Read Your Way Through a Thriller and Mystery
Discover gripping thrillers and mysteries in this curated reading list, featuring bestselling authors John Grisham, David Baldacci, Karin Slaughter, and Janet Evanovich. From Atlanta crime in Undone to courtroom drama in The Appeal, explore suspenseful page-turners like The Whole Truth and Fearless Fourteen—perfect for fans of fiction, murder mysteries, and edge-of-your-seat reads.
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Change of Heart
by Jodi Picoult
Her life shattered by a devastating act of violence, June Nealson is forced to make a pivotal choice that involves her twelve-year-old daughter and a salvation-seeking criminal. By the author of Nineteen Minutes. 1,000,000 first printing.
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The Appeal
by John Grisham
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • “Fascinating ... filled with deadly accurate characterizations by an author who knows both the law and politics from the inside.”—Los Angeles Times In a crowded courtroom in Mississippi, a jury returns a shocking verdict against a chemical company accused of dumping toxic waste into a small town’s water supply, causing the worst “cancer cluster” in history. The company appeals to the Mississippi Supreme Court, whose nine justices will one day either approve the verdict or reverse it. Who are the nine? How will they vote? Can one be replaced before the case is ultimately decided? The chemical company is owned by a Wall Street predator named Carl Trudeau, and Mr. Trudeau is convinced the Court is not friendly enough. With judicial elections looming, he decides to try to purchase himself a seat on the Court. The cost is a few million dollars, a drop in the bucket for a billionaire like Mr. Trudeau. Through an intricate web of conspiracy and deceit, his political operatives recruit a young, unsuspecting candidate. They finance him, manipulate him, market him, and mold him into a potential Supreme Court justice. Their Supreme Court justice. The Appeal is a powerful, timely, and shocking story of political and legal intrigue, a story that will leave readers unable to think about our electoral process or judicial system in quite the same way ever again. Don’t miss John Grisham’s new book, THE EXCHANGE: AFTER THE FIRM!
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Fearless Fourteen
by Janet Evanovich
The #1 blockbuster bestselling phenomenon continues in the 14th Stephanie Plum adventure.
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The Whole Truth
by David Baldacci
While the head of the world's largest defense contractor conspires to gain even more riches by instigating a war, an intelligence agent reluctantly travels to keep the world safe, and a journalist receives a mysterious offer to interview the sole survivor
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The Silver Swan
by Benjamin Black
Quirke, an irascible, hard-drinking Dublin pathologist, investigates the apparent suicide of Deidre Hunt, the beautiful young wife of an old acquaintance, and discovers many things that might better have remained hidden, as well as grave danger to those h
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The Memory Keeper's Daughter
by Kim Edwards
A #1 New York Times bestseller by Kim Edwards, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter is a brilliantly crafted novel of parallel lives, familial secrets, and the redemptive power of love Kim Edwards’s stunning novel begins on a winter night in 1964 in Lexington, Kentucky, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy, but the doctor immediately recognizes that his daughter has Down syndrome. Rationalizing it as a need to protect Norah, his wife, he makes a split second decision that will alter all of their lives forever. He asks his nurse, Caroline, to take the baby away to an institution and never to reveal the secret. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child herself. So begins this beautifully told story that unfolds over a quarter of a century—in which these two families, ignorant of each other, are yet bound by the fateful decision made that winter night long ago. A family drama, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter explores every mother's silent fear: What would happen if you lost your child and she grew up without you? It is also an astonishing tale of love and how the mysterious ties that hold a family together help us survive the heartache that occurs when long-buried secrets are finally uncovered.
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Dead Ringer
by Ken Douglas
"Maggie Nesbitt is pregnant and depressed, because her husband isn't the father of her unborn child. She's thinking about abortion when she's attacked on the beach. She barely gets away, then gets the shock of her life the next morning when she sees that she has been killed on the news and that her nude body had been dumped in the trash behind a beachside bar. She finds out the body behind the bar is the twin sister she'd been told had died when she was two weeks old. She also learns her twin was divorced from a horrid man and that she had an eight-year-old daughter, Jasmine. Maggie, showing a bump on her head she got while getting away from her attackers, claims partial amnesia and steps into her dead twin's life. This way she can have her baby, give it a home, and save Jasmine from having to go and live with her father. But she doesn't know her twin saw someone do murder. And that someone thinks he's killed the wrong woman."--Publisher description
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The Paper Moon
by Andrea Camilleri
Inspector Montalbano investigates the fatal shooting of a man and finds himself dealing with two beautiful women as prime suspects, mysterious computer codes, threatening letters, and dirty cocaine.
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Tree of Smoke
by Denis Johnson
Once upon a time there was a war . . . and a young American who thought of himself as the Quiet American and the Ugly American, and who wished to be neither, who wanted instead to be the Wise American, or the Good American, but who eventually came to witness himself as the Real American and finally as simply the Fucking American. That’s me. This is the story of Skip Sands—spy-in-training, engaged in Psychological Operations against the Vietcong—and the disasters that befall him thanks to his famous uncle, a war hero known in intelligence circles simply as the Colonel. This is also the story of the Houston brothers, Bill and James, young men who drift out of the Arizona desert into a war in which the line between disinformation and delusion has blurred away. In its vision of human folly, and its gritty, sympathetic portraits of men and women desperate for an end to their loneliness, whether in sex or death or by the grace of God, this is a story like nothing in our literature. Tree of Smoke is Denis Johnson’s first full-length novel in nine years, and his most gripping, beautiful, and powerful work to date. Tree of Smoke is the 2007 National Book Award Winner for Fiction.
