From The Booking Desk:
This is one of those epic book weeks where you definitely want to make your way to your favorite bookshop. So many great books – three I have already reviewed and two others that I will be reviewing soon. Buy any one of them – or all of them – you won’t be sorry!
Jane Harper – The Lost Man (Flatiron, Hardcover, $27.99, 02/05/2019)
BOLO Books Comments:
Jane Harper has risen to must-read status very quickly and she just keeps getting better. This stand-alone may just be her best book yet. Read the spoiler-free BOLO Books review of The Lost Man for more of my thoughts.
I will have the pleasure of seeing Jane Harper live this Sunday in DC, so I am sure I will have a recap post about that sometime next week.
Jacket Copy (Publisher’s Description):
Brothers Nathan and Bub Bright meet for the first time in months at the remote fence line separating their cattle ranches in the lonely outback.
Their third brother, Cameron, lies dead at their feet.
In an isolated belt of Australia, their homes a three-hour drive apart, the brothers were one another’s nearest neighbors. Cameron was the middle child, the one who ran the family homestead. But something made him head out alone under the unrelenting sun.
Nathan, Bub and Nathan’s son return to Cameron’s ranch and to those left behind by his passing: his wife, his daughters, and his mother, as well as their long-time employee and two recently hired seasonal workers.
While they grieve Cameron’s loss, suspicion starts to take hold, and Nathan is forced to examine secrets the family would rather leave in the past. Because if someone forced Cameron to his death, the isolation of the outback leaves few suspects.
A powerful and brutal story of suspense set against a formidable landscape, The Lost Man confirms Jane Harper, author of The Dry and Force of Nature, is one of the best new voices in writing today.
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Alex Michaelides – The Silent Patient (Celadon, Hardcover, $26.99, 02/05/2019)
BOLO Books Comments:
I love debut novels because you just never know what you are going to experience. From the spoiler-free BOLO Books review of The Silent Patient, you can tell this is an unusual novel that is very difficult to describe, but rest assured, this is sure to be one of the most talked about books this season.
Jacket Copy (Publisher’s Description):
Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word.
Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London.
Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations―a search for the truth that threatens to consume him….
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Laura Benedict – The Stranger Inside (Mulholland, Hardcover, $27.00, 02/05/2019)
BOLO Books Comments:
Laura Benedict has been writing really strong books for years now, but her new stand-alone seems poised to be her breakout novel. Deservedly so. You can tell from the spoiler-free BOLO Books review of The Stranger Inside, that I really enjoyed this twisted tale.
Jacket Copy (Publisher’s Description):
There’s a stranger living in Kimber Hannon’s house. He tells the police that he has every right to be there, and he has the paperwork to prove it. But Kimber definitely didn’t invite this man to move in. He tells her that he knows something about her, and he wants everyone else to know it too.
“I was there. I saw what you did.”
These words reveal a connection to Kimber’s distant past, and dark secrets she’d long ago left buried. This trespasser isn’t after anything as simple as her money or her charming Craftsman bungalow. He wants to move into her carefully orchestrated life–and destroy it.
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Lars Kepler – Stalker (Knopf, Hardcover, $27.95, 02/05/2019)
BOLO Books Comments:
The husband and wife team that is Lars Kepler write some of the most psychologically interesting novels coming out of the Scandinavian crime fiction tradition. While they write a series, the books can be read as stand-alone novels, so if you have not yet given their writing a try, this might be a good place to start.
Jacket Copy (Publisher’s Description):
The Swedish National Crime Unit receives a video of a young woman in her home, clearly unaware that she’s being watched. Soon after the tape is received, the woman’s body is found horrifically mutilated. With the arrival of the next, similar video, the police understand that the killer is toying with them, warning of a new victim, knowing there’s nothing they can do. Detective Margot Silverman is put in charge of the investigation, and soon asks Detective Joona Linna for help. Linna, in turn, recruits Erik Maria Bark, the hypnotist and expert in trauma, with whom Linna’s worked before. Bark is leery of forcing people to give up their secrets. But this time, Bark is the one hiding things.
Years before, he had put a man away for an eerily similar crime, and now he’s beginning to think that an innocent man may be behind bars–and a serial killer still on the loose. . .
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C. J. Tudor – The Hiding Place (Crown, Hardcover, $27.00, 02/05/2019)
BOLO Books Comments:
C. J. Tudor’s debut was almost universally acclaimed. The BOLO Books review of The Chalk Man will give you a sense of what made that book resonate with readers. I am looking forward to diving in this new stand-alone from her just as soon as I can get my hands on a copy.
Jacket Copy (Publisher’s Description):
Joe never wanted to come back to Arnhill. After the way things ended with his old gang–the betrayal, the suicide, the murder–and after what happened when his sister went missing, the last thing he wanted to do was return to his hometown. But Joe doesn’t have a choice. Because judging by what was done to that poor Morton kid, what happened all those years ago to Joe’s sister is happening again. And only Joe knows who is really at fault.
Lying his way into a teaching job at his former high school is the easy part. Facing off with former friends who are none too happy to have him back in town–while avoiding the enemies he’s made in the years since–is tougher. But the hardest part of all will be returning to that abandoned mine where it all went wrong and his life changed forever, and finally confronting the shocking, horrifying truth about Arnhill, his sister, and himself. Because for Joe, the worst moment of his life wasn’t the day his sister went missing.
It was the day she came back.
With the same virtuosic command of character and pacing she displayed in The Chalk Man, C. J. Tudor has once again crafted an extraordinary novel that brilliantly blends harrowing psychological suspense, a devilishly puzzling mystery, and enough shocks and thrills to satisfy even the most seasoned reader.
