Fast-Paced Fiction to Talk About Over Breakfast
Discover fast-paced fiction books perfect for lively breakfast discussions. Explore gripping reads that spark conversations and keep you hooked from the first page to the last.
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The Poet
by Michael Connelly
New York Times bestselling author Michael Connelly has written one explosive thriller after another featuring Detective Harry Bosch. Now, in an electrifying departure, he presents a novel that breaks all the rules and will keep your heart racing and your mind guessing until the very last page. Death is reporter Jack McEvoy's beat: his calling, his obsession. But this time, death brings McEvoy the story he never wanted to write--and the mystery he desperately needs to solve. A serial killer of unprecedented savagery and cunning is at large. His targets: homicide cops, each haunted by a murder case he couldn't crack. The killer's calling card: a quotation from the works of Edgar Allen Poe. His latest victim is McEvoy's own brother. And his last...may be McEvoy himself.
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Don't Tell a Soul
by David Rosenfelt
The popular author of six Andy Carpenter mysteries, including the recent hit "Play Dead," delivers his first stand alone with this gripping suspense novel.
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Killing Johnny Fry
by Walter Mosley
When Cordell Carmel catches his longtime girlfriend with another man, the experience dissolves his calm, everyday existence into a thirst for revenge and a sexual odyssey in search of a new way of life.
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Desperation Moon
by Ken Douglas
When racecar driver Sara Hackett arrives home from a desert road race, she finds her niece and another girl have been kidnapped and a dead man has turned up in her bed. The kidnappers want a million dollars she doesn't have or they say they'll kill the kids.
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Foreign Body
by Robin Cook
A series of unexplained deaths in foreign hospitals sends Jennifer Hernandez, an idealistic UCLA medical student, on a desperate search for answers about her grandmother's sudden death. With the discovery of other unexplained deaths followed by hasty cre
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To the Death
by Patrick Robinson
When Admiral Arnold Morgan breaks up a terrorist cell in the U.S. following a bombing at Boston's Logan Airport, the Hamas high command, led by Morgan's old enemy, Ravi Rashood, vows to assassinate the admiral when he leaves American soil.
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Burn Zone
by James O. Born
It was supposed to be a low-level bust for ATF agent Alex Duarte, with the hope that he could work it up the ladder to someone important. In New Orleans to check out a mysterious Panamanian named Ortiz who likes to trade guns illegally and import marijuan
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The Poe Shadow
by Matthew Pearl
“I present to you . . . the truth about this man’s death and my life.” Baltimore, 1849. The body of Edgar Allan Poe has been buried in an unmarked grave. The public, the press, and even Poe’s own family and friends accept the conclusion that Poe was a second-rate writer who met a disgraceful end as a drunkard. Everyone, in fact, seems to believe this except a young Baltimore lawyer named Quentin Clark, an ardent admirer who puts his own career and reputation at risk in a passionate crusade to salvage Poe’s. As Quentin explores the puzzling circumstances of Poe’s demise, he discovers that the writer’s last days are riddled with unanswered questions the police are possibly willfully ignoring. Just when Poe’s death seems destined to remain a mystery, and forever sealing his ignominy, inspiration strikes Quentin–in the form of Poe’s own stories. The young attorney realizes that he must find the one person who can solve the strange case of Poe’s death: the real-life model for Poe’s brilliant fictional detective character, C. Auguste Dupin, the hero of ingenious tales of crime and detection. In short order, Quentin finds himself enmeshed in sinister machinations involving political agents, a female assassin, the corrupt Baltimore slave trade, and the lost secrets of Poe’s final hours. With his own future hanging in the balance, Quentin Clark must turn master investigator himself to unchain his now imperiled fate from that of Poe’s. Following his phenomenal debut novel, The Dante Club, Matthew Pearl has once again crossed pitch-perfect literary history with innovative mystery to create a beautifully detailed, ingeniously plotted tale of suspense. Pearl’s groundbreaking research–featuring documented material never published before–opens a new window on the truth behind Poe’s demise, literary history’s most persistent enigma. The resulting novel is a publishing event that, through sublime craftsmanship, subtle wit, and devious twists, does honor to Poe himself
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Moscow Rules
by Daniel Silva
Investigating the suspicious death of a journalist in Moscow, Gabriel Allon learns of the machinations of a former KGB colonel whose covert arms dealing business is part of a larger plot to challenge the global dominance of the United States.
