Archives de catégorie : Crime & Thrillers

ONLY IF YOU’RE LUCKY de Stacy Willingham

A sharp and twisty exploration of female friendship from the New York Times bestselling author of A Flicker in the Dark and All the Dangerous Things.

ONLY IF YOU’RE LUCKY
by Stacy Willingham
Minotaur, January 2024
(via Writers House)

Lucy Sharpe is larger than life. Magnetic, addictive. Bold and dangerous. Especially for Margot, who meets Lucy at the end of their freshman year at a liberal arts college in South Carolina. Margot is the shy one, the careful one, always the sidekick and never the center of attention. But when Lucy singles her out at the end of the year, a year Margot spent studying and playing it safe, and asks her to room together, something in Margot can’t say no―something daring, or starved, or maybe even envious.

And so Margot finds herself living in an off-campus house with three other girls, Lucy, the ringleader; Sloane, the sarcastic one; and Nicole, the nice one, the three of them opposites but also deeply intertwined. It’s a year that finds Margot finally coming out of the shell she’s been in since the end of high school, when her best friend Eliza died three weeks after graduation. Margot and Lucy have become the closest of friends, but by the middle of their sophomore year, one of the fraternity boys from the house next door has been brutally murdered… and Lucy Sharpe is missing without a trace.

From the author of A Flicker in the Dark and All the Dangerous Things comes a tantalizing thriller about the nature of friendship and belonging, about loyalty, envy, and betrayal―another gripping novel from an author quickly becoming the gold standard in psychological suspense.

Stacy Willingham is the New York Times bestselling author of A Flicker in the Dark and All the Dangerous Things. She studied journalism at the University of Georgia and holds an MFA from the Savannah College of Art & Design.

ONE OF US KNOWS d’Alyssa Cole

From the critically acclaimed and New York Times bestselling author of When No One Is Watching comes a riveting thriller about the new caretaker of a historic estate who finds herself trapped on an island with a murderer—and the ghosts of her past.

ONE OF US KNOWS
by Alyssa Cole
William Morrow, April 2024
(via Writers House)

Years after a breakdown and a diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder derailed her historical preservationist career, Kenetria Nash and her alters have been given a second chance they can’t refuse: a position as resident caretaker of a historic home. Having been dormant for years, Ken has no idea what led them to this isolated Hudson River island, but she’s determined not to ruin their opportunity.

Then a surprise visit from the home’s conservation trust just as a Nor’easter bears down on the island disrupts her newfound life, leaving Ken trapped with a group of possibly dangerous strangers—including the man who brought her life tumbling down years earlier. When he turns up dead, Ken is the prime suspect.

Caught in a web of secrets and in a race against time, Ken and her alters must band together to prove their innocence and discover the truth of Kavanaugh Island—and their own past—or they risk losing not only their future, but their life.

Alyssa Cole is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of romance and thrillers. Her debut thriller When No One Is Watching was the winner of the 2021 Edgar Allen Poe Award for Best Paperback Original and the Strand Critics Award for Best Debut. Her Civil War-set espionage romance An Extraordinary Union was the American Library Association’s RUSA Best Romance for 2018, and her contemporary royal romcom A Princess in Theory was one of the New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2018. Her books have received critical acclaim from The New York Times, Library Journal, BuzzFeed, Kirkus, Booklist, Jezebel, Shondaland, Vulture, Book Riot, Entertainment Weekly, and various other outlets.

DON’T LET THE DEVIL RIDE d’Ace Atkins

Ace Atkins, the New York Times bestselling author of the Quinn Colson series, delivers an unputdownable new standalone thriller.

DON’T LET THE DEVIL RIDE
by Ace Atkins
William Morrow, Summer 2024
(via Writers House)

Addison McKellar has it all — the big house, two kids at the right schools, the club memberships, friends, and a handsome, successful husband. Until the day her husband, Dean, leaves for a short business trip and just doesn’t come back. No messages. Her calls and texts unanswered. Fearing the worst, she hires private investigator Porter Hayes, an old friend of her father’s and a legend in Memphis. Hayes starts pulling at loose threads, and Addison’s entire life unravels.

Her husband’s prosperous construction firm? It doesn’t exist. Instead, her easy, affluent lifestyle is funded by blood money from Dean’s shadowy international mercenary firm. Her upstanding husband is a hired killer who runs a small army of hired killers and weapons dealers — and she doesn’t even know his real name.

