A Brand New Series From Nicci French

The stunning first book in a new series of psychological thrillers introducing an unforgettable London psychotherapist

Frieda Klein is a solitary, incisive psychotherapist who spends her sleepless nights walking along the ancient rivers that have been forced underground in modern London. She believes that the world is a messy, uncontrollable place, but what we can control is what is inside our heads. This attitude is reflected in her own life, which is an austere one of refuge, personal integrity, and order.

The abduction of five-year-old Matthew Farraday provokes a national outcry and a desperate police hunt. And when his face is splashed over the newspapers, Frieda cannot ignore the coincidence: one of her patients has been having dreams in which he has a hunger for a child. A red-haired child he can describe in perfect detail, a child the spitting image of Matthew. She finds herself in the center of the investigation, serving as the reluctant sidekick of the chief inspector.

Drawing readers into a haunting world in which the terrors of the mind have spilled over into real life, Blue Monday introduces a compelling protagonist and a chilling mystery that will appeal to readers of dark crime fiction.

Jackie says:
"I've always been a bit curious about the husband and wife writing team known at Nicci French, so when I learned that their latest book was the first in a new series, I snatched it up. The series spotlights psychotherapist Frieda Klein--a woman with more than few quirks--and her practice. This first one involves a patient she reluctantly took over after a colleague's nervous breakdown. She begins to suspect that her new client may have something to do with a missing little boy, and reluctantly speaks to the police about it, stirring up a major storm that blows in all sorts of unexpected things. While I felt that there were a couple of unsupported leaps in the story line, I still found it an absorbing thriller that ends in a very, very interesting way."

Gardner Is Bringing All Your Favorite Characters Back To Solve This Mystery

In four days, someone is going to kill me . . .

Detective D. D. Warren is hard to surprise. But a lone woman outside D.D.'s latest crime scene shocks her with a remarkable proposition: Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant believes she will be murdered in four days. And she wants Boston's top detective to handle the death investigation.

It will be up close and personal. No evidence of forced entry, no sign of struggle.

Charlie tells a chilling story: Each year at 8:00 p.m. on January 21st, a woman has died. The victims have been childhood best friends from a small town in New Hampshire; the motive remains unknown. Now only one friend, Charlie, remains to count down her final hours.

But as D.D. quickly learns, Charlie Grant doesn't plan on going down without a fight. By her own admission, the girl can outshoot, outfight, and outrun anyone in Boston. Which begs the question, is Charlie the next victim, or the perfect perpetrator? As D.D. tracks a vigilante gunman who is killing pedophiles in Boston, she must also delve into the murders of Charlie's friends, racing to find answers before the next gruesome January 21 anniversary. Is Charlie truly in danger, or is she hiding a secret that may turn out to be the biggest threat of all?

In four days, someone is going to kill me. But the son of a bitch has gotta catch me first. 

Jackie says:
"The thing about Lisa Gardner books is that they catch you from the very first paragraph and don't let you go.  That's why I started this on a weekend so I wouldn't have to read this book in pieces.  This concerns Charlene, 'Charlie', who is preparing to die.  Two years ago on Jan 21, one of her best friends was strangled in her home.  There were no defensive wounds.  Last year, Charlie's other best friend was killed, 1000 miles away, in the exact same way.  Charlie figures that this year is HER year to die since the three of them had been a constant fixture in each others' life since the age of 8.  But she's not going to go without a fight.  She moves to Boston, far away from anyone she knows, and she trains, and trains, and trains.  She even contacts D.D. Warren, Boston's top homicide cop, to explain what are likely to be the circumstances of her (Charlie's) death should she not win her fight.  Warren's already plenty busy--it seems someone has become a vigilante and is executing child predators.  But then, the cases begin to have some similarities, especially after a traumatized 7 year old tells Warren what he saw after he was abducted from the public library.  The tension is intense in this novel, and the ending breath taking.  I wouldn't have expected anything less from Gardner."

Special note:  Though this book utilizes many reoccurring Gardner characters, it reads very well as a stand alone.

Lisa, Our Resident C.J. Box Expert, Says This Book "will keep readers turning pages until the last one when they can finally let go and breathe again."

