Book picks similar to
Blood List by Patrick Freivald


first-reads
fiction
mystery-and-suspense
thrillers

The Perfect 10: A Palm Beach Murder Mystery


Eric O'Keefe - 2020
    IT’S A BLOOD SPORT IN THE PERFECT 10.The final of the US Open is just days away, and Juancito Harrington, the world’s best polo player, is found dead in a posh Palm Beach hotel suite.The good news is that Palm Beach P.D. quickly identifies the trophy wife of Juancito’s team owner as the primary suspect. The bad news is that everyone in polo knows that Kelly Dick doesn’t murder her lovers. She recycles them.Only one man can crack the case: Rick Hunt, a West Point graduate currently assigned to the White House. Hunt is no detective, but he’s a lifelong polo player who needs no introduction to the world’s top pros. Or his ex-fiancée. Or her new boyfriend, an old teammate with a score to settle.

Last Day


Luanne Rice - 2020
    The detective assigned to the case, Conor Reid, swore to protect the sisters from then on.Beth moved on, throwing herself fully into the art world, running the family gallery, and raising a beautiful daughter with her husband Pete. Kate, instead, retreated into herself and took to the skies as a pilot, always on the run. When Beth is found strangled in her home, and Moonlight goes missing again, Detective Reid can’t help but feel a sense of déjà vu.Reid immediately suspects Beth’s husband, whose affair is a poorly kept secret. He has an airtight alibi—but he also has a motive, and the evidence seems to point to him. Kate and Reid, along with the sisters’ closest childhood friends, struggle to make sense of Beth’s death, but they only find more questions: Who else would have wanted Beth dead? What’s the significance of Moonlight?Twenty years ago, Reid vowed to protect Beth and Kate—and he’s failed. Now solving the case is turning into an obsession . . .

The Mermaid Girl: A Story


Erika Swyler - 2016
    She traveled everywhere with two boxes: the first with red sequins for the dress she wore as a magician’s assistant, the second with green sequins for her mermaid tail. She'd grown up on wild stories told by wild circus people. Books, she hadn’t had books until she’d found Daniel Watson and stopped moving.The first time Daniel saw her, Paulina was floating in a glass tank, suspended in water that sparkled like it was made from night sky. She has settled down now, living in a house on a cliff on Long Island Sound with Daniel and their young family: six-year-old Simon and his baby sister, Enola. But if you steal the magician’s assistant from a carnival, how can you know if she’ll disappear?

The Safe Place


Anna Downes - 2020
    Until he meets Emily.Emily is perfect.Scott offers Emily a summer job as a housekeeper on his remote, beautiful French estate. Enchanted by his lovely wife Nina, and his eccentric young daughter, Aurelia, Emily falls headlong into this oasis of wine-soaked days by the pool. But soon Emily realizes that Scott and Nina are hiding dangerous secrets, and if she doesn't play along, the consequences could be deadly.Superbly tense and oozing with atmosphere, Anna Downs's debut is the perfect summer suspense, with the modern gothic feel of Ruth Ware and the morally complex family dynamics of Lisa Jewell.Welcome to paradise...will you ever be able to leave?

The Last Shuttle


Tom Glover - 2011
    Only one man could prevent the accident. An ex-NASA scientist reluctantly joins the crew of re-commissioned space shuttle Discovery on a daring rescue mission to recover the satellite. Orbiting Earth, they are about to experience something out of this world.

Rooked


Caitlin Sara - 2018
    . . Despite her desire for control, Ara Hopkins has always felt like a pawn—constantly being maneuvered by those surrounding her. Carrying a riddled past of abandonment by her mother, a jealous step-sister and exploitation by men she was supposed to be able to trust, Ara craves a social media certified life. So, when she meets her husband, a New York congressman’s son, she believes she’s finally won her game. Secure in a life her mother would approve of—and having firmly shut the door on her chaotic and miscalculated past—Ara feels she’s thriving. Until the night her husband is murdered. Thrust into a game of deceit and lies, Ara realizes that nothing is as it seems and that the past can quickly return to the present. The facade crumbles as relationships are tested and family boundaries crossed. Faced with losing it all, she discovers what a person is really capable of. Because in this game of life, it's either rook or be rooked. An intricately braided plot with unforeseeable twists and a sucker-punch ending, Rooked is a captivating thriller that shatters all perceptions.

Little White Secrets


Carol Mason - 2020
    A marriage ready to crack. A secret that can break them. For Emily Rossi, life may not be perfect, but it’s pretty close. She has a great career, a house in the country, a solid marriage to Eric and two wonderful children—tennis superstar Daniel and quiet, sensitive Zara. But when her fourteen-year-old daughter brings home a toxic new best friend, Emily’s seemingly perfect family starts to spiral out of control.Suddenly Zara is staying out late, taking drugs and keeping bad company. And just when Emily needs Eric to be an involved father, he seems too wrapped up with his job in London to care. What’s more, he’s started drinking again.When a dark secret from the past emerges, Emily’s life is turned upside down. Struggling to protect the people she loves, can she save her damaged family? Doing so may mean keeping a secret of her own…

The Cannastar Factor


Stephen Steele - 2011
    This rewritten, revised, expanded and updated edition is now part of a 3-book series entitled The Trouble with Miracles.Alex Farmer, M.D. is a former drug addict trying to put his tortured life behind him. Cyd Seeley is a brilliant botanist and rancher in dire financial straits. Inadvertently, they are thrown together when a mutual friend is murdered after developing an inexpensive, organically grown cure for viral diseases.The miracle plant is called Cannastar and it cures all manner of viruses from Coronavirus and cancer, to HIV and herpes. Cannastar costs next to nothing to grow, returns the hopelessly ill to good health, and threatens to bankrupt the pharmaceutical industry. Big Pharma will stop at nothing to keep it off the market.Aided by faithful Native Americans from the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana and the Navajo Nation in Arizona, Cyd and Alex fight to grow Cannastar and bring it to a desperate world. Their harrowing and perilous journey ranges from the Rocky Mountain wilderness, to the political corruption of Washington D.C., to the jungles of Mexico, to the deserts of the Southwest.Filled with mystery and suspense, The Cannastar Factor is part adventure and part love story; a timely thriller that unfolds with endless surprises and heartwarming relationships; an epic novel about the resolute passions of two people who stand against a broken world.

Uncorking a Murder


Michael Carlon - 2016
    Five years ago, Mia Michaels was abducted and killed after her husband, a prominent scientist who may have found the cure for Type II diabetes, went missing. Detective Rodney Peters hunted down an unlikely suspect who wound up convicted for her murder—even though the evidence against him didn’t add up. Now retired from the Ft. Lauderdale Police Department, Rodney’s days are numbered due to his declining health, though he’s relentless in pursing the truth of what really happened to Mia in the hopes of setting an innocent man free—a man he helped put away. With no one left to turn to for help, Rodney enlists the assistance of Farrah Graham, host of the wildly popular Uncorking a Murder podcast, to uncover the truth of what really happened to Mia Michaels. Interested to hear why a retired detective is driven to have a conviction overturned, Farrah and her intern Jimmy “Doubts” follow their curiosity down to Ft. Lauderdale where they uncover a conspiracy involving a deranged CEO, his despondent lover, and a former IRA hitman who all have a vested interest in keeping the truth about Mia Michaels’ death hidden. Together Rodney, Farrah, and Jimmy race against the clock as events unfold like a wheel inside a wheel.

You Can't Catch Me


Catherine McKenzie - 2020
    Thanks to the private detective who rescued her, she reintegrated into society, endured an uncomfortable notoriety, and tried to put it all behind her. Then, at an airport bar, Jessica meets a woman with an identical name and birth date. It appears to be just an odd coincidence—until a week later, when Jessica finds her bank account drained and her personal information stolen.Following a trail of the grifter’s victims, each with the same name, Jessica gathers players—one by one—for her own game. According to her plan, they’ll set a trap and wait for the impostor to strike again. But plans can go awry, and trust can fray, and as Jessica tries to escape the shadows of her childhood, the risks are greater than she imagined. Now, confronting the casualties of her past, Jessica can’t help but wonder…Who will pay the price?

Long Hill Home


Kathryn Pincus - 2015
    Kelly Malloy is a wife, a mother and a successful lawyer whose world is shattered when she is brutally attacked while running along the banks of the Brandywine River. Chad McCloskey, a lonely teenage boy from a dysfunctional home, stumbles upon Kelly Malloy’s unconscious body immediately after the assault, and he is falsely accused of the crime after he tries to help her. Maria Hernandez, a young woman who emigrated illegally from Mexico, is reluctantly thrust into the role of witness to the crime, putting her in jeopardy of deportation only weeks before she is to give birth to her child.Kelly, Chad and Maria all suffer tremendous adversity in the wake of the crime, and they ultimately discover that their lives and their fate are inextricably and permanently connected. Long Hill Home is a story of crime, mystery and the legal process—but it is also a story about the human condition, and how, regardless of vast differences in background or circumstances, all people strive for the same things—love, security and a fulfilling life.Described by reviewers as "simultaneously heart wrenching and heart welling," a "page turner" that readers "cannot put down," an "emotional" read and "an incredible novel, all the more so as a debut work."

Wilde Lake


Laura Lippman - 2016
    Fiercely intelligent and ambitious, she sees an opportunity to make her name by trying a mentally disturbed drifter accused of beating a woman to death in her home. It’s not the kind of case that makes headlines, but peaceful Howard county doesn’t see many homicides.As Lu prepares for the trial, the case dredges up painful memories, reminding her small but tight-knit family of the night when her brother, AJ, saved his best friend at the cost of another man’s life. Only eighteen, AJ was cleared by a grand jury. Now, Lu wonders if the events of 1980 happened as she remembers them. What details might have been withheld from her when she was a child? The more she learns about the case, the more questions arise. What does it mean to be a man or woman of one’s times? Why do we ask our heroes of the past to conform to the present’s standards? Is that fair? Is it right? Propelled into the past, she discovers that the legal system, the bedrock of her entire life, does not have all the answers. Lu realizes that even if she could learn the whole truth, she probably wouldn’t want to.

The Missing Years


Lexie Elliott - 2019
    The other half belongs to a man who disappeared without a trace twenty-seven years ago—her father.Leaving London behind to settle the inheritance from her mother’s estate, Ailsa returns to her childhood home, nestled amongst the craggy peaks of the Scottish Highlands, joined by the half-sister who’s almost a stranger to her.Ailsa can’t escape the claustrophobic feeling that the house itself is watching her—as if her past hungers to consume her. She also can’t ignore how the neighbourhood animals refuse to set one foot within the gates of the garden.When the first nighttime intruder shows up, Ailsa fears that the manor’s careless rugged beauty could cost her everything.

Southern Heat


David Burnsworth - 2014
    Brack Pelton, an ex-racecar driver and Afghanistan War veteran, witnesses the murder of his uncle, Reggie Sails. Darcy Wells, the pretty Palmetto Pulse reporter, investigates Reggie's murder and targets Brack.The sole heir of his uncle's estate, Brack receives a rundown bar called the Pirate's Cove, a rotting beach house, and one hundred acres of preserved and valuable wetland along the Ashley River. A member of Charleston's wealthiest and oldest families offers Brack four million dollars for the land. All Brack wants is his uncle's killer.From the sandy beaches of Isle of Palms, through the nineteenth-century mansions lining the historic Battery, to the marshlands surrounding the county, Southern Heat is drenched in the humidity of the lowcountry.

Incitement


David Graham - 2013
    But she is marginalised by her colleagues and her judgement is challenged at every turn. Only if she can expose the truth will she be able to stop the violence and save her career.Michael Larsen is an ex-soldier and hired mercenary who has been contracted to fuel the conflict at every opportunity until it destroys both sides. As he battles his own demons, he hopes that by directing the violence he will attain some measure of redemption.But neither Mesi nor Larsen know the full extent of the forces at play or of what is truly at stake. As they each pursue their own resolution, the violence escalates and they become increasingly isolated and vulnerable to the dangers that stalk them.British Academy of Film and Television Award Winner 2001, Ferdia MacAnna, "I loved it, a page-turner, couldn't put it down ... I'm amazed it's a first book, it's like a 3rd or 4th from an established writer. He's also created an amazing character called Larsen ... the best character I've met in these books, quite chilling but brilliant. Mesi is an enigmatic heroine. It's a great book, if you like thrillers it's just terrific ..."'Incitement' won a national competition from over 500 entrants. The competition was run by one of Irish Radio’s flagship programs on the national station, The John Murray Show, in conjunction with the biggest selling Irish weekly magazine, The RTE Guide.