Happy November, thriller fans!
Before you eat your body weight in turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie—get your thriller fix with one of the many must-read new books coming out this month.
As always, we’ve highlighted a few titles that deserve some extra attention, and this month, those books are Fortune and Glory, the latest Stephanie Plum book from Janet Evanovich, and The Law of Innocence by Michael Connelly. Both are phenomenal. Obviously, Evanovich is one of the biggest names in publishing, and Stephanie Plum is beloved around the world. Likewise, Connelly is one of the best in the game too, but this time, he’s keeping his famed LAPD Detective Harry Bosch on the bench (though he does appear in the book in a support role) and trotting out defense attorney Mickey Haller to star in his latest masterpiece.
Find out more about those books, and everything else hitting store shelves, below.
Happy reading!
Tuesday, November 3
Fortune and Glory (Tantalizing Twenty-Seven) by Janet Evanovich (Featured Selection)
The twenty-seventh entry in the #1 New York Times bestselling series isn’t just the biggest case of Stephanie Plum’s career. It’s the adventure of a lifetime.
When Stephanie’s beloved Grandma Mazur’s new husband died on their wedding night, the only thing he left her was a beat-up old easy chair…and the keys to a life-changing fortune.
But as Stephanie and Grandma Mazur search for Jimmy Rosolli’s treasure, they discover that they’re not the only ones on the hunt. Two dangerous enemies from the past stand in their way—along with a new adversary who’s even more formidable: Gabriela Rose, a dark-eyed beauty from Little Havana with a taste for designer clothes. She’s also a soldier of fortune, a gourmet cook, an expert in firearms and mixed martial arts—and someone who’s about to give Stephanie a real run for her money.
Stephanie may be in over her head, but she’s got two things that Gabriela doesn’t: an unbreakable bond with her family and a stubborn streak that will never let her quit.
She’ll need both to survive because this search for “fortune and glory” will turn into a desperate race against time with more on the line than ever before. Because even as she searches for the treasure and fights to protect her Grandma Mazur, her own deepest feelings will be tested—as Stephanie could finally be forced to choose between Joe Morelli and Ranger.
Tuesday, November 10th
The Law of Innocence by Michael Connelly (Featured Selection)
Lincoln Lawyer Mickey Haller must defend himself against murder charges in the heart-stopping new thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Connelly.
On the night he celebrates a big win, defense attorney Mickey Haller is pulled over by police, who find the body of a former client in the trunk of his Lincoln. Haller is immediately charged with murder but can’t post the exorbitant $5 million bail slapped on him by a vindictive judge.
Mickey elects to represent himself and is forced to mount his defense from his jail cell in the Twin Towers Correctional Center in downtown Los Angeles. All the while he needs to look over his shoulder—as an officer of the court he is an instant target, and he makes few friends when he reveals a corruption plot within the jail.
But the bigger plot is the one against him. Haller knows he’s been framed, whether by a new enemy or an old one. As his trusted team, including his half-brother, Harry Bosch, investigates, Haller must use all his skills in the courtroom to counter the damning evidence against him.
Even if he can obtain a not-guilty verdict, Mickey understands that it won’t be enough. In order to be truly exonerated, he must find out who really committed the murder and why. That is the law of innocence.
In his highest stakes case yet, the Lincoln Lawyer fights for his life and proves again why he is “a worthy colleague of Atticus Finch… in the front of the pack in the legal thriller game” (Los Angeles Times).
Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz
Featuring his famous literary detective Atticus Pund and Susan Ryeland, hero of the worldwide bestseller Magpie Murders, a brilliantly complex literary thriller with echoes of Agatha Christie from New York Times bestselling author Anthony Horowitz.
Retired publisher Susan Ryeland is living the good life. She is running a small hotel on a Greek island with her long-term boyfriend Andreas. It should be everything she’s always wanted. But is it? She’s exhausted with the responsibilities of making everything work on an island where nothing ever does, and truth be told she’s beginning to miss London.
And then the Trehearnes come to stay. The strange and mysterious story they tell, about an unfortunate murder that took place on the same day and in the same hotel in which their daughter was married—a picturesque inn on the Suffolk coast named Farlingaye Hall—fascinates Susan and piques her editor’s instincts.
