Turn off the TV and Read some Fast-Paced Fiction
Looking for your next gripping read? Turn off the TV and dive into this curated list of fast-paced fiction. From legal thrillers by Michael Connelly to suspenseful page-turners by Lee Child and James Patterson, discover a collection of pulse-pounding novels that demand to be finished in one sitting.
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Phantom Prey
by John Sandford
Lucas Davenport has had disturbing cases before, but never one quite like this. Filled with his brilliant trademark suspense, "Phantom Prey" is the shocking new novel from the #1 "New York Times"-bestselling author.
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The Brass Verdict
by Michael Connelly
Things are finally looking up for defense attorney Mickey Haller. After two years of wrong turns, Haller is back in the courtroom. When Hollywood lawyer Jerry Vincent is murdered, Haller inherits his biggest case yet: the defense of Walter Elliott, a prominent studio executive accused of murdering his wife and her lover. But as Haller prepares for the case that could launch him into the big time, he learns that Vincent's killer may be coming for him next. Enter Harry Bosch. Determined to find Vincent's killer, he is not opposed to using Haller as bait. But as danger mounts and the stakes rise, these two loners realize their only choice is to work together. Bringing together Michael Connelly's two most popular characters, The Brass Verdict is sure to be his biggest book yet.
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The Crime Writer
by Gregg Hurwitz
Awakening in a hospital with a scar on his head and no memory of being found holding a knife over his ex-fiancée's murdered body, crime novelist Drew Danner struggles to reconstruct clues to determine his own guilt or innocence. By the author of The Tower. Reprint.
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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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Havana Bay
by Martin Cruz Smith
When the corpse of a Russian is hauled from the oily waters of Havana Bay, Arkady Renko comes to Cuba to identify the body. Looking for the killer, he discovers a city of faded loneliness, unexpected danger, and bewildering contradictions. His investigation introduces him to a beautiful Cuban policewoman; to the rituals of Santeria; to an American fugitive and a group of ruthless mercenaries. In this place where all things Russian are despised, where Hemingway fished and the KGB flourished, where the hint of music is always in the air, Arkady finds a trail of deceit that reaches halfway around the world–and a reason to relish his own life again.
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Careless in Red
by Elizabeth George
In her most eagerly anticipated novel yet, Elizabeth George brings back Scotland Yard's Thomas Lynley to investigate a ruthless crime. After the senseless murder of his wife, Detective Superintendent Thomas Lynley retreated to Cornwall, where he has spent six solitary weeks hiking the bleak and rugged coastline. But no matter how far he walks, no matter how exhausting his days, the painful memories of Helen's death do not diminish. On the forty-third day of his walk, at the base of a cliff, Lynley discovers the body of a young man who appears to have fallen to his death. The closest town, better known for its tourists and its surfing than its intrigue, seems an unlikely place for murder. However, it soon becomes apparent that a clever killer is indeed at work, and this time Lynley is not a detective but a witness and possibly a suspect. The head of the vastly understaffed local police department needs Lynley's help, though, especially when it comes to the mysterious, secretive woman whose cottage lies not far from where the body was discovered. But can Lynley let go of the past long enough to solve a most devious and carefully planned crime?
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Stalin's Ghost
by Martin Cruz Smith
Gorky Park's Detective Arkady Renko returns to his Moscow base in Smith's latest entry in the internationally bestselling series about Russian crimes, broken hearts, and the mysteries of the soul.
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Secret Dead Men
by Duane Swierczynski
Detective Del Farmer is investigation a murder, but the usual suspects are all in his head. Del Farmer isn't your oridinary harboiled private eye. Instead of collecting fingerprints and clues, he collects souls of the recently dead.
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Hold Tight
by Harlan Coben
Mike and Tia Baye, worried about their sixteen-year-old son Adam, wrestle with whether to spy on his computer, and discover details about their son's friend Spencer's suicide while a killer stalks the neighborhood.
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The Blonde
by Duane Swierczynski
General Adult. Indulging in harmless flirting with the pretty blonde he meets in a Philadelphia airport bar, a married Jack Eisley is stunned when she tells him that she has poisoned his drink and will only give him the antidote if he remains close to protect her from the relentless assassin, double-crossing spy, eccentric crime scene cleaners, and other perils threatening her life. Reprint. 17,500 first printing.
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The Front
by Patricia Daniels Cornwell
Dispatched by the district attorney to a declining Massachusetts neighborhood to address a case related to a new public relations campaign, state investigator Win Garano becomes involved with a loosely organized association of vigilante police officers.
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Book of the Dead
by Patricia Daniels Cornwell
Relocating to Charleston after a particularly grueling case, Dr. Kay Scarpetta opens a private forensic pathology practice but is quickly targeted by local politics and a covert saboteur before a series of violent deaths bring her skills into high view. 1,500,000 first printing. BOMC, Lit Guild, Doubleday, & Mystery Guild Main.
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Death's Little Helpers
by Peter Spiegelman
In this masterful follow-up to Peter Spiegelman’s stunning debut Black Maps, private investigator John March finds himself drawn into a web of corruption that extends from the halls of high finance to the dark underworld of organized crime. Gregory Danes, a Wall Street analyst has gone missing, and his ex-wife, a fashionable painter, calls March to track him down. She just wants him to sign her alimony checks, but as March soon discovers, she’s not the only one looking for him. Danes was once an industry hot shot, but has lost his touch. His biggest gains lately, it seems, had been in enemies–including a few members of the Russian mob. When March receives a threat upon his own family, he realizes Danes had been involved in something far more dangerous than insider trading.
