Book picks similar to
Paradise Falls by Jonnie Jacobs
mystery
fiction
thriller
heart-wrenching
Hair of the Dog (A Gil Mason Novel Book 2)
Gordon Carroll - 2020
The Cuban Affair
Nelson DeMille - 2017
At age thirty-five he’s living in Key West, owner of a forty-two-foot charter fishing boat, The Maine. Mac served five years in the Army as an infantry officer with two tours in Afghanistan. He returned with the Silver Star, two Purple Hearts, scars that don’t tan, and a boat with a big bank loan. Truth be told, Mac’s finances are more than a little shaky.One day, Mac is sitting in the famous Green Parrot Bar in Key West, contemplating his life, and waiting for Carlos, a hotshot Miami lawyer heavily involved with anti-Castro groups. Carlos wants to hire Mac and The Maine for a ten-day fishing tournament to Cuba at the standard rate, but Mac suspects there is more to this and turns it down. The price then goes up to two million dollars, and Mac agrees to hear the deal, and meet Carlos’s clients—a beautiful Cuban-American woman named Sara Ortega, and a mysterious older Cuban exile, Eduardo Valazquez.What Mac learns is that there is sixty million American dollars hidden in Cuba by Sara’s grandfather when he fled Castro’s revolution. With the “Cuban Thaw” underway between Havana and Washington, Carlos, Eduardo, and Sara know it’s only a matter of time before someone finds the stash—by accident or on purpose. And Mac knows if he accepts this job, he’ll walk away rich…or not at all.Brilliantly written, with his signature humor, fascinating authenticity from his research trip to Cuba, and heart-pounding pace, Nelson DeMille is a true master of the genre.
The Most Dangerous Thing
Laura Lippman - 2011
series and her New York Times bestselling standalone novels (What the Dead Know, Life Sentences, I’d Know You Anywhere, etc.). With The Most Dangerous Thing, the multiple award winning author—recipient of the Anthony, Edgar®, Shamus, and Agatha Awards, to name but a few—once again demonstrates how storytelling is done to perfection. Set once again in the well-wrought environs of Lippman’s beloved Baltimore, it is the shadowy tale of a group of onetime friends forced to confront a dark past they’ve each tried to bury following the death of one of their number. Rich in the compassion and insight into flawed human nature that has become a Lippman trademark while telling an absolutely gripping story, The Most Dangerous Thing will not be confined by genre restrictions, reaching out instead to captive a wide, diverse audience, from Harlan Coben and Kate Atkinson fans to readers of Jodi Picoult and Kathryn Stockett.
The Odd Fellows Society
C.G. Barrett - 2015
First, historian Jasper Willoughs, his closest friend, didn’t toss himself off a dormitory roof. Second, a Georgetown University secret society—a running joke on campus—has blood on its hands. Torres’s pursuit of the truth embroils him in a bizarre and thrilling scavenger hunt. The clues, scratched out on parchment by the mysterious Odd Fellows Society, lead Santi to risk everything he holds sacred: his job, his life, even the woman he secretly loves. As for his relationship with his God? Well, that’s complicated. A hold-your-breath thriller that explores our national obsession with race, The Odd Fellows Society will have you looking at the U.S. capital—and its monuments’ secrets—in a whole different shade of black and white.
Domino Island
Desmond Bagley - 2019
His rapidly inflated premiums immediately before his death stand to make his young widow a very rich lady! Once there, Kemp discovers that Salton’s political ambitions had made him a lot of enemies, and local tensions around a forthcoming election are already spilling over into protest and violence on the streets. Salton also had friends in unexpected places, including the impossibly beautiful Leotta Tomsson, to whom there is much more than meets the eye. Kemp realises that Salton’s death and the local unrest are a deliberate smokescreen for an altogether more ambitious plot by an enemy in their midst, and as the island comes under siege, even Kemp’s army training seems feeble in the face of such a determined foe.Unseen for more than 40 years and believed lost, Domino Island was accepted for publication in 1972 but then replaced by a different novel to coincide with the release of The Mackintosh Man, the Paul Newman film based on Bagley’s earlier novel The Freedom Trap. It is a classic Bagley tour de force with an all-action finale.
