Michelle Rao

The Ninth House, One of the Year’s Best Thrillers

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The Bottom Line: Buzzworthy. The Ninth House is a truly magical take on the secret society thriller. Yale’s freshman class may look homogenous, but there’s at least one outlier within: Galaxy “Alex” Stern. Alex has survived attempted murder, loser boyfriends and a hippie upbringing. Lightning strikes when she receives a full ride to Yale. But nothing in life is free, and Alex’s sponsors ask her to […]

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The Secrets We Kept, an Electrifying Spy Novel by Lara Prescott

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The Bottom Line: Did the world need another spy novel pitting the CIA against Russia? The answer is a resounding yes. Part historical fiction, part spy fiction, Prescott’s highly original novel begins in 1956 as Pasternak Boris is writing his future masterpiece, Doctor Zhivago. The Kremlin decides to ban it. The CIA has other plans. Why not use the subversive novel to create civil unrest in the

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Bionic Bug, One of the Year’s Best Thrillers

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The Bottom Line: A funny, vibrant, high-tech detective novel. One of the year’s best thrillers. Set nearly a decade in the future, Bionic Bug begins as struggling private investigator Lara Kingsley and her partner and best friend, Sully, are hanging out at their favorite local haunt. Lara notices something odd about his appearance, but he doesn’t want to talk about it. Days later, the pair

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Recursion, a Spectacular Sci-Fi Thriller by Blake Crouch

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The Bottom Line: The author of Wayward Pines and Dark Matter delivers yet again, establishing Blake Crouch among the 21st Century’s elite authors. There aren’t many authors who can deliver a jaw-dropping reveal like Blake Crouch, and the surprises in Recursion proves that he’s still writing at the top of his game. If you haven’t yet read Crouch, or seen the TV series based on his

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See No More, One of the Year’s Best Thrillers

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The Bottom Line: See No More is a near-perfect blend of sci-fi and spy fiction. One of the year’s best thrillers. Twenty-five years after her father left the family, therapist Kate Randolph is enjoying a happy, stable life, until a phone call announcing the death of Jeffrey Randolph rocks her world. Kate has searched for the scientist without success over the years, going so far as

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The Disappeared, an Evocative Thriller by Sibel Hodge

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The Bottom Line: Lush and evocative. The perfect introduction to Sibel Hodge, one of the decade’s most dynamic literary talents. Set in the fictional West African country of Narumbe (you thought I was going to say Wakanda, didn’t you?), author Sibel Hodge delivers a taut thriller that could be a bonafide blockbuster. While Hodge commits the cardinal sin of calling her own book “gripping” (check the

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Desperate Paths, a First-Rate Crime Thriller by E.C. Diskin

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The Bottom Line: A masterfully crafted murder mystery that spins a small town’s dark secrets about family, faith and racial tensions into pure gold. Within a week of returning to her hometown to care for her father, struggling actress Brooklyn Anderson finds herself at the epicenter of two brutal crimes. Just hours before her arrival, an unknown assailant shoots A-list actor and Eden native Darius

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Shadowspell Academy: The Culling Trials, by Shannon Mayer and K.F. Breene

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The Bottom Line: Harry Potter meets The Hunger Games. Sadly, there’s no audiobook version, so fans will have to devour this book the old fashioned way. We’re not in Texas anymore, Bluebell. In the opening chapter of Shadowspell Academy, the compelling farm girl known as Wild says, “My family got kicked more often than most.” That turns out to be the understatement of the year.

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The Rescue, a Superb Conspiracy Thriller by Steven Konkoly

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The Bottom Line: Taken meets Patriot Games. Highly recommended. The first entry in Steven Konkoly’s new Ryan Decker series is a perfect choice for fans of Mark Greaney, Tom Clancy and Brad Taylor. Decker, an ex-CIA operative turned mercenary, specializes in rescuing kidnap victims. Hired by an influential US senator to liberate her daughter from a human-trafficking ring, Decker never anticipated sabotage or that the

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Project Purple, a Dystopian Page-Turner by Michael Greco

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The Bottom Line: The Hunger Games meets Survivor. Equal parts dystopian thriller and satire, Project Purple is a truly memorable page-turner. For a tidy sum of cash as well as the promise of bonuses and fame, 13 wildly diverse people agree to recreate a colonial experience as it was in the early 1600s, and have the entirety of their experience broadcast worldwide. The colonists in

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