One of her former writers, the late Alan Conway, author of the fictional Magpie Murders, knew the murder victim—an advertising executive named Frank Parris—and once visited Farlingaye Hall. Conway based the third book in his detective series, Atticus Pund Takes the Cake, on that very crime.
The Trehearne’s, daughter, Cecily, read Conway’s mystery and believed the book proves that the man convicted of Parris’s murder—a Romanian immigrant who was the hotel’s handyman—is innocent. When the Trehearnes reveal that Cecily is now missing, Susan knows that she must return to England and find out what really happened.
Brilliantly clever, relentlessly suspenseful, full of twists that will keep readers guessing with each revelation and clue, Moonflower Murders is a deviously dark take on vintage English crime fiction from one of its greatest masterminds, Anthony Horowitz.
Head Wounds by Michael McGarrity
Clayton Istee, son of retired police chief Kevin Kerney, goes up against an elusive Mexican hitman in a mesmerizing story of murder, revenge, and redemption.
Given a chance to salvage his law enforcement career, Dona Ana County Sheriff’s Detective Clayton Istee catches a bizarre late-night double homicide at a Las Cruces hotel. Both victims, a man and a woman, have been scalped with their throats cut.
The murders show all the signs of a signature hit, but national and state crime databases reveal no similar profiles. Digging into the victims’ backgrounds, Clayton discovers that six months prior the couple had walked out of a nearby casino with $200,000 of a high-stakes gambler’s money.
He also learns the crime had been hushed up by an undercover federal DEA agent, who resurfaces and recruits Clayton for a dangerous mission to seize the Mexican drug lord responsible for the killings.
Thrust into the nightmare world of borderland drug wars and corrupt cops, Clayton duels with a cunning assassin poised to kill him and his family in a ferocious climax to the Kevin Kerney series that is sure to stun.
The Wolves of Helmand: A View from Inside the Den of Modern War by Frank “Gus” Biggio
At turns poignant, funny, philosophical, and raw—but always real—The Wolves of Helmand is both a heartfelt homage to the Marine brotherhood with whom Biggio served and an expression of respect and love for the people of Afghanistan who ultimately trusted, shared, and appreciated their purpose.
Ten years after serving his country as a U.S. Marine, Captain Frank “Gus” Biggio signed up once again because he missed the brotherhood of the military. Leaving behind his budding law career, his young wife, and newborn son, he was deployed to Helmand Province—the most violent region in war-torn Afghanistan—for reasons few would likely understand before reading this book.
Riven by conflict and occupation for centuries because of its strategic location, the region he landed in was, at that time, a hotbed of Taliban insurgency. As a participant in the landmark U.S.-led Operation Khanjar, Biggio and his fellow Marines were executing a new-era military strategy. Focused largely on empowerment of the local population, the offensive began with a troop surge designed to thwart the Taliban, but was more importantly followed by the restoration of the local government and real-time capacity building among the withdrawn and destitute Afghan people.
The Wolves of Helmand is unlike other war memoirs. It takes us less into the action—though there is that too—and more into the quiet places of today’s war zones. Yes, you’ll read of our Marines’ stealth arrival in a single night, our advanced weaponry, and our pop-up industrial village command centers. You’ll read, as well, about the ambushed patrols and the carnage of IEDs. But you will also read of the persistence, humility, ruggedness, loneliness, tedium, diplomacy, and humanity of our Marines’ jobs there, which more than anything else reveals the magnitude of even the smallest victories.
Completed years after the author’s return from his mission, The Wolves of Helmand is most of all a decade-long self-examination of a warrior’s heart, conscience, and memory. Whether intended or not, Biggio’s deep reflections and innate honesty answer every question you’ve ever wanted to ask about life and death in war—and even questions you probably never thought to ask.
What calls a warrior to duty?
What makes, sustains, plagues, and even breaks a warrior?
These are bigger questions than the ones impolite society pokes around when a veteran returns home—Did you kill anyone? Did you have to go? Why would you fight for another country? Why were we even there?
Yet the answers to those queries are here, too, in this thoughtful memoir that will make you think about war, family, love, and loss.
Marauder by Clive Cussler and Boyd Morrison
It is up to Juan Cabrillo and the crew of his ship, the Oregon, to stop a terrorist plot to release a deadly chemical weapon across the globe in the explosive new novel in Clive Cussler’s #1 New York Times bestselling series.
