t count on meeting anyone like Richard Falk. By the time they descend, they have lost more than they ever could have imagined. Now, less than two weeks after their return to New York, Frankie’s East Village loft is a blood-soaked crime scene, and Richard has been charged with her murder.