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One Good Turn
by Kate Atkinson
"Atkinson's bright voice rings on every page, and her sly and wry observations move the plot as swiftly as suspense turns the pages of a thriller."-San Francisco Chronicle Two years after the events of Case Histories left him a retired millionaire, Jackson Brodie has followed Julia, his occasional girlfriend and former client, to Edinburgh for its famous summer arts festival. But when he witnesses a man being brutally attacked in a traffic jam - the apparent victim of an extreme case of road rage - a chain of events is set in motion that will pull the wife of an unscrupulous real estate tycoon, a timid but successful crime novelist, and a hardheaded female police detective into Jackson's orbit. Suddenly out of retirement, Jackson is once again in the midst of several mysteries that intersect in one giant and sinister scheme. "Compelling and always entertaining." -USA Today "One Good Turn crackles with energy and imagination." -Chicago Tribune "Atkinson's tart prose sparkles." -Entertainment Weekly "Entertaining both as a murder mystery and as a sprawling multi-character study in the best post-Nashville tradition." -The Onion "A remarkable feat of storytelling bravado." -Washington Post
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The Girl of His Dreams
by Donna Leon
One cold and rainy morning, the body of a gypsy is found floating in a canal. Brunetti suspects she fell off a nearby roof while fleeing an apartment she had robbed--but something about the case continues to haunt him.
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Stranger in Paradise
by Robert B. Parker
Ten years after hit man Crow Cromartie escapes with the spoils of a lucrative heist, Massachusetts police officer Jesse Stone is astonished when the fugitive enlists his cooperation with a job gone bad involving a young woman whose father wants her killed. By the author of High Profile. 275,000 first printing.
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Lady Killer
by Lisa Scottoline
Mary DiNunzio is a trademark Lisa Scottoline heroine—she's strong, she's smart, and she's got plenty of attitude. In recent years, she's become a big-time business-getter at Rosato & Associates, but the last person she expects to walk into her office one morning—in mile-high stilettos—is super sexy Trish Gambone, her high school rival. Back then, while Mary was becoming the straight-A president of the Latin Club and Most Likely to Achieve Sainthood, Trish was the head Mean Girl, who flunked religion and excelled at smoking in the bathroom. As it turns out, however, Trish's life has taken a horrifying turn. She's terrified of her live-in boyfriend, who's an abusive, gun-toting drug dealer for the South Philly mob. There's only one problem—Mary remembers the guy from high school too. Unbeknownst to Trish, Mary had a major crush on him. Then Trish vanishes, a dead body turns up in an alley, and Mary is plunged into a nightmare, one that threatens her job, her family, and even her life. She goes on a one-woman crusade to unmask the killer, and on the way, finds new love in a very unexpected place. But before the novel's shocking surprise ending, Mary is forced to confront some very uncomfortable truths about her own past, and the profound effects of lifelong love—and hate.
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The First Patient
by Michael Palmer
In his most high-concept suspense novel to date, "New York Times" bestselling author Palmer delivers a thriller pitched at the crossroads of presidential politics and cutting-edge medicine.
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The Shell Game
by Steve Alten
American intelligence agents plan an terrorist attack to trigger a war against Iran.
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A Beautiful Blue Death
by Charles Finch
Equal parts Sherlock Holmes and "Gosford Park," this Victorian debut introduces a wonderfully appealing detective and his friend, the lovely Lady Jane.
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The Chase
by Clive Cussler
The 1950 discovery of four bodies inside a sunken steam locomotive in a Montana lake gives way to the story of a murderous 1906 bank robber whose ruthlessness challenged Isaac Bell, a talented detective whose struggle to identify and capture the killer had been complicated by the great San Francisco earthquake. 750,000 first printing.
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Devil Bones
by Kathy Reichs
When a plumber discovers the remains of a murdered girl and various dark religious objects in the cellar of a client's house, Temperance Brennan is called in to investigate the case and finds her efforts challenged by vigilante upheavals against Wiccans and occultists. 450,000 first printing.
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Bones to Ashes
by Kathy Reichs
Discovering the skeleton of a young girl in the neighborhood of a childhood best friend who had gone missing thirty years earlier, Tempe Brennan investigates suspicions that victim and her friend are one and the same
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Lie Down with the Devil
by Linda Barnes
Boston P.I. Carlotta Carlyle's allegedly unfaithful fiancé disappears right after his supposed mistress turns up dead.
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Another Thing to Fall
by Laura Lippman
The "New York Times"-bestselling author of "What the Dead Know" is back with an indelible tale that probes the darkest recesses of the human heart. William Morrow & Company
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Undone
by Karin Slaughter
Sarah Linton has fled to Atlanta seeking refuge from the patient in her ER. She finds herself deeply ensnared in a case which rips the lid off secrets as dark and complex as they are disturbing. When Will Trent and Faith Mitchell join forces to probe into the life of the victim, they embark on an investigation which will change them all.
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Say Goodbye
by Lisa Gardner
Pregnant eighteen-year-old Delilah Rose enlists the assistance of FBI agent Kimberly Quincy to investigate the disappearances of young women whom no one else will notice are gone, including runaways, high-risk teens, and prostitutes.
