THE SEARCHER
by Tana French
A spellbinding, propulsive new novel from the bestselling mystery writer who “is in a class by herself.” (The New York Times)
Cal Hooper thought a fixer-upper in a bucolic Irish village would be the perfect escape. After twenty-five years in the Chicago police force and a bruising divorce, he just wants to build a new life in a pretty spot with a good pub where nothing much happens. But when a local kid whose brother has gone missing arm-twists him into investigating, Cal uncovers layers of darkness beneath his picturesque retreat, and starts to realize that even small towns shelter dangerous secrets.
“One of the greatest crime novelists writing today” (Vox) weaves a masterful, atmospheric tale of suspense, asking what we sacrifice in our search for truth and justice, and what we risk if we don’t.
DEAR CHILD
by Romy Hausmann
“Chilling, original and mesmerizing.” ―David Baldacci
Bustle Best Books of Fall 2020
Publishers Weekly Top 10 Mysteries & Thrillers of Fall 2020
She Reads Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2020
A woman held captive finally escapes―but can she ever really get away?
Gone Girl meets Room in this page-turning, #1 internationally bestselling thriller from one of Germany’s hottest new talents
A windowless shack in the woods. A dash to safety. But when a woman finally escapes her captor, the end of the story is only the beginning of her nightmare.
She says her name is Lena. Lena, who disappeared without a trace 14 years prior. She fits the profile. She has the distinctive scar. But her family swears that she isn’t their Lena.
The little girl who escaped the woods with her knows things she isn’t sharing, and Lena’s devastated father is trying to piece together details that don’t quite fit. Lena is desperate to begin again, but something tells her that her tormentor still wants to get back what belongs to him…and that she may not be able to truly escape until the whole truth about what happened in the woods finally emerges.
Twisty, suspenseful, and psychologically clever, Romy Hausmann’s Dear Child is a captivating thriller with all the ingredients of a breakout hit.
THE DEVIL AND THE DARK WATER
by Stuart Turton
“[An] outstanding whodunit…Fans of impossible crime fiction won’t want to miss this one.”―Publishers Weekly, STARRED review
The extraordinary new thriller from Stuart Turton, author of the bestselling murder mystery The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, winner of the Costa Best First Novel Award.
A murder on the high seas. A remarkable detective duo. A demon who may or may not exist.
It’s 1634 and Samuel Pipps, the world’s greatest detective, is being transported to Amsterdam to be executed for a crime he may, or may not, have committed. Travelling with him is his loyal bodyguard, Arent Hayes, who is determined to prove his friend innocent.
But no sooner are they out to sea than devilry begins to blight the voyage. A twice-dead leper stalks the decks. Strange symbols appear on the sails. Livestock is slaughtered. Anyone could be to blame. Even a demon.
And then three passengers are marked for death, including Samuel.
With Pipps imprisoned, only Arent can solve a mystery that connects every passenger. A mystery that stretches back into their past and now threatens to sink the ship, killing everybody on board.
For fans of Steven King, The Devil and the Dark Water brings a chilling new spin to the Sherlock Holmes detective duo in a thriller of supernatural horror, occult suspicion, and paranormal mystery on the high seas.
CONFESSIONS ON THE 7:45
by Lisa Unger
“[A] taut, beautifully-written novel.” —Sarah Pekkanen, #1 New York Times bestselling author of An Anonymous Girl
From master of suspense Lisa Unger comes a riveting thriller about a chance encounter that unravels a stunning web of lies and deceit.
Be careful to whom you tell your darkest secrets…
Selena Murphy is commuting home from her job in the city when the train stalls out on the tracks. She strikes up a conversation with a beautiful stranger in the next seat, and their connection is fast and easy. The woman introduces herself as Martha and confesses that she’s been stuck in an affair with her boss. Selena, in turn, confesses that she suspects her husband is sleeping with the nanny. When the train arrives at Selena’s station, the two women part ways, presumably never to meet again.
But days later, Selena’s nanny disappears.
Soon Selena finds her once-perfect life upended. As she is pulled into the mystery of the missing nanny, and as the fractures in her marriage grow deeper, Selena begins to wonder, who was Martha really? But she is hardly prepared for what she’ll discover.
Expertly plotted and reminiscent of the timeless classic Strangers on a Train, Confessions on the 7:45 is a gripping thriller about the delicate facades we create around our lives.
STILL LIFE
by Val McDermid
Val McDermid is the award-winning, international bestselling author of more than thirty novels and has been hailed as Britain’s Queen of Crime. In Still Life, McDermid returns to her propulsive series featuring DCI Karen Pirie, who finds herself investigating the shadowy world of forgery, where things are never what they seem.
