When Hell’s Kitchen-born Private Investigator Fritz Malone witnesses an assassination on Thanksgiving and tries to chase down the killer, he never thought that his act of humanitarianism would lead him into a nightmare of complications. He gets hustled to the police station where he is informed by the new police commissioner that someone named “Nightmare” has been threatening New York City’s leaders for weeks with attacks on the citizenry, with eyes and ears everywhere, unless the city’s officials meet his tall demands. The need for secrecy is high — even the rest NYPD isn’t involved — so an outside guy is needed, which the new police commissioner sees in Malone. Racing against time, Malone uncovers the frustration of a killer who wears many masks, an investigation that takes him all over New York City, and gruesome secrets that emerge from both sides of the law.

Read a review of Speak of the Devil here.

Two men: one was destined to create England’s greatest detective, the other was to suffer misfortune and become a victim of racial injustice. Julian Barnes weaves a luscious historical fiction novel about the 1906 even that had Sir Arthur Conan Doyle come to the aid of George Edalji and defend him from false accusations of mutilating animals and writing obscene, threatening letters to his family. Barnes examines each man’s life with almost clinical precision, finally detailing the time when their paths, having come from two very different directions, finally crossed — all with restrained irony and fascinating prose. Arthur and George is an excellent examination of early 20th century English society and a fascinating character study of one of England’s most beloved authors.

The Father of Horror is back with his latest novel Cell, in which the end of the world comes about not through nuclear bombs or stray viruses, but rather through something called the Pulse, an electronic signal that is sent through all cell phones into whomever is using their cell phone at the time and turning them into mindless, blood thirsty zombies. Those lucky to escape the occurence are now left to suffer the aftereffects: planes falling from the sky, cars crashing, and, naturally, gangs of roving zombies hungry for human flesh. The so-called “normies” retreat to the grounds of Gaiten Academy, where the headmaster and his one remaining student may just have the secret weapon to combat this terror and save the rest of humanity.

After surviving attempts on his life in The Protege’s predecessor, The Chairman, Christian Gillete has risen in the corporate world to become Chairman of Everest Capital, a wildly successful company on the brink of taking over an ex-rival’s sinking ship and buying the NFL’s newest team, the Las Vegas Twenty-One’s. Only, disaster is starting to loom with Gillete’s young protege, David Wright, a man with a few skeletons in his closet, government spies wanting him to become involved in secret nanotechnology, and the mafia wanting to infiltrate his NFL franchise. To make matters worse, the events surrounding Christian’s father’s death in a plane crash 16 years ago are unclear. It’s a crowded plot, by author Stephen Frey holds The Protege together with deft skill and readers will be drawn in until the very last action-packed page.

Read a review of this book here.

In his debut effort, Tom Gabbay proves he has the espionage thriller chops with his novel The Berlin Conspiracy, centered around President John F. Kennedy’s historic visit to Berlin in 1963. Jack Teller is a former CIA operative who retired to a quiet South Florida community after the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco. However, how much can a CIA agent, even a former one, really stay away? For Teller, the answer is “not very long,” when his former mentor and boss Sam Clay informs him of a high-ranking East German officer with important information who will only speak to Teller. With no choice but to go, Jack goes to Berlin and stumbles across a nefarious plot to assassinate the president, and worse still, it originated within the US Governement.

The Finishing School is Michele Martinez’s second novel featuring feisty Federal prosecutor Melanie Vargas, freshly separated from her philandering husband and caring for her one-year-old daughter single-handedly. Melanie receives a middle-of-the night summons to a posh Park Avenue penthouse where two teenage girls, students at an exclusive Manhattan Finishing School, are found dead from heroin overdose, while another girl believed to have been with them, has gone missing. One of the girls was Whitney Seward, step-daughter to a wealthy and powerful U.S. Senator candidate, so the pressure is on Melanie by her ambitious, politically-scheming boss to solve the case quickly. But what Melanie uncovers goes far beyond a simple cut-and-dry case, involving sordid secrets, affairs, extortion, kidnapping, a handsome FBI Agent Melanie almost fell into bed with on a previous assignment, and a killer who has no intention of getting caught.

“C.S.I. has nothing on Michele Martinez. Brutally honest and addictive! THE FINISHING SCHOOL is a powerful novel that hits the mark.”
– Jennifer Vido

Odd Thomas, the man gifted with the ability to see and communicate with the dead, first introduced to readers in Dean Koontz’s 2003 novel of the same name, is back in Forever Odd, where the ghost of his best friend’s father, Dr. Wilbur Jessup, summons Odd to the Jessup home to discover Dr. Jessup’s body and his friend Danny, afflicted by brittle bones, nowhere to be found. Odd uses his gifts to trace the psychic trails left behind to find his endangered friend, but ends up becoming the prey himself when the beautiful and evil Datura wants to use Odd for his supernatural abilities and then kill him.

Long ago in ancient times, the Golden Capstone, placed on top of the Great Pyramid at Giza during a rare solar event called the Tartarus Rotation, would prevent the world from coming to destruction by worldwide flooding and solar scorching. However, according to the legend, whosoever accomplished the task would gain absolute power over the world for a thousand years, prompting Alexander the Great to break the Capstone into seven pieces and hide them in the Seven Wonders of the World. Now, in 2006, the event of the Tartarus Rotation is about to roll around again, and race is on for the nations of the world to find and assemble the Capstone in order to gain ultimate power, including the U.S., Europe and the Vatican, greedy terrorists, and a coalition of seven small nations who think that no single country ought to have power of that magnitude. This coalition assembles an eight-person team led by Australian Indiana Jones-type Jack West Jr. to not only find the seven Capstone pieces, but outwit their other contenders in the process.

Read a review of this book here.

In Got the Look, reader favorite Attorney Jack Swyteck finds himself falling in love with his new girlfriend Mia Salazar, only to find out she’s married. When Mia becomes the latest victim of a serial kidnapper who ransoms his victims off or kills them brutally, Jack’s caught between his sense of betrayal and his lingering feelings. What’s worse, Mia’s husband, who know about his wife’s affair, has no desire to pay off her ransom. It’s up to Jack, working with FBI agent Andie Henning, to discover the secrets behind Mia’s strange marriage and mysterious past, and rescue her from the clutches of a madman before it’s too late.

Read a review of Got the Look here.

Though this is McGarrity’s tenth Kevin Kerney novel, McGarrity shows no signs of slowing down. This time, smarmy rodeo star-turned executive film producer Johnny Jordan, a boyhood friend of Kerney, approaches him and offers him a lucrative offer to serve as a technical advisor on a contemporary western being shot on the Mexican border. Kerney agrees, thinking the vacation will be good for him, his wife Sara (a Lt. Colonel in the US Army), and their precocious three-year-old son Patrick, but when Sara is called to Ireland to track down a notorious gem smuggler and wartime deserter, Kevin is saddled with his child alone. Of course, things take a turn for the worse when a dead body is found on the border, and Kerney finds himself embroiled in a federal investigation along with Johnny Jordan’s troublesome behavior, all while his wife Sara finds herself at the center of a dangerous Pentagon plot.