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Reviews

Reviews

by Riley Sager - Fiction, Gothic, Horror, Suspense, Thriller

The Hope family murders shocked the Maine coast one bloody night in 1929. While most people assume 17-year-old Lenora was responsible, the police were never able to prove it. Lenora has never spoken publicly about that night, nor has she set foot outside Hope’s End, the cliffside mansion where the massacre occurred. It’s now 1983, and home-health aide Kit McDeere arrives at a decaying Hope’s End to care for Lenora. Confined to a wheelchair, Lenora was rendered mute by a series of strokes and can only communicate with Kit by tapping out sentences on an old typewriter. One night, Lenora uses it to make a tantalizing offer: I want to tell you everything. As Kit helps Lenora write about the events leading to the Hope family massacre, it becomes clear there’s more to the tale than people know.

by Alison Gaylin - Fiction, Mystery

Sunny Randall’s newest client, Blake, seems to have it all: he is an Instagram influencer, with all the perks the lifestyle entails --- a beautiful girlfriend, wealth and adoring fans. But one of those fans has turned ugly, and Sunny is brought on board by Blake’s manager, Bethany, to protect him and to uncover who is out to kill him. In doing so, she investigates a glamorous world rife with lies and schemes…and ties to a dangerous criminal scene. When Bethany goes missing and the threats against Blake escalate, Sunny realizes that in order to solve this case, she has to find out exactly who Blake and Bethany are, behind the Instagram filters. While digging into their pasts, she is also forced to confront her own, as old friends --- and ex-husbands --- reappear.

by Richard North Patterson - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

Malcolm Hill, a Black 18-year-old voting rights worker, is stopped by a white sheriff’s deputy on a dark country road in rural Georgia. His single mother, Allie, America’s leading voting rights advocate, restlessly awaits his return before police inform her that Malcolm has been arrested for murder. In Washington, D.C., the rising, young white congressman Chase Brevard of Massachusetts is watching the morning news with his girlfriend, only to find his life transformed in a single moment by the appearance of Malcolm’s photograph. Suddenly all three are enveloped in a media firestorm that threatens their lives --- especially Malcolm’s.

by Jeremy P. Bushnell - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Mystery, Historical Thriller, Supernatural, Suspense, Thriller

By day, Artie Quick holds down a job as a salesgirl in women’s accessories at Filene’s. By night, she disguises herself as a man to pursue studies in Criminal Investigation at the YMCA's Evening Institute for Younger Men. Artie sets out in search of something to investigate with her pal Theodore, an upper-crust young bachelor whose interest in Boston's occult counterculture has drawn him into the study of magic. Their journey begins on Boston Common --- where the tramps and the groundskeepers swap rumors about unearthly screams and other unsettling anomalies --- but soon they uncover a series of violent abductions that take them on an adventure from the highest corridors of power to the depths of an abandoned mass transit tunnel, its excavation suspiciously never completed.

by Alex Marwood - Fiction, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

1985. To 12-year-old Mercedes, La Kastellana is home, an island with deep-rooted traditions untouched by the modern world. But this secluded paradise is upended with the arrival of multimillionaire Matthew Meade and his pampered young daughter, Tatiana. The price that Mercedes and the rest of the islanders will pay is more than they ever could have imagined. 2016. Robin has been desperately searching for her missing 17-year-old daughter, Gemma. Finding herself on La Kastellana, Robin quickly realizes she’s out of her depth. No one is willing to help, and she fears she’s running out of time to find her child. But someone has been watching, silently waiting for the moment to expose the dark truth of what really happens on the island of lost girls.

by S. A. Cosby - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

Titus Crown is the first Black sheriff in the history of Charon County, Virginia. In recent decades, quiet Charon has had only two murders. Then a year to the day after Titus’ election, a schoolteacher is killed by a former student, and the student is fatally shot by Titus’ deputies. As Titus investigates the shootings, he unearths terrible crimes and a serial killer who has been hiding in plain sight. With the killer’s possible connections to a local church and the town’s harrowing history weighing on him, Titus projects confidence about closing the case while concealing a painful secret from his own past. At the same time, he also has to contend with a far-right group that wants to hold a parade in celebration of the town’s Confederate history.

by James Patterson and Brendan DuBois - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

The brilliant crime-solving duo of Washington, DC’s Metro PD and the FBI has a proven MO: Detective Alex Cross makes his own rules. Detective John Sampson enforces them. When military-style attacks erupt, brutally sidelining Cross, Sampson is sent reeling. The patterns are too random --- Sampson’s friend, his partner, his brother --- have told him. Don’t trust anyone. As a shadow force advances on the nation’s capital, Sampson alone must protect the Cross family, his own young daughter and every American, including the president.

by J.T. Ellison - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

While the high-profile murder of a young country singer turns Nashville inside out, danger lurks in the woods beyond the city's border. There was a witness to the terrible crime, a college student who stumbled onto the scene. When the girl goes missing, the police don't know if she's run for cover or been taken...or if something more sinister is happening. The truth will shatter Taylor Jackson's career and bring her face to face with a deadly assassin who wants nothing more than to finish what they started.

by Ashley Audrain - Domestic Thriller, Fiction, Suspense, Thriller, Women's Fiction

On Harlow Street, the well-to-do neighborhood couples and their children gather for a catered barbecue as the summer winds down. Drinks continue late into the night. Everything is fabulous until the picture-perfect hostess explodes in fury because her son disobeys her. Everyone at the party hears her exquisite veneer crack --- loud and clear. Before long, that same young boy falls from his bedside window in the middle of the night. And then, his mother can only sit by his hospital bed, where she refuses to speak to anyone, and his life hangs in the balance. What happens next, over the course of a tense three days, as each of these women grapple with what led to that terrible night?

by Jaime Lynn Hendricks - Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

Murderpalooza, the premier thriller writers conference, is meant to be an exciting celebration of the genre and its preeminent writers. But when bestselling author and industry favorite Kristin Bailey is found dead in her hotel room, four rival authors --- a midlister, an egomaniac, a has-been and a newbie --- also get targeted by an anonymous social media account and wonder if they’re next. First, they find themselves bonding to try to find out who’s behind it. As the account taunts them, it slowly reveals secrets that each of them have connected to Kristin --- secrets that make them a suspect in each other’s eyes. Soon, they are turning on each other and silently accusing each as a killer. Time is running out until the awards ceremony, where the social media account has promised a big reveal.