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Midnight Rambler
by James Swain
"As waves of heat and rain wash over the steamy streets, Carpenter races against the clock to reaffirm the case against Skell. Yet the deeper he digs, the more he starts to realize that Skell is just one piece in a terrifying puzzle of predation and murder, just one player in a shocking conspiracy that ranges across the state of Florida. And as the relentless Carpenter draws the net tighter, his enemies prepare to spring a devastating final surprise."--BOOK JACKET.
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A Toast to Tomorrow
by Manning Coles
Book Sense March 2008 Notable Book Pick. Joseph Goebbels is fuming. It's the mid-1930s and the Nazi Minister of Propoganda has a nice little racket going. He and his cohorts are allowing Jews to slip out of Germany in return for 80 percent of their assets. But longtime Nazi party member Klaus Lehmann, the Chief of the German Police, is too much of a prig to let him get away with it. And given that Lehman was one of Hitler's earliest supporters, he's virtually untouchable. In the meantime, British Intelligence is going around in circles. Someone in Germany is sending them messages in a code that hasn't been used since World War I. When it was first published in 1941 in the U.S., A Toast to Tomorrow, along with its predecessor, Drink to Yesterday, was heralded by famed critic Anthony Boucher as "a single long and magnificent novel of drama, intrigue and humor."
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A Corpse in the Koryo
by James Church
"On the surface, A Corpse in the Koryo is a crackling good mystery novel, filled with unusual characters involved in a complex plot that keeps you guessing to the end." ---Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post One of Publishers Weekly Top 100 Books of 2006 One of Booklist's Best Genre Fiction of 2006 One of the Chicago Tribune's best mystery/thrillers of 2006 Sit on a quiet hillside at dawn among the wildflowers; take a picture of a car coming up a deserted highway from the south. Simple orders for Inspector O, until he realizes they have led him far, far off his department's turf and into a maelstrom of betrayal and death. North Korea's leaders are desperate to hunt down and eliminate anyone who knows too much about a series of decade's-old kidnappings and murders---and Inspector O discovers too late he has been sent into the chaos. This is a world where nothing works as it should, where the crimes of the past haunt the present, and where even the shadows are real. Author James Church weaves a story with beautifully spare prose and layered descriptions of a country and a people he knows by heart after decades as an intelligence officer. ". . . an outstanding crime novel. . . . a not-to-be-missed reading experience. " ---Library Journal (starred) "Inspector O is completely believable and sympathetic . . . The writing is superb, too . . . richly layered and visually evocative." ---Booklist (starred) ". . . an impressive debut that calls to mind such mystery thrillers as Martin Cruz Smith's Gorky Park. . . ." ---Publishers Weekly (starred)
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Primal Threat
by Earl W. Emerson
On a late August day in the foothills of the Cascades, five bicyclists climb into the hot, dry air, the breeze of their movement cooling their overheated bodies, the stress of a workweek slipstreaming behind them. But another group has entered the park, too. They're in cars, for pleasure and for vengeance. In Earl Emerson's gripping new novel, a grudge turns an idyllic setting into a terrifying landscape of men and nature at their most dangerous. Zak Polanski doesn't do long-term relationships, doesn't like rich people, and, after saving Nadine Newcastle from an accident scene, isn't ready to be loved back. When the improbable affair sours, Zak returns to his old ways. But Nadine's former boyfriend, William Potter III, can't let it go. Potter knows that Zak is one of five mountain bikers at an isolated camping ground at Panther Creek, and has come for a little payback. What starts as a nasty prank soon escalates. Someone has a gun. Someone makes a move. And a spark ignites amid a volatile mix of anger and alcohol, pride and betrayal. Now, men and women cut off from their urban environment are making choices, choosing sides, facing one another's demons and their own. And when human hatred merges with nature's fury, the only goal is to get out alive. A mesmerizing novel that weaves the story of a charged love affair with a drama of sheer survival, Primal Threat is a thriller delivered with the brawny, vivid, and lyrical style that makes Earl Emerson one of the most compelling storytellers of our time.
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Shadow of Power
by Steve Martini
The Supreme Court is one of our most sacred—and secretive—public institutions. But sometimes secrets can lead to cover-ups with very deadly consequences. Terry Scarborough is a legal scholar and provocateur who craves headline-making celebrity, but with his latest book he may have gone too far. In it he resurrects forgotten language in the U.S. Constitution—and hints at a missing letter of Thomas Jefferson's—that threatens to divide the nation. Then, during a publicity tour, Scarborough is brutally murdered in a San Diego hotel room, and a young man with dark connections is charged. What looks like an open-and-shut case to most people doesn't to defense attorney Paul Madriani. He believes that there is much more to the case and that the defendant is a pawn caught in the middle, being scapegoated by circumstance. As the trial spirals toward its conclusion, Madriani and his partner, Harry Hinds, race to find the missing Jefferson letter—and the secrets it holds about slavery and scandal at the time of our nation's founding and the very reason Scarborough was killed. Madriani's chase takes him from the tension-filled courtroom in California to the trail of a high court justice now suddenly in hiding and lays bare the soaring political stakes for a seat on the highest court, in a country divided, and under the shadow of power.
