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Reviews

Reviews

by Sara Blaedel - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

After suddenly inheriting a funeral home from her father --- who she hadn't heard from in decades --- Ilka Jensen has impulsively abandoned her quiet life in Denmark to visit the small town in rural Wisconsin where her father lived. There, she's devastated to discover her father's second family: a stepmother and two half-sisters she never knew existed and who aren't the least bit welcoming, despite Ilka's efforts to reach out. Then a local woman is killed, seemingly the unfortunate victim of a home invasion turned violent. But when Ilka learns that the woman knew her father, it becomes increasingly clear that she may not have been a completely random victim after all.

by Charles A. Gardner - Nonfiction, True Crime

In June 2015, two convicted murderers broke out of the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, in New York’s North Country --- launching the most extensive manhunt in state history and dominating the news cycle. Double murderer Richard Matt and cop-killer David Sweat slipped out of their cells, followed a network of tunnels and pipes under the 30-foot prison wall, and climbed out of a manhole to freedom. For three weeks, residents of local communities were prisoners in their own homes as law enforcement swept the wilderness near the Canadian border. DANNEMORA is a gripping account of the bold breakout and the search that ended with one man dead, one man back in custody --- and lingering questions about those who set the deadly drama in motion.

by Christopher Rice - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

Enabled by a superpower drug, Charlotte Rowe is partnered with a shadowy pharmaceutical company to hunt down and eliminate society’s most depraved human predators. When her latest mission goes off the rails in a horrifying way, she wants some time to retreat. But something sinister is evolving in Altamira, California --- a massive network of domestic terrorists with ties to Charlotte’s influential and corrupt employers. As a vast and explosive criminal conspiracy grows, the fate of Charlotte’s hometown hangs in the balance. With everyone she cares about in danger, Charlotte has no choice but to bring her powers home.

by C. J. Tudor - Fiction, Mystery, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

When her late grandfather’s dying deputy calls Mercy to his side, she and Elvis inherit the cold case that haunted him --- and may have killed him. But finding Beth Kilgore 20 years after she disappeared is more than a lost cause. It’s a Pandora’s box releasing a rain of evil on the very people Mercy and Elvis hold most dear. The timing couldn’t be worse when the man who murdered her grandfather escapes from prison and a fellow Army vet turns up claiming that Elvis is his dog, not hers. With her grandmother Patience gone missing, and Elvis’s future uncertain, Mercy needs help, and that means forgiving Vermont Game Warden Troy Warner long enough to enlist his aid. With time running out for Patience, Mercy and Elvis must team up with Troy and his search-and-rescue dog to unravel the secrets of the past and save her grandmother --- before it’s too late.

by Charles Todd - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Mystery, Mystery

An astonishing tip from a grateful ex-convict seems implausible --- but Inspector Ian Rutledge is intrigued and brings it to his superior at Scotland Yard. Alan Barrington, who has evaded capture for 10 years, is the suspect in an appalling murder during Black Ascot, the famous 1910 royal horse race honoring the late King Edward VII. His disappearance began a manhunt that consumed Britain for a decade. Now it appears that Barrington has returned to England, giving the Yard a last chance to retrieve its reputation and see justice done. Rutledge is put in charge of a quiet search under cover of a routine review of a cold case. But his sanity is suddenly brought into question by a shocking turn of events.

by James Grippando - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

Julia Rodriguez and her teenage daughter, Beatriz, escaped bloodthirsty gangs, random violence and Julia's abusive husband back in El Salvador. Arriving in Miami, mother and daughter struggled to carve their own piece of the American dream. While life in the States is hard, it is safer, until Julia rejects her boss's unwanted sexual advances. Suddenly --- thanks to an "anonymous" tip to U.S. immigration authorities --- she is arrested, locked in detention with criminals and slated for deportation. Miami attorney Jack Swyteck’s only viable legal move to save her is asylum --- a long shot that’s become nearly impossible in today’s charged political climate.

by Brian Freeman - Fiction, Mystery, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

San Francisco homicide detective Frost Easton hadn’t seen his estranged friend Denny in years. Not until he dies in Frost’s arms uttering a final inexplicable word: Lombard. Denny appears to be the latest victim in a string of murders linked by a distinctive clue: the painting of a spiraled snake near the crime scenes. Is it the work of a serial killer? Or is Denny’s death more twisted and personal? To find the answer, Frost reaches into a nest of vipers --- San Francisco’s shady elite --- where the whispered name of Lombard is just one secret. Now, drawn into a cat-and-mouse game with an enemy who knows his every move, Frost finds that there is no one he can trust.

by Mark Alpert - Adventure, Fiction, Post-Apocalyptic Fiction, Science Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

New York City, 2023: Rising seas and superstorms have ravaged the land. Food and electricity are scarce. A dangerous Washington regime has terrorized the city, forcing the most vulnerable and defenseless people into the flood-ravaged neighborhoods. The new laws are enforced by an army of genetically enhanced soldiers, designed to be the fiercest and cruelest of killers. Genetic scientist Dr. Jenna Khan knows too much about how these super-soldiers were engineered: by altering the DNA sequence in ways that could change the fabric of humanity. Escaping arrest and on the run, Jenna joins forces with a genetically enhanced soldier gone rogue and a Brooklyn gang kingpin to resist the government’s plan to manipulate the DNA of all Americans.

by James Rollins - Adventure, Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

Arriving home on Christmas Eve, Commander Gray Pierce discovers his house ransacked, his pregnant lover missing, and his best friend’s wife, Kat, unconscious on the kitchen floor. With no shred of evidence to follow, his one hope to find the woman he loves and his unborn child is Kat, the only witness to what happened. But the injured woman is in a semi-comatose state and cannot speak --- until a brilliant neurologist offers a radical approach to "unlock" her mind long enough to ask a few questions. What Pierce learns from Kat sets Sigma Force on a frantic quest for answers that are connected to mysteries reaching back to the Spanish Inquisition and to one of the most reviled and blood-soaked books in human history.

by Lyndsay Faye - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

The year is 1921, and "Nobody" Alice James has just arrived in Oregon with a bullet wound, a lifetime's experience battling the New York Mafia, and $50,000 in illicit cash. She befriends Max, a black Pullman porter who reminds her achingly of home and who saves Alice by leading her to the Paragon Hotel. But her unlikely sanctuary turns out to be an all-black hotel in a Jim Crow city, and its lodgers seem unduly terrified of a white woman on the premises. The Ku Klux Klan has arrived in Portland in fearful numbers --- burning crosses, electing officials, infiltrating newspapers and brutalizing blacks. And only Alice and her new Paragon "family" are searching for a missing mulatto child who has mysteriously vanished into the woods. To untangle the web of lies and misdeeds around her, Alice will have to answer for her own past, too.