Billy Summers is a man with a gun who is in a room. He is the greatest in the business and a hired murderer. But if the objective is a genuinely evil person, he won’t complete the task. Billy now wants to leave. But there’s one more hit to make first. Billy is a distinguished Iraq War veteran, one of the best shooters in the world, and a master at disappearing after the task has been completed. What could go wrong, then? Let’s see, everything…
Best Quotes from this Book:
“You can’t help how you feel. Feelings are like breathing. They come in and go out.”
― Stephen King, Billy Summers
“He thinks writing is also a kind of war, one you fight with yourself. The story is what you carry and every time you add to it, it gets heavier.”
― Stephen King, Billy Summers
“It’s just that if there’s a God, he’s doing a piss poor job.”
― Stephen King, Billy Summers
“Try to write your own story. Consider writing about yourself, or rewriting something in your life you wished had gone differently. Then, be brave and share with someone what you’ve written. How did this process feel for you?”
― Stephen King, Billy Summers
“There aren’t just 2 kinds of people, good and bad like I thought when I was a kid who got most of his ideas on how people act from TV. There are 3. The third type of people goes along to get along as Deputy F.W.S. Malkin told me to do. Those are the most people in the world and I think they are gray people. They will not hurt you (at least on purpose) but they won’t help you much, either. They will say do what you want and God help you.”
― Stephen King, Billy Summers
Prior to Marissa’s infidelity, wealthy Washington suburbia residents Marissa and Matthew Bishop appeared to have it all. Their seemingly flawless relationship is actually riven by work and a lack of connection. She wants to do the necessary repairs out of love for her husband and for their eight-year-old son. Avery Chambers comes in.
Avery is a therapist who misplaced her license to practice. Though they must follow her unconventional ways, it doesn’t stop her from offering crisis counseling to individuals who need it. The Bishops are in need of help. They all come into contact as they walk through Avery’s door and Marissa admits to having an affair. Because the biggest secrets are still kept a secret and more than just marriage is at risk.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Grief isn’t linear. It isn’t logical. There’s no structure or civility to it; it grabs you when you least expect it and digs in its nails until you succumb.”
― Greer Hendricks, The Golden Couple
“Grief is a shape-shifter, it defies logic, sneaking up on you when you least expect it and leaving you empty-handed and hollow when you go searching for it.”
― Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen, The Golden Couple
“Grief isn’t linear, it isn’t logical. There’s no structure or civility to it. It grabs you when you least expect it and it digs in its nails until you succumb.”
― Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen, The Golden Couple
“Time is a chameleon. It’s ever-changing, cannily adapting to circumstances. It stretches out some tiny moments for an eternity. Then it shifts course and swallows up whole days, years even as if they never existed. It’s as slippery and elusive as water running through the cracks in a tightly cupped hand.”
― Sarah Pekkanen, The Golden Couple
“I don’t want to give him up, but neither do I want to lead him on. He deserves more than I can offer right now.”
― Greer Hendricks, The Golden Couple
Finlay Donovan appears to be killing it, but she’s not. A struggling novelist and stressed-out single mother of two, Finlay’s life is in disarray. Her ex-husband dismissed the nanny without notifying her, and this morning she had to send her four-year-old to school with her hair duct-taped to her skull after an incident with scissors.
When Finlay’s lunchtime conversation with her agent about the storyline of her upcoming thriller book is overheard, she is mistaken for a contract assassin and unwittingly accepts an offer to get rid of a troublesome husband in order to make ends meet. As she becomes entangled in a real-world murder case, she quickly realizes that crime in real life is much more challenging than its fictitious counterpart.
Finlay Donovan Is Killing is a quick-witted, delectably funny, and utterly honest portrayal of the struggles and joys of motherhood in all its messiness, comedy, and emotional moments. It is the first book of a fantastic new series by the honored Elle Cosimano.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“My Google search history alone was probably enough to put me on a government watch list. I wrote suspense novels about murders like this. I’d searched every possible way to kill someone. With every conceivable kind of weapon.”
― Elle Cosimano, Finlay Donovan Is Killing It
“It’s a widely known fact that most moms are ready to kill someone by eight thirty A.M. on any given morning.”
― Elle Cosimano, Finlay Donovan Is Killing It
“You can’t spend your whole life shut up in that house, making up stories.”
― Elle Cosimano, Finlay Donovan Is Killing It
“Let us not attribute to malice and cruelty what may be referred to as less criminal motives.’ I make it a point never to assume the worst about people.”
― Elle Cosimano, Finlay Donovan Is Killing It
“We are not adding grand larceny of farming equipment to our growing list of felonies.”
― Elle Cosimano, Finlay Donovan Is Killing It
In this straight-from-the-headlines political thriller, a Navy SEAL learns that the US government is responsible for the deaths of his crew and has nothing left to live for but everything to die for.
Lieutenant Commander James Reece’s whole team was slain in a devastating ambush on his last combat mission, which also claimed the lives of the aircrew brought in to rescue them. Reece learns that the deaths of those closest to him on the day of his return home were the result of a conspiracy that extends to the highest echelons of government rather than a war crime committed by an enemy nation.
Reece now uses the skills he’s learned through more than ten years of nonstop combat to exact revenge on his family and comrades after growing up without a family and being released from the military’s leadership structure. Reece targets his opponents at the highest echelons of power with cold-blooded precision and unrelenting suspense, disregarding both the rules of warfare and the rule of law.
The Terminal List is an addictive thriller that warns against the allure of total power and those who will stop at nothing to obtain it. It is ideal for fans of Vince Flynn, Brad Thor, Stephen Hunter, and Nelson DeMille.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“You must direct the fire and movement of the entire element and resist the instinct to become just another gun in the fight.”
― Jack Carr, The Terminal List
“You show me a member of Congress who’s part of the appropriations process and I’ll show you a wife, child, or brother-in-law with a company that benefits from federal dollars.”
― Jack Carr, The Terminal List
“The consolidation of power at the federal level in the guise of public safety is a national trend and should be guarded against at all costs.”
― Jack Carr, The Terminal List
“Revisionist views of the Constitution by opportunistic politicians and unelected judges with agendas that reinterpret the Bill of Rights to take power away from the people and consolidate it at the federal level threaten the core principles of the Republic. As a free people, keeping federal power in check is something that should be of concern to us all. The fundamental value of freedom is what sets us apart from the rest of the world. We are citizens, not subjects, and we must stay ever vigilant that we remain so.”
― Jack Carr, The Terminal List
“You can plan forever but at some point you have to execute.”
― Jack Carr, The Terminal List
A semi-conscious man without identity who is also mute is discovered on a British beach and is promptly identified as Mr. Nobody by the national press. Dr. Emma Lewis, a neuropsychiatrist, is asked to evaluate him and finds that he does remember details about her own past that nobody else is aware of.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Sometimes the most terrifying thing is our own imagination.”
― Catherine Steadman, Mr. Nobody
“There are no miracles—there are only people and their actions.”
― Catherine Steadman, Mr. Nobody
“Recognition is a complex neurological process and humans are very, very good at masking the absence of it. People adapt to memory losses. They rely on other things—visual cues, social cues—they get good at reading people, situations; they find ways around things until an answer presents itself.”
