Archives de catégorie : Crime & Thrillers

BEYOND YEAR ZERO de Lawrence Held

A troubled Australian journalist undertakes an odyssey into the heart of Cambodian darkness that will destroy the life of everyone he encounters – and his own …

BEYOND YEAR ZERO
by Lawrence Held
‎Big Sky (Australia), August 2022

Carl Meissner is a 32-year-old unemployed journalist who was fired over his reporting of a paedophile scandal involving a prominent Sydney judge, and is hired by Joe Goldman, a rich currency trader/property developer, to find his missing twin brother, whom a private detective has traced to Cambodia.
BEYOND YEAR ZERO is the story of Carl’s journey into the dark heart of Cambodia – and simultaneously into himself – along the way becoming entangled in the lives of the mysterious ‘Bible Bill’ Butt and the two beautiful Eurasian sisters, Bopha and Dara, and being forced to confront Cambodia’s dark underworld of child pornography, trafficking in human body parts, personal and political corruption, cannibalism, incest, lust and drugs. Having got himself into this seething milieu, where the only certainties are cruelty and violence, Carl then has to get himself out …

Lawrence Held trained at the ‘Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art’ (London), worked in theatre and television in the UK and Europe, presented a ninepart series for the BBC, acted in Waiting for Godot and Endgame, developed scripts for ‘Film Victoria’ and published Once A Jolly Swagperson (Pan Macmillan).

THE OPPORTUNIST d’Elyse Friedman

For fans of the HBO hit series Succession.

THE OPPORTUNIST
by Elyse Friedman
HarperCollins Canada, December 2022

When Alana Shropshire hears from her brothers, Teddy and Martin, complaining about Kelly, the 28-year-old “gold-digger” their 76-year-old father has taken up with, she ignores them. A single mom with a disabled daughter, Alana has more important things on her mind and has long since left her dysfunctional family behind. But her brothers persist, and eventually, she relents. In exchange for sorely needed payment, Alana flies to her father’s private island retreat to perform one tiny task in Teddy and Martin’s simple plan to make the gold-digger go away.
But when Kelly proves a lot wilier than expected, Alana is entangled in an increasingly dangerous scheme full of twists, turns, secrets and surprises. She has long viewed her brothers as callous sycophants who sacrificed their integrity and freedom for a share of their father’s fortune. But what more are they capable of, and how far will they go to retain control?
Is Kelly really an opportunist? Or is it Alana’s father, an exploitative businessman with more than a few skeletons in the closet? Or perhaps it’s Teddy and Martin, who will do anything to secure their piece of the pie.

Elyse Friedman is a critically acclaimed author, screenwriter, poet and playwright

SNAKE OIL de Kelsey Rae Dimberg

From the author of Girl in the Rearview Window comes a stunning novel set in the high-stakes world of Silicon Valley.

SNAKE OIL
by Kelsey Rae Dimberg
William Morrow, Summer 2023
(via Writers House)

Radical is a fast-growing wellness startup, rumored to be approaching “unicorn” status. But on the night of a booze-fueled bacchanal celebrating another round of venture capital investment, a woman’s body is found outside the company’s San Francisco HQ. Did she fall from the roof? Did she jump? Or was she pushed?
Rhoda West, Radical’s luminous founder-CEO, has attracted both avid followers and vocal detractors in the building of her wellness company. Her Instagram page exhorts followers to #bebetter, showcasing intimate glimpses of Rhoda’s glamorous personal life alongside promotions for the mysterious, cult-status products created in Radical’s secretive Lab.
Dani is her enthusiastic employee—a “radigal”—who has fully immersed herself in the Radical lifestyle, eagerly testing products while covering up a pregnancy she’s not sure she’s ready for. When @Radicalidiocy, a twitter account devoted to lambasting the company online, starts to expose company secrets, Dani suspects her colleague and on-the-rocks friend Cecilia, a disgruntled customer service rep, might be running the account. As Rhoda engages in a cat-and-mouse chase with the Twitter author and struggles to maintain her power against mounting pressure, the women’s ambitions and beliefs will clash—with deadly results.
A page-turning literary thriller, Dimberg’s new book is an incisive examination of the high-stakes startup world, where the reputation of a leader carries outsize influence on the value of a brand, and the barbed double-standards applied to female CEOs.

Kelsey Rae Dimberg is the author of Girl in the Rearview Mirror. She received an MFA from the University of San Francisco and studied at Barrett Honors College of Arizona State University, where she was editor-in-chief of the literary magazine, Lux, and received the Swarthout Award in Fiction.

THE DIG d’Anne Burt

In the vein of Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn, Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok, and The Dry by Jane Harper, THE DIG features propulsive writing and magnetic main characters who seek to solve the puzzle of their own past.

THE DIG
by Anne Burt
‎Counterpoint, Spring 2023
(via Writers House)

After Antonia (Toni) King trades small-town Minnesota and her adopted family for a high-powered legal career, her brother’s mysterious disappearance pulls her back home. Toni has a complicated relationship with the past: after being found as a child in the rubble of a bombed-out apartment in Sarajevo, she and her brother Paul were taken in by the Kings, a family of contractors in the small Midwestern town of Thebes, Minnesota.
As a child, Toni fantasized about what life would be like if she were born in Minnesota with blond hair and blue eyes, instead of as a dark haired Bosniak with a traumatic history. Now in her adult life, Toni has a newly minted law degree from Harvard and plans to put it to good use in the cause of justice in Washington, D.C. —far away from Thebes. But when she wins a plum job at an influential Twin Cities law firm with international clientele, she feels herself pulled back to the Midwest.
Her adoptive uncle, Christopher King, is furious that she’s moved back to Minnesota but rejected the opportunity he’s offered to work as counsel for the family construction business. And shortly after her arrival, Toni learns that idealistic Paul has disappeared after vocally protesting their uncle’s next development site—a Somali Community Center. As Toni must search for her brother, fend off her uncle’s demand to disavow him, and all the while try to please her demanding new boss, she uncovers a strange connection between her client and her uncle’s business, and with that begins to excavate decades of family secrets and lies. Toni must suddenly come to terms with the fact that her perceived foundation upon which her life was based was false.
Over the course of a single day, Toni navigates the serpentine bureaucracy of her small-town’s justice system, unearthing salacious characters from the past along with decades of secrets and lies, leading to explosive revelations about her adoptive family—and the sinister truth behind her biological mother’s death—that will alter the course of her life, and change her definition of home forever.
THE DIG is a shimmering, heart-wrenching portrait of a woman at odds with her history.

Anne Burt is the editor of My Father Married Your Mother: Dispatches from the Blended Family, and co-editor, with Christina Baker Kline, of About Face: Women Write About What They See When They Look in the Mirror. Anne is a consultant for organizations including the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Aspen Institute, and a lecturer at Columbia University’s School of Professional Studies. Anne’s essays and fiction have appeared in numerous publications and venues, including Salon, National Public Radio, and The Christian Science Monitor; she is a past winner of Meridian Literary Magazine’s Editors’ Prize in Fiction. Anne holds a B.A. in history from Yale University and an M.A. in creative writing from NYU. THE DIG is her first novel.

THESE SMALL-TOWN SINS de Ken Jaworowki

With pacing set at perfection and a series of unforgettable characters, THESE SMALL-TOWN SINS is a chilling and addictive commercial thriller.

THESE SMALL-TOWN SINS
by Ken Jaworowki
‎ Henry Holt, Summer 2023
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

When volunteer firefighter Nathan finds millions in cash inside a burning building, he begins to question every decision he has made in his life. Meanwhile local nurse Callie makes a dangerous choice to take a dying patient on an adventure before it’s too late. Just down the road, former heroin addict Andy, devastated by losing his wife and daughter, unexpectedly finds the perfect target for his wrath in a local predator.
Set in small-town Pennsylvania, this Rust Belt thriller will appeal to fans of Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone, Scott Smith’s A Simple Plan, and popular TV show Mare of Easttown.

Ken Jaworowski has been a Senior Staff Editor at The New York Times for 17 years, primarily covering the culture desk. He has also had a dozen short stories published in literary magazines, several of which were nominated for Pushcart Prizes. His plays have been produced in New York, London, France, Edinburgh, and elsewhere.