While interrupting an attack on a Kuwaiti oil tanker, Juan Cabrillo and his team discover something even more dangerous: a ruthless billionaire’s dying wish has allowed a paralyzing chemical to end up in the hands of a terrorist group. When an Oregon crew member falls victim to the poison, Juan Cabrillo will stop at nothing to find an antidote before it is too late. He and his team must connect an ancient mystery with a cunning modern enemy in order to save millions of innocent lives, including their own.
Tuesday, November 17th
Tom Clancy Shadow of the Dragon by Marc Cameron
A missing Chinese scientist, unexplained noises emanating from under the Arctic ice, and a possible mole in American intelligence are just some of the problems that plague President Jack Ryan in the latest entry in Tom Clancy’s #1 New York Times bestselling series.
Aboard an icebreaker in the Arctic Ocean a sonar operator hears an unusual noise coming from the ocean floor. She can’t isolate it and chalks the event up to an anomaly in a newly installed system.
Meanwhile, operatives with the Chinese Ministry of State Security are dealing with their own mystery–the disappearance of brilliant but eccentric scientist, Liu Wangshu. They’re desperate to keep his crucial knowledge of aerospace and naval technology out of their rivals’ hands.
Finding Liu is too great an opportunity for any intelligence service to pass up, but there’s one more problem. A high-level Chinese mole, codenamed Surveyor, has managed to infiltrate American Intelligence. President Jack Ryan has only one choice: send John Clark and his Campus team deep into China to find an old graduate student of the professor’s who may hold the key to his whereabouts. It’s a dangerous gamble, but with John Clark holding the cards, Jack Ryan is all in.
Piece of My Heart by Marry Higgins Clark and Alafair Burke
In the latest thrilling collaboration from #1 New York Times bestselling author and “Queen of Suspense” Mary Higgins Clark and Alafair Burke, television producer Laurie Moran must solve the kidnapping of her fiancée’s nephew—just days before her wedding.
Television producer Laurie Moran and her fiancée, Alex Buckley, the former host of her investigative television show, are just days away from their mid-summer wedding, when things take a dark turn. Alex’s seven-year-old nephew, Johnny, vanishes from the beach. A search party begins and witnesses recall Johnny playing in the water and collecting shells behind the beach shack, but no one remembers seeing him after the morning. As the sun sets, Johnny’s skim board washes up to shore, and everyone realizes that he could be anywhere, even under water.
A ticking clock, a sinister stalker, and fresh romance combine in this exhilarating follow up to the bestselling You Don’t Own Me—another riveting page-turner from the “Queen of Suspense” Mary Higgins Clark and her dazzling partner-in-crime Alafair Burke.
Daylight by David Baldacci
FBI Agent Atlee Pine’s search for her sister Mercy clashes with military investigator John Puller’s high-stakes case, leading them both deep into a global conspiracy — from which neither of them will escape unscathed.
For many long years, Atlee Pine was tormented by uncertainty after her twin sister, Mercy, was abducted at the age of six and never seen again. Now, just as Atlee is pressured to end her investigation into Mercy’s disappearance, she finally gets her most promising breakthrough yet: the identity of her sister’s kidnapper, Ito Vincenzo.
With time running out, Atlee and her assistant Carol Blum race to Vincenzo’s last known location in Trenton, New Jersey — and unknowingly stumble straight into John Puller’s case, blowing his arrest during a drug ring investigation involving a military installation.
Stunningly, Pine and Puller’s joint investigation uncovers a connection between Vincenzo’s family and a breathtaking scheme that strikes at the very heart of global democracy. Peeling back the layers of deceit, lies and cover-ups, Atlee finally discovers the truth about what happened to Mercy. And that truth will shock Pine to her very core.
McGarvey by David Hagberg
“The grand master of the contemporary thriller.” ―Douglas Preston, #1 New York Times bestselling author
When Kirk McGarvey investigates the mysterious death of his parents so many years ago, he uncovers long-buried secrets that put him head to head and mano a mano with . . . Vladimir Putin.
After Mac calls Putin out, the Russian dictator decides he wants him dead. Battling Russian hit squads as well as enemies at home, McGarvey must fight like the devil to save the himself, his friends, and the US of A in this engrossing international thriller from David Hagberg.