― Catherine Steadman, Mr. Nobody
“I say it because he is my patient and it will make him feel really good, and he won’t remember I said it tomorrow.”
― Catherine Steadman, Mr. Nobody
“I’m not lying to him. I’m just not being an asshole.”
― Catherine Steadman, Mr. Nobody
A compelling psychological thriller novel and story about a home with a startling secret. It is all Alice and Leo had ever wanted when they move into a newly refurbished home in The Circle, a gated neighborhood of upscale homes. However, appearances can be deceiving… As Alice gets to meet her neighbors, she learns a terrible truth about her new house and starts to develop a close relationship with Nina, the former resident who was a therapist.
Alice has an obsession with trying to reconstruct what occurred two years earlier. However, nobody wants to discuss it. Things are not as perfect as they look, and her neighbors are concealing secrets.
Every narrative has three sides, starting with yours. Mine. And reality as newlyweds, madly in love, and enviously wealthy, Max and Alissa have a fairy tale life. Then, at their home, Alissa miraculously flees with her life when Max is savagely stabbed to death. Why, though, was she spared? As the search for the murderer gets underway, several leads are found. Was Max’s great fortune the reason? Had his dubious business methods finally gotten to him? Or was it a dangerous stalker with an obsession? As gentle, sweet Alissa is left to mourn her husband’s passing and rebuild her life, devoted friends come to her aid. But not everybody is what they seem to be… Not all fairy tales have a pleasant conclusion, and behind the surface, there are deep-seated jealousies, secrets, and twisted loves. The bestselling author of Look Behind You and Where the Memories Lie brings us Duplicity, a gripping thriller.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“You have to accept what you can’t change, and change what you can’t accept.”
― Sibel Hodge, Duplicity
Fans of Gone Girl, Apple Tree Yard, and Anatomy of a Scandal will enjoy this riveting debut thriller. Alison has everything. She has a devoted spouse, a cute daughter, and a career that is taking off. She recently received her first murder case to defend. But nothing is ever what it seems. One more night, please. I’ll conclude then.
Alison drinks excessively. She is not caring for her family. Additionally, she is having an affair with a coworker whose penchant for pushing boundaries could be too much for her to bear. I finished. I murdered him. I ought to be imprisoned.
Although Alison’s client wants to enter a guilty plea, she does not dispute that she stabbed her spouse. But there is a serious flaw in her story. Alison might be able to save this woman by first saving herself. I keep an eye on you. I am aware of your actions. Alison’s secrets are known by someone. Someone who wants to punish her for what she did and who won’t give up until she has nothing left. BLOOD ORANGE presents a striking new voice in a psychological thriller and examines the power of fear and want, jealousy and betrayal, and love and hate in a dark, toxic, and captivating story.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“We don’t need a drink to be pleasant”
― Harriet Tyce, Blood Orange
“It’s so sad . . . He had so much to offer, so much to live for. Well, if only he’d been able to control himself better. A fatal flaw. He was such a good boss – I was due to become a full partner soon, too.”
― Harriet Tyce, Blood Orange
“Looking up at them, I feel smaller and stockier than usual, a workhorse to their thoroughbred elegance.”
― Harriet Tyce, Blood Orange
“But as her barrister . . . I know there’s something that doesn’t feel right, something I’m missing, just out of the corner of my eye. I stop telling her about the limitations of mitigation and steel myself.”
― Harriet Tyce, Blood Orange
“All so much in common, abusive childhoods leading to abuse of alcohol and drugs, deprivation and a desperation that sometimes externalized itself in raging demands”
― Harriet Tyce, Blood Orange
Gosford Park meets Inception, via Agatha Christie and Black Mirror, in this incredibly creative higher aspirations murder mystery from a terrific new artist.
‘Somebody’s going to be murdered at the ball tonight. It won’t appear to be a murder and so the murderer won’t be caught. Rectify that injustice and I’ll show you the way out.’
It’s supposed to be a celebration, but tragedy strikes instead. Evelyn Hardcastle, the young and attractive daughter of the home, is killed as fireworks explode overhead. However, Evelyn won’t pass away just once. The day will keep repeating itself until Aiden, one of the visitors invited to Blackheath for the celebration can solve her murder. Each time culminated in a fatal handgun fire. Finding the murderer is the only way to end this cycle. But every time the day starts over, Aiden awakens in a different visitor’s body. And someone is adamant that he never leave Blackheath…
Best Quotes from this Book:
“How lost do you have to be to let the devil lead you home?”
― Stuart Turton, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
“If this isn’t hell, the devil is surely taking notes.”
― Stuart Turton, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
“Too little information and you’re blind, too much and you’re blinded.”
― Stuart Turton, The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
“We are never more ourselves than when we think people aren’t watching.”
― Stuart Turton, The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
“Nothing like a mask to reveal somebody’s true nature.”
― Stuart Turton, The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
When John Kelly, a former Navy SEAL and Vietnam War veteran, befriends a young woman with a dubious past, he is still grieving the accidental death of his wife, which had occurred six months earlier. He swears vengeance and gathers all of his former skills to set out to find the men guilty before it can happen again. When that history reaches out for her in an especially horrible way, he does so with a sense of urgency. In the meantime, the Pentagon is getting ready to launch an operation to free a significant number of detainees from a North Vietnamese POW camp. They discover that one man, a specific ex-Navy SEAL by the name of John Kelly, is the best at navigating the area around the camp.
Kelly is on a specific mission. He’s wanted by the Pentagon for their use. When Kelly (now known by the code name Mr. Clark) tries to balance the two, he is met with a wide variety of foes—both domestically and abroad—who are so cunning that even the slightest error may result in death. And Kelly’s ability to ensure that error never occurs will determine the fate of a great number of people, including himself. Men aren’t inherently risky. They develop a threat. Kelly discovers that the most hazardous of all are the ones you least anticipate. Without Remorse is a page-turning thriller written by Tom Clancy. As he guides us through its twists and turns, Clancy combines his trademark excellent realism and authenticity with complex plotting, suspense on the verge of breaking, and a stunning ensemble of characters.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“The nice thing about enemies is you know where they stand. This is not always true of friends.”
“Civilians listened to officers, which said a lot about the intelligence of civilians.”
“The problem with so secure a place was that it depended absolutely on secrecy which, once blown, became a fatal liability”
“He was a person whose universe was very small indeed. It held only one person, himself, surrounded by things whose sole function was to be manipulated for his amusement or profit.”
“The dead were gone and didn’t know or care what they left behind.. If the dead still lived on the surface of this earth then it was in the minds of those who remembered them…”
One of the most proficient assassins in the entire globe is Villanelle (a codename, of course). She is a psychopath with cat-like features who prefers the creature comforts of her opulent lifestyle to play the game, and she specializes in killing the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world. However, she attracts a determined enemy to her trial when she murders a powerful Russian politician.
