Archives de catégorie : Crime & Thrillers

BREAK TO YOU de Neal Shusterman, Michelle Knowlden et Debra Young

Bestselling author of Scythe and Challenger Deep Neal Shusterman, here with coauthors Debra Young and Michelle Knowlden, tells an intense yet tender story of two teens, trapped in impossible circumstances and unjust systems, willing to risk everything for love—no matter the consequences.

BREAK TO YOU
by Neal Shusterman, Michelle Knowlden and Debra Young
HarperCollins, July 2024
(via Writers House)

Adriana knows why she is in Compass juvenile detention center: her bad taste in “friends.” If she can manage to keep her head down for the next seven months, she might be able to get through her sentence. Thankfully, she’s allowed to keep her journal, where she writes down her most private thoughts and observations when the pressure insider her is too much.

Until the day she opens her journal and discovers that her thoughts are no longer so private. Someone has read her entries and written back. A boy who lives on the other side of the gender-divided detention center. A boy who sparks a fire in her to write back.

Jon’s story is different from Adriana’s; he’s already been at Compass for years and will be in the system for years to come. Still, when he reads the words Adriana writes to him, it makes him feel like the walls that hold them could just melt away.

Neal Shusterman is the New York Times bestselling and award-winning authors of Challenger Deep, which won the National Book Award; Scythe, a Michael L. Printz Honor title; Game Changer; Dry; Bruiser; and the Unwind series, among many other books.

Michelle Knowlden is a former space shuttle engineer and the author of numerous Shamus Award-nominated stories. She has collaborated with Neal Shusterman on his Unbound and Gleanings anthologies. Her mystery novels include the Abishag quartet and the Deluded Detective series.

Debra Young writes fantasy, science fiction, and horror. She has published stories in The Horror Zine, Dark Fire Fiction, Swords and Sorcery Magazine, and Black Fox Literary Magazine, and is the author of Grave Shadows, a story anthology.

GIRLS WITH LONG SHADOWS de Tennessee Hill

There never was a gator killing around here, contrary to everlasting rumor, and there was only one real murder, but it seems each bad thing that happens is like an incantation invoking the Binderup family, its women and their dying.

GIRLS WITH LONG SHADOWS
by Tennessee Hill
Harper, TBD
(via Park & Fine Literary and Media)

Photo by Emily Townsend

Identical triplets Baby A, Baby B, and Baby C Binderup came into the world as their mother left it, leaving them nameless and in the care of their Gram Isadora, whose maternal instincts died alongside her daughter. 19 years later, the triplets work at their Gram’s crumbling golf course, where the watchful eyes of the town observe them perched on lawnmowers, serving up glasses of lemonade to golfers and swimming in the murky waters of the river nearby, hoping to attract the kind of attention they are only beginning to understand.

Through the eyes of cautious Baby B, we watch as lustful Baby A and introverted Baby C find matches among the town boys. When even Baby B notices that the town’s golden boy seems to be intrigued by her, only her, it begins to appear that the young women’s wish to be seen as individuals has been granted – until a seemingly trivial kiss is gifted to the wrong sister. What comes next forces the sisters to confront the devastating implications of their collective anonymity. As insecurities become weapons and the tight bonds between sisters are severed, the threat of female teenage angst turns real and deadly, and the young women face a future where triplets must learn to be twins.

Tennessee Hill is a poet by trade; she was the 2022 Gregory Djanikian scholar and holds an MFA from North Carolina State University. Her work has been featured in POETRY, Best New Poets, Southern Humanities Review, Fugue, Arkansas International, and elsewhere. She is a South Texas native, where she still lives and teaches with her husband and their dog, Bark Ruffalo.

IF SOMETHING HAPPENS TO ME d’Alex Finlay

From “one of the genre’s most exciting voices” (E! News) comes one of the year’s most-anticipated thrillers.

