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Reviews

Reviews

by Lise Haines - Fiction, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

When Nora agrees to help her new husband, Paul, and his family fix up Hidden Lake Camp, she didn't expect it to be in such a state of ruin. Only a few months, he said. They'd drive north to get Paul's elderly parents settled while he and his brother make enough repairs to sell the property. But the summer camp and its deep lake have other plans. On the first night, Nora stumbles through a first meal with his difficult family. Her sister-in-law shows off a prized collection of handmade knives, 13 in all. Long summer days stretch before them, and one by one the knives begin to disappear. There's talk of ghosts, secret rooms, and someone at the summer camp found dead in the tall grass.

by Anne Perry - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Mystery, Mystery

It is the summer of 1934, and Hitler is nearing the summit of supreme power in Germany. When Britain’s MI6 gets word that a pair of German scientists have made breakthroughs in germ warfare, they send Elena Standish on a dangerous mission to get one of them out of Germany before he’s forced to share his knowledge and its devastating power with Hitler’s elite. But the new head of Germany’s germ warfare division is an old enemy of Elena’s grandfather Lucas, the former head of MI6. And he’s bent on using any means at his disposal to avenge his defeat at Lucas’ hands 20 years before. What starts as an effort to save Europe from the devastation of disease soon becomes an intensely personal fight.

by Scott Turow - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

For as long as Lucia Gomez has been the police chief in the city of Highland Isle, near Kindle County, she has known that any woman in law enforcement must walk a precarious line between authority and camaraderie to gain respect. She has maintained a spotless reputation --- until now. Three male police officers have accused her of soliciting sex in exchange for promotions to higher ranks. With few people left who she can trust, Chief Gomez turns to an old friend, Rik Dudek, to act as her attorney in the federal grand jury investigation, insisting to Rik that the accusations against her are part of an ugly smear campaign designed to destroy her career and empower her enemies --- both outside the police force and within.

by Kate Atkinson - Fiction, Historical Fiction

It’s 1926, and in a country still recovering from the Great War, London has become the focus for a delirious new nightlife. In the clubs of Soho, peers of the realm rub shoulders with starlets, foreign dignitaries with gangsters, and girls sell dances for a shilling a time. The notorious queen of this glittering world is Nellie Coker, ruthless but also ambitious to advance her six children, including the enigmatic eldest, Niven, whose character has been forged in the crucible of the Somme. But success breeds enemies, and Nellie’s empire faces threats from without and within. For beneath the dazzle of Soho’s gaiety, there is a dark underbelly, a world in which it is all too easy to become lost.

by Josh Malerman - Fiction, Horror, Suspense, Thriller

It’s the last summer for Kit Lamb: The last summer before college. The last summer with her high school basketball team, and with Dana, her best friend. The last summer before her life begins. But the night before the big game, one of the players tells a ghost story about Daphne, a girl who went to their school many years ago and died under mysterious circumstances. Some say she was murdered, others that she died by her own hand. And some say that Daphne is a murderer herself. They also say that she is still out there and will appear to kill again anytime someone thinks about her. After Kit hears the story, her teammates vanish, one by one, and she begins to suspect that the stories about Daphne are real…and fears that her own mind is conjuring the killer.

by Allen Eskens - Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

Max Rupert has left his position as a Minneapolis homicide detective to live in solitude. Mourning the tragic death of his wife, he's also racked by guilt --- he alone knows what happened to her killer. But then the former local sheriff, Lyle Voight, arrives with a desperate plea: Lyle’s daughter, Sandy, and his six-year-old grandson, Pip, have disappeared. Lyle is certain that Sandy's ex-husband, Reed, is behind it, but the new sheriff is refusing to investigate. When Max reluctantly looks into their disappearance, he too becomes convinced something has gone very wrong. But the closer Max and Lyle get to finding proof, the more slippery Reed becomes, until he makes a break for the beautiful but formidable Boundary Waters wilderness with vulnerable Pip in tow.

by Robert Harris - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

1660 England. General Edward Whalley and his son-in law, Colonel William Goffe, board a ship bound for the New World. They are on the run, wanted for the murder of King Charles I --- a brazen execution that marked the culmination of the English Civil War, in which parliamentarians successfully battled royalists for control. But now, 10 years after Charles’ beheading, the royalists have returned to power. Under the provisions of the Act of Oblivion, the 59 men who signed the king’s death warrant and participated in his execution have been found guilty in absentia of high treason. Some of the Roundheads, including Oliver Cromwell, are already dead. Others have been captured, hung, drawn and quartered. A few are imprisoned for life. But two have escaped to America by boat.

by Agatha Christie and various authors - Anthology, Fiction, Mystery, Short Stories

Agatha Christie’s legendary sleuth, Jane Marple, returns to solve 12 baffling cases in this brand-new collection, penned by a host of acclaimed authors skilled in the fine art of mystery and murder. Join Marple as she travels through her sleepy English village and around the world. In St Mary Mead, a Christmas dinner is interrupted by unexpected guests; the Broadway stage in New York City is set for a dangerous improvisation; bad omens surround an untimely death aboard a cruise ship to Hong Kong; and a bestselling writer on holiday in Italy is caught in a nefarious plot. These and other crimes committed in the name of love, jealousy, blackmail and revenge are ones that only the indomitable Jane Marple can solve.

by Andrew Mayne - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

A signal is detected at the outer edge of the solar system. Computational biologist Dr. Theo Cray and magician-turned-FBI-agent Jessica Blackwood are looking --- and listening --- a little closer. The man at the center of this cosmic mystery is billionaire Thomas T. Theismann. He’s spent a lifetime --- and a fortune --- trying to find out if we’re alone in the universe. Highly skeptical, Theo joins the effort to find the source of the signal, and he quickly enlists Jessica to look into the suspicious death of another academic at the lab. As their investigations converge, they uncover curious connections to the otherworldly contact, including a 1970s science-fiction writer and the body of an astronaut found buried in an ancient tomb.

by Laurie R. King - Fiction, Mystery

A magnificent house, vast formal gardens, a golden family that shaped California, and a colorful past filled with now-famous artists: the Gardener Estate was a 12th-century Eden. And now, just as the Estate is preparing to move into a new future, restoration work on some of its art digs up a grim relic of the home’s past: a human skull, hidden away for decades. Inspector Raquel Laing has her work cut out for her. Fifty years ago, the Estate’s young heir, Rob Gardener, turned his palatial home into a counterculture commune of peace, love and equality. But that was also a time when serial killers preyed on innocents --- monsters like The Highwayman, whose case has just surged back into the public eye. Could the skull belong to one of his victims?