Yesterday I requested a bunch of advance copies of books, many of which I hadn’t yet heard about. I wanted to share the list, just in case you hadn’t heard about them yet either.
The dates below are the release dates, and the copy is the publisher’s description of each.
PHANTOM INSTINCT
Meg Gardiner
June 26, 2014
When shots ring out in a crowded L.A. club, bartender Harper Flynn watches helplessly as her boyfriend, Drew, is gunned down in the cross fire. Then somebody throws a Molotov cocktail, and the club is quickly engulfed in flames. L.A. Sheriff Deputy Aiden Garrison sees a gunman in a hoodie and gas mask taking aim at Harper, but before he can help her a wall collapses, bringing the building down and badly injuring him.
A year later, Harper is trying to rebuild her life. She has quit her job and gone back to college. Meanwhile, the investigation into the shoot-out has been closed. The two gunmen were killed when the building collapsed.
Certain that a third gunman escaped and is targeting the survivors, Harper enlists the help of Aiden Garrison, the only person willing to listen. But the traumatic brain injury he suffered has cut his career short and left him with Fregoli syndrome, a rare type of face blindness that causes the delusion that random people are actually a single person changing disguises.
As Harper and Aiden delve into the case, Harper realizes that her presence during the attack was no coincidence—and that her only ally is unstable, mistrustful of her, and seeing the same enemy everywhere he looks.
SHOTS FIRED
CJ Box
July 15, 2014
Over the course of eighteen books, C. J. Box has been consistently hailed for his brilliant storytelling and extraordinary skills at creating character, suspense, and a deep sense of place. All of those strengths are in the ten riveting stories—three of them never before published—that make up Shots Fired.
In “One-Car Bridge,” one of four Joe Pickett stories, Pickett goes up against a “just plain mean” landowner, with disastrous results, and in “Shots Fired,” his investigation into the radio call referred to in the title nearly ends up being the last thing he ever does. In “Pirates of Yellowstone,” two Eastern European tough guys find out what it means to be strangers in a strange land, and in “Le Sauvage Noble,” the stranger is a Lakota in Paris who enjoys playing the “noble savage” for the French women—until he meets Sophie. Then he discovers what “savage” really means.
THE FORSAKEN
Ace Atkins
July 24, 2014
Thirty-six years ago, a nameless black man wandered into Jericho, Mississippi, with nothing but the clothes on his back and a pair of paratrooper boots. Less than two days later, he was accused of rape and murder, hunted down by a self-appointed posse, and lynched.
Now evidence has surfaced of his innocence, and county sheriff Quinn Colson sets out not only to identify the stranger’s remains, but to charge those responsible for the lynching. As he starts to uncover old lies and dirty secrets, though, he runs up against fierce opposition from those with the most to lose—and they can play dirty themselves.
Soon Colson will find himself accused of terrible crimes, and the worst part is, the accusations just might stick. As the two investigations come to a head, it is anybody’s guess who will prevail—or even come out of it alive.
THE HIDDEN GIRL
Louise Millar
August 19, 2014
This is the UK cover.
Hannah Riley and her musician husband, Will, hope that a move to the Suffolk countryside will promise a fresh start.
Hannah, a human rights worker, is desperate for a child and she hopes that this new life will realise her dream.
Yet when the snow comes, Will is working in London and Hannah is cut off in their remote village. Life in Tornley turns out to be far from idyllic, who are the threatening figures who lurk near their property at night? And why is her neighbour so keen to see them leave? Plus Will’s, behaviour is severely testing the bonds of her trust.
Hannah has spent her professional life doing the right thing for other people. But as she starts to unbury a terrible crime, she realises she can no longer do that without putting everything she’s ever wanted at risk.
But if she does nothing, the next victim could be her…
BROKEN MONSTERS
Lauren Beukes
September 16, 2014
A criminal mastermind creates violent tableaus in abandoned Detroit warehouses in Lauren Beukes’s new genre-bending novel of suspense.
A criminal mastermind creates violent tableaus in abandoned Detroit warehouses in Lauren Beukes’s new genre-bending novel of suspense.
Detective Gabriella Versado has seen a lot of bodies. But this one is unique even by Detroit’s standards: half boy, half deer, somehow fused together. As stranger and more disturbing bodies are discovered, how can the city hold on to a reality that is already tearing at its seams?
If you’re Detective Versado’s geeky teenage daughter, Layla, you commence a dangerous flirtation with a potential predator online. If you’re desperate freelance journalist Jonno, you do whatever it takes to get the exclusive on a horrific story. If you’re Thomas Keen, known on the street as TK, you’ll do what you can to keep your homeless family safe–and find the monster who is possessed by the dream of violently remaking the world.
COBRA
Deon Meyer
October 7, 2014
Celebrated as the “King of South African crime,” Deon Meyer is a world-class thriller writer, whose gripping plots probe the social and racial complexities of his native country. In his latest brilliant page turner, the bodies of three people are found at an exclusive guest house in the beautiful Franschhoek wine valley. Two of them were professional bodyguards, but the British citizen they were meant to be protecting is nowhere to be found; left behind are his brand new passport, new suitcase, and new clothes. And the spent shell cases bear a chilling engraving: the flaring head of a spitting cobra.
Meanwhile, in Cape Town, a skilled pickpocket is using his considerable talents to put his younger sister through school. But one day he is caught in the act. Security guards begin to question him, only to be killed with consummate ease by a stranger who leaves behind the distinctive shell cases.
With the help of his colleagues, Detective Benny Griessel rushes to untangle a case that only grows more complex. The British man’s passport turns out to be a fake, but the British consulate is decidedly unhelpful. And then the pickpocket’s sister is abducted. From Cape Town’s famous waterfront to a deadly showdown on a suburban train, Cobra hurtles towards a shocking finale-and someone may not make it out alive.
THE FINAL SILENCE
Stuart Neville
October 28, 2014
This is the UK cover.
Belfast, Northern Ireland: Rea Carlisle has inherited a house from an uncle she never knew. It doesn’t take her long to clear out the dead man’s remaining possessions, but one room remains stubbornly locked. When Rea finally forces it open, she discovers a chair, a table-and a leather-bound book, its pages filled with locks of hair, fingernails: a catalog of victims.
Horrified, Rea wants to go straight to the police but her family intervenes, fearing that scandal will mar her politician father’s public image. Rea turns to the only person she can think of: an old boyfriend, police inspector Jack Lennon. The disgraced detective may be the only person who can help her, but he has more than enough problems already. He is facing suspension from the force and his new supervisor, DCI Serena Flanagan, is the toughest cop he’s ever met. But a gruesome murder brings the dead man’s terrifying journal to the top of the Belfast police’s priority list.
THE FORGOTTEN GIRLS
Sara Blaedel
February 3, 2015
Yes, I’ve read this one already. But I’m including it here because you should read it too, and the e-galley is now available.
In a forest in Denmark, a ranger discovers the fresh corpse of an unidentified woman. A large scar on one side of her face should make the identification easy, but nobody has reported her missing. After four days, Louise Rick–the new commander of the Missing Persons Department–is still without answers. But when she releases a photo to the media, an older woman phones to say that she recognizes the woman as Lisemette, a child she once cared for in the state mental institution many years ago. Lisemette, like the other children in the institution, was abandoned by her family and branded a “forgotten girl.” But Louise soon discovers something more disturbing: Lisemette had a twin, and both girls were issued death certificates over 30 years ago. As the investigation brings Louise closer to her childhood home, she uncovers more crimes that were committed–and hidden–in the forest, and finds a terrible link to her own past that has been carefully concealed.