The national security agencies have engaged former MI6 agent Eve Polastri (no codename) to discover, apprehend, or kill the assassin who committed the crime and anybody who assisted her. Eve accepts the mission despite leading a calm and average life despite her bright wit and sharp intellect. The ensuing chase will take them across the globe, colliding with despotic regimes and formidable crime networks, all leading to a decisive showdown from which neither will survive unharmed. An intriguing new voice in fiction has written the slick, quick-paced international thriller Codename Villanelle.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Without predators, people who can think the unthinkable, and act without fear or hesitation, the world stands still. You are an evolutionary necessity.”
“Someone who could get up in the morning, make coffee, choose what to wear, and then go out and cold-bloodedly put a total stranger to death. Did you have to be some kind of anomalous, psychopathic freak to do that? Did you have to be born that way? Or could any woman, correctly programmed, be turned into a professional executioner?”
“I really really don’t want to die here, among these criminally ugly furnishings.”
“With her make-up-free complexion and nondescript brown hair gathered in a scrappy up-do, she looks like someone for whom there are more important things than being thought pretty. She might be an academic, or an assistant in the better sort of a bookshop. But there’s something about her—a stillness, a fixity of gaze—that tells another story.”
Life is great for Emma. She has a fulfilling work as a doctor at the nearby hospital is the mother of an intelligent kindergartener and is wed to her true love, a devoted and caring police detective. But when she learns that her son Josh has a rare type of cancer, everything falls apart.
Emma, who is adamant about saving him, decides to sell opioids in order to pay for the necessary treatment that could save his life. However, when someone is found dead, a deadly game of cat and mouse starts, with her own husband taking the lead. Emma is drawn into the murky world of drugs, deception, and murder as the life of her kid is in danger. Will she learn the truth before she can help Josh?
Reality is created by memory. That’s what New York City cop Barry Sutton is discovering as he examines the horrific phenomena known as False Memory Syndrome—a strange illness that drives its victims insane with recollections of a life they never lived.
Helena Smith, a neuroscientist, believes this. That is why she has committed her life to develop technology that will allow us to save our most important memories. If she is successful, everyone will be able to relive their first kiss, childbirth, or final moments with a dying parent. As Barry seeks the truth, he encounters an adversary more horrific than any disease—a force that destroys not only our minds but also the fabric of the past. And, as its consequences begin to unravel the world today it, only he and Helena, functioning together, will be able to defeat it. But how can they remain firm when the reality is shifting and disintegrating all around them?
Recursion is a thriller as only Blake Crouch could envision it—a ferocious page-turner and a complicated science-fiction puzzle box about time, identity, and memory—and his most ambitious, mind-boggling, seductive work to date.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Life with a cheat code isn’t life. Our existence isn’t something to be engineered or optimized for the avoidance of pain. That’s what it is to be human – the beauty and the pain, each meaningless without the other.”
“He has wondered lately if that’s all living really is—one long goodbye to those we love.”
“Time is an illusion, a construct made out of human memory. There’s no such thing as the past, the present, or the future. It’s all happening now.”
“I know everything feels hopeless to you at this moment, but this is just a moment, and moments pass.”
“Everything will look better in the morning.
There will be hope again when the light returns.
The despair is only an illusion, a trick the darkness plays.”
When a lovely aspiring writer walks into Joe Goldberg’s East Village bookstore, he does what everyone would do: he Googles the name on her credit card. In New York City, there is just one Guinevere Beck. She has a public Facebook account and constantly Tweets, informing Joe of all he must know: she is simply Beck to her friends, she attended Brown University, she resides on Bank Street, and she’ll be at a bar in Brooklyn tonight—the ideal location for a “chance” meeting.
As Joe takes control of Beck’s life covertly and compulsively, he organizes a sequence of events to guarantee Beck finds herself in his welcoming arms. Joe transforms himself from stalker to boyfriend, all while silently removing the hurdles that stand in their way—even if it involves murder. Caroline Kepnes’ debut novel is a scary investigation of how susceptible we all are to stalking and manipulation. It is a razor-sharp tale for our hyper-connected digital age.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“The problem with books is that they end.”
“The only thing crueler than a cage so
small that a bird can’t fly is a cage so
large that a bird thinks it can fly.”
“If we were teenagers, I could kiss you. But I’m on a platform behind a counter wearing a name tag and we’re too old to be young.”
“The problem with books is that they end. They seduce you. They spread their legs to you and pull you inside. And you go deep and leave your possessions and your ties to the world at the door and you like it inside and you don’t want for your possessions or your ties and then, the book evaporates.”
“Work in a bookstore and learn that most people in this world feel guilty about being who they are.”
A band of robbers pulls off a spectacular theft from a safe vault deep beneath Princeton University’s Firestone Library. Their booty is precious, but Princeton has insured it for $25 million. Bruce Cable runs a popular bookstore in the tranquil tourist town of Santa Rosa on Florida’s Camino Island. He makes his true money, though, as a well-known rare book merchant. Few individuals are aware that he dabbles in the black market for stolen books and manuscripts on occasion.
Mercer Mann is a young novelist suffering from writer’s block who was recently laid off from her teaching job. An elegant, intriguing woman working for an even more secretive company approaches her. A significant monetary offer persuades Mercer to go incognito and infiltrate Bruce Cable’s network of literary acquaintances, with the goal of eventually becoming close enough with him to learn his secrets. However, Mercer finally knows far too much, and there is trouble in paradise, as only John Grisham can deliver it.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“I’ve never understood people who grind through a book they don’t really like, determined to finish it for some unknown reason.”
“If you’re gonna be stupid you gotta be tough.”
“Maybe you should be a lawyer.” “I can’t think of anything worse.”
“She was a good swimmer but we never used life jackets.” “It wouldn’t matter in that storm.”
“her mind was wonderfully uncluttered with the nagging irritations of everyday life.”
Sharon Bolton is back in The Split, an exciting new solo thriller about a woman on the run that is tense, riveting, and has a twist you won’t see coming. Some secrets will always keep pace with you no matter how far you run… The last boat of the summer is ready to leave the isolated Antarctic island of South Georgia, signaling safety to the local glaciologist Felicity Lloyd.
Felicity often worries that her ex-husband Freddie will locate her, even in this remote location. She got a job on this remote island to avoid him, but now that he’s out after serving a murder conviction sentence, she knows he won’t stop looking for her. However, a doctor at Cambridge who is looking into the history of Felicity and Freddie’s relationship discovers that Felicity has been on the verge of collapse for a very long time. The only method he can think of to assist her is to leave for South Georgia himself in an effort to reach her first.
In this narrative, a man fights to save his family and his little North Carolina village after America loses a war that would plunge the country back into the Middle Ages in a split second, according to William R. Forstchen, a New York Times best-selling author. A conflict centered on an electromagnetic pulse as a weapon (EMP). a weapon that our adversaries might already be carrying.
One Second After was already being debated in the Pentagon’s hallways months before it was ever published as a book that every American should read because it provided a real sense of a weapon with the incredible capacity to obliterate the entire country in a matter of seconds. The Wall Street Journal cautions that this weapon has the potential to destroy America. This book, which is set in a typical American community, is an ominous warning of what might be our future—and our demise—in the vein of On the Beach, Fail Safe, and Testament.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“America is like an exotic hothouse plant. It can only live now in the artificial environment of vaccinations, sterilization, and antibiotics we started creating a hundred or more years ago.”