Back of Beyond

The Edgar® Awardwinning and New York Times bestselling author delivers a thriller about a troubled cop trying to save his son from a killer in Yellowstone. Cody Hoyt, while a brilliant cop, is an alcoholic struggling with two months of sobriety when his mentor and AA sponsor Hank Winters is found burned to death in a remote mountain cabin. At first it looks like the suicide of a man who’s fallen off the wagon, but Cody knows Hank better than that. Sober for fourteen years, Hank took pride in his hard-won sobriety and never hesitated to drop whatever he was doing to talk Cody off a ledge. When Cody takes a closer look at the scene of his friend’s death, it becomes apparent that foul play is at hand. After years of bad behavior with his department, he’s in no position to be investigating a homicide, but this man was a friend and Cody’s determined to find his killer.


When clues found at the scene link the murderer to an outfitter leading tourists on a multi-day wilderness horseback trip into the remote corners of Yellowstone National Park—a pack trip that includes his son Justin—Cody is desperate to get on their trail and stop the killer before the group heads into the wild. Among the tourists is fourteen-year-old Gracie Sullivan, an awkward but intelligent loner who begins to suspect that someone in their party is dangerous.

In a fatal cat and mouse game, where it becomes apparent the murderer is somehow aware of Cody’s every move, Cody treks into the wilderness to stop a killer hell bent on ruining the only thing in his life he cares about.

Read the BookGeek interview with the author.

Lisa says:

"Cody Hoyt is a rogue cop that readers first met in ThreeWeeks to Say Goodbye, and he left Denver at the end of that story.  Now, in Box’s newest thriller Back of Beyond, Hoyt is back home in Montana, where the Lewis and Clark Co. Sheriff’s Dept. has grudgingly hired him.

Hoyt drinks too much, chain smokes, makes snap decisions that don’t serve him well (like shooting the coroner), but he tries. He loves his son and wants to be closer, but due to his alcoholism his ex-wife isn’t real keen on getting drunken calls or visits. His partner, Larry, doesn’t like him, trust him or want to work with him. And to top it off – someone has murdered the only person who had befriended him and supported him – his AA sponsor.

After the murders start stacking up and lead him to a pack trip heading into Yellowstone – the one his son, Justin, is on with his ex’s boyfriend, Hoyt spins out of control and the wild ride into Yellowstone Park begins. Hoyt can barely keep his addictions at bay, let alone ride a horse into the wilderness. Readers will find they, too, are holding on tightly as the story twists, turns and bucks them from one dangerous scene to the next.

Box lets readers know that each person has come on the trip for a reason. There’s a dad trying to connect with his two daughters, one who loves nature and the other who loves cell phones, Hoyt’s son, Justin, and “Mr. Richness” who is hoping to gain the teen’s approval, the Wall Street guys seeking a City Slickers fantasy, the estranged couple, a mysterious single woman and the loner. They just don’t know that there’s a murderer among them.

Box writes of Yellowstone’s beauty and deadly features honestly because he’s been there so many times as a guide. He’s probably done more than 80 trips with a variety of nature enthusiasts, fly fishermen and greenhorns. This is exactly why his all of his books ring true. He writes what he knows. He creates a believable cast of characters that are as real as your next door neighbor. Back of Beyond will keep readers turning pages until the last one when they can finally let go and breathe again."

Some Questions Are Better Left Unanswered

All her life, Sara Gallagher has wondered about her birth parents. As an adopted child with two sisters who were born naturally to her parents, Sara did not have an ideal home life. The question of why she was given up for adoption has always haunted her. Finally, she is ready to take steps and to find closure. 

But some questions are better left unanswered. 

After months of research, Sara locates her birth mother---only to be met with horror and rejection. Then she discovers the devastating truth: Her mother was the only victim ever to escape a killer who has been hunting women every summer for decades. But Sara soon realizes the only thing worse than finding out about her father is him finding out about her.

What if murder is in your blood? 

Never Knowing is a complex and compelling portrayal of one woman’s quest to understand herself, her origins, and her family. That is, if she can survive. . . .

