New Fiction in October 2022

While filming on location in scenic Santa Barbara, California, Peter Barrington and Ben Bacchetti look to expand Centurion Studios's business by making a deal with a young Croatian billionaire. But when the magnate’s wife is kidnapped, Teddy Fay is brought in to assess the threat and recover the young woman. As Teddy unravels the threads of her disappearance, he quickly comes to find that darker forces are at play and an old vendetta has been revived that puts them all at risk. Meanwhile, danger lurks even nearer to home as an obsessive fan with perilous intentions weasels his way onto the film set, and only Teddy can stop him from getting too close for comfort.

In the midst of World War II, an English musician, Norah Chambers, places her eight-year-old daughter Sally on a ship leaving Singapore, desperate to keep her safe from the Japanese army as they move down through the Pacific. Norah remains to care for her husband and elderly parents, knowing she may never see her child again.

1992. All across the United States respectable, upstanding citizens are showing up dead. These deaths could be accidents, and they don’t appear to be connected—until a fatal fall from a high-floor window attracts some unexpected attention. That attention comes from the secretary of defense. All of a sudden he wants an interagency task force to investigate. And he wants Jack Reacher as the army’s representative. If Reacher gets a result, great. If not, he’s a convenient fall guy.

Sasha has had it. She cannot bring herself to respond to another inane, "urgent" (but obviously not at all urgent) email or participate in the corporate employee joyfulness program. She hasn't seen her friends in months. Sex? Seems like a lot of effort.Even cooking dinner takes far too much planning. Sasha has hit a wall. Armed with good intentions to drink kale smoothies, try yoga, and find peace, she heads to the seaside resort she loved as a child. But it's the off season, the hotel is in a dilapidated shambles, and she has to share the beach with the only other occupant: a grumpy guy named Finn, who seems as stressed as Sasha. How can she commune with nature when he's sitting on her favorite rock, watching her? Nor can they agree on how best to alleviate their burnout (Sasha: manifesting, wild swimming; Finn: drinking whisky, getting pizza delivered to the beach). When curious messages, seemingly addressed to Sasha and Finn, begin to appear on the beach, the two are forced to talk-about everything. How did they get so burned out? Can either of them remember something they used to love? (Answer: surfing!) And the question they try and fail to ignore: what does the energy between them-flaring even in the face of their bone-deep exhaustion-signify?

This latest installment of the beloved No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series finds Botswana's premier detective agency as busy as ever, with no shortage of sensitive situations requiring Mma Ramotswe's keen eye and discerning input. Through it all, Mma Ramotswe will demonstrate that there are solutions to all manner of difficulties, there to be discovered as long as one is led by kindness, grace, and logic, and can rely on the wise counsel of close friends and loved ones. Sometimes, she reminds us, the best solutions to life's problems can be found with a bit of good humor, generosity of spirit, and a steaming cup of red bush tea.

From the internationally best-selling author, a twisted, multi-layered spin on the classic horror novel In the wake of his parents' tragic deaths in a house fire, fourteen-year-old Richard Elauved has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle in the remote, insular town of Ballantyne. Richard quickly earns a reputation as an outcast, and when a classmate named Tom goes missing, everyone suspects the new, angry boy is responsible for his disappearance. No one believes him when he says the telephone boothout by the edge of the woods sucked Tom into the receiver like something out of a horror movie. No one, that is, except Karen, a beguiling fellow outsider who encourages Richard to pursue clues the police refuse to investigate. He traces the number that Tom prank called from the phone booth to an abandoned house in the Black Mirror Wood. There he catches a glimpse of a terrifying face in the window. And then the voices begin to whisper in his ear... You know who I am. She's going to burn. The one you loveis going to burn. There's not a thing you can do about it. When another classmate disappears, Richard must find a way to prove his innocence-and preserve his sanity-as he grapples with the dark magic that is possessing Ballantyne and pursuing his destruction. Then again, Richard may not be the most reliable narrator of his own story.

Alex Sand was spending the evening at home playing basketball with his two young sons when all three were shot in cold blood. A wealthy federal judge, there’s no short list of people who could have a vendetta against Sands, but the gruesome murders, especially that of his children, turn their St. Paul community on its head. Sand was on the verge of a major donation to a local housing charity, Heart/Twin Cities, and with the money in limbo, eyes suddenly turn to his grieving widow, Margaret Cooper, to see what she might do with the money. Margaret, distraught over the death of her family, struggles to move forward, and can’t imagine how or why anyone would target her husband.

Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation.

Eden, Kentucky, is just another dying, bad-luck town, known only for the legend of E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth-century author and illustrator who wrote The Underland--and disappeared. Before she vanished, Starling House appeared. But everyone agrees that it's best to let the uncanny house--and its last lonely heir, Arthur Starling--go to rot. Opal knows better than to mess with haunted houses or brooding men, but an unexpected job offer might be a chance to get her brother out of Eden. Too quickly, though, Starling House starts to feel dangerously like something she's never had: a home. As sinister forces converge on Starling House, Opal and Arthur are going to have to make a dire choice: to dig up the buried secrets of the past and confront their own fears, or let Eden be taken over by literal nightmares. If Opal wants a home, she'll have to fight for it.

Stephanie Plum, Trenton’s hardest working, most underappreciated bounty hunter, is offered a freelance assignment that seems simple enough. Local jeweler Martin Rabner wants her to locate his former security guard, Andy Manley (a.k.a. Nutsy), who he is convinced stole a fortune in diamonds out of his safe. Stephanie is also looking for another troubled man, Duncan Dugan, a fugitive from justice arrested for robbing the same jewelry store on the same day.

As the head of a prestigious movie studio for nearly two decades, Andy Westfield has had every conceivable professional luxury: a stunning office on the forty-fourth floor, a loyal assistant who can all but read his mind, access to a private jet and company cars. The son of Hollywood royalty, Andy always put his career before his marriage, and now, besides his daughter and young grandchildren, it’s the only thing he truly loves.

Army Criminal Investigation Agents Scott Brodie and Maggie Taylor have been separated for five months following their last assignment, a dangerous mission in Venezuela to locate and detain an infamous Army deserter. Now, in Berlin, they are reunited and tasked with investigating the murder of one of their own: CID Special Agent Harry Vance of the 5th MP Battalion, an accomplished counterterrorism agent who had been stationed in western Germany, and whose body was discovered in a city park in the heart of Berlin’s Arab refugee community.