For generations they've shared the small Maine island of Seven, but the Hillsingers and the Quicks have always kept apart, even since before Jim Hillsinger and Billy Quick married sisters. When Jim is ousted from the CIA under suspicion of treason, he begins to suspect that he has been betrayed --- by his brother-in-law, Billy, and also by his own wife, Lila. In retaliation, he decides to carry out an old threat: to send their 12-year-old son, Catta, to a neighboring island to test his survival skills. Set over three summer days in 1964, Estep Nagy's debut novel moves among the communities of Seven --- the families, the servants and the children --- as longstanding tensions become tactical face-offs in which love, loss and long-held secrets become brutal ammunition.
In 90 A.D., following the Saturninus revolt in Germany, the Emperor Domitian has become more paranoid about traitors and dissenters around him. This leads to several senators and even provincial governors facing charges and being executed for supposed crimes of conspiracy and insulting the emperor. Wanting to root out all the supports of Saturninus from the Senate, one of Domitian’s men offers to hire Flavia Albia to do some intelligence work. Adding to the confusion is that yet another Nero pretender has shown up in Parthia and is trying to rally support for his claim for the throne. With intrigue upon intrigue swirling around the capital city, it’s up to Albia to uncover what is --- and isn’t --- the real threat.
Unmoored by a recent family tragedy and on the verge of sinking her career, Cooper Gosling accepts her place in the National Science Foundation’s Artists & Writers Program and flees to Antarctica, where she encounters a group of misfits motivated by desires as ambiguous as her own. The only thing the Polies have in common is the conviction that they don’t belong anywhere else. Then a fringe scientist arrives, claiming climate change is a hoax. His presence will rattle this already-imbalanced community, bringing Cooper and the Polies to the center of a global controversy and threatening the ancient ice chip they call home.
For three years, Investigator Cassie Dewell has been on the hunt for a serial killer known as the Lizard King, whose hunting grounds are the highways and truck stops where runaways and prostitutes are most likely to vanish. Working for the Bakken County, North Dakota sheriff's department, Cassie has lured him and his truck to a depot. But her plan goes horribly wrong, and consequently she loses her job. At the same time, Kyle Westergaard, a troubled kid whom Cassie has taken under her wing, has disappeared after telling people that he’s going off on a long-planned adventure. Kyle's grandmother begs Cassie to find him, and Cassie agrees --- all the while hunting the truck driver.
Alex Marston, the headstrong fifteen-year-old daughter of the British Ambassador, disappears. Army Intelligence Officer Tom Fox, posted to Moscow to keep him from telling the truth to a government committee, is asked to help find her. It’s a shot at redemption. But Russia is reluctant to give up the worst of her secrets. As Fox’s investigation sees him dragged deeper towards the dark heart of a Soviet establishment determined to protect its own, his fears for Alex’s safety grow with those of the girl’s father. And if Fox can’t find her soon, she looks likely to become the next victim of a sadistic killer whose story is bound tight to that of his country’s terrible past...
Mennonite farm boy Lance Roark’s faith is as big as the challenges he faces on his family’s drought-ravaged Dust Bowl spread on the old Chisholm Trail. He can also run over, around and away from people on the football field and is a natural-born aviator. As war clouds gather across the seas, Lance is drawn into the dangerous world of America First, the Lindbergh-led organization that opposes the popular Roosevelt’s covert drive toward American involvement in World War II. When the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, Lance faces his ultimate decision --- whether or not to accept command of a B-17 Flying Fortress in which he would face, and inflict, mass slaughter in Nazi-occupied Europe amidst history’s most fearsome war.
When she’s called to the murder scene, the last thing San Francisco Homicide detective Valerie Hart is expecting is for Katherine Glass to walk back into her life. Six years earlier, revulsion and fascination had gripped the nation in equal measure, as Katherine had been convicted on six counts of Murder One. But the freshly mutilated corpse in the ground-floor apartment bears all the hallmarks of Katherine’s victims. And then there’s the note, with its chilling implications, addressed to Valerie. To stop the slaughter, Valerie must ask Katherine to help her decipher the killer’s twisted message. But that means re-entering the pitch-black labyrinth that is Katherine’s mind, and this time Valerie isn’t so sure which one of them will survive.
A serial killer is on the loose in San Diego with a most unusual M.O. With each kill, the perpetrator leaves behind mystifying random objects. In this confusing array of unrelated evidence, the one thing that is clear is that the murders all have one characteristic in common: they all require the specific skills of Kendra Michaels, hired gun for both the CIA and FBI. Kendra, who was blind for the first 20 years of her life, gained her sight through a revolutionary surgical procedure and now uses her acute powers of observation to assist in cases all over the United States. FBI investigators soon make a startling discovery: the left-behind objects are actually souvenirs of other unsolved serial murder cases from around the country.
Chicago police detective Gina Simonetti is keeping a secret from the department: she has multiple sclerosis. But Gina's secret is threatened when a colleague calls her in to help trace a suspect: Johnny Marble has added to his rap sheet with an assault charge --- this time against his mother. When Gina pays a visit to the mom in the hospital and winds up running into --- and after --- Marble, she finds herself in a physical confrontation she can’t possibly win. He gets away, and Gina is faced with an impossible situation. She has to find him, but knows doing so means turning in the one person who knows the true story of what happened. After all, now that he's seen her fight, Johnny Marble can reveal her deepest secret to the police department.
The remains of a young woman are discovered in a lake north of Copenhagen. Her identity is a mystery and no one, it appears, has reported her missing. After months of fruitless investigation by the local police, the case is handed over to Konrad Simonsen. It soon becomes clear to Simonsen and his team that this unknown woman is the key to a world of trafficking, prostitution and violence. A world where everything comes with a price, no mistake goes unpunished and everyone knows how to keep a secret.
We have listed 12 of Carol’s Bookreporter.com Bets On picks that are now or soon to be in paperback. Which of these books have you read or do you plan to read? Please check all that apply.
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Coming Soon
Curious about what books will be released in the months ahead so you can pre-order or reserve them? Then click on the months below.
January's Books on Screen roundup includes the films People We Meet on Vacation on Netflix and H Is for Hawk in theaters; the series premieres of "Harlan Coben's Run Away," "His & Hers" and "Agatha Christie’s Sevel Dials" on Netflix, along with "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" on HBO Max; the season premieres of ABC's "Will Trent," Hallmark Channel's "When Calls the Heart," Netflix's "Bridgerton," Prime Video's "The Night Manager" and Hulu's "Tell Me Lies"; the season finales of "Sanctuary: A Witch’s Tale" on AMC+ and "Percy Jackson and the Olympians" on Disney+ and Hulu; and the DVD/Blu-ray releases of Wicked: For Good, One Battle After Another and Afterburn.