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Reviews

Reviews

by Sophie Hannah - Fiction, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

All Beth has to do is drive her son to his soccer game, watch him play and then return home. Just because she knows her ex-best friend lives near the field, that doesn’t mean she has to drive past her house and try to catch a glimpse of her. Why would Beth do that and risk dredging up painful memories? Nevertheless, she parks outside the open gates of Newnham House, watches from across the road as Flora arrives, and calls to her children, Thomas and Emily, to get out of the car. But there’s something terribly wrong. Flora looks the same, only older. Twelve years ago, Thomas and Emily were five and three years old. Today, they look precisely as they did then. Why haven’t they grown? How is it possible that they haven’t grown up?

by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

Appearing out of nowhere to horrify the quiet resort town of Sanibel Island, Florida, dozens of identical, ordinary-looking shoes float in on the tide and are washed up on the tropical beach --- each one with a crudely severed human foot inside. In short order, Agent Pendergast finds himself facing the most complex and inexplicable challenge of his career: a tangled thread of evidence that spans seas and traverses continents, connected to one of the most baffling mysteries in modern medical science. Through shocking twists and turns, all trails lead back to a powerful adversary with a sadistic agenda and who --- in a cruel irony --- ultimately sees in Pendergast the ideal subject for their malevolent research.

by Nina Sadowsky - Fiction, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

Eva and her husband, Peter, are in Hong Kong on a romantic getaway from London when Peter wakes up in their hotel room to an empty bed, his wife gone without a trace. Suddenly, he finds himself the number one suspect in his wife’s disappearance. He calls his boss, Forrest “Holly” Holcomb, who enlists the help of Catherine, his ex-flame and the enigmatic operator behind the darknet witness-protection program known as the Burial Society. Not only is Catherine tasked with a mission in Mexico City, protecting a family that knows too much from a vengeful pharmaceutical company, but an FBI agent tracking down the missing wife and child of a charismatic businessman is about to come dangerously close to exposing the Society’s secrets.

by Lisa Gardner - Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

FBI Special Agent Kimberly Quincy and Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren have built a task force to follow the digital bread crumbs left behind by deceased serial kidnapper Jacob Ness. When a disturbing piece of evidence is discovered in the hills of Georgia, they bring Flora Dane and true-crime savant Keith Edgar to a small town where something seems to be deeply wrong. What at first looks like a Gothic eeriness soon hardens into something much more sinister...and they discover that for all the evil Jacob committed while alive, his worst secret is still to be revealed. Quincy and DD must summon their considerable skills and experience to crack the most disturbing case of their careers --- and Flora must face her own past directly in the hope of saving others.

by Peter Robinson - Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

In Eastvale, a young Middle Eastern boy is found dead. Detective Superintendent Alan Banks and his team know they must tread carefully to solve this sensitive case. But tensions rise when they learn that the victim was stabbed somewhere else and dumped. Who is the boy, and where did he come from? Then, in a decayed area of Eastvale scheduled for redevelopment, a heroin addict is found dead. Was this just another tragic overdose or something darker? Just when he needs to be his sharpest, the seasoned detective finds himself distracted by a close friend’s increasingly precarious situation. He needs a break --- and gets one when he finds a connection to a real estate developer that could be key to finding the truth.

by Catherine Steadman - Fiction, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

When a man is found on a British beach with no identification and unable to speak, interest in him is sparked immediately. From the hospital staff who find themselves inexplicably drawn to him, to international medical experts who are baffled by him, to the national press who call him Mr. Nobody, everyone wants answers. Neuropsychiatrist Dr. Emma Lewis is asked to assess the patient in a small town deep in the English countryside. Emma left this same town 14 years ago and has taken great pains to cover all traces of her past since then. But now something --- or someone --- is calling her back. And the more time she spends with her patient, the more alarmed she becomes that he knows the one thing about her that nobody is supposed to know.

by Ian Rankin - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

In Europe, the Americans are pulling out their troops in a tide of isolationism. Britain, torn between loyalties to America and the continent, is caught in the middle. In America, a space shuttle crashes on landing, killing all but one of the crew on-board: a British citizen named Mike Dreyfuss, who will become vilified by the US press and protesters. Halfway across the world, at English ground control headquarters, Martin Hepton watches with dismay as they lose contact with the most advanced satellite in Europe. A colleague of Hepton's who suspects something strange is going on disappears. Hepton realizes there is much more at stake than anyone knows --- and many more people on their trail than they can possibly evade.

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

The boarding school of choice for daughters of the rich and influential, The Goode School accepts only the best and the brightest. Its elite status, long-held traditions and honor code are ideal for preparing exceptional young women for brilliant futures at Ivy League universities and beyond. But a stranger has come to Goode, and this ivy has turned poisonous. In a world where appearances are everything, as long as students pretend to follow the rules, no one questions the cruelties of the secret societies or the dubious behavior of the privileged young women who expect to get away with murder. But when a popular student is found dead, the truth cannot be ignored.

by John O'Connell - Essays, Literary Criticism, Nonfiction

Three years before David Bowie died, he shared a list of 100 books that changed his life. His choices span fiction and nonfiction, literary and irreverent, and include timeless classics alongside eyebrow-raising obscurities. In 100 short essays, music journalist John O’Connell studies each book on Bowie’s list and contextualizes it in the artist’s life and work. How did the power imbued in a single suit of armor in THE ILIAD impact a man who loved costumes, shifting identity and the siren song of the alter-ego? How did the poems of T.S. Eliot and Frank O’Hara, the fiction of Vladimir Nabokov and Anthony Burgess, and the groundbreaking politics of James Baldwin influence Bowie’s lyrics, sound and artistic outlook? How did the 100 books on this list influence one of the most influential artists of a generation?

by Richard Snow - Entertainment, History, Nonfiction

One day in the early 1950s, Walt Disney stood looking over 240 acres of farmland in Anaheim, California, and imagined building a park where people “could live among Mickey Mouse and Snow White in a world still powered by steam and fire for a day or a week or (if the visitor is slightly mad) forever.” On July 17, 1955, Disneyland opened its gates…and the first day was a disaster. But the curious masses kept coming, and the rest is entertainment history. In DISNEY’S LAND, Richard Snow presents the entire spectacular story, an epic of innovation and error that reflects the uniqueness of the man determined to build “the happiest place on earth” with a watchmaker’s precision, an artist’s conviction, and the desperate, high-hearted recklessness of a riverboat gambler.