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Gambit
by Karna Small Bodman
Bodman, a former director of the National Security Council and author of "Checkmate," returns with another gripping thriller that reads like tomorrow's headlines.
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Killer View
by Ridley Pearson
A dead search-and-rescue team member, a missing friend, an unexplained illness at a local water-bottling plant that sends workers to the hospital and sets off biohazard warnings may have something in common as Sun Valley sheriff Walt Fleming follows threa
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Dark Horse
by Mike Langan
A Syracuse attorney who's made a specialty of skating on thin ice feels the surface tremble beneath him when his partner is murdered. Nicky Rigopoulos is every inch the modern politician. There's his gift for bringing people together, his call to public service and, of course, his extramarital affairs.
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Patriot Acts
by Greg Rucka
After surviving an ambush, bodyguard Atticus Kodiak is mistakenly identified as one of The Ten--the world's most wanted assassins.
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Blind Fall
by Christopher Rice
"New York Times"-bestselling author Rice delivers the gripping story of an Iraqi War vet seeking redemption and revenge when one of his fellow Marines is brutally murdered.
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Calumet City
by Charlie Newton
Among the most self-assured and sharply crafted debuts in recent years, "Calumet City" detonates a Molotov cocktail of character-driven suspense and ghetto-Chicago intrigue.Meet Patti Black, the most decorated cop in Chicago. On her ghetto beat, Patti Black redefines the word badass. But her steel-plated exterior -- solitary, stoic, loveless -- belies the wrenching legacy of her orphan childhood. Haunted by the horrifying abuse she suffered at the hands of her foster parents, Patti Black sublimates past torments into a meticulously maintained tough-gal persona.When a series of unrelated cases -- a drug bust gone bad, a mayoral assassination attempt, the murder of a state attorney, the exhumation of a long-concealed body from a tenement basement wall -- all point in Patti Black's direction, she finds herself facing the dark truth: You can't hide from your history, no matter how far into the fog you run. For Patti Black, that history didn't die in the tenement wall; it's alive -- and riding her down.In researching this electrifying thriller, Charlie Newton rode in the squad car with real-life street cop Patti Black. The result is a powerful fiction debut that captures the precise emotional landscape of one cop's hard-bitten life in the trenches. This first-time author joins that rare breed whose fiction is suffused with profound authenticity
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The Secret Scroll
by Ronald Cutler
Josh Cohan, a work-obsessed archaeology professor, has a recurring dream about uncovering a great secret. He follows his instincts to the Judean desert, where he makes a fantastic discovery -- an ancient scroll which seems to have been written by Jesus Christ.. The Israel Antiquities Authority has a claim on the scroll, but another, more sinister organisation wants the scroll as well. The Guardians, members of an ancient extremist religious sect, are willing to kill to get what they want. Josh joins the government-sponsored team of translators who believe the scroll might be genuine, and falls in love with Danielle, the fiery daughter of one of the translators. When a friend turns up dead and Danielle goes missing, Josh realises that the scroll might be more powerful and controversial than he had ever imagined. Will Josh be able to prevent something terrible from happening to the woman he loves without giving up the most important discovery mankind has ever made?
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Ice Trap
by Kitty Sewell
At the height of his career, a British surgeon has found success in both the hospital and at home. He and his wife have everything they want out of life, except the child she longs for, the child Dr. Woodruff secretly believes he may never be ready to par
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Hitler's Judas
by Tom Lewis
Continuing the saga from "Sundays Child," the first book in the trilogy Pea Island Gold, "Hitlers Judas" covers the elaborate plot by Hitlers right-hand man, Martin Bormann, to smuggle gold out of Germany. The gold ends up on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, buried in the sand around the house of Sunday Everette, a young black woman who falls in love with the Nazi submarine captain she rescues.
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Bone Rattler
by Eliot Pattison
Ordered to find another prisoner accountable for a series of suspicious deaths aboard a British convict ship, Duncan McCallum follows a series of clues that lead him into the heart of the French and Indian War and finds himself in love with the daughter of a man to whom he is indentured.
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An Incomplete Revenge
by Jacqueline Winspear
In this latest installment of the bestselling series, Maisie Dobbs, the extraordinary psychologist and investigator, delves into a strange series of crimes in a small rural community.
