my favorite adult fiction
Discover a curated list of the best adult fiction books. Explore captivating stories, must-read novels, and top-rated favorites for your next great read.
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Back Story
by Robert B. Parker
Spenser tries to solve a thirty-year murder as a favor to an old friend.
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The King of Torts
by John Grisham
The author of such best-selling legal thrillers as The Summons and The Brethren presents his latest novel of courtroom and legal suspense. 2,500,000 first printing. $2,500,000 ad/promo.
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Final Witness
by Simon Tolkien
The grandson of J.R.R. Tolkien makes a thrilling debut as a novelist in this suspenseful courtroom drama that will have you guessing to the very end. "Don't let the author's last name confuse you, for there are no Hobbits in this debut novel by the grandson of J.R.R. Tolkien, only a wonderful story of family, relationships, and suspense. . . . Part English cozy, part family saga, part courtroom drama, this genre-bending work of fiction is touching and enchanting." --"Booklist (starred review) "The book is fast-paced and crisply plotted, with Tolkien elegantly piecing together the different perspectives and introducing unexpected twists." --"Publishers Weekly "Tolkien's skill as a storyteller is worthy of notice in this taut, well-paced legal thriller. The excellent courtroom drama and well-drawn, believable characters make this a good choice. . . . With an easily recognizable surname, a formidable Oxford education, and a successful career as a London barrister, the grandson of the author of The Lord of the Rings is bound to create a stir with this debut novel." --"Library Journal One summer night, two men break into an isolated manor house and kill Lady Anne Robinson. Her son, Thomas, convinces the police that his father's beautiful personal assistant sent the killers, but Thomas is known for his overactive imagination, and he has reasons to lie. Thomas's father, Sir Peter Robinson, the British minister of defense, refuses to believe his son. Instead, he marries his assistant, Greta Grahame, and will be giving evidence for the defense at her trial. He will be the final witness. Author Simon Tolkien successfully combines legal suspense and psychological tensionin this sharply etched portrait of four people whose lives are changed by a murder. Alternating between the trial in London's Central Criminal Court and private moments among the characters, Tolkien expertly describes the art of the trial, the clash between Britain's social classes, and, most notably, the complexity of family relations. Who is telling the truth--the new wife or the bereaved son? What will Sir Peter tell the court? With tantalizing ambiguity, Tolkien keeps readers guessing about the true motivations of these characters until the final witness.
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A Body in the Bathhouse
by Lindsey Davis
Ancient Roman investigator Marcus Didius Falco finds trouble on the site of a new palace being built by the king of the Atrebtes tribe in distant Britain. 20,000 first printing.
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Scott Free
by John Gilstrap
Sherry Carrigan O'Toole is forced into an uneasy alliance with her former husband, Brandon, when their son's plane goes down in the wilderness during a storm, and they race against time, the elements, and a deadly enemy to find him.
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The Man with a Load of Mischief
by Martha Grimes
Inspector Richard Jury is dispatched to Long Piddleton, Northants, to help solve many murders.
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Cat & Mouse
by James Patterson
In this New York Times bestseller, two killers-one operating in America, one in Europe-believe Alex Cross is the only worthy opponent in the deadly game each has planned. Gary Soneji, a dying prison escapee, is looking for revenge on Cross, while another insane killer is pursued by Thomas Augustine Pierce-a brilliant and relentless detective who may even be better than Cross. As the bodies pile up, and Cross is nearly murdered in his own home, the game of cat and mouse leads to one final trap. . . The body count is high, the tension the highest, and the two killers on the loose are watching every move their pursuers make. Who is the cat, and who is the mouse? What and where is the final trap? And who survives?
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The Dante Club
by Matthew Pearl
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes and James Russell Lowell team up with 19th-century publisher J.T. Fields to catch a serial killer in post-Civil War Boston.
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The Da Vinci Code
by Dan Brown
Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon and French cryptologist Sophie Neveu work to solve the murder of an elderly curator of the Louvre, a case which leads to clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci and a centuries-old secret society.
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Fingersmith
by Sarah Waters
“Oliver Twist with a twist…Waters spins an absorbing tale that withholds as much as it discloses. A pulsating story.”—The New York Times Book Review The Handmaiden, a film adaptation of Fingersmith, directed by Park Chan-wook and starring Kim Tae-Ri, is now available. Sue Trinder is an orphan, left as an infant in the care of Mrs. Sucksby, a "baby farmer," who raised her with unusual tenderness, as if Sue were her own. Mrs. Sucksby’s household, with its fussy babies calmed with doses of gin, also hosts a transient family of petty thieves—fingersmiths—for whom this house in the heart of a mean London slum is home. One day, the most beloved thief of all arrives—Gentleman, an elegant con man, who carries with him an enticing proposition for Sue: If she wins a position as the maid to Maud Lilly, a naïve gentlewoman, and aids Gentleman in her seduction, then they will all share in Maud’s vast inheritance. Once the inheritance is secured, Maud will be disposed of—passed off as mad, and made to live out the rest of her days in a lunatic asylum. With dreams of paying back the kindness of her adopted family, Sue agrees to the plan. Once in, however, Sue begins to pity her helpless mark and care for Maud Lilly in unexpected ways...But no one and nothing is as it seems in this Dickensian novel of thrills and reversals.
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Those who Trespass
by Bill O'Reilly
NYPD detective Tommy O'Malley joins forces with tabloid reporter Ashley Van Buren to find the person murdering TV journalists.
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Le Fin
by Victoria Taylor Murray
The Lambert Series (Thief Of Hearts, Forbidden and Friendly Enemies), is centered around one earth-shattering week in the life of Nouri St. Charles Sommers, a beautiful young woman that rushed into marriage with a mysterious billionaire...a man she knew nothing about. Two short years later, Nourias fairytale marriage suddenly turns into a nightmare changing her life forever a].Falling in love a] out of love a] in love againa]a fairytale marriage turned nightmarea]implicated and then cleared in two gruesome murdersa]surviving a death threat after being forced into hiding from a stalkera]Nourias one week from hell continues. Now six weeks later, Nourias life continues to spin out of control, drawing the reader deeper and deeper into the turmoil of The Lambert Series with the final book to the series, Le Fin. Nourias billionaire husband, Ethan Sommers, has been shot and killed. Her former lover, high-powered attorney Clint Chamberlain, is feared dead after his car plummets off a bridge in Paris during a rain storm, and if those things arenat bad enough for her to deal with, Nouri suddenly discovers that the man she has finally chosen over both Clint Chamberlain and Charles Mason, homicide detective Gabe Baldwin, has returned to Boston to wed his former fiancA(c)e after an argument Nouri and Gabe had while they were still in France.
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Old Flames
by John Lawton
Brilliantly evoking the intrigue of the Cold War and 1950s London, John Lawtons thrilling sequel to "Black Out" takes Inspector Troy deep into the rotten heart of MI6, the distant days of his childhood, and the dangerous arms of an old flame: Larissa Tosca, late of the U.S. Army, later still of the KGB. It is April 1956, and an official visit to Britain by Soviet leaders Khrushchev and Bulganin is unexpectedly interrupted when a mutilated body is found under the hull of Khrushchevs ship in Portsmouth Harbor. Is the dead man a Royal Navy diver or the corpse of Arnold Cockerell, a furniture salesman with a mysterious source of income? As the mystery deepens, the inexplicable murders continue, leading Troy to an unforgettable discovery.
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Life Sentence
by David Ellis
An innocent man fears he has unwittingly contributed to murder--both past and present--in this new legal thriller by the Edgar Award-winning author of "Line of Vision."
