Archives de catégorie : Crime & Thrillers

WANDER IN THE DARK de Jumata Emill

From the acclaimed author of The Black Queen comes a stunning new YA novel in the spirit of This Is Us, but with the propulsive, page-turning suspense synonymous with Karen McManus, Kara Thomas, and Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé.

WANDER IN THE DARK
by Jumata Emill
Delacorte, Spring 2024
(via Writers House)

Amir Trudeau, the troubled son of local celebrity chef and restaurateur Martin Trudeau, isn’t without his share of problems. He hates his new school, his mother doesn’t like any of his friends, and his estranged half-brother Marcel is continuously trying to repair a relationship that Amir wants no part of. As far as Amir is concerned, years of hurt feelings that began the day their father divorced Amir’s mother and then moved on to achieve fame and fortune after marrying Marcel’s mother isn’t something that will ever be undone. But when Amir wakes up in the middle of the night and finds Chloe Danvers, a pretty and popular white girl he barely knows, stabbed to death, he suddenly finds himself with much bigger things to worry about.
Chloe is from an upper middle-class family with connections, and the last person she was with is a Black man caught fleeing the scene via security cameras. Everyone thinks the killer is Amir, including the police, and so in order to clear his name he’s going to have to rely on the people he trusts least—especially Marcel. Marcel sees helping Amir clear his name as way to repair their relationship, but he quickly learns that finding out why someone fatally stabbed Chloe will force the Trudeaus to confront truths that might tear them further apart, and reveal the twisted secrets festering within the hallowed halls of the elite private school the brothers attend.

Jumata Emill is a journalist who has covered crime and local politics in Mississippi and parts of Louisiana. He earned his BA in mass communications from Southern University and A&M University. He’s a Pitch Wars alum and a member of the Crime Writers of Color. When he’s not writing about murderous teens, he’s watching and obsessively tweeting about every franchise of the Real Housewives. Jumata lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

AFTER YOU VANISHED de E. A. Neeves

Sadie meets We Were Liars in this YA heartfelt mystery, in which one girl desperately searches to find out what happened to her missing sister.

AFTER YOU VANISHED
by E. A. Neeves
Disney-Hyperion, June 2023
(via Writers House)

Teddy’s favorite place is Bottomrock Lake, where sunfish swim in their little saucer nests and lilypads edge the shore. She’s worked there as a lifeguard every summer, including last year, when her twin sister Izzy waded into the lake for a midnight swim and never came out. Now, Teddy can’t stop scripting stories for where she went. Izzy was an accomplished swimmer, so she couldn’t possibly have drowned. And if she did somehow drown, where’s her body and why is her passport missing? 
When Toby, the gorgeous jerk who was with Izzy on the night she vanished, comes to Bottomrock to work as a lifeguard alongside Teddy, she can’t help but be suspicious. How many of her sister’s secrets does he hold? And how can Teddy unearth them—without falling for the boy who watched her sister disappear?
Told from Teddy’s point of view directly to Izzy, AFTER YOU VANISHED is a mystery that will have readers trying to piece together the secret life of a sister who’s gone.

E.A. Neeves grew up in New England, where she spent many summers lifeguarding at an idyllic lake, and occasionally catching snapping turtles. She enjoys tea, swimming, and board games that take entire evenings to play. When she’s not writing, she can usually be found spending time with her family at their (probably not haunted) home in Salem, MA. AFTER YOU VANISHED is her YA debut.

MAKE ME A LIAR de Melissa Landers

The detective story gets a fantastical twist in this novel about a girl with a transferrable consciousness, who uses her power for good, only to have it turned on her when someone uses her body to commit murder. Now she must solve the crime before the killer comes after her.