Porter Hayes, once one of Memphis’s first black police detectives, has confronted evil in many forms over the years. He wants to help Addison get free of this dangerous man and keep her children safe — even if no one else in her privileged world believes her story.

As the real reason behind Dean’s disappearance becomes clear, Addison and Hayes cross paths with Russian mobsters, federal agents, international thieves, arms dealers, and an aging It Girl in this darkly comic thriller with echoes of classic Hitchcock.

Ace Atkins is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of almost thirty novels. Atkins, a former SEC football player, started his career as a crime beat reporter in Florida before becoming a full time novelist. Since then he’s written eleven books in the Quinn Colson series and several true crime novels based on infamous crooks and killers. He was also chosen by Robert B. Parker’s family to continue the Spenser series in 2010, adding ten novels to that iconic franchise.

THE VOICES de Natalie Chandler

They say it was an accident, but you can hear every word they say, and they aren’t telling the truth. Then again, before the crash, neither were you.

THE VOICES
by Natalie Chandler
HarperNorth, Spring 2025
(via Mushens Entertainment)

Tamsin Shaw’s doctors describe her condition as a permanent vegetative state and say she has no chance of recovery. After three years in limbo, her husband Jamie is given the option of withdrawing her treatment. To save her own life, Tamsin must somehow prove that, unbeknownst to those around her, she has full awareness. When it becomes clear Jamie may have his own reasons for allowing his wife to slip away, Tamsin, trapped inside her own mind, fears she may never be able to communicate with the outer world.

In her old life, Tamsin was an eminent psychiatrist, specialising in treating sex offenders. Her final client before the crash was the charming, aristocratic Richard Mandeville, who insisted he was innocent of the horrific crimes he had been convicted of. As his retrial now looms, Tamsin’s boss Dan suspects her notes indicate she may have fallen under Mandeville’s spell.

With no memory of the day of the crash, Tamsin is convinced those lost recollections hold the key to understanding exactly what her brain is trying to protect her from. If it wasn’t an accident, who would want to harm her, and why?

Natalie Chandler was educated at St Chad’s College, Durham and currently works in behavioural education, specialising in social, emotional and mental health issues. She is a Curtis Brown Creative alumna and was previously selected to be part of the WoMentoring scheme.

NO ONE LEFT BUT YOU de Tash McAdam

Own voices for trans identity and struggles with anxiety and depression, NO ONE LEFT BUT YOU will appeal to fans of Malinda Lo’s A Line in the Dark, Angelline Boulley’s Firekeeper’s Daughter, and the TV show Euphoria.

NO ONE LEFT BUT YOU
by Tash McAdam
Soho Teen, November 2023
(via The Rights Factory)

Newly out trans guy Max is having a hard time in school. Things have been tough since his summer romance turned on him. This year, his plan is to keep his head down and make sure he graduates. All that changes when new It-girl Gloss moves to town.

No one understands why perfect, polished Gloss is so interested in an introverted skater kid, but Max blooms in the hothouse of her attention. Swept along in the riptide of burgeoning popularity, it doesn’t matter to Max that Gloss is making all the decisions, choosing his clothes, what he does and who he hangs out with. Caught somewhere between romance and obsession, he’ll do whatever it takes to keep her on his side.

Haircut, makeovers, drugs, parties. It’s all fun and games until someone gets stabbed in the throat. When Gloss confesses to murdering his ex, Max refuses to believe that she did it. If she did, he’ll have lost the two most important people in his life in one night. Trying to collect evidence that will exonerate his only friend, Max veers dangerously close to being implicated—and his own memories of that awful night are fuzzy. He has to figure out who’s lying, even if it turns out to be himself.

Tash McAdam is a Welsh-Canadian author, activist, and high school educator. Their publications include The Psionics (Nine Star Press), and the Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selections Blood Sport and Sink Or Swim (Orca Books). They are also featured in multiple anthologies. Tash is a recipient of the Shoot for the Moon fund for trans writers, and a founding mentor with the Gender Generations Project. When they’re not writing or reading you can probably find Tash in a lake, lying on the carpet thinking about monsters, or getting a new tattoo. They enjoy regular cups of tea, existential philosophy, and sharp objects.