Archives de catégorie : Fiction

IF SOMETHING HAPPENS TO ME d’Alex Finlay

From “one of the genre’s most exciting voices” (E! News) comes one of the year’s most-anticipated thrillers.

IF SOMETHING HAPPENS TO ME
by Alex Finlay
Minotaur, May 2024
(via Aaron M. Priest Literary Agency)

For the past five years, Ryan Richardson has relived that terrible night. The car door ripping open. The crushing blow to the head. The hands yanking him from the vehicle. His girlfriend Ali’s piercing scream as she is taken. With no trace of Ali or the car, a cloud of suspicion hangs over Ryan. But with no proof and a good lawyer, he’s never charged, though that doesn’t matter to the podcasters and internet trolls. Now, Ryan has changed his last name, and entered law school. He’s put his past behind him. Until, on a summer trip abroad to Italy with his law-school classmates, Ryan gets a call from his father: Ali’s car has finally been found, submerged in a lake in his hometown. Inside are two dead men and a cryptic note with five words written on the envelope in Ali’s handwriting: If something happens to me… Then, halfway around the world, the unthinkable happens: Ryan sees the man who has haunted his dreams since that night.  As Ryan races from the rolling hills of Tuscany, to a rural village in the UK, to the glittering streets of Paris in search of the truth, he has no idea that his salvation may lie with a young sheriff’s deputy in Kansas working her first case, and a mobster in Philadelphia who’s experienced tragedy of his own.

Alex Finlay lives in Washington, D.C. and is the author of several critically-acclaimed novels, including the 2021 breakout, Every Last Fear. His work has appeared on numerous best-of-the-year lists, been published in twenty-two languages around the world, and Every Last Fear is currently in development for a major television limited series.

THE MORNINGSIDE de Téa Obreht

There’s the world you can see. And then there’s the one you can’t. Welcome to The Morningside.

THE MORNINGSIDE
by Téa Obreht
Random House, March 2024
(via The Gernert Company)

When Silvia and her mother finally land in a place called Island City, after being expelled from their ancestral home in a not-too-distant future, they end up living and working at The Morningside, a crumbling luxury tower where Silvia’s aunt, Ena, serves as the superintendent. Silvia feels unmoored in her new life because her mother has been so diligently secretive about their family’s past. Silvia knows almost nothing about the place she was born and spent her early years; nor does she know why she and her mother had to leave. But in Ena there is an opening: a person willing to give a young girl glimpses into the folktales of her demolished homeland, a place of natural beauty and communal spirit that is lacking in Silvia’s lonely and impoverished reality.

Enchanted by Ena’s stories, Silvia begins seeing the world with magical possibilities, and becomes obsessed with the mysterious older woman who lives in the penthouse of the Morningside. Bezi Duras is an enigma to everyone in the building; she has her own elevator entrance, and only leaves to go out at night and walk her three massive hounds, often not returning until the early morning. Silvia’s mission to unravel the truth about this woman’s life, and her own haunted past, may end up costing her everything.

Startling, inventive, and profoundly moving, The Morningside is a novel about the stories we tell, and the stories we refuse to tell, to make sense of where we came from, and who we hope we might become.

Téa Obreht is the internationally bestselling author of The Tiger’s Wife, which won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her second novel, Inland, was an instant bestseller, won the Southwest Book Award, and was a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, and Zoetrope: All-Story, among many others. Originally from the former Yugoslavia, she now resides in Wyoming.

THE BOUNDARIES WE CROSS de Brad Parks

THE BOUNDARIES WE CROSS is a twist-filled did-he-or-didn’t-he thriller about a teacher accused of having a sexual relationship with a student, a young woman who then disappears under suspicious circumstances.

THE BOUNDARIES WE CROSS
by Brad Parks
Oceanview Press, 2024
(via The Martell Agency)

Charles Bliss, raised by a single mother in a hardscrabble Maine fishing town, is a highly respected and much appreciated English teacher at Carrington Academy, an elite Connecticut prep school, from which he graduated some years ago as a scholarship student. Recently, Charles’s highly touted debut novel debut unexpectedly bombed, so he is grateful for his job at Carrington, while working feverishly on a new manuscript by night to capture the literary glory that was almost his.

