Archives de catégorie : Crime & Thrillers

WELCOME TO THE GAME de Craig Henderson

From a brilliant new voice, WELCOME TO THE GAME is a gripping thriller that races through Motor City at heart-stopping pace as its protagonists swerve to avoid danger at every turn. Writer and BBC presenter Craig Henderson screeches onto the scene with this fast-paced debut, for fans of Drive by James Sallis, Blacktop Wasteland by S. A. Cosby, and Thomas Perry’s Butcher Boy series.

WELCOME TO THE GAME
by Craig Henderson
Atlantic Monthly Press, August 2022

Ex-rally driver Spencer Burnham moved his family from England to Detroit and opened a foreign car dealership, but his life was derailed by the death of his beloved wife. Disconnected from his young daughter and losing control of the cocktail of drugs and alcohol that gets him through the day, he only just keeps Child Protective Services at bay while his business teeters on the edge of bankruptcy.
Then he has a seemingly chance encounter with charismatic but lethal gangster, Dominic McGrath. McGrath employs military strategy in the art of crime, covertly and mercilessly promoting inter-gang rivalry to keep his competitors so busy that they can’t launder their own money. For a hefty percentage, McGrath takes care of this tedious business for them. But McGrath is feeling the squeeze from informants, the rise of tech surveillance, booming gangs from out of state encroaching on their old school Detroit outfit, and a hotshot detective who’s made busting McGrath a personal crusade. For some time he’s been planning a last heist that would allow a comfortable retirement, provided he can find a very special type of driver—one who’s capable, trustworthy . . . and naïve.
To Spencer, McGrath seems heaven-sent. He even pays cash, lots of it. But it comes at a price; Spencer finds himself playing in an arena where rookies don’t last long. Wising up to the ruthlessness behind McGrath’s charming façade, he tries to break free, but McGrath has too much invested to allow him to leave.
As the city swelters in a heat wave, the two men apply their considerable talents to besting each other, while mistakenly assuming they have only each other to beat.

Craig Henderson is a British writer and the presenter of the BBC’s “Books That Made Britain” series. Scottish by birth, he gained an MA in Latin and Ancient History from the University of Edinburgh where he also won two scholarships. WELCOME TO THE GAME is his first novel.

THE COUNSELORS de Jessica Goodman

From bestselling author Jessica Goodman comes a twisty new thriller about three best friends, one elite summer camp, and the dark secrets that lead to a body in the lake.

THE COUNSELORS
by Jessica Goodman
Razorbill/Penguin YR, May 2022

Camp Alpine Lake is the only place where Goldie Easton feels at home. As the daughter of the camp nurse and shop instructor, plus the honorary granddaughter of the camp’s owners, she’s always had a special connection to Alpine Lake, even before she was old enough to attend. Now she’s back as a counselor, desperate for summer to start and her camp friends to arrive. Because with the dark secret she’s been keeping, she’s more in need of the comfort of home than ever.
But with everything she’s been holding back from her best friends, Ava and Imogen, things might not be as simple as she’d hoped—and Goldie’s not the only person at camp who has been lying. When a local boy turns up dead in the lake, she knows that his death couldn’t have been an accident. She also knows that Ava went down to the lake that night. But Ava’s her best friend, and despite everything that happened this past year, Goldie dives into the mystery surrounding the boy’s death.
But asking questions offers no answers, only danger and betrayals deeper than Goldie ever imagined.

Jessica Goodman is the op-ed editor at Cosmopolitan and author of They Wish They Were Us and They’ll Never Catch Us. The Counselors is her third novel.

NO WAY HOME de Jody Feldman

An exciting international thriller! When a teenager’s dream exchange program in Italy turns into a nightmare, can she find a way to outwit her criminal host family before she and her parents end up dead?

