Archives de catégorie : Crime & Thrillers

THE INFLUENCERS d’Anna-Marie McLemore

When May “Mother May I” Iverson’s mansion burns down with her newlywed husband inside, friends, neighbors, media, and the Iversons’ fans and enemies alike begin speculating and investigating faster than detectives.

THE INFLUENCERS
by Anna-Marie McLemore
Dial Press, March 2025
(via Dystel, Goderich & Bourret)

May is a social media sensation, glamorous-yet-relatable, but the key to her enduring fame is her daughters, who featured in videos from their births through adorable childhoods, difficult adolescences, and terrible teens. But the girls are all grown up now, and their lingering anger and resentment from childhoods stolen by the camera have started to spill over into public view. April is a businesswoman feuding with her mother over IP; June and July are influencers themselves, possibly threatening May’s dominance; January is a theater tech who steers clear of her mother and the limelight; and March…well, March has somehow completely disappeared.

Could it be one of the girls who murdered May’s less-than-charming new groom? Or could online sweetheart Mother May I have killed the man she’d just recently married and then burned down her dream home to cover it up? Or could it be one of us, the fawning yet fickle mob of media consumers?

THE INFLUENCERS is award-winning (including recently Printz-winning) YA author Anna-Marie McLemore’s first novel for adults, told in multiple points of view, reminiscent of The Virgin Suicides, and in the vein of other compulsively readable family dramas, like The Family Fang and Dava Shastri’s Last Day.

Anna-Marie McLemore (they/them) writes magical realism and fairy tales that are as queer, Latine, and nonbinary as they are. Their books include The Weight of Feathers, a 2016 William C. Morris YA Debut Award Finalist; 2017 Stonewall Honor Book When the Moon Was Ours, which was longlisted for the National Book Award in Young People’s Literature and was the winner of the James Tiptree Jr. Award; Wild Beauty, a Kirkus, School Library Journal, and Booklist best book of 2017; Blanca & Roja, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice; Miss Meteor (co-authored with Tehlor Kay Mejia); Dark And Deepest Red, a Winter 2020 Indie Next List selection; The Mirror Season, which has recently received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, Booklist and School Library Journal; Lakelore, which has received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and Shelf Awareness; Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix, which was longlisted for the National Book Award in Young People’s Literature; and Venom & Vow, co-authored with Elliott McLemore. Most recently, they contributed to the 2023 Printz-winning anthology The Collectors: Stories, edited by A.S. King.

A CURTAIN TWITCHER’S BOOK OF MURDER

Set in London in 1968, follows the lives of the inhabitants of a suburban London street. But this is no ordinary street.

A CURTAIN TWITCHER’S BOOK OF MURDER
by Gay Marris
Bedford Square (Ed. Carolyn Mays), June 2024
(via Randle Editorial & Literary Consultancy)

Ask anyone on Atbara Avenue how well they know their neighbours, and they’ll answer ‘well’.

After all, they see each other across the vast distance afforded by close proximity, and that is probably for the best…

For the best, because Atbara Avenue is a street where, all too often, murder feels like the solution.

With a delicious cast of characters, dazzling plotting, and an utterly unique voice, Gay Marris’ first book is remarkably accomplished. If you’ve been longing for a fresh and compelling new voice in the world of crime fiction, your wait is over.

Gay Marris is a retired research scientist. Her career focused on insect ecology, parasites and honey bee health. A CURTAIN TWITCHER’S BOOK OF MURDER is her first novel, set in the suburbs of the deceptively dangerous suburbs of 1960s London, where she grew up. Gay now lives in York with her husband, a cat and a tortoise.

FALLS THE SHADOW de Mike Nicol

An edgy new detective series from master of noir Mike Nicol.

FALLS THE SHADOW
by Mike Nicol
Pan Macmillan (South Africa), late 2025
(via The Lennon-Ritchie Agency)

A cop in a quiet rural town kills his family and then turns the gun on himself. In his shed is a cache of weapons: Russian automatics, handguns, 9mils, .38s. You don’t need forensics to work out what’s going on. This is a cop with a side racket. Which gets the attention of Captain Zara Dewane of the Internal Crime Unit. A single mom, known among cops as the Jackal, what she uncovers about the family murder puts her in the firing line. There are cops running guns stolen from the police armoury. There are cops selling guns to gangsters. Thing is, the money chain goes deep into the police hierarchy. Even fingers the political bosses. Close her down, comes the order from on high. Kill her, in other words. Making Zara and her family targets. With only one way out.

Mike Nicol is the author of twenty-four books. He has written novels, works of non-fiction and poetry. His thrillers are published in the UK and the USA, and have been translated into Afrikaans, Dutch, French and German. His long list of accolades starts in 1979, with his debut poetry collection receiving the Ingrid Jonker Prize. His Revenge Trilogy featured in the KrimiZeit Top 10 list in Germany, as did Of Coprs and Robberts and Power Play, while Payback was shortlisted for the VN Thriller of the Year award in Holland and the Prix SCNF Du Polar 2016 in France. He lives in Cape Town.

THEY ALL FALL THE SAME de Wesley Browne

An organized crime boss in Kentucky believes money and power are everything until his enterprise collides with a family tragedy, in this gripping noir thriller perfect for fans of S.A. Cosby and Eli Cranor.

THEY ALL FALL THE SAME
by Wesley Browne
Crooked Lane, November 2024

Cannabis kingpin Burl Spoon has reigned over the Jackson County area for three decades, building a powerful backwoods empire. But behind a well-run organization, his personal life is crumbling – his daughter can’t stay clean; his son has hated him since coming out; and after enduring years of infidelity, his wife is straying too. The only person not on his payroll who still adores him is his six-year-old granddaughter, Chelsea.

When his daughter overdoses on heroin laced with fentanyl and one of his employees is murdered, Burl’s retaliation against Clovis Begley, the patriarch of the heroin-dealing family involved in both deaths, is inevitable. As Burl’s plan spirals into a firestorm of vengeance that threatens the safety of his granddaughter, his drive for revenge conflicts with his longing for redemption. On the brink of losing everything, Burl must find a path between retribution and protecting what’s left of his family.

Wesley Browne is the founder and host of Pages & Pints Reading Series at Apollo Pizza in Richmond, Kentucky. He lives with his wife and two sons in Madison County, Kentucky.

LOST ARK DREAMING de Suyi Davies Okungbowa

The brutally engineered class divisions of Snowpiercer meets Rivers Solomon’s The Deep in this high-octane post-climate disaster novella written by Nommo Award-winning author Suyi Davies Okungbowa.

LOST ARK DREAMING
by Suyi Davies Okungbowa
Tordotcom, May 2024
(via DeFiore & Company)

Off the coast of West Africa, decades after the dangerous rise of the Atlantic Ocean, the region’s survivors live inside five partially submerged, kilometers-high towers originally created as a playground for the wealthy. Now the towers’ most affluent rule from their lofty perch at the top while the rest are crammed into the dark, fetid floors below sea level.

There are also those who were left for dead in the Atlantic, only to be reawakened by an ancient power, and who seek vengeance on those who offered them up to the waves.

Three lives within the towers are pulled to the fore of this conflict: Yekini, an earnest, mid-level rookie analyst; Tuoyo, an undersea mechanic mourning a tremendous loss; and Ngozi, an egotistical bureaucrat from the highest levels of governance. They will need to work together if there is to be any hope of a future that is worth living―for everyone.

Suyi Davies Okungbowa is an award-winning author of fantasy and science fiction. He lives in Ontario, where he is a professor of creative writing at the University of Ottawa.