“The enemy will never attack you where you are strongest. . . . He will attack where you are weakest. If you do not know your weakest point, be certain, your enemy will.”
“We were spoiled unlike any generation in history, and we forgot completely just how dependent we were on the juice flowing through the wires, the buttons doing something when we pushed them.”
“As was said by Thomas Jefferson, “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”
“I’d of shot him in town if he lived that long.”
The popular author of All Is Not Forgotten returns with a suspenseful novel about two sisters who go missing, their dysfunctional family, and what happens when one of the girl’s returns.
The Tanner sisters, ages 15-year-old Cass and 17-year-old Emma, vanished one night three years ago. Cass returns three years later without her sister Emma. Her tale involves a mysterious island where the two were confined, kidnapping, and betrayal. But something doesn’t stack up with forensic psychiatrist Dr. Abby Winter. Dr. Winter digs deep into this dysfunctional family and finds a life where limits were broken and a narcissistic parent was in charge. And where the homecoming of one sister might only be the start of the crime.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“I think there are two types of people. Ones who have a scream inside them and ones who don’t.”
“The truth is, nothing really matters unless we decide it matters.”
“In spite of everything she did that she shouldn’t have done, and everything she didn’t do that she should have, something that felt like love was in her and she would take it out at times like this and show it to us and make us hunger for more. All of us, each in our own way.”
“Sometimes you can win a war by leaving the battlefield before your army gets killed.”
“Sorry happens after something bad has happened, after people have let it happen. It had become contemptuous to me, all these I’m-so-sorries.”
In 2020, The Undoing is the most talked-about TV show. Big Little Lies creators; stars Nicole Kidman, Hugh Grant, and Donald Sutherland. Grace Sachs, a wedded therapist with a small boy, believes she has all the answers on relationships with both men and women. Her pet theory—that women undervalue their intuition about males, which can cause severe problems later on—is the basis of a book she is preparing to publish.
Grace knows her own husband, but how well? A brutal death, a missing husband, and a slew of shocking revelations will replace everything she previously believed she understood. She is about to find out. Grace must tear apart one life and build another for herself and her child after being left behind in the wake of a very public calamity and appalled by the ways in which she has failed to heed her own advice.
A stunning new action-packed thriller with high stakes international intrigue, written by Daniel Silva, the author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers The New Girl and The Other Woman, stars the mysterious art restorer and master snoop Gabriel Allon.
Master of the espionage thriller Silva has delighted readers with twenty-two thought-provoking and suspenseful novels that transport them around the world and back, from the United States to Europe, Russia to the Middle East, with a wide cast of engrossing characters and clever storylines.
He makes a comeback with another bestseller, a powerful book that displays his extraordinary talent and creative imagination and is sure to become a classic for both his devoted followers and his expanding legions of converts.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“How about a global pandemic? A novel strain of influenza for which we humans have no natural defense.”
“Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?”
“He was xenophobic, intolerant, distrustful of the free press, and had little patience for niceties such as parliamentary democracy or the rule of law.”
“There was not one member of the team whose life had not been altered by the longest hatred.”
“Computer files are a bit like sin, Excellency. They can be absolved, but they never really go away. – Gabriel Allon”
Alex North crafts a multigenerational tale of a father and son who are targeted by an investigation to find a serial murderer preying on a tiny village in this dark, gripping thriller. Tom Kennedy is hopeful that a new beginning will help him and his little son Jake recover from his wife’s unexpected death. Featherbank is a new beginning, a new home, and a new community.
Featherbank, though, has a troubled background. Five locals were kidnapped and killed by a serial killer twenty years ago. Frank Carter was known as “The Whisper Man” before he was finally apprehended because he would lure his victims out by murmuring at their windows at night. A young boy disappears as Tom and Jake are getting settled in their new house. His disappearance resurrects previous accusations that he preyed on a partner by having an unsettling similarity to Frank Carter’s actions. Detectives Pete Willis and Amanda Beck are now under pressure to discover the boy before it’s too late, even if it means Pete must go back and face The Whisper Man, his greatest adversary from behind bars. Jake then starts to act suspiciously. At his window, he overhears whispering.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Courage is not the absence of fear, Pete knew. Courage requires fear.”
“The devil finds work for idle hands. Bad thoughts find empty heads.”
“The butterflies didn’t have a choice, after all. That’s what things do. Even in the toughest of circumstances, they keep living.”
“There were always so many reasons to drink, though. Only ever one real reason not to.”
“The only ghosts that existed were in your head. They spoke through you, not to you.”
World War II and the present alternate conspiratorially amongst each other as Cryptonomicon soars across the globe. The brilliant mathematician Lawrence Waterhouse, the master cryptanalyst, and the gung-ho, morphine-dependent marine Bobby Shaftoe are our 1940s heroes. They’re a part of Detachment 2702, an Allied team attempting to decipher Axis communication codes while also keeping the enemy from discovering the success of their efforts. Their work consists primarily of covering up lies on top of lies. Dr. Alan Turing, who is a member of 2702, explains to Waterhouse how the unit operates in its peculiar way. “We send out an observation plane initially when we want to sink a convoy… In fact, its main responsibility is not to observe; the location of the convoy is already known to us. Its true responsibility is to be upheld… The Germans won’t be suspicious when we approach and sink them then.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker’s game because they almost always turn out to be—or to be indistinguishable from—self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time.”
“Show some fucking adaptability!”
“Ask a Soviet engineer to design a pair of shoes and he’ll come up with something that looks like the boxes that the shoes came in; ask him to make something that will massacre Germans, and he turns into Thomas Fucking Edison.”
“This made him a grad student, and grad students existed not to learn things but to relieve the tenured faculty members of tiresome burdens such as educating people and doing research.”
“The best way to know someone is to have a conversation with them.”
When Lily, a young lawyer, marries Ed, she’s determined to start over and leave the past’s secrets in the past. However, when she takes on her first murder case, she meets Joe, a convicted killer to whom Lily finds herself curiously connected. Soon, she will sacrifice virtually anything for him.
Lily, however, is not the only person harboring a secret. Carla, who lives next door, may only be nine years old, but she has already discovered the power of secrets. that whatever she wants can be obtained for her. Twelve years later, Carla shows up at Lily’s door, starting a series of events that can only lead in one direction.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“The fact that you no longer have a right to grieve for someone you once shared your life with makes the pain even worse. •”
“There are times when you’ll find yourself swearing that blue is black. You’ll truly believe it yourself. We all do it. It’s not that lawyers lie. It’s that they twist the real facts to make another world that everyone else believes in, too. And who’s to say that won’t be a better world?”
“When you’re constantly prepared for things to go wrong, it’s a shock when they go right.”
“Sometimes you have to do something wrong before you can make things right.”
“Did you know that the average person produces enough saliva to fill two swimming pools during their life?”
Colby Cavendish is looking forward to a long, hot season of parties, beach BBQs, and possibly more hook-ups with Levi Bonham, the hottest man in school, since that she has lately let go of her nerdy image—and the best friend that went with it. But when her parents send her to spend the summer in Greece with her insane aunt Tally, her entire world collapses.