Among his children-of-the-extremely-rich students is Hayley Goodloe, heiress to a massive fortune, who clearly is developing a crush on him. Happily married Charles is careful to maintain proper boundaries with Hayley, leaving no room for suspicion. So he is shocked to his core when the principal confronts him with an accusation of an affair with Hayley and demands his resignation. And when Hayley soon turns up missing, Charles’s world is turned upside down, with the police and DA targeting him as the likely kidnapper. Who can he trust? His loyal wife Emily, his best friend Leo, his new fast-talking criminal defense attorney Jerry and the reliability of his own memory are all in the mix as Charles desperately tries to prove his innocence amidst damaging evidence that somehow keeps piling up against him.

Filled with memorable characters, this is a wonderfully clever, involving thriller that expertly deploys the Hitchcockian pivot of the “innocent man” in fresh, surprising ways.

International bestselling author Brad Parks is the only writer to have won the Shamus, Nero, and Lefty Awards, three of American crime fiction’s most prestigious prizes. His novels, including Unthinkable, Interference, Say Nothing, Closer Than You Know and The Last Act have been published in fifteen languages and have won critical acclaim across the globe, including stars from every major prepublication review outlet.

WEST HEART KILL de Dann McDorman

Spoiler alert: the detective dies.

WEST HEART KILL
by Dann McDorman
Knopf, October 2023
(via David Black Literary Agency)

When Detective Adam McAnnis first shows up at club West Heart in upstate New York, his motivations for being there are unclear. But when a dead body is found shortly after his arrival, everyone at the club is suspect. The complication? The folk of West Heart have their own language—the language of high society—and Detective McAnnis is an outsider. In order to solve the murder, McAnnis must not only sleuth for clues but infiltrate a tight-knit community that has no intention of ratting out one of their own.

As the investigation unfolds and another body is discovered, McAnnis finds himself in a race against time and a fight for justice in which he seems to be the sole champion of truth. The reader finds themselves dragged into the story, both as voyeur and accomplice, guided by an irreverent narrator with a flair for the dramatic. And when Detective McAnnis becomes the third body to drop in the small upstate New York community, it is up to the members themselves to step up to the challenge and find the person responsible.

WEST HEART KILL is Dann McDorman’s debut novel, though it reads as a seasoned author’s mystery. McDorman showcases for the first time his unmatched skill in building a narrative that actively weaves the reader into its threads. As the story progresses, the reader becomes more and more entrenched in the plot, eventually turning into a character in their own right as the plot unravels and the book radically changes form. West Heart Kill is a classic in the making, and readers are sure to walk away transformed.

Dann McDorman is an Emmy-nominated TV news producer, who has also worked as a newspaper reporter, book reviewer, and cabinet maker. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two children.

MAGIC BELOW STAIRS de Caroline Stevermer

In an alternate Regency England, a plucky young boy is hired be a wizard’s assistant and with help from his fairy guardian, he will excel at his job and break a curse on the wizard. This charming Middle Grade novel is set in the same world as Caroline Stevermer and Patricia C. Wrede’s beloved Cecilia and Kate novels.

MAGIC BELOW STAIRS
by Caroline Stevermer
Dial Press, 2010
(via JABberwocky)

11-year-old Frederick is plucked from an orphanage to be a servant to the wizard Lord Schofield. With help from Billy Bly, the brownie who has been his « fairy guardian » over the years, Frederick quickly proves his worth and excels at the difficult tasks assigned by Lord Schofield.

However, Lord Schofield has banished all magical creatures from his holdings so Frederick must keep Billy Bly’s existence a secret. When Billy Bly discovers dark magic within the Schofields’ manor house, it’s up to Frederick and Billy to break the curse and save the manor.

Caroline Stevermer is the multiple-award-winning author of the Cecelia and Kate Novels, the College of Magics Series, the Glass Magician Series, and the middle grade novels River Rats and Magic Below Stairs.