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Clockers
by Richard Price
Crack-dealers known as "Clockers" are at the bottom of the drug-dealing ladder, and they must commit murder to rise higher.
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Nothing to Lose
by Lee Child
Arriving in the small town of Despair, Colorado, Jack Reacher finds himself taking on an entire town as he searches for the truths behind its sinister connection to a brutal war that is killing Americans thousands of miles away. 400,000 first printing.
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Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand
by Fred Vargas
Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg investigates a series of crimes that had taken place between 1943 and 2003 in which nine people are stabbed to death with an unusual trident, cases in which arrests are made, but in none of the presumed murderers have any recollection of the killings. Original.
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7th Heaven
by James Patterson
A terrible fire in a wealthy suburban home leaves a married couple dead and Detective Lindsay Boxer and her partner Rich Conklin searching for clues. And after California's golden boy, Michael Campion has been missing for a month, there finally seems to be a lead in his case--a very devastating lead. As fire after fire consume couples in wealthy, comfortable homes, Lindsay and the Murder Club must race to find the arsonists responsible and get to the bottom of Michael Campion's disappearance. But suddenly the fires are raging too close to home. Frightened for her life and torn between two men, Lindsay must find a way to solve the most daunting dilemmas she's ever faced--at work and at home.
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Sliver of Truth
by Lisa Unger
The highly anticipated follow-up to the New York Times bestseller Beautiful Lies. Charged with relentless intensity and kinetic action, and playing out with unnerving suspense on the streets of New York and London, Sliver of Truth delves deep into the shadowy world of Ridley Jones, a terrified but determined young woman at once hunting down a ghost from her past and running for her life.
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The Third Angel
by Alice Hoffman
Follows the lives of three women in love with the wrong men--Madeleine Heller, attracted to her sister's fiance; Frieda Lewis, the muse to an ill-fated rock star; and Bryn Evans, engaged to be married but secretly obsessed with her ex-husband.
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Bones
by Jonathan Kellerman
The anonymous caller has an ominous tone and an unnerving message about something "real dead ... buried in your marsh." The eco-volunteer on the other end of the phone thinks it's a prank, but when a young woman's body turns up in L.A.'s Bird Marsh preser
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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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After Dark
by Haruki Murakami
From the New York Times bestselling author—a gripping novel of late night encounters that’s “hypnotically eerie, sometimes even funny, but most of all … [a book] that keeps ratcheting up the suspense” (The Washington Post Book World). Now with a new introduction by the author. Nineteen-year-old Mari is waiting out the night in an anonymous Denny’s when she meets a young man who insists he knows her older sister, thus setting her on an odyssey through the sleeping city. In the space of a single night, the lives of a diverse cast of Tokyo residents—models, prostitutes, mobsters, and musicians—collide in a world suspended between fantasy and reality. Utterly enchanting and infused with surrealism, After Dark is a thrilling account of the magical hours separating midnight from dawn.
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Grotesque
by Natsuo Kirino
Life at the prestigious Q High School for Girls in Tokyo exists on a precise social axis: a world of insiders and outsiders, of haves and have-nots. Beautiful Yuriko and her unpopular, unnamed sister exist in different spheres; the hopelessly awkward Kazue Sato floats around among them, trying to fit in.Years later, Yuriko and Kazue are dead — both have become prostitutes and both have been brutally murdered. Natsuo Kirino, celebrated author of Out, seamlessly weaves together the stories of these women’s struggles within the conventions and restrictions of Japanese society. At once a psychological investigation of the pressures facing Japanese women and a classic work of noir fiction, Grotesque is a brilliantly twisted novel of ambition, desire, beauty, cruelty, and identity by one of our most electrifying writers.
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4th of July
by James Patterson
The world's bestselling detective series has never been more suspenseful. Trapped in deadly showdowns, courtroom trials, and dangerous secrets, the Women's Murder Club must fight for their lives. In a deadly late-night showdown, San Francisco police lieutenant Lindsay Boxer fires her weapon and sets off a dramatic chain of events that leaves a police force disgraced, a family destroyed, and Lindsay herself at the mercy of twelve jurors. During a break in the trial, she retreats to a picturesque town that is reeling from a string of grisly murders-crimes that bear a link to a haunting, unsolved case from her rookie years. Now, with her friends in the Women's Murder Club, Lindsay must battle for her life on two fronts: in a trial rushing to a climax, and against an unknown adversary willing to do anything to hide the truth about the homicides-including kill again?
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Honeymoon
by James Patterson
In his sexiest, scariest novel yet, James Patterson deftly confirms that he always "takes thrills to the next level" (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review). When FBI agent John O'Hara first sees Nora Sinclair, she seems perfect. She has the looks. The career. The clothes. The wit. The sophistication. The tantalizing sex appeal. The whole extraordinary package-and men fall in line to court her. She doesn't just attract men, she enthralls them. So why is the FBI so interested in Nora Sinclair? Mysterious things keep happening to people around her, especially the men. And there is something dangerous about Nora when Agent O'Hara looks closer-something that lures him at the same time that it fills him with fear. Is there something dark hidden among the unexplained gaps in her past? And as he spends more and more time getting to know her, is he pursuing justice? Or his own fatal obsession? With the irresistible attraction of the greatest Hitchcock thrillers, Honeymoon is a sizzling, twisting tale of a woman with a deadly appetite and the men who dare to fall for her.