Colby worries that her new friends have completely forgotten about her while she is stranded on an uninteresting island with no shops, no cell phone connection, and an aunt who converses with her plants. However, all changes when she encounters Yannis, a charming native from Greece. In Alyson Noel’s Cruel Summer, she has an experience that is more profound and emotional than a summer romance, and it pushes her to view herself and the life she left behind in a completely new light.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“The trick is to learn to see with your heart, not with your eyes”
“If there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that nothing is ever sure.”
“Because the truth is, it’s just a whole lot better to not let yourself get too involved with anyone, or anything. Because in the end – everything comes to an end.”
“This was supposed to be my best summer yet, the one I’ve been working toward since practically forever. Now I’m being banished from everything I know and love, and it just doesn’t make any sense.”
A missing girl seeking retribution. a podcast similar to Serial that investigates the hints she leaves behind. And a conclusion that you won’t be capable of putting out of your mind. Sadie’s life hasn’t been simple. She raised her sister Mattie in a remote tiny village where she had grown up alone, doing her best to give them a decent existence and keep them afloat.
But Sadie’s entire world falls apart when Mattie is discovered dead. Sadie is driven to bring her sister’s murderer to justice after a slightly bungled police investigation and sets out on the road in search of him. Sadie’s story is overheard by West McCray, a radio host working on a piece about small, unnoticed villages in America, at a nearby gas station, and he becomes fixated on locating the missing girl. He launches his own podcast and follows Sadie’s journey while attempting to understand what transpired and searching for her before it was too late. The book by Courtney Summers launched her writing career. Sadie is a fast-paced, horrifying book that will keep you engrossed until the very last page.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“People don’t change. They just get better at hiding who they really are.”
“Every little thing about you can be a weapon, if you’re clever enough.”
“It was a terrible thing, sure, but we live in a world that has no shortage of terrible things. You can’t stop for all of them.”
“I wish his darkness lived outside of him, because you have to know it’s there to see it. Like all real monsters, he hides in plain sight.”
“And Sadie, if you’re out there, please let me know. Because I can’t take another dead girl.”
A gripping psychological thriller with page-turning tension about the creation and dissolution of a family and a woman whose experience as a mother is all she feared and nothing like what she had hoped for. Blythe Connor is adamant that she would provide Violet with the kind of loving care that she herself never received as a child.
However, throughout the arduous early stages of parenthood, Blythe starts to believe that there is something flawed with her daughter because she doesn’t act like most kids. Or is Blythe imagining everything? Fox, her husband, claims she is hallucinating. Blythe starts to doubt her own sanity the more Fox downplays her anxieties, and we start to doubt what Blythe is telling us about her life as well.
When their son Sam is born, Blythe experiences the joyful bond with her kid that she had always dreamed. Even Violet appears to like her little sibling. But when their way of life is abruptly altered, Blythe is forced to face the reality due to the disastrous consequences. The Push is a masterpiece that you should read in one sitting. It is an immensely absorbing book that will make you rethink everything you believe about parenting, what we owe our kids, and what it’s like for women to be disbelieved.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“A mother’s heart breaks a million ways in her lifetime.”
“We could have counted our problems on the petals of the daisy in my bouquet, but it wouldn’t be long before we were lost in a field of them.”
“You used to care about me as a person—my happiness, the things that made me thrive. Now I was a service provider. You didn’t see me as a woman. I was just the mother of your child.”
“Marriages can float apart. Sometimes we don’t notice how far we’ve gone until all of a sudden, the water meets the horizon and it feels like we’ll never make it back.”
“I don’t want you learning to be like me. But I don’t know how to teach you to be anyone different.”
The Good Sister by The Mother-in-Law author Sally Hepworth is a fantastic book about the secrets that connect two sisters together. Only once has Rose been unable to prevent me from making a bad decision, and that was a mistake I will carry with me for the rest of my life.
In her neighborhood library, Fern Castle works. Three times every week, she eats dinner with Rose, one of her twin sisters. She also does her best to stay away from crowded areas, bright lights, and loud noises. Because Fern has a meticulously planned-out existence, upsetting her routine may be deadly.
Fern sees the opportunity to repay her sister for all that Rose has done for her when Rose learns she is sterile. Rose can receive a child from Fern. All she has to do is locate a father. In this funny, rich, and startling tale of what families keep concealed, Fern’s mission will upend the foundations of the life she has carefully established for herself and rile up dark secrets from the past.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“The library belongs to everyone. The library, Janet used to say, is one of only a few places in the world that one doesn’t need to believe anything or buy anything to come inside.”
“Angry is just a pen name for sad,” Janet had explained. “In my experience, nine times out of ten if you are kind to the angry person, you will calm them down and find out what is really going on with them.”
“If it were up to me, every child would have a year in the library before they went to school.”
“The library, Janet used to say, is one of only a few places in the world that one doesn’t need to believe anything or buy anything to come inside”
“One thing I’ve learned about facing fear,” he says, “is that sometimes, it’s just too scary.”
“Allah!” Three Muslim terrorists blast up a crucial Soviet oil complex with that piercing yell, causing a major oil crisis that jeopardizes the USSR’s stability. Members of Politburo and the KGB come up with a brilliant scheme of diplomatic trickery to offset the effects of this catastrophe. They orchestrate a series of events to pit the NATO allies against one another, creating a distraction that will allow the Soviets to take control of all the Persian Gulf oil.
The Soviets are faced with another possibility, one they hadn’t anticipated, as this captivating tale of international espionage and global politics approaches its climax: a full-scale confrontation in which no side can prevail.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“We sink ships and try to pretend that they’re just ships—things without people in them. It’s dishonest, but we do it anyway.”
“If you penetrate the hull at deep depth, the sudden pressure change inside the hull supposedly causes the air to ignite and everyone inside the boat incinerates.”
“What will our Defense Minister do when it becomes obvious even to him that we have failed? Have you considered that? When desperate men realize they have failed—and those desperate men have control of atomic weapons, then what?”
“Heavy enemy jamming activity to the west,” the regimental commander announced. “Plan Three. Repeat: Plan Three.”
“The Americans would claim thirty-seven kills, quite a score since they had expected a total of only twenty-seven Russian aircraft. In fact, of twenty-six MiGs, only five undamaged aircraft remained”
At the peak of the Cold War, the CIA selects two secretaries from its typing pool and gives them the job of a lifetime. Their goal was to smuggle Doctor Zhivago out of the USSR, where no one dared publish it, and aid Pasternak’s masterpiece in entering the global publishing market. Sally Forrester is a glamorous and intelligent spy who has developed her knack for deception throughout the world by using her charm and attraction to get information out of strong men. Irina is a total newbie who, with Sally’s guidance, picks up how to mix in, conduct drops, and sneakily transport sensitive data.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“We unveil ourselves in the pieces we want others to know, even those closest to us. We all have our secrets.”
“the mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for,”
“I wanted them to take a good hard look at a system that had allowed the State to kill off any writer, any intellectual—hell, even any meteorologist—they disagreed with.”
“Maybe certain poems are meant only for oneself.”
