If you believe you've ever taken the road trip from hell, you haven't traveled cross-country with the Morgan siblings. Grandpa, now a box of ashes in the trunk, possessed a substantial estate, and in order to inherit, Eddie, Portia and Beth must recreate the family road trip he took them on 20 years ago. Complete with seedy motels, quirky landmarks, incessant bickering and more varieties of crime than you can imagine. Don't expect a nostalgic trip down memory lane from this family, "He Started It" is an outrageously entertaining battle royale to determine who will be the last Morgan standing.
Cara Black has entertained us for over twenty years with her series featuring Aimee Ledue, a young, stylish PI who knows 1990's Paris inside and out. Who better to write a World War II thriller set in Paris starring young American widow Kate Rees who has been selected by the British and trained as a sniper with one goal: to assassinate Hitler on his brief, 3 hour stop in Paris.
If you love mysteries but also enjoy The Nightingale or The Alice Network, Cara Black has written a book for you!
There is a complex web surrounding the characters in "His & Hers" stretching back twenty years to the night five sixteen year-old girls went into the woods together and two of them came out changed forever. Now the sticky strings of the we have reached out and ensnared the grown women those girls have become. Ringleader Rachel Hopkins has been killed in the very same woods and on the scene is BBC presenter Anna Andrews, one of the five original friends, as well as DCI Jack Harper who also has reasons to want Rachel dead. Told in alternating chapters, "His & Hers" will keep you guessing until the very end.
Blacktop Wasteland bolts out of the gate with a first chapter that is propulsive and unrelenting. Beauregard "Bug" Montage is a getaway driver, who has been trying to get out of the life, but overwhelming debts pull him back in. Cosby has raced to the top of the list of thriller writers to watch with this novel. Besides being a top notch crime novel, Blacktop Wasteland also weaves in issues of race and poverty without feeling preachy. You could wait for the paperback, but I wouldn't advise it.
In the hot summer of 1959, all but two of the 800 inhabitants of the remote mining town of Silvertjarn, Sweden disappeared without a trace. Only a crying newborn and the village outcast, stoned to death in the square, remained. Now documentary filmmaker Alice and her crew of frenemies, several with ties to the region, have come to investigate. But the evil that occupied Silvertjarn sixty years ago has not faded with time. A spooky, atmospheric Nordic thriller that will keep you turning the pages!
Meet orphan, Jane, whose hardscrabble life has amazingly led her to the steps of the palatial Thornfield Estates and the arms of broodingly handsome Eddie Rochester (who may have his previous wife imprisoned upstairs!). If this sounds vaguely familiar, don't worry if it's been a while since you read "Jane Eyre." You can enjoy this clever, fast-paced thriller and review the classic when you're finished. Then you can truly delight in Rachel Hawkins' witty nod to Charlotte Bronte's masterpiece.
This book sat on my pile for a long time while I worked up the courage to read it. Like the main character, I have a teenage daughter and the thought that she could be abducted and I, in turn, would be forced to abduct someone else's child to take her place was almost unimagiable. But fear not, this is a thriller through and through with breakneck pacing and resourceful characters who care deeply for one another and who will work together to break the Chain. Once I picked it up, I couldn't put it down!
Iris Carmichael has spent her life feeling second best to her twin, Summer. Born moments apart and identical to the naked eye, Summer nonetheless has always been the beloved golden child while Iris is the prickly black sheep. But the race to be the sole heir of their father's massive estate is the one time Iris is determined to be the "first" twin.
Expensive lifestyles, backstabbing siblings and gorgeous Australian and island settings make this the ideal escape, dive in and enjoy!
Ruth Ware is the master of the contemporary locked room mystery and I would follow her anywhere. Murder amongst frenemies in an isolated cabin? Check. Disappearing woman overboard on a luxury yacht? Check. Mysterious happenings at a secluded Highland manor house? Check. So when she packed her bags to join a corporate retreat in the Alps, I threw warm clothes and my deductive reasoning in my suitcase to join her. Since we can’t travel in real life, it’s the next best thing. Just watch your back!
Popular opinion traces the dawn of the age of the psychological thriller to “Gone Girl” in June 2012, however, for me it began with S.J. Watson’s “Before I Go to Sleep” published a year earlier. A tale with a narrator so unreliable she herself doesn’t remember the facts of her life from day to day, coupled with a truly suspect domestic relationship, Watson’s debut lacked only the titular “girl” in it’s heralding of a new era. Now he returns with his third effort, the story of a small village with an inordinate number of missing girls and a filmmaker with a missing past who is as desperate to solve both puzzles as someone else is to keep both her and the dead quiet. Welcome back, S.J. Watson.
