Archives de catégorie : Crime & Thrillers

THE CONTEST de Jeff Macfee

In this light noir crime novel, a previous puzzle prodigy returns to the competing world. A thoughtful mystery with deeply personal stakes, perfect for fans of The Queen’s Gambit.

THE CONTEST
by Jeff Macfee
Angry Robot, February 2025
(via JABberwocky)

Once a child prodigy of puzzles and logic games, Gillian Charles now barely ekes out a living in Los Angeles. With her sick mother facing eviction from her care facility, Gillian can’t say no when her childhood nemesis, Tommy, shows up at her apartment with a $50k offer. All she has to do is return to the place where it all started, where she swore she’d never set foot again: Miscellany.

Miscellany is a place of wonder and enchantment—a Disney World for puzzle lovers, and one that quickly owns the lives of those who stay too long. Tommy is running the park’s latest big game, and he’s convinced someone is leaking the answers. With investment and expansion in the cards, Miscellany can’t afford a scandal. As a former puzzler who kept her distance from Miscellany for twenty years, Gillian should find it easy to investigate while avoiding Miscellany’s charms and entanglements.

But when Gillian arrives, she discovers things aren’t so straightforward. Her turncoat ex-friend Martin Ellsberg holds the security reins, Tommy’s estranged wife Evelina spins PR webs around the park’s machinations, and the manipulative park founder Sebastian offers her the financial security and intellectual future she always wanted. With her mother’s circumstances growing more dire, and under pressure to sweep the accusations under the rug, Gillian finds childhood games all the more treacherous for adults.

Miscellany is offering Gillian the life she always wanted. But at what price?

Jeff Macfee writes about ordinary people who do their best but make things worse. When he’s not writing he’s doing IT things and asking you to turn it off and on again. He lives in North Texas with his wife and three kids.

UP IN SMOKE de Nick Brooks

Perfect for fans of Karen McManus and The Hate U Give, this edge-of-your-seat thriller from the author of Promise Boys follows a girl determined to clear her brother’s name and a boy desperate to keep his own out of the line of fire. As the heat turns up in a murder investigation, old feelings reignite between them, but a shocking secret could tear them apart.

UP IN SMOKE
by Nick Brooks
Henry Holt/Macmillan, May 2025
(via Writers House)

Unmask a murderer or take the fall.

After Cooper King is pressured by big brother figure Jason to go on a looting spree during a local march, the unthinkable happens: gunshots ring in the air and someone ends up dead. After Cooper flees, the news shows four teens in ski masks near the scene of the murder—Cooper and his friends. Cooper fears the cops will come knocking at his door, and the pressure only mounts when a suspect is taken into custody: Jason.

Monique, Jason’s sister and Cooper’s longtime crush, is willing to go any length to clear her brother’s name. Even if she needs to go into the belly of the beast and confront the killer herself. When she teams up with Cooper, they fall down the investigation rabbit hole and start to fall for each other. But little does Monique know that within this web of deception, Cooper is shrouding the truth that he was there when the shots went off. If the pair fail to uncover the real murderer, Jason will get locked up for a crime he didn’t commit—and drag Cooper down with him.

Nick Brooks is the critically-acclaimed author of Promise Boys and award-winning filmmaker from Washington, DC. His short film, Hoop Dreamin’, earned him the George Lucas Scholar Award and was a finalist in the Forbes 30 Under 30 Film Fest.

WHEN THE BONES SING de Ginny Myers Sain

From New York Times bestselling author of Dark and Shallow Lies comes a new southern gothic supernatural thriller about a teen girl in a small Ozark town who can hear the bones of the dead.

WHEN THE BONES SING
by Ginny Myers Sain
Razorbill, March 2025
(via Park & Fine Literary and Media)

The past three years have been tough for Lucifer’s Creek, Arkansas, a small town quietly tucked away in the Ozark mountains. More than two dozen people have disappeared on the local hiking trails; there one moment, gone the next, not a trace left behind, until their buried bodies are discovered.

17-year-old Dovie doesn’t believe in magic even though she comes from a long line of women who can hear the bones of the dead sing, and for the past few years the bones have been crooning nonstop, calling out to Dovie to dig them up.

Some of the old-timers believe that it’s the monstrous Ozarks howler snatching people off the Aux Arc Trail. Well Dovie doesn’t believe in the howler, and she doesn’t believe her best friend Lo when he tells her he is being haunted by dark shadows. All she believes in is her talent that guides the local sheriff to the bones when they begin their song, then reuniting the dead with their families to give them some peace.