“This book will take us down a spiral from which there will be no return.”
In the community of Long Thorpe, nothing ever happens—that is, till sixteen-year-old Summer Robinson vanishes without a trace. No search by her family or the police can find her. Summer discovers Colin’s abusive past and his views of his victims as his family—his lovely, pure flowers—while spending months in the cellar of her captor with a number of other ladies. But time is running out, and flowers can’t thrive without the sun for very long.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“I had heard that true love is realized after a couple has experienced and overcome something huge.”
“My mum was right: the longer you were with a man, the grosser they became.”
“He continued driving, and with every passing second, I started to give up hope. I was going to die. The van finally came to a stop and my body froze. This is it. This is where he kills me. After”
“Four vases sat proudly on the side table behind the dining table and chairs; one held roses, one violets, one poppies. The fourth was empty. I”
“He was like a dog playing with a balloon; you knew it would pop but not exactly when.”
Hacker Sara Martinez is. She did break into the foster care system in New York City to reveal her foster family as dishonest and illegal. Instead of being celebrated as a hero, Sara is forced to spend years in a juvenile detention center and is also forbidden from accessing computers for the same amount of time. Enter Mother, a British agent who not only frees Sara from prison but also gives her the opportunity to establish herself within the covert MI6 organization.
The City Spies are a group of five young people from different countries who operate out of a base in Scotland. They are developing their special abilities, such as hand sleight of hand, breaking and entering observation, and explosives when they are not attending the neighborhood boarding school. All of these enable them to travel to spy locations where adults are unable to.
Before she knows what she’s doing, Sarah is attempting to stop a villain while dangling thirty feet off the side of a building, traveling to Paris for an international youth summit, breaking into a rival school’s computer to thwart them from winning a million euros, and navigating the complicated dynamics of her new team. Nobody said preserving the world was simple…
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Only fools and liars speak with certainty about things beyond their control.”
“You cannot achieve what you cannot believe.”
“Bad guys never wait, so good guys can’t be late.”
“you don’t have to be part of a group to understand that they’re being mistreated.”
“My secret entrance,” he said. “It’s funny if you think about it. The thing that kept him alive was traveling through the City of the Dead.” “The what of the what?” Brooklyn asked, alarmed.”
Leigh Bardugo’s captivating adult debut is a story of privilege, murder, dark magic, and power that is set among the Ivy League elite. The most unlikely student in Yale’s freshmen class is Galaxy “Alex” Stern. Alex, who was raised by a hippie mother in the suburbs of Los Angeles, dropped out of school early and entered a world of sketchy drug-dealer boyfriends, hopeless jobs, and much, much worse. She is actually the only survivor of horrifying, unsolved multiple homicides by the age of twenty. Some could argue that she wasted her life. However, in her hospital bed, Alex is given a second chance: a full scholarship to one of the most famous colleges in the world. Why her and what’s the catch?
Alex, who is still looking for answers, is sent to New Haven to keep an eye on Yale’s secret organizations by her enigmatic sponsors. Their eight windowless “tombs” are well-known hangouts for the wealthy and powerful, from top politicians to the greatest names on Wall Street. However, their occult practices are far more terrible and spectacular than anything a paranoid mind could conjure up. They play around with illegal magic. The deceased are raised. They also occasionally feed on the living.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“I want to survive this world that keeps trying to destroy me.”
“All you children playing with fire, looking surprised when the house burns down”
“That was what magic did. It revealed the heart of who you’d been before life took away your belief in the possible. It gave back the world all lonely children longed for.”
“I let you die. To save myself, I let you die.
That is the danger in keeping company with survivors.”
“Mors irrumat omnia. Death fucks us all.”
An international best-seller about motherhood gone wrong is riveting. The unlovable youngster who killed seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a beloved teacher who sought to befriend him all two days before his sixteenth birthday was not the kind of son Eva ever really wanted to be. Now, two years later, she must confront her marriage, her work, her family, her parenting responsibilities, and Kevin’s heinous rampage in a series of stunningly direct letters to her ex-husband, Franklin. Eva worries that her frightening disdain for her own son may be to blame for sending him so nihilistically off the rails because she is uncomfortable with the sacrifices and social denigration of motherhood from the beginning.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“I thought at the time that I couldn’t be horrified anymore, or wounded. I suppose that’s a common conceit, that you’ve already been so damaged that damage itself, in its totality, makes you safe.”
“You can call it innocence, or you can call it gullibility, but Celia made the most common mistake of the good-hearted: she assumed that everyone else was just like her.”
“It’s far less important to me to be liked these days than to be understood.”
“Children live in the same world we do. To kid ourselves that we can shelter them from it isn’t just naive it’s a vanity.”
“Though surely to avoid attachments for fear of loss is to avoid life.”
THEN, She was her mother’s golden girl, fifteen years old. She still had the rest of her life to live. Ellie vanished in an instant after that. NOW, Ellie has been missing for ten years, but Laurel never has given up on locating her daughter.
Then, one day, Floyd, a charismatic and charming stranger, enters a café and completely wins over Laurel. She is introduced to his nine-year-old daughter and spends the night at his home before long. Poppy is young and beautiful, and Laurel was immediately taken aback upon first meeting her. Because Poppy resembles Ellie in every way at that age. And now Laurel is once again plagued by all the unresolved mysteries.
What has become of Ellie? What did she do there? Who still has unspoken secrets?
Best Quotes from this Book:
“When I read a book it feels like real life and when I put the book down it’s like I go back into the dream.”
“Stories,” she says, “are the only thing in this world that are real. Everything else is just a dream.”
“A man who can’t love but desperately needs to be loved is a dangerous thing indeed.”
“May was like the Friday night of summer: all the good times lying ahead of you, bright and shiny and waiting to be lived.”
“Cooking doesn’t just nurture the recipient, it nurtures the chef.”
At a far-flung wellness resort, nine people assemble. Some people come here to improve their health, others to reset their lives, while still others come for reasons they can’t even acknowledge themselves. They are aware that these ten days may require some actual work in addition to all the luxury and pampering, awareness, and meditation. But none of them could have predicted how difficult the ensuing ten days would be.
Formerly successful romantic novelist Frances Welty arrives at Tranquillum House with a poor back, a shattered heart, and an excruciating paper cut. She is quickly drawn to the other visitors. The majority of them don’t appear to require any kind of health resort. She is most intrigued by Tranquillum House’s eccentric and fascinating owner/director, though. Could this guy actually have the solutions that Frances had no idea she was looking for? Should Frances put her reservations aside and engross herself in just about everything Tranquillum House has to offer, or should she leave while she still has the chance?
It doesn’t take long for all of the visitors to Tranquillum House to pose the same query. Nine Perfect Strangers once again demonstrates why Liane Moriarty is a master of her craft by combining all the characteristics that have made her work a go-to for anybody looking for wickedly brilliant, page-turning fiction that will make you laugh and gasp.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“He could find hatred in his heart for her, too, if he went looking for it. The secret of a happy marriage was not to go looking for it.”
“No one could be expected to give up wine and books at the same time.”
“Women and their bodies! The most abusive and toxic of relationships.”