IF SOMETHING HAPPENS TO ME
by Alex Finlay
Minotaur, May 2024
(via Aaron M. Priest Literary Agency)

For the past five years, Ryan Richardson has relived that terrible night. The car door ripping open. The crushing blow to the head. The hands yanking him from the vehicle. His girlfriend Ali’s piercing scream as she is taken. With no trace of Ali or the car, a cloud of suspicion hangs over Ryan. But with no proof and a good lawyer, he’s never charged, though that doesn’t matter to the podcasters and internet trolls. Now, Ryan has changed his last name, and entered law school. He’s put his past behind him. Until, on a summer trip abroad to Italy with his law-school classmates, Ryan gets a call from his father: Ali’s car has finally been found, submerged in a lake in his hometown. Inside are two dead men and a cryptic note with five words written on the envelope in Ali’s handwriting: If something happens to me… Then, halfway around the world, the unthinkable happens: Ryan sees the man who has haunted his dreams since that night.  As Ryan races from the rolling hills of Tuscany, to a rural village in the UK, to the glittering streets of Paris in search of the truth, he has no idea that his salvation may lie with a young sheriff’s deputy in Kansas working her first case, and a mobster in Philadelphia who’s experienced tragedy of his own.

Alex Finlay lives in Washington, D.C. and is the author of several critically-acclaimed novels, including the 2021 breakout, Every Last Fear. His work has appeared on numerous best-of-the-year lists, been published in twenty-two languages around the world, and Every Last Fear is currently in development for a major television limited series.

THE BOUNDARIES WE CROSS de Brad Parks

THE BOUNDARIES WE CROSS is a twist-filled did-he-or-didn’t-he thriller about a teacher accused of having a sexual relationship with a student, a young woman who then disappears under suspicious circumstances.

THE BOUNDARIES WE CROSS
by Brad Parks
Oceanview Press, 2024
(via The Martell Agency)

Charles Bliss, raised by a single mother in a hardscrabble Maine fishing town, is a highly respected and much appreciated English teacher at Carrington Academy, an elite Connecticut prep school, from which he graduated some years ago as a scholarship student. Recently, Charles’s highly touted debut novel debut unexpectedly bombed, so he is grateful for his job at Carrington, while working feverishly on a new manuscript by night to capture the literary glory that was almost his.

Among his children-of-the-extremely-rich students is Hayley Goodloe, heiress to a massive fortune, who clearly is developing a crush on him. Happily married Charles is careful to maintain proper boundaries with Hayley, leaving no room for suspicion. So he is shocked to his core when the principal confronts him with an accusation of an affair with Hayley and demands his resignation. And when Hayley soon turns up missing, Charles’s world is turned upside down, with the police and DA targeting him as the likely kidnapper. Who can he trust? His loyal wife Emily, his best friend Leo, his new fast-talking criminal defense attorney Jerry and the reliability of his own memory are all in the mix as Charles desperately tries to prove his innocence amidst damaging evidence that somehow keeps piling up against him.

Filled with memorable characters, this is a wonderfully clever, involving thriller that expertly deploys the Hitchcockian pivot of the “innocent man” in fresh, surprising ways.

International bestselling author Brad Parks is the only writer to have won the Shamus, Nero, and Lefty Awards, three of American crime fiction’s most prestigious prizes. His novels, including Unthinkable, Interference, Say Nothing, Closer Than You Know and The Last Act have been published in fifteen languages and have won critical acclaim across the globe, including stars from every major prepublication review outlet.

WEST HEART KILL de Dann McDorman

Spoiler alert: the detective dies.

WEST HEART KILL
by Dann McDorman
Knopf, October 2023
(via David Black Literary Agency)

When Detective Adam McAnnis first shows up at club West Heart in upstate New York, his motivations for being there are unclear. But when a dead body is found shortly after his arrival, everyone at the club is suspect. The complication? The folk of West Heart have their own language—the language of high society—and Detective McAnnis is an outsider. In order to solve the murder, McAnnis must not only sleuth for clues but infiltrate a tight-knit community that has no intention of ratting out one of their own.

As the investigation unfolds and another body is discovered, McAnnis finds himself in a race against time and a fight for justice in which he seems to be the sole champion of truth. The reader finds themselves dragged into the story, both as voyeur and accomplice, guided by an irreverent narrator with a flair for the dramatic. And when Detective McAnnis becomes the third body to drop in the small upstate New York community, it is up to the members themselves to step up to the challenge and find the person responsible.

WEST HEART KILL is Dann McDorman’s debut novel, though it reads as a seasoned author’s mystery. McDorman showcases for the first time his unmatched skill in building a narrative that actively weaves the reader into its threads. As the story progresses, the reader becomes more and more entrenched in the plot, eventually turning into a character in their own right as the plot unravels and the book radically changes form. West Heart Kill is a classic in the making, and readers are sure to walk away transformed.

Dann McDorman is an Emmy-nominated TV news producer, who has also worked as a newspaper reporter, book reviewer, and cabinet maker. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two children.