The Bottom Line: A psychic thriller that ranks among King’s best. Stephen King’s latest thriller The Institute is in no way a sequel to Dr. Sleep (which itself was a sequel to The Shining), but thematically speaking, it’s a close cousin. As in Dr. Sleep, villains with terrifying psychic powers are hell bent on leveraging […]
The Bottom Line: A mesmerizing medical thriller about the consequences of humanity’s quest for immortality. In Matthew Mather’s The Dreaming Tree, Royce Lowell-Vandeweghe wakes up after a nearly fatal car crash to find that his mind has been transferred into a new body. Suffice to say his recover is “complicated,” with side effects that include […]
The Bottom Line: A believable thriller about the lengths to which parents will go to protect their children. You’d never know by looking at her, but drug addict Paige Green is the daughter of a Wall Street financial adviser and a pediatrician. When her father, Simon, spots her playing guitar and panhandling in Central Park, […]
The Bottom Line: Big Little Lies meets The Big Chill. A thoroughly engaging whodunnit. Ah, reunions. They are always filled with both anticipation and dread. But in Claire McGowan’s new novel, the 20th anniversary get together of six college friends is also a deadly one. Host Ali finally has the life she always wanted: a career […]
The Bottom Line: A haunting psychological thriller that will stick with you long past the final chapter. Wyoming high school senior Branson Kovac hears voices. Sometimes, he sees entities that he calls “the shadow people” carry out violent acts. And sometimes, they kill people. Including his mother. Told in alternating points of view, A Divided […]
The Bottom Line: The Russians are back in this full-throttle revenge thriller. Brad Thor proves that even after 19 entries, his Scot Harvath series still has plenty of fuel left in the tank. The cliffhanger ending in Brad Thor’s previous Scot Horvath entry, Spymaster, made Backlash one of the year’s most hotly anticipated books. The […]
The Bottom Line: Get in on the ground floor of this engrossing small-town crime thriller. Highly recommended for fans of C.J. Box and Craig Johnson. In B.D. Smith’s second Detective Douglas Bateman series novel, Bateman is called to investigate multiple axe murders in northern Maine. Bateman, who serves with Maine’s Major Crimes Unit, soon discovers […]
The Bottom Line: An exciting, fresh new voice delivers a thoughtful crime thriller. Perfect for fans of Jessica Knoll and Liane Moriarty. By his own admission, 38-year-old Finnian Carroll doesn’t have much to live for. He still lives at home, though his parents are long dead. He survived suicide and is depressed enough to give […]
The Bottom Line: A thriller about greed, gluttony and murder that is destined for the big screen. The promise of inheritance has divided families since the beginning of time, and from time to time has ended in murder. But novelist Jill Hand’s White Oaks has introduced an ingenious new twist on the time-old tale, as […]
The Bottom Line: A blend of non-fiction and fiction that works on many levels. Alice Sandoval’s The New Holy Warriors adds a potent new layer to the canon of post-9/11 political thriller literature. The primary story begins on September 13, 2001, as Dr. Rodrigo Bravo and his wife Sally, both Doctors Without Borders volunteers vanish […]
