From The Booking Desk:

It looks like it’s going to be a winter week for much of the U.S., so the timing is right for some great book. Three very different novels this week; something that will appeal to everyone.

Gregg Hurwitz – Out of the Dark (Minotaur, Hardcover, $27.99, 01/29/2019)

BOLO Books Comments: 

Evan Smoak has quickly become an iconic character in the crime fiction world, but there are still many facets of this fascinating man readers need to learn. After the excellent debut, Out of the Dark is my favorite Orphan X novel – one fueled by pure adrenaline and with stakes that even the most jaded reader can appreciate. Pitting two operatives from opposite ends of the program’s timeline against each other proves to provide a thrilling ride, with risk at every turn.

Jacket Copy (Publisher’s Description):

Taken from a group home at age twelve, Evan Smoak was raised and trained as part of the Orphan Program, an off-the-books operation designed to create deniable intelligence assets―i.e. assassins. Evan was Orphan X. He broke with the Program, using everything he learned to disappear and reinvent himself as the Nowhere Man, a man who helps the truly desperate when no one else can. But now Evan’s past is catching up to him.

Someone at the very highest level of government has been trying to eliminate every trace of the Orphan Program by killing all the remaining Orphans and their trainers. After Evan’s mentor and the only father he ever knew was killed, he decided to strike back. His target is the man who started the Program and who is now the most heavily guarded person in the world: the President of the United States.

But President Bennett knows that Orphan X is after him and, using weapons of his own, he’s decided to counter-attack. Bennett activates the one man who has the skills and experience to track down and take out Orphan X―the first recruit of the Program, Orphan A.

With Evan devoting all his skills, resources, and intelligence to find a way through the layers of security that surround the President, suddenly he also has to protect himself against the deadliest of opponents. It’s Orphan vs. Orphan with the future of the country―even the world―on the line.

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Sherry Harris – The Gun Also Rises (Kensington, Paperback, $7.00, 01/29/2019)

BOLO Books Comments:

Anyone who has ever hosted (or attended) a garage sale knows that you never know what you are going to find, which is why it was such an inspired choice for a cozy crime series. Book lovers, in particular, will relish Sherry Harris’s latest, in which Sarah Winston offers to help an elderly client sell her mystery book collection, only to stumble into a real mystery from the past. The research into Hemingway’s missing manuscripts is well done and Harris does an excellent job of weaving her own mystery plot through the threads of the historical tidbit.

Jacket Copy (Publisher’s Description):

TO RECOVER A PRICELESS MANUSCRIPT . . .

A wealthy widow has asked Sarah Winston to sell her massive collection of mysteries through her garage sale business. While sorting through piles of books stashed in the woman’s attic, Sarah is amazed to discover a case of lost Hemingway stories, stolen from a train in Paris back in 1922. How did they end up in Belle Winthrop Granville’s attic in Ellington, Massachusetts, almost one hundred years later?

WILL SARAH HAVE TO PAY WITH HER LIFE?

Before Sarah can get any answers, Belle is assaulted, the case is stolen, a maid is killed, and Sarah herself is dodging bullets. And when rumors spread that Belle has a limited edition of The Sun Also Rises in her house, Sarah is soon mixed up with a mobster, the fanatical League of Literary Treasure Hunters, and a hard-to-read rare book dealer. With someone willing to kill for the Hemingway, Sarah has to race to catch the culprit—or the bell may toll for her . . .

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Brian Freeman – The Crooked Street (Thomas & Mercer, Hardcover, $24.95, 01/29/2019)

BOLO Books Comments:

Brian Freeman is one of the under-the-radar stars of the crime fiction community. More people should be reading this man’s books! In this third in his Frost Easton series, Frost is on the trail of a possible serial killer – one who leaves graffiti snakes painted around the scenes of the crime – but things are always more complicated than they seem. Freeman keeps readers on their toes with a huge cast of characters (and a cat), a twisting plot-line that rarely goes where expected, and an ending that provides shocks on multiple levels. Don’t miss it.

Jacket Copy (Publisher’s Description):

The hunt for a killer in San Francisco becomes a dizzying game of cat and mouse in a thrilling novel of psychological suspense.

“Lombard is your Moriarty, Frost. Taking him down will be the most dangerous thing you’ve ever done.”

San Francisco homicide detective Frost Easton hadn’t seen his estranged friend Denny in years. Not until he dies in Frost’s arms uttering a final inexplicable word: Lombard. Denny appears to be the latest victim in a string of murders linked by a distinctive clue: the painting of a spiraled snake near the crime scenes. Is it the work of a serial killer? Or is Denny’s death more twisted and personal?

To find the answer, Frost reaches into a nest of vipers—San Francisco’s shady elite—where the whispered name of Lombard is just one secret. Now, drawn into a cat-and-mouse game with an enemy who knows his every move, Frost finds there is no one he can trust. And somewhere down the crooked streets of the city, Frost’s cunning adversary is coiled and ready to strike again.