I didn’t believe in the Rule of Three. Not at first. It was just one of those urban myths you hear about all the time. A story my boyfriend told me about a girl cursed by the number three. A girl whose parents had killed themselves after her sibling had died in an accident. Which meant that she was doomed to die too because that’s the Rule of Three. Bad things always happen in threes, they say, and they are right. Because it’s happening again. But this time the curse is coming for me. And worst of all? It’s coming for you, too.
A mysterious cargo plane, flanked by a squadron of Russia’s most lethal fighters, has just taken off from a remote airbase. Closely monitored by the United States, no one inside the Pentagon has any idea where it’s going or what it’s carrying. A high-level Russian defector, a walking vault of secrets that could shatter the West, seeks asylum in Norway. Across the continent, in the heart of Paris, a lone French agent stumbles upon a conspiracy so explosive it could ignite a global firestorm. As alarm bells ring in Washington, the CIA’s most lethal weapon, Scot Harvath, is forced to choose between his conscience and his country.
Constance Greene confronts Manhattan’s most dangerous serial killer, Enoch Leng, bartering for her sister's life. But she is betrayed and turned away empty-handed, incandescent with rage. Unknown to Leng, Pendergast’s brother, Diogenes, appears unexpectedly, offering to help --- for mysterious reasons of his own. Disguised as a cleric, Diogenes establishes himself in New York's notorious Five Points slum, manipulating events like a chess master, watching Leng’s every move…and awaiting his own chance to strike. Meanwhile, as Pendergast focuses on saving the unstable Constance in her fanatical quest for vengeance, she strikes out on her own: to rescue her beloved siblings from a tragic fate and take savage retribution on Leng. But Leng is one step ahead and has a surprise for them all.
When a pilot suffers a heart attack at 35,000 feet, a commercial airliner filled with passengers crashes into a nuclear power plant in the small town of Waketa, Minnesota, which becomes ground zero for a catastrophic national crisis with global implications. The International Nuclear Event Scale tracks nuclear disasters. It has seven levels. Level 7 is a Major Accident, with only two on record: Fukushima and Chernobyl. There has never been a Level 8. Until now. In WORST CASE SCENARIO, ordinary people --- power plant employees, firefighters, teachers, families, neighbors and friends --- are thrust into an extraordinary situation as they face the ultimate test of their lives. It will take the combined courage, ingenuity and determination of a brave few to save not only their community and loved ones, but the fate of humanity at large.
For childhood friends Gabe, Xavier, Tavo, Paul and Bimbo, death has always been close. Hurricanes. Car accidents. Gang violence. Suicide. Estamos rodeados de fantasmas was Gabe’s grandmother’s refrain. We are surrounded by ghosts. But this time is different. Bimbo's mom has been shot dead. We’re gonna kill the guys who killed her, Bimbo swears. And they all agree. Feral with grief, Bimbo has become unrecognizable, taking no prisoners in his search for names. Soon, they learn Maria was gunned down by guys working for the drug kingpin of Puerto Rico. No one has ever gone up against him and survived. As the boys strategize, a storm gathers far from the coast. Hurricanes are known to carry evil spirits in their currents and bring them ashore, spirits that impose their own order.
Victor Silvius has spent nine years as an inmate at The Grange, a private sanatorium, for the crime of attacking judge Sir Giles Drury. Now, the judge’s wife, Lady Elspeth Drury, believes that Silvius is the one responsible for a series of threatening letters her husband recently has received, so she seeks out retired stage magician Joseph Spector. Meanwhile, Miss Caroline Silvius is disturbed after a recent visit to her brother Victor, convinced that he isn’t safe at The Grange. Someone is trying to kill him, and she suspects that the judge, who already has made Silvius’ life a living hell, may be behind it. Caroline hires Inspector George Flint of Scotland Yard to investigate. The two cases collide at Marchbanks, the Drury family seat of over 400 years, where a series of unnerving events interrupt the peace and quiet of the snowy countryside.
It’s 1918. The war in Europe grinds on, and the Spanish flu seems to be on an insatiable killing spree. But in the small fishing village of Parrsboro, Nova Scotia, a more confined drama slowly unfolds. It begins when Elizabeth Frame murders her husband hours after their wedding and thrusts the revolver into the blowhole of a beached whale. Crime reporter Toby Havenshaw covers the hearing, and his diary subsequently follows the surprising twists and turns of Elizabeth Frame’s flight from the law, accompanied as she is by a love-besotted court stenographer. But Toby’s diary also paints a vivid and deeply affecting portrait of his marriage to Amelia, a surgeon just returned from the front lines in France and Belgium. When a child is born to Elizabeth Frame on the lam, Amelia is drawn into events in ways she never could have imagined. And then everything changes.
In 2022, when small-town librarian Amanda Jones caught wind of a local public hearing that would discuss “book content,” she knew what was at stake. Schools and libraries nationwide have been bombarded by demands for books with LGBTQ+ references, discussions of racism and more to be purged from the shelves. Amanda would be damned if her community were to ban stories representing minority groups. She spoke out that night at the meeting. Days later, she woke up to a nightmare that is still ongoing. Amanda Jones has been called a groomer, a pedophile and a porn-pusher. She has faced death threats and attacks from strangers and friends alike. But she wouldn't give up without a fight. She sued her harassers for defamation and urged others to join her in the resistance.
Katy Sweeney is looking for her sister. A year earlier, her free-spirited younger sister, Phoebe, vanished without a trace on the remote, achingly beautiful coastal highway in Western Australia. With no witnesses, no leads and no DNA evidence, the case has gone cold. But Katy refuses to give up on her. Using Phoebe’s social media accounts as a map, Katy retraces her sister’s steps, searching for any clues the police may have missed. Was Phoebe being followed? Who had she met along the way, and how dangerous were they? And then Katy’s path collides with that of Beth, who is on the run from her own dark past. Katy realizes that Beth might be her best --- and only --- chance of finding the truth, and the two women form an uneasy alliance to find out what really happened to Phoebe.
Los Angeles Police Detective Margaret Nolan and her partner have worked a lot of different cases, ones where things aren’t always as they appear. And it’s Nolan’s job to find the truth in the darkness around her. When they’re called to the scene of what looks like a fatal carjacking, Nolan soon realizes her victim was a founder of a company about to sell for millions, and within a day of his death, his partner’s wife is abducted. As Nolan learns more about the victim and his life, she gets pulled into a disturbing world of sex, violence and big business --- and an even darker world, where whispers of an "Angel of Death" are beginning to surface.
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.
July's Books on Screen roundup includes the series premieres of "Ballard" on Prime Video, "Dexter: Resurrection" on Paramount+ with Showtime, "The Institute" on MGM+, "Washington Black" on Hulu, and "The Hunting Wives" on Netflix; the season premieres of Apple TV+'s "Foundation" and Prime Video's "The Summer I Turned Pretty"; the season finales of "Nine Perfect Strangers" on Hulu and "Sullivan's Crossing" on The CW; the films Jurassic World Rebirth, Superman, I Know What You Did Last Summer and Abraham’s Boys: A Dracula Story; and the DVD/Blu-ray releases of Juliet & Romeo, The Amateur and The Actor.