MAKE ME A LIAR
by Melissa Landers
Disney-Hyperion, December 2023
(via Kaplan/DeFiore Rights)

Caught red handed… for a crime she didn’t commit. Within the secret circles of Harvey Davis High School, everyone knows Tia Dante is worth her weight in hall passes. Using her genetic gift of transferable consciousness, she can slip inside your mind and do your dirty work—humiliate your cheating boyfriend, bring a bully to his knees, tell your boss where to stick it—and then return your body with no one the wiser. No task is too awkward, and unlike the competition, she takes care of business without peeking at your goods.
But while Tia is occupied during a routine payback mission, someone uses her body for a few dirty deeds of their own…like murdering the town prosecutor. With the crime caught on camera and no concrete alibi, Tia is forced to ask her infuriatingly gorgeous ex—Nash Brock–to help unravel the mystery. The heat is on, in more ways than one, and a few stray bullets later, Tia is in a frantic race against the clock to find the killer before they find her.

Melissa Landers is a former teacher who left the classroom to pursue other worlds. A proud sci-fi geek, she isn’t afraid to wear her Princess Leia costume in public—just ask her embarrassed kids. She lives outside Cincinnati in the small town of Milford Ohio, where she writes romantic space adventures for teens and the young at heart.

THE HOUSE GUEST de Hank Phillippi Ryan

Another diabolical cat-and-mouse thriller from USA Today bestselling author Hank Phillippi Ryan—but which character is the cat, and which character is the mouse?

THE HOUSE GUEST
by Hank Phillippi Ryan
Forge/Macmillan, February 2023
(via DeFiore and Company)

After every divorce, one spouse gets all the friends. What does the other one get? If they’re smart, they get the benefits. Alyssa Macallan is terrified when she’s dumped by her wealthy and powerful husband. With a devastating divorce looming, she begins to suspect her toxic and manipulative soon-to-be-ex is scheming to ruin her — leaving her alone and penniless. And when the FBI shows up at her door, Alyssa nows she really needs a friend.
And then she gets one. A seductive new friend, one who’s running from a dangerous relationship of her own. Alyssa offers Bree Lorrance the safety of her guest house, and the two become confidantes. Then — Bree makes a heart-stoppingly tempting offer. Maybe Alyssa and Bree can solve each others’ problems.
But no one is what they seem. And the fates and fortunes of these two women twist and turn until the shocking truth emerges: You can’t always get what you want. But sometimes you get what you deserve.

Hank Phillippi Ryan has won five Agatha Awards in addition to Anthony, Macavity, Daphne du Maurier, and Mary Higgins Clark Awards. As on-air investigative reporter for Boston’s WHDH-TV, she’s won 37 Emmys and many more journalism honors. A past president of National Sisters in Crime and a founder of MWA University, Ryan lives in Boston with her husband.

ADRIFT de Lisa Brideau

What if you lost everything about yourself—and it would kill you to find it? A galvanizing riddle that is just as unmooring as it seems, this sharp character-driven odyssey explores a future challenged by our quickly changing world and the choices we must make to save what matters most.

ADRIFT
by Lisa Brideau
Sourcebooks Landmark, May 2023

The truth doesn’t always set you free…
Ess wakes up alone on a sailboat in the remote Pacific Northwest with no memory of who she is or how she got there. She finds a note, but it’s more warning than comfort: Start over. Don’t make yourself known. Don’t look back.
Ess must have answers. She sails over a turbulent ocean to a town hundreds of miles away that, she hopes, might offer insight. The chilling clues she uncovers point to a desperate attempt at erasing her former life. But why? And someone is watching her…someone who knows she must never learn her truth.
In Ess’s world, the earth is precariously balanced at a climate tipping point, and she is perched at the edge of a choice: which life does she want? The one taken from her―and the dangerous secret that was buried―or the new one she can make for herself?

« It’s rare for a book to be a taut page-turning thriller and also be the kind of story that makes you think about the nature of self, but Lisa Brideau has managed to do just that. Full of apocalyptic tension, tempered by warm human connection, this is a book that will stay in my memory for life. » ― Marissa Levien, author of The World Gives Way

A former aerospace engineer, Lisa Brideau has a master’s in urban planning from the University of British Columbia and works at the intersection of municipal climate change policy and equity as a sustainability specialist. Recipient of a Canada Council for the Arts grant, Brideau lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.