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Reviews

Reviews

by Anthony Horowitz - Fiction, Mystery

Ex-Detective Inspector Daniel Hawthorne is dead. Or, rather, the actor playing him in the film adaptation of The Word is Murder is. Rising star David Caine has been stabbed, and it seems that everyone on the set had a motive. Caine had just fired his PA. He had fallen out with his director, slept with the screenwriter, humiliated his co-star, and dropped his agent days before he was about to sign a multi-million-dollar deal to appear in the next Spider-Man movie. But what if Caine’s murderer had made a mistake? What if it was the real Hawthorne who was the intended victim? For it turns out that the brilliant detective may have gotten it wrong 10 years earlier. An innocent man has died in jail. And perhaps someone has decided that Hawthorne must pay the price.

by Candice Fox - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

Since a violent confrontation tore apart a family five years ago, brothers and fellow cops Russell and Evan haven’t spoken a word to each other. When they’re both assigned to the murder of a young journalist in the tiny town of Redbelly Crossing, their paths are forced to cross again. This was supposed to be the week Russell could repair things with his teenage daughter. Instead, he has to drag her on a murderous ride into the middle of snake-infested nowhere. For Evan, this case is exactly what he needed: a high-profile investigation that will give him the chance to rebuild his career after a terrible mistake that nearly ended it. Then a dark discovery leaves Evan with only one way out: to bury the truth Russell is so determined to uncover.

by Daisy Pearce - Fiction, Horror, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Supernatural Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

Hazel has been gone from her small hometown of Idless in the English countryside for years. Now returned in the wake of a traumatic divorce and crumbling personal life, her simple plans are to lay low at her parents’ vacated house, reconnect with her prickly sister, Cathy, and slowly get back on her feet. Cathy is surprised when Hazel doesn’t show. Their relationship strained from a fallout half a decade ago, she didn’t expect them to get back into a sisterly rhythm…though she hadn’t counted on Hazel bailing, either. But something isn’t adding up. Other people in town whisper of a threat that can’t be shaken. The woods are known for being restless. And Cathy knows the old saying: If you go looking for trouble, you just might find it.

by Douglas Preston and Aletheia Preston - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

When a reclusive man is found dead under grisly circumstances in the Colorado wilderness, CBI Agent Frankie Cash and Eagle County Sheriff Jim Colcord, whom we met in EXTINCTION, team up again on their most enigmatic and dangerous case yet. Their investigation uncovers a trail of bizarre killings, baffling money transfers, and a fanatical secret society. And all the while, the resurrected Neanderthals, who vanished into the Colorado mountains, seem to be biding their time for something…spectacular.

by Anne Perry and Victoria Zackheim - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Mystery, Mystery

1913: Junior attorney Daniel Pitt must step in for his friend, fellow attorney Toby Kitteridge, whose parents have been brutally attacked. Toby's mother is dead, and his father is barely alive. With Toby returning to the family home in rural Ipswich, Daniel remains in London to substitute for Toby and defend Peter Ward, who is on trial for the sexual assault and murder of a young woman. Daniel is convinced that Ward is innocent, yet the evidence seems to prove otherwise. Eager to assist, his pathologist wife, Miriam fford Croft, offers her forensics expertise. But despite Miriam’s involvement, Daniel finds himself distracted by his desire to help Toby. And when the evidence points to Toby’s father as the killer of Toby’s mother, Daniel faces two of the greatest challenges of his young career: proving the innocence of both Peter Ward and Reverend Kitteridge.

by C. J. Dotson - Fiction, Horror, Supernatural Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

In 1998, desperate loneliness pushes preteen Amber to ignore the misgivings of her family, particularly her younger sister, when she befriends the troubled new kid in the neighborhood --- a boy with dead eyes, a fascination with fire, and no remorse. Their turbulent relationship is brief but creates lasting consequences. Twenty-two years later, in 2020, he resurfaces to kill Amber’s parents, and is in turn betrayed by his accomplice and killed in Amber's childhood home. After the deaths, Amber inherits the house and, in an effort to save money, moves in with her husband and two children, hoping to reclaim some sense of stability in the grief and chaos surrounding her. Instead, she finds that the familiar walls are haunted by more than just bitter memories and lockdown stress.

by Clay McLeod Chapman - Fiction, Horror, Supernatural Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

At 66 years old, Winston Kemper has always been a nonentity. No one notices him. His simple existence barely registers for those who come into contact with him. Winston is a collector of voices, and his magnum opus --- The Butterfly Girls --- is a sprawling epic of untapped imagination. It has no single canvas, no particular frame. It is everywhere: scribbled on the walls, the floor and countless notebooks. Winston is creating a fantasia that exists in words, images and blood. As part of his “art,” he has been murdering forgotten women. Poor souls who slip through the cracks of society, who no one is looking for. Winston takes their lives, their voices. But now he can hear them. They whisper to him. They talk of revenge. Winston might not believe in ghosts, but he is about to learn they are very real. And they are very, very angry.

by Dawn Kurtagich - Fiction, Horror, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

After the tragic death of their parents, the seven Ward sisters are sent to live with their grandmother on the remote forest island of Beltane, a place suspended between time and shadow. What begins as an attempt to mend their fractured lives soon twists into a waking nightmare, where grief bleeds into childhood fantasy and ancient rites awaken a dark and eerie devotion to Daudir, the Forgotten God of the Wood. When another cruel tragedy strikes, the sisters are left to fend for themselves. The fragile world they’ve carved splinters beneath the weight of isolation, and the forest around them grows restless. Years later, a cryptic letter summons the surviving sisters home. Drawn back into the wild embrace of their dangerous faith, they confront a truth more terrible than memory, and the dreadful secret that waits in the depths of the all-seeing trees.

by David Baldacci - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

Walter Nash is on the road to revenge after becoming an informant for the FBI against a global criminal operation headed up by Victoria Steers. Steers has ripped everything Nash held dear away from him. With long, rigorous training under his belt, the gentle and sensitive Nash has transformed into a physically imposing man with lethal skills. And now he has only one goal left in life: taking down Victoria Steers. In order to succeed, Nash is going to need to cross enemy lines and work the job from the inside. But he must rely on every ounce of his hard-earned skills to prove himself an ally to Steers if he’s ever going to get close enough to decimate her criminal empire. Still, Nash finds himself oddly drawn to Steers in ways that he never could’ve imagined. And what he ultimately discovers will turn all he believed upside down, forcing him to do something truly unfathomable.

by Wendy Corsi Staub - Fiction, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

Detective Sergeant Midge Kennedy and her lifelong pals, Talia and Kelly, have reunited on the 25th anniversary of the disappearance of their friend, Caroline. But as the season draws to a close in Mulberry Bay, Midge is plunged into a missing person case with unsettling ties to the past. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t suspect foul play when a 16-year-old girl is just a few hours late getting home. But her investigation yields a shocking glimpse of a familiar face, and mounting coincidences link Sarah Greene’s vanishing to Caroline’s. The clues lead to Haven Cliff, an abandoned Gilded Age estate that’s been the stuff of cursed legend for generations. It’s also Kelly’s new home. Midge suspects that the wooded grounds hold the key to Sarah’s fate and Caroline’s. But will Haven Cliff --- and Midge herself --- give up long-buried secrets?