Jackie says:
"Chevy Stevens, the author Still Missing, once again delivers a huge dose of adrenaline via the written word.  Sara has always known that she's adopted--her father's treatment of her reminded her each and every day.  She'd thought, on and off, about researching her biological parents, but didn't act on it until a few months before her wedding.  She hired a private investigator who soon turned up her mother's name.  When Sara called the woman, she tersely denied ever having a daughter.  But that was a lie, one protecting 30+ years of pain, shame and terror.  Because it turns out that Sara is a child of rape--in fact the woman who gave birth to her was the only person to survive an attack by a famous serial killer, one who is still on the loose.

Somehow, the media gets a hold of the information, and soon there is a circus of attention around Sara--a circus that her biological father notices.  He begins to contact her, wanting a relationship...in fact, demanding one.  Very much against her adoptive family's wishes, Sara begins to work with the Canadian version of the FBI to catch her infamous father.  But at what cost?

This is a thrill ride of a book, once again delving deep into psychology (once again, Steven's tells the story through a series of therapy sessions between Sara and her doctor), not the least of which deals with Sara trying to figure out if she has inherited the ability to be a killer.  This book has plenty of action and plot twists and turns, right down to the last pages.  It's an amazing read that will be difficult to forget."

Will Lavender is Creating A New Genre, "Puzzle Thrillers," and Jackie's Completely On Board and Loving It

Dominance

THE PROCEDURE HAS BEGUN . . . 

Fifteen years earlier. Jasper College is buzzing with the news that famed literature professor Richard Aldiss will be teaching a special night class called Unraveling a Literary Mystery—from a video feed in his prison cell. In 1982, Aldiss was convicted of the murders of two female grad students; the women were killed with axe blows and their bodies decorated with the novels of notoriously reclusive author Paul Fallows. Even the most obsessive Fallows scholars have never seen him. He is like a ghost. Aldiss entreats the students of his night class to solve the Fallows riddle once and for all. The author’s two published novels, The Coil and The Golden Silence, are considered maps to finding Fallows’s true identity. And the only way in is to master them through a game called the Procedure. You may not know when the game has begun, but when you receive an invitation to play, it is an invitation to join the elite ranks of Fallows scholars. Failure, in these circles, is a fate worse than death. Soon, members of the night class will be invited to play along . . .

Present day. Harvard professor Alex Shipley made her name as a member of Aldiss’s night class. She not only exposed the truth of Paul Fallows’s identity, but in the process uncovered information that acquitted Aldiss of the heinous 1982 crimes. But when one of her fellow night class alums is murdered— the body chopped up with an axe and surrounded by Fallows novels—can she use what she knows about Fallows and the Procedure to stop a killer before each of her former classmates is picked off, one by one?

Read a great blog posting from the author about writing this book.

Jackie says:

"Will Lavender is inventing his own genre--'puzzle thrillers,' which his website describes as 'novels that are not quite mysteries and not quite thrillers but incorporate elements of both'.  Whatever else they may be, they are tantalizing reads to a mystery buff and book lover such as myself.

Dominance jumps back and forth between 1994 and the present day, following nine very special literature students and their highly controversial professor.  The students were handpicked and Richard Aldiss, the professor, was teaching via a video feed from prison, where he was serving a sentence for the murder of two grad students in the last class he taught.  He's an expert in an elusive author, Paul Fellows, who is a mystery in and of himself as he had only written two (possibly three) books of cultishly fascinating literature.  This new class was charged with solving the literary mystery of just who this author was.  To do so, they had to learn to play The Procedure, developed from Fellow's book, and cryptically mysterious.  Startling things happen during the course of the class, making one student very famous in the literary world.

Flash forward to the present day when the class is called together because of the suicide (or was it?) of one of their own.  Strange things begin as the old friends meet each other again, and begin to die one by one.

This is a gloriously frustrating book to puzzle through as you are given clues from two different mysteries nearly two decades apart but very much having to do with each other.  The deeper into the book you get, the faster the clues come until there is just NO way you can put it down until the last page is turned.  And even then...well, read it and see."