When a lobster fisherman discovers a dead body in Scotland’s Firth of Forth, Karen is called into investigate. She quickly discovers that the case will require untangling a complicated web―including a historic disappearance, art forgery, and secret identities―that seems to orbit around a painting copyist who can mimic anyone from Holbein to Hockney. Meanwhile, a traffic crash leads to the discovery of a skeleton in a suburban garage. Needless to say, Karen has her plate full. Meanwhile, the man responsible for the death of the love of her life is being released from prison, reopening old wounds just as she was getting back on her feet.
Tightly plotted and intensely gripping, Still Life is Val McDermid at her best, and new and longtime readers alike will delight in the latest addition to this superior series.
Still Hot in Mysteries & Thrillers
SECRETS OF WINTER
by Nicola Upson
A snowy Christmas gathering on an island off the Cornish coast goes murderously wrong in this festive Golden Age mystery.
December 1938, and storm clouds hover once again over Europe. Josephine Tey and Archie Penrose gather with friends for a Cornish Christmas, but two strange and brutal deaths on St. Michael’s Mount–and the unexpected arrival of a world famous film star, in need of sanctuary–interrupt the festivities. Cut off by the sea and a relentless blizzard, the hunt for a murderer begins.
Pivoting on a real moment in history, the ninth novel in the Josephine Tey series draws on all the much-loved conventions of the Golden Age Christmas mystery, while giving them the contemporary twist which has come to distinguish the books so far.
TROUBLED BLOOD
by Robert Galbraith
A breathtaking, labyrinthine epic, Troubled Blood is the fifth Strike and Robin novel and the most gripping and satisfying yet.
Private Detective Cormoran Strike is visiting his family in Cornwall when he is approached by a woman asking for help finding her mother, Margot Bamborough – who went missing in mysterious circumstances in 1974.
Strike has never tackled a cold case before, let alone one forty years old. But despite the slim chance of success, he is intrigued and takes it on; adding to the long list of cases that he and his partner in the agency, Robin Ellacott, are currently working on. And Robin herself is also juggling a messy divorce and unwanted male attention, as well as battling her own feelings about Strike.
As Strike and Robin investigate Margot’s disappearance, they come up against a fiendishly complex case with leads that include tarot cards, a psychopathic serial killer and witnesses who cannot all be trusted. And they learn that even cases decades old can prove to be deadly . . .
TOTAL POWER
by Kyle Mills
“Mills’s suspenseful, strikingly original sixth Mitch Rapp novel…is as riveting as anything penned by Mitch’s creator, Vince Flynn (1966–2013). Mills has really hit his stride with this franchise entry.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“One of the best thriller writers on the planet.” —The Real Book Spy
In the next thriller in the #1 New York Times bestselling Mitch Rapp series, it’s a race against the clock when ISIS takes out the entire US power grid and throws the country into chaos.
When Mitch Rapp captures ISIS’s top technology expert, he reveals that he was on his way to meet a man who claims to have the ability to bring down America’s power grid. Rapp is determined to eliminate this shadowy figure, but the CIA’s trap fails.
The Agency is still trying to determine what went wrong when ISIS operatives help this cyber terrorist do what he said he could—plunge the country into darkness. With no concept of how this unprecedented act was accomplished, the task of getting the power back on could take months. Perhaps even years.
Rapp and his team embark on a desperate search for the only people who know how to repair the damage—the ones responsible. But his operating environment is like nothing he’s experienced before. Computers and communication networks are down, fuel can no longer be pumped from gas stations, water and sanitation systems are on the brink of collapse, and the supply of food is running out.
Can Rapp get the lights back on before America descends irretrievably into chaos?
This compulsive thriller proves once again that the Mitch Rapp series is “the best of the best when it comes to the world of special ops” (Booklist, starred review).
ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE
by Louise Penny
INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
PARADE MAGAZINE – ONE OF FALL’S MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS
AN AMAZON BEST OF THE MONTH – SEPTEMBER
CRIMEREADS – ONE OF FALL’S MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS
AARP’S MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF FALL
The 16th novel by #1 bestselling author Louise Penny finds Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Quebec investigating a sinister plot in the City of Light
On their first night in Paris, the Gamaches gather as a family for a bistro dinner with Armand’s godfather, the billionaire Stephen Horowitz. Walking home together after the meal, they watch in horror as Stephen is knocked down and critically injured in what Gamache knows is no accident, but a deliberate attempt on the elderly man’s life.
When a strange key is found in Stephen’s possession it sends Armand, his wife Reine-Marie, and his former second-in-command at the Sûreté, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, from the top of the Tour d’Eiffel, to the bowels of the Paris Archives, from luxury hotels to odd, coded, works of art.
It sends them deep into the secrets Armand’s godfather has kept for decades.
A gruesome discovery in Stephen’s Paris apartment makes it clear the secrets are more rancid, the danger far greater and more imminent, than they realized.
Soon the whole family is caught up in a web of lies and deceit. In order to find the truth, Gamache will have to decide whether he can trust his friends, his colleagues, his instincts, his own past. His own family.
For even the City of Light casts long shadows. And in that darkness devils hide.