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Kelly Link, author of The Book of Love

Late one night, Laura, Daniel and Mo find themselves beneath the fluorescent lights of a high school classroom, almost a year after disappearing from their hometown, the small seaside community of Lovesend, Massachusetts, having long been presumed dead. Which, in fact, they are. With them in the room is their previously unremarkable high school music teacher, who seems to know something about their disappearance --- and what has brought them back again. Desperate to reclaim their lives, the three agree to the terms of the bargain their music teacher proposes. They will be given a series of magical tasks. While they undertake them, they may return to their families and friends, but they can tell no one where they’ve been. But their resurrection has attracted the notice of other supernatural figures, all with their own agendas.

February 20, 2024

In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of February 19th and February 26th that we think will be of interest to Bookreporter.com readers, along with Bonus News, where we call out a contest, feature or review that we want to let you know about so you have it on your radar.

This week, we are calling attention to Carol Fitzgerald's Bookreporter.com Bets On commentary for ONE WRONG WORD. Hank Phillippi Ryan’s newly released psychological thriller explores the insidious nature of gossip, scandal and lies --- and how careers, friendships and even marriages can be shattered forever.

February 20, 2024

This Bookreporter.com Special Newsletter spotlights a book that we know people will be talking about this winter. Read more about it, and enter our Winter Reading Contest by Wednesday, February 21st at noon ET for a chance to win one of five copies of END OF STORY by A. J. Finn, which is now available and will be a Bookreporter.com Bets On pick. Please note that the contest is only open for 24 hours, so you will need to act quickly!

February 17, 2024

In the January 18th newsletter, I wrote about my book group and what makes our meetings so special. I then asked you to tell me about your group and share any stories you had about your discussions or how your group was formed. We heard from a number of readers and compiled their comments into a blog post that you can take a look at here.

George Pelecanos, author of Owning Up: New Fiction

Esteemed crime fiction writer George Pelecanos has penned four blistering novellas, drawn together by themes of strife, violence and humanity. When the son of the Carusos is involved in a hold-up, the family home comes under siege in the form of a no-knock warrant. Months after the cops destroyed their home, the Carusos struggle to return to normal. Elsewhere, two former inmates reunite by chance on the set of a TV production. Both have found their way on the straight and narrow path, until one sees the potential for an easy grift. A teenage boy must step into the man he'd like to be as a hostage crisis grips his hometown. A woman adrift meets a man tied to her grandmother's past, an encounter that awakens her to a bloody history that undergirds the place she grew up.

James Lee Burke, author of Harbor Lights: Stories

These eight stories from James Lee Burke moves from the marshlands on the Gulf of Mexico to the sweeping plains of Colorado to prisons, saloons and trailer parks across the South, weaving together love, friendship, violence, survival and revenge. A boy and his father watch a German submarine sink an oil tanker as evil forces in the disguise of federal agents try to ruin their family. A girl is beaten up outside a bar as her university-professor father navigates new love and threats from a group of neo-Nazis. A pair of undercover union organizers are hired to break colts for a Hollywood actor, whose “Western hero” façade hides darkness. An oil rig worker witnesses a horrific attack on a local village while on a job in South America and seeks justice through one final act of bravery.

Kate Quinn, author of The Phoenix Crown

San Francisco, 1906. Two very different women hope to change their fortunes: Gemma, a golden-haired, silver-voiced soprano, and Suling, a petite and resolute Chinatown embroideress. Their paths cross when they are drawn into the orbit of Henry Thornton, a charming railroad magnate whose extraordinary collection of Chinese antiques includes the fabled Phoenix Crown, a legendary relic of Beijing’s fallen Summer Palace. His patronage offers Gemma and Suling the chance of a lifetime, but their lives are thrown into turmoil when a devastating earthquake rips San Francisco apart and Thornton disappears, leaving behind a mystery reaching further than anyone could have imagined…until the Phoenix Crown reappears five years later at a sumptuous Paris costume ball, drawing Gemma and Suling together in one last desperate quest for justice.

Terry Hayes, author of The Year of the Locust

If, like Kane, you’re a Denied Access Area spy for the CIA, then boundaries have no meaning. Your function is to go in, do whatever is required, and get out again --- by whatever means necessary. You know when to run, when to hide --- and when to shoot. But some places don’t play by the rules. Some places are too dangerous, even for a man of Kane’s experience. The badlands where the borders of Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan meet are such a place --- a place where violence is the only way to survive. Kane travels there to exfiltrate a man with vital information for the safety of the West, but instead he meets an adversary who will take the world to the brink of extinction. A frightening, clever, vicious man with blood on his hands and vengeance in his heart.

Gregg Hurwitz, author of Lone Wolf: An Orphan X Novel

Once a black ops government assassin known as Orphan X, Evan Smoak left the Program, went deep underground, and reinvented himself as someone who will go anywhere and risk everything to help the truly desperate. Since then, Evan has fought international crime syndicates and drug cartels, faced down the most powerful people in the world, and even brought down a president. Now struggling with an unexpected personal crisis, Evan goes back to the very basics of his mission. This time, the truly desperate is a little girl who wants him to find her missing dog. This unlikely, tiny job quickly explodes into his biggest mission yet, one that finds him battered between twisted AI technocrat billionaires, a mysterious female assassin who seems a mirror of himself, and personal stakes so gut-wrenching he can scarcely make sense of them.

Editorial Content for Crosshairs: A Michael Bennett Thriller

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Ray Palen

James Patterson has been called the most popular storyteller of our time, and rightly so. If his output of fiction and nonfiction titles is any indication, there is no sign of him slowing down. Now he has teamed up once again with James O. Born to bring us a new thriller starring NYPD Detective Michael Bennett. Read More

Teaser

A killer uses fearsome precision to take out impossible targets. Detective Michael Bennett teams with a shooting expert --- a former Army Ranger and sniper with NYPD’s Emergency Services Unit. But Officer Rob Trilling seems more comfortable with rifles than he is with people. When his new partner begins to log unexplained absences from duty, only Bennett can prove whether the decorated officer is a lonely hunter or a hardened assassin.

Promo

A killer uses fearsome precision to take out impossible targets. Detective Michael Bennett teams with a shooting expert --- a former Army Ranger and sniper with NYPD’s Emergency Services Unit. But Officer Rob Trilling seems more comfortable with rifles than he is with people. When his new partner begins to log unexplained absences from duty, only Bennett can prove whether the decorated officer is a lonely hunter or a hardened assassin.

About the Book

“Turn. Up. The. Heat” (New York Times) with this psychological thriller. New York City detective Michael Bennett faces his most terrifying killer ever. It could be anyone. They could be anywhere.

A killer uses fearsome precision to take out impossible targets.

Detective Michael Bennett teams with a shooting expert --- a former Army Ranger and sniper with NYPD’s Emergency Services Unit. But Officer Rob Trilling seems more comfortable with rifles than he is with people.

When his new partner begins to log unexplained absences from duty, only Bennett can prove whether the decorated officer is a lonely hunter or a hardened assassin.

Audiobook available, read by Peter Giles and Will Collyer