“The lowest point of your life can lead to the highest.”
“You are a woman in the prime of your life! You should march into a room with your head held high! Like you are walking onto a stage, a battlefield!”
I’m Jane. Jane, a recent immigrant to Birmingham, Alabama, works as a broke dog walker in the gated community of Thornfield Estates, which is home to McMansions, gleaming SUVs, and bored housewives. a location where Jane could steal unwanted trinkets and jewelry from the side tables of her affluent clients without anybody noticing. where nobody would think to inquire about Jane’s real name.
However, when she meets Eddie Rochester, her luck changes. Eddie, a recent widower, is the most enigmatic resident of Thornfield Estates. Bea, his wife, and her best friend died in a boating accident, their remains lost to the depths. Eddie presents Jane with a chance since he is not only wealthy, menacing, and attractive but he might also be able to provide her with the security she has always desired.
However, as Jane and Eddie grow in love, the legend of Bea, a bold beauty with a rags-to-riches backstory who started a phenomenally popular southern lifestyle company, haunts Jane more and more. How is plain Jane ever going to measure up? Can she win Eddie over before her or his pasts catch up with her?
Best Quotes from this Book:
“A man who overestimates his intelligence is a man who can be easily manipulated.”
“This is another trick I’ve learned over the years—make people think they have the upper hand, and they trust you so much faster.”
“Gossip is tricky, slippery. Pretend to be too interested, and suddenly you look suspicious”
“I’ve gone so long trying not to be seen that there’s something intoxicating about letting him really see me.”
“Gossip is currency in this neighborhood, and she’s clearly about to make it rain.”
Once upon a time, Jacob Finch Bonner was a bright young novelist with a well-received debut. He hasn’t written or published anything respectable in years, and right now he’s battling to keep what’s left of his self-respect while teaching in a subpar MFA school. Jake is ready to brush the statement off as normal amateur narcissism when Evan Parker, his most conceited pupil, claims he doesn’t need Jake’s assistance because the narrative of his currently unfinished novel is a foregone conclusion. He then hears the plot, though.
Jake picks up where his career left off and prepares himself for the supernova release of Evan Parker’s debut book, but it never happens. All of Evan Parker’s forecasts have come true in a matter of years, but Jake is the one riding the wave. He is well-off, well-read, and highly praised all around the world. But just when he is getting used to his wonderful new life, an email arrives—the start of a scary, anonymous campaign—and reads: It claims you are a thief.
Jake begins to discover more about his late student, and what he learns both astounds and terrifies him. As he tries to comprehend his enemy and conceal the truth from his readers and his publishers, Jake also learns more about his antagonist. How did Evan Parker come up with the idea for his “sure thing” novel? Who was he? What is the true motivation behind the plot, and from whom was it stolen?
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Good writers borrow, great writers steal. —T. S. Eliot (but possibly stolen from Oscar Wilde)”
“You’re only as successful as the last book you published, and you’re only as good as the next book you’re writing. So shut up and write.”
“People don’t realize you can’t copyright a plot,” Alessandro said finally. “You can’t even copyright a title, and that would be a lot easier to make an argument about.”
“Cause I’m telling you, I read all the time. Seventy-five novels last year, I counted! Well, Goodreads counted.”
“Anyone could be an idiot or a jerk, separately, but the combination of ignorance and meanspiritedness–that was special.”
She was dressed head to toe in pricey wool and plaid, the kind of clothing one would see at the Burberry store in Harrods. She didn’t wear a nylon backpack; she carried a leather bookbag. Her ballet slippers were made of shiny, patent leather. She was a prim and modest new girl. But she also had another quality.
The identity of the stunning girl with raven hair who travels to an elite private school in Switzerland every morning in a motorcade befitting a head of state is shrouded in mystery. She is alleged to be a wealthy multinational businessman’s daughter. In reality, her father is Saudi Arabia’s despised crown prince Khalid bin Mohammed.
He was once lauded for his audacious social and religious changes, but now he is despised for his part in the killing of a critical journalist. In addition, he goes to the one man he can rely on to recover his only child before it’s too late after she is cruelly abducted.
The New Girl is a gripping, page-turning story of entertainment as well as a nuanced examination of political alliances and great-power rivalry in a perilous world. It is filled with dark humor, astonishing narrative twists, and an unforgettable ensemble of characters. Additionally, it serves as further evidence that Daniel Silva is the best author now producing works of international intrigue and suspense, according to the Kansas City Star, and that Gabriel Allon is “one of fiction’s greatest spies” (Kirkus).
Best Quotes from this Book:
“It is a truism that no profession welcomes the end of the work week with more anticipation than teachers.”
“Left to its own devices, the Kingdom would return to what it once was, an arid land of warring desert nomads.”
“The Tsar is the most powerful man in the world, never forget that.”
“If you live to seek revenge, dig a grave for two. – Jewish proverb”
“vengeance comes in all shapes and sizes.”
A fabled figure is known only in whispers, The Nowhere Man. According to legend, the Nowhere Man will stop at nothing to save and defend those who come to him when they are genuinely helpless and deserving. He is not, however, a legendary figure.
A man with abilities, money, and a personal goal to assist individuals with no one else to turn to, Evan Smoak. Additionally, he is a man with a risky background. He was selected as a young child and nurtured and educated as part of the clandestine Orphan program, which was created to produce the ideal assassins for the deniable intelligence community. Orphan X was him. Evan disobeyed the rules and vanished using what he had learned. But now, someone is after him. someone with comparable qualifications and skills. someone familiar with Orphan X. someone who is approaching steadily. They will use Evan’s frailty—his role as The Nowhere Man—to track him down and get rid of him. The first book in Gregg Hurwitz’s riveting new series starring Evan Smoak, Orphan X, is a brilliant thriller that captures the reader’s attention from the initial page.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“A guy can love a million women. But a man, a man loves one woman a million ways.”
“Always respect life. Then you’ll value yours. The hard part isn’t turning you into a killer. The hard part is keeping you human.”
“There is no emotion more useless than self-pity. Evan”
“Pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedient.”
“Women’s rights and economic development within a country are highly correlated.”
He is referred to as the Gray Man by those who prowl the shadows. He is a legend in the shadows, slipping stealthily from job to job, doing the unthinkable, and then disappearing. And he consistently hits his mark. Always.
However, the world has more deadly forces than Gentry. money-like forces and strength. And there are men who believe that this is the only thing worth fighting for in the world. And in their eyes, Gentry’s usefulness has simply run its course. However, Court Gentry will demonstrate that there is no distinction between killing to survive and killing to earn a living in his eyes.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“My skill set is not conducive to honest work.”
“Luck was fleeting, arbitrary, fickle.”
“Court Gentry was the Gray Man simply because he believed there existed bad men in this world who truly needed to die.”
This chilling debut about a cult on a remote island, in which nothing is as it seems, is reminiscent of The Giver and Never Let Me Go. Ten men and their families settled on an island off the coast many years ago, right before the nation was burned to ashes and left as a wasteland. They created a revolutionary society with tight knowledge and history rationing, and ancestor worship, and managed to breed. Only the Wanderers, chosen male descendants of the original ten, are permitted to enter the wastelands, where they scavenge for debris among the still-burning fires. The daughters of these men are future wives. They encounter their Summer of Fruition at the first hint of puberty, a ritualistic season that ushers them from adolescence into marriage.