NO WAY HOME
by Jody Feldman
‎ Sourcebooks Fire, June 2022

Tess Morelli is living a dream: she was selected for an incredible exchange program in Rome, where she’s spending a month taking in the beautiful sights and sounds and tastes of Italy. Her Italian counterpart, Sofia, is staying with Tess’s family while she’s away. Sure, her host parents barely speak English, but they seem cool enough.
Until one day when Tess is woken up before dawn by her hosts, who are on a video chat with their daughter. Tess sees her sleeping parents on the screen―and Sofia brandishing a knife over them. Tess’s parents will die, her hosts tell her, unless she follows their exact instructions. They’ve taken her passport, credit cards and phone, and Tess, at their mercy, must commit a series of crimes that add up to a shocking plan. Now Tess must find a way to outwit these criminals before she―and her family―end up dead.

Jody Feldman is the author of the bestselling middle-grade series The Gollywhopper Games. This is her YA debut.

AFTER THE BLINDING de Thomas Mullen

From Thomas Mullen, the internationally acclaimed author of Darktown and The Last Town On Earth, and in the tradition of Blade Runner and Minority Report, AFTER THE BLINDING is a fast-paced speculative thriller about the ways technology has warped how we see the world and the people around us.

AFTER THE BLINDING
by Thomas Mullen
St. Martin’s Press, Fall 2022
(via Writers House)

Years ago, in a still little-understood phenomenon known as The Blinding, all of mankind lost the ability to see. Now, people can “see” again thanks to vidders, devices that transmit radar and other visual information directly to the brain. It feels like slightly enhanced vision, complete with night vision and, alas, pop-up ads. But now someone’s figured out to hack it.
Mark Owens is a burned-out, grieving detective called to investigate a murder in which the killer supposedly blacked himself out of view of every single witness. Owens doesn’t believe the story—until the killer strikes again, and this time Owens himself “sees” not the killer but a black blur, like a human censor bar, the killer somehow redacted from Owens’ vision.
In this police procedural set in a recognizable but fully imagined world, Owens needs to figure out how the killer is redacting himself, and who he is, before he strikes again. His investigation will take him from tech billionaires to anti-modernity cultists, and he’ll be forced to confront his past mistakes and the tragic loss of his wife, a visual artist who was driven to suicide by The Blinding.
Tackling subjects like the pervasive impact of technology, the role of police, government censorship, and a world recovering from collective trauma, AFTER THE BLINDING has the social resonance and immersive world-building of Darktown but with an escapism that whisks the reader someplace new.

Thomas Mullen’s first novel, The Last Town On Earth, was named Best Debut of the Year by USA Today, won the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for historical fiction, was optioned in a preempt by DreamWorks, and has been a popular choice for colleges’ Freshmen Reads programs (and its treatment of the 1918 flu has proven eerily prescient). Darktown was named an NPR Best Book of the year and was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Indies Choice Award, and several international prizes, and is currently under development for television with MGM. The follow-up, Lightning Men, was named one of the top 10 crime novels of the year by The New York Times Book Review. Five of Mullen’s novels have been optioned for TV and film.

THE KINGDOMS OF SAVANNAH de George Dawes Green

A new suspense novel from the Edgar award-winning author of The Caveman’s Valentine.

THE KINGDOMS OF SAVANNAH
by George Dawes Green
Celadon/St. Martin’s Press, July 2022
(via The Friedrich Agency)

When matriarch Morgana Musgrove calls upon her prodigal son Ransom to help her with a case, the defunct M. Musgrove & Family Detective Agency is back in business, albeit reluctantly. Tensions rise between the Musgroves and whispers of a mysterious lost “Kingdom”—descendants of the African-American soldiers who fought for King George, and afterwards formed a secret community, refusing to return to slavery—float in the sultry Savannah night. The family of investigators creeps closer and closer to exposing the city’s seedy underbelly, and a depraved history that a powerful few are determined to keep hidden, no matter the cost…

George Dawes Green, founder of The Moth and Unchained, is an internationally celebrated author. His first novel, The Caveman’s Valentine, won the Edgar Award and became a motion picture starring Samuel L. Jackson. The Juror was an international bestseller in more than twenty languages and was the basis for the movie starring Demi Moore and Alec Baldwin. Ravens was chosen as one of the best books of 2009 by the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Daily Mail, and many other publications. George Green grew up in Georgia and now lives in Brooklyn, New York.