Lo doesn’t know peace, though. The shadows follow him everywhere. He soon learns they’re the murdered hikers and they want answers. But the truth of their deaths isn’t buried with their bones; it’s hidden somewhere deep in the hills. And Lo and Dovie must unearth it before anyone else is killed.

Ginny Myers Sain is the New York Times bestselling author of Dark and Shallow Lies, Secrets So Deep, and One Last Breath. She lives in Florida and has spent the past twenty years working closely with teens as a director and acting instructor in a program designed for high school students seriously intent on pursuing a career in the professional theatre. Having grown up in deeply rural America, she is interested in telling stories about resilient kids who come of age in remote settings.

YOUNG WORLD de Soman Chainani

From international bestseller Soman Chainani comes a devastatingly powerful political thriller set in America, 5 minutes in the future. A global revolution set into motion by the newly elected seventeen-year-old President of the United States of America turns deadly when the Revolting Youth meet for the first time for their G-8 summit.

YOUNG WORLD
by Soman Chainani
Random House, Spring 2026
(via Park & Fine Literary and Media)

As a new election approaches, America is a powder keg, waiting for a match. Then a teenager makes a video.

Benton Young is just trying to impress a girl when he goes online, urging people to write in his name for President. Not because he’s special or skilled. Instead, Benton is a goofy, relatable kid tired of a world where being young means growing up under a cloud of doom. “No one is coming to save us,” he says. “We have to save ourselves, starting with a vote against a broken system.”

To Benton’s shock, the video explodes—and the global party of Revolting Youth is born. Its platform: to turn the future over to those who will inherit it. To bring back the right to be young. And from the seed of a single video, the impossible happens … Benton Young, age 17, is elected President.

One election becomes a movement, and soon eight of the world’s biggest powers are run by teenagers. Teens who are smart, ambitious, capable—but also wild, ruthless, messy, horny, and young. When they meet for the first time at a G-8 summit in Sweden, they have a chance to set the course of history. At play: an unclaimed island in the Arctic with enough treasure to save the world —or destroy it.

On night one, a leader is assassinated in cold blood. And the new American President is the chief suspect. A globetrotting thrill-ride begins, led by our young hero under siege, desperate to prove that the young aren’t condemned to repeat the mistakes of the old. That Revolting Youth can forge a new path, one that will stand the test of time. But to become the hero the world needs, first Benton has to find the real killer-before he’s the next victim himself.

Soman Chainani’s debut series, The School for Good & Evil, has sold more than 4.2 million copies, been translated into 35 languages across six continents, and has been adapted into a major motion picture from Netflix that debuted at #1 in over 80 countries at release. His book of retold fairytales, Beasts & Beauty, also debuted on the New York Times bestseller List, his seventh book in a row to do so, and is slated to be a limited television series from Sony 3000, with Soman writing and executive producing. A graduate of Harvard University and Columbia University’s MFA Film Program, Soman has been nominated for the Waterstone Prize for Children’s Literature, been named to the Out100, and also received the Sun Valley Writer’s Fellowship. In his career, Soman has visited over 800 schools around the world, where he continues to share his secret with students of all ages that reading is the path to a better life.

THE FAVORITE GIRL de Monica Arya

Every family has secrets–dark ones, twisted ones, ones they hide. The Ivory family is no different.

THE FAVORITE GIRL
by Monica Arya
Podium Audio, October 2024

An Amazon Top 60 Bestselling Thriller Novel
#1 Bestselling novel in multiple categories

From the outside of their gated estate, one would see a beautiful, wealthy family. But the more perfect they seem, it only shows how many imperfections they are trying to bury.

When Demi Rao, a young woman is at her wits’ end and on the run from escaping her captor, she comes across an employment ad from the Ivory family, looking for someone to help maintain their elaborate estate. Although the ad is strange with meticulous directions to wear all-white, no makeup and speak quietly, Demi applies.

With no choices, Demi gets and accepts the job and when she does, she quickly realizes she’s not there to clean, she’s there for a purpose. They picked her. They chose her. They’ve always known her. Behind the doors of the pristine estate lies secrets, a lethal human experiment and Demi’s entire life planned out for her.

The Ivory’s have picked a favorite girl.

And it might just be her.

Monica Arya is an Amazon Top 35 best-selling author. Her books have been #1 bestsellers in multiple categories on Amazon. She is a multi-genre author, writing both thrillers and romance. Monica resides in the Carolinas with her family. She loves to connect with readers and you can find her on social media @monicaaryaauthor.