When they are no longer needed, they take their last drink and pass away. They have kids, who have children, and so on. However, during the summer, the younger kids are in charge. The children live wildly, fighting over food and shelter, free from their dads’ grasp and their mothers’ anguish, with the adults inside and the teenagers in Fruition. And at the conclusion of one summer, young Caitlin Jacob witnesses something so horrible and in direct violation of the island’s laws that she is forced to inform the others.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Gathering her courage, she raises her voice gleefully and sings Father’s favorite swear word, which would get her smacked if any adult heard her say it. “So fuck! Fuck! Fuck you, Father and Mother, fuck you, little brother, fuck all the others, fuck the ferry and the fog, fuck school and fuck church and fuck the ancestors and fuck fruition, fuck you, fuck the island too.”
“She can’t see the point of the repetitiveness of it all, people living to create more people and then dying when they’re useless, to make room for even more new people. She’s not sure why they keep making new people to replace themselves, except—of course—that the ancestors said to.”
“If she could start her life over again, she decides, she would shout more. She would bite like the dream dogs. She wouldn’t be so scared of everything all the time. She wouldn’t come when Father called, she would stay where she was. She wouldn’t lose her breath when Mr. Abraham said her name, but speak boldly. She would stomp and yell and be loud and big, eat until she grew six feet tall and then run away. She rolls into a”
The first three books of the hugely successful Heroes of Olympus series are collected in a gorgeous paperback boxed set. Both devoted followers of the series and fresh readers just starting out will desire this compilation.
I have a sweet space in my heart for this series. The typical structure of a Riordan book is widely known. There is a demi-god, they receive a quest, finish it, and briefly save the world, only for it to happen again in the following book. But Riordan does provide enough minor surprises and information to keep this style engaging. This series covers both the Roman demigods and their demi-god counterparts in addition to the Greek demigods and their demi-gods. The way that these two universes were combined for this plot intrigued me. Once more, the gods were employing the demi-gods as pieces in their chess games.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“I can’t summon any more gas!” Leo warned. Then his face turned red. “Wow, that came out wrong. I mean”
“That should’ve killed her!” the archer protested. “Welcome to my world,” Percy muttered.”
“What if we promoted, like, Adidas or something? Would that make Nike mad enough to show up?”
“To be perfect, you have to feel perfect about yourself—avoid trying to be something you’re not.”
“I love breakfast,” Frank said. “I’d eat breakfast, breakfast, and breakfast if I could.”
A murderer, Edward Fosca is. Mariana is assured of this. Fosca, though, is untouchable. Fosca is a charming and attractive Greek tragedy professor at Cambridge University who is adored by both staff and students, especially by the female members of The Maidens, a covert organization of female students. When one of The Maidens, a friend of Mariana’s niece Zoe, is found killed in Cambridge, Mariana Andros, a bright but unstable group therapist, gets fascinated with the group.
Mariana, who was previously a student at the institution, rapidly develops the suspicion that something dark hides beneath the ancient traditions and behind the beautiful grandeur of the spires and turrets. She also comes to the conclusion that Edward Fosca committed the crime despite having a plausible excuse. But why would the teacher pick on one of his pupils? And why does he constantly bring up the rituals associated with the female Persephone and her trip to the underworld?
When a second body is discovered, Mariana’s preoccupation with establishing Fosca’s guilt becomes out of control, endangering both her reputation and her closest relationships. Mariana, however, is determined to bring this murderer to justice, at any cost, including the cost of her own life.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“After all, everyone’s entitled to be the hero of their own story. So I must be permitted to be the hero of mine. Even though I’m not. I’m the villain.”
“Reading about life was no preparation for living it.”
“Ruth always said that forgiveness could not be coerced – it was experienced spontaneously, as an act of grace, appearing only when a person was ready.”
“You can’t love someone if you’re afraid of them,”
“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”
A stunning view, a roaring fire, and company to make you feel comfortable don’t sound like the worst problems in the world when you’re snowed in at a charming, rustic mountain cabin. But what if that company consists of eight of your coworkers, and none of them can be trusted?
When an avalanche strikes during a work retreat intended to foster mindfulness and collaboration, the corporate food chain is rendered meaningless and survival takes precedence over camaraderie. How many members will the team be missing on Monday? Another exciting thriller set on a snow-covered mountain is written by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Turn of the Key and In a Dark Dark Wood.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“It’s not just the snow; it’s a hundredweight of unwelcome memories bearing down on me.”
“And for a killer, that’s a kind of superpower.”
“keep my earbuds shoved into my ears on”
“In Topher’s world, people are hard, polished shells, their shiny exteriors hiding the inadequacies and anxieties inside.”
“Behind him is a girl with fluffy yellow hair that cannot possibly be her real shade. It’s the color of buttercups and the texture of dandelion fluff.”
The life of Alicia Berenson appears to be ideal. She is a well-known painter who is married to a well-known fashion photographer. She resides in a lavish home with large windows that looks out onto a park in one of London’s most prestigious neighborhoods. Gabriel, her husband, arrives home late one evening from a fashion assignment, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face before going silent.
By being silent and refusing to offer any explanation, Alicia elevates a family tragedy into a mystery that captivates the public’s interest and makes her famous. She, the quiet patient, is kept out of the spotlight and tabloids at the Grove, a secure forensic facility in North London, as the value of her artwork soars.
A criminal psychologist named Theo Faber has been eager to work with Alicia for a while. He embarks on a perilous journey into his own motivations in an effort to get her to open up and reveal the mystery of why she shot her husband. His quest for the truth threatens to overwhelm him.
In the unsettling psychological thriller The Silent Patient, a lady attacks her husband, and the therapist becomes fixated on finding out why.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Remember, love that doesn’t include honesty doesn’t deserve to be called love.”
“Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive, and will come forth later, in uglier ways. —SIGMUND FREUD”
“We’re all crazy, I believe, just in different ways.”
“No one is born evil. As Winnicott put it, “A baby cannot hate the mother, without the mother first hating the baby.”
“There’s so much pain everywhere, and we just close our eyes to it. The truth is we’re all scared. We’re terrified of each other.”
“There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark’s Eve,” Neeve said. “Either you’re his true love . . . or you killed him.”
Before the dead ever arrive, the churchyard is chilly. Every year, as the soon-to-be-dead pass by, Blue Sargent and her psychic mother watch from a distance. Not until this particular year, when a boy steps out of the shadows and speaks to Blue directly, does Blue herself ever see them.
His name is Gansey, and Blue quickly learns that he attends the affluent private school Aglionby in the area. Blue follows the rule of avoiding boys from Aglionby. They are called Raven Boys, which can only spell trouble. But despite her inability to fully articulate it, Blue finds herself drawn to Gansey. He has it all—family wealth, attractiveness, loyal friends—but he’s searching for much more.
Adam, the scholarship student who laments all the privilege around him, Ronan, the fierce soul who oscillates