The Delphi Chronicle, Bundle Book 2 & 3 - The Tortoise and the Hare, and Phoenix Rising
Russell Blake - 2011
This bundle of book 2 & 3 continues the saga of NY private eye Michael Derrigan, as he comes into possession of a manuscript that will change the world order if its secrets are aired. Clandestine factions of the U.S. government will do anything to keep the story buried, & a trail of butchery follows Derrigan as he races for his life in a chase that takes him from New York, to Mexico, to Havana. A roller-coaster ride of a thriller, The Delphi Chronicle's unflinching & often disturbing twists and turns question the nature of reality & of the integrity of our governments in a post-modern world of lies, deceit & betrayal.+++Questions & Answers with bestselling author Russell Blake.Question: The Delphi Chronicle posits a troubling & plausible conspiracy. Where did you get the idea?Russell Blake: The idea stemmed from the title. I was originally going to call the trilogy The Pegasus File, & I'd conceptualized a cool cover, so I Googled it to confirm there weren't any other books with that name. The original conspiracy was much tamer than what I wound up with. I had the idea of a literary agent getting a manuscript detailing a shocking scheme, but I hadn't defined what it was, exactly. From that search came this conspiracy, & I have to admit I considered toning it down a lot, because it scared even me. So readers? This is fiction, OK? And U.S. government? No need to send a wet team after me. We all understand it's fictional. As in, an invention, not real. That's my official position. Readers can decide how plausible theinvention is for themselves. Some will hate it, as it portrays the U.S. government in a negative light. Can't please everyone.Q: Why write it as a trilogy?RB: It would have been a long single volume if I'd tried to squeeze it all into one book. Given the success I saw with the Zero Sum trilogy, I wanted to do another one, & this was just naturally written in three volumes, although I think most will get the first one, & then buy the specially-priced bundle of Books 2 & 3 if they're interested in following the story to its thrilling conclusion (wink wink).Q: How do your novels compare to the work of your peers?RB: I think they're faster paced than most. I try to catapult readers through a series of twists & turns at such aggressive velocity they're left gasping by the end. And I dislike books where I can see the ending coming a third of the way through. Just hate that. I try to write racing, intelligent thrillers that don't pander & aren't formulaic. All have gotten raves, so I'm fooling at least some of the people most of the time...Q: Part of Delphi unfolds in Mexico. Any particular reason?RB: I live in Mexico. Have for almost a decade. Modern Mexico is very different than as portrayed by the U.S. media. Many parts are indistinguishable from medium sized cities in the U.S. Strip malls, high rises, melting-pot racial integration, etc. It's not cactus & sombreros. One of the things I find fascinating is how different it is than what my expectations were when I moved here, & I try to impart that. Most novels set in modern Mexico I've read are caricatures of the truth. Mission bells, white-garbed peasants, stereotypical characters. I try to imbue my fiction with reality, not a Hollywood portrayal based on a snapshot from the 1950s. I think readers will find that distinction interesting.
Lynchpin: The Best Laid Schemes of Mice and Men
Siddharth Maheshwari - 2021
A sinister plan, of a shrewd calculating mastermind, has set the wheels of doom in motion. He is now pulling the lynchpins across the country and making it fall into disarray. He is using everyone in his path to achieve his goals. Within thirty days he intends to control the nation’s soul. As chaos grips the country, it’s a race against time for DSP Ranbir Roy of the Intelligence Bureau and Inspector Vikram Aditya Singh to stop him before anarchy dooms the country. The pieces are set, the board is laid out but what happens when your own pawns move against you? What will be the end game?
Her Sister's Lie
Debbie Howells - 2018
Was it an accident or did she know her killer?Abe's life changes overnight when he goes to live with his aunt, Hannah, who hasn't seen him for ten years and who doesn't want him any more than he wants to be there.His silence disturbs her - Hannah's convinced he knows more than he's letting on. But while the police investigate her sister's death, Hannah's nightmare begins. Unexplained things start happening around her, but as Hannah's behaviour becomes more erratic, no-one believes her. Then she finds some letters that threaten to expose a secret she believed had been buried forever. If Abe has read them, he knows...
Poison Lake
L.G. Davis - 2021
She had to save herself from a man who hurt her more than he loved her.As Eden Sparks, she now lives in Liar's Island, where she spends her days running her interior design business or hiding from the world inside her secluded lake house.Each day she still looks over her shoulder, still expects him to emerge from the shadows.When he finally does, she's far from prepared.Is it time to stop running and fight for her life? Or has she already lost before fate deals her another blow?***Welcome to Liar’s Island, a stand-alone series of interconnected, novella-length domestic thrillers set in the picture-perfect community of Liars Island. Here, nothing is quite as it seems.On this island, families, and friendships are more than meets the eye...secrets, deceptions, and jealousies threaten to ruin everything these influential people have built. But it isn’t only the rich that live here...and power comes in all shapes and sizes. Everyone here is a liar...just how far would you go to get what you want?
London 2012: "What If...?"
Ian C.P. Irvine - 2012
People the world over will identify with the story told within these pages. As the story progresses, some will feel guilty, some will cry, some will laugh, ...but all will follow the plight of James Quinn, a man who is not unlike so many of us all.The Story :Contemplating having an affair, bored with work, and convinced there must be something more to it all, James Quinn is a man just about to enter a mid-life crisis. At the pinnacle of his career, James leads a successful life. But is it the right life? Instead of a Product Manager in a Telecommunications company, should he have been a plumber, an Olympic athlete, or a stockbroker, or an artist? Life, as they say, isn't a practice run. This is it.Convinced the 'grass is greener' everywhere else, and worried that he may be missing out, James Quinn is a man full of doubts.It's not that he hates his own life. Far from it. His 'life', as others may call it, is good. It's just that, nowadays he can't stop looking at other people and wondering if, out of the thousands of different lives that he could be living, is he living the right one? What if James has got it wrong? And then there's Jane, the first girl he kissed at school, and the one that got away. What would life have been like if he had married her instead of his wife? Unable to control his curiosity he tracks her down through Facebook and discovers that she is now a beautiful woman, living in London, and unhappy in her marriage: like a moth drawn to a flame James finds himself heading for infidelity and feels powerless to stop. Then one day, during the normal underground commute to work in London, he looks up from his book and doesn't recognise the station name on the Jubilee Line, …and in a split-second, everything changes.Emerging onto a platform at "New Cross Gate North", a station that shouldn't exist, James finds that Canary Wharf has vanished. Gone. And so have Selfridges and mobile phones.Instead, James finds himself in an alternate and different London, where the city he lived in has subtly changed, and every moment is now a voyage of discovery into a new life: a new career in advertising, a new house, and a new wife: Jane-the object of all his fantasies.In this new world, James discovers that he is a flamboyant, intelligent, charismatic, successful businessman. Yet, even though he now has everything he has always dreamt of, he finds that he longs for everything else that he used to have but has now lost: his two children, Keira and Nicole, and his wife Sarah. Sarah, the woman he loved but took for granted. Convinced that both the past and present are somehow real, he realises that somewhere Sarah must be as real in this world as she was in the last. Longing to hold her in his arms again, and with no apparent way back to his old world, he sets out to find Sarah in his new world. Wherever she is. Using knowledge of her gained from their previous life together, he manages to track her down. But James realises that before he can truly be together with Sarah once again, he must first understand what went wrong between them in the other world to avoid it happening again. What is the secret that his subconscious has hidden from his conscious mind, and which made him want to turn away from Sarah and into the arms of another woman? Will it be possible for Sarah to fall in love with him again in this new world? And is it too late to find a way back to the old world, the old life, and the London he used to know?Or will he be stuck forever in this other world, yearning for the green, green grass of home…
Sara's Game
Ernie Lindsey - 2012
His car was found. He wasn't. Unbelievably, the police report said, "No foul play suspected." There were a few unreliable sightings over the following months, but little else.Now, on the last day before summer break, her three children have gone missing from their schools, all at the same time.And the note under her windshield wiper asks one simple question: Are you ready to play the game?
Murder on Music Row
Stuart Dill - 2011
Meanwhile, Ripley’s label, Galaxy Records, is preparing a secret merger agreement that would create the largest record conglomerate in the world. Trouble arises when rumors spread that Ripley and Simon are withholding Ripley’s new album in hopes of renegotiating his contract.When Simon and Judd are shot on the famed Grand Ole Opry stage during the filming of Ripley’s new music video, no one is more upset than Ripley—especially as everyone assumes the shots were meant for him. While Simon’s life hangs in the balance, Judd seeks help from Megan Olsen, Simon’s right hand and Ripley’s day-to-day manager. The two set off on a high-powered chase to disclose the real motive behind the shootings and spare Ripley from a second murder attempt.Not unlike John Grisham’s legal thrillers and Michael Crichton’s science-based thrillers, Stuart Dill’s “music industry thriller” can now be added to the literary lexicon. Murder on Music Row leads readers through a maze of twists and turns that connect Nashville, New York, Los Angeles, and London in a behind-the-scenes look at an industry where there are no limits in the pursuit of money, power, and fame.
Lights All Night Long
Lydia Fitzpatrick - 2019
. . . One of the most propulsive, un-put-downable literary novels I've read in ages."--Anthony Marra, author of
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
Fifteen-year-old Ilya arrives in Louisiana from his native Russia for what should be the adventure of his life: a year in America as an exchange student. But all is not right in Ilya's world: he's consumed by the fate of his older brother Vladimir, the magnetic rebel to Ilya's dutiful wunderkind, back in their tiny Russian hometown. The two have always been close, spending their days dreaming of escaping to America. But when Ilya was tapped for the exchange, Vladimir disappeared into their town's seedy, drug-plagued underworld. Just before Ilya left, the murders of three young women rocked the town's usual calm, and Vladimir found himself in prison.With the help of Sadie, who has secrets of her own, Ilya embarks on a mission to prove Vladimir's innocence. Piecing together the timeline of the murders and Vladimir's descent into addiction, Ilya discovers the radical lengths to which Vladimir has gone to protect him--a truth he could only have learned by leaving him behind. A rich tale of belonging and the pull of homes both native and adopted, Lights All Night Long is a spellbinding story of the fierce bond between brothers determined to find a way back to each other.
Satan's Garden
Kit Lyman - 2014
It chronicles their experiences in parallel over the course of six years, unfolding the independent challenges they face while struggling to survive worlds apart from each other. This book club pick inspires readers to see that love, friendship, and faith can survive in spite of the most terrible circumstances.Dani and Keely imagined that life was more magical than others believed. If they had to be summed up, their one plus one would equal three. Together, they became something greater. It was twin sisters against the world. But the world had different plans. The man followed them to their secret tree house that unusually warm day in September. He only came for one, there and gone in the blink of an eye. Satan’s Garden takes you on the six-year journey of two sisters who learn what it means to survive. It’s a story of resiliency, hope, and above all, a bond that cannot be taken away. It teaches us how quickly life can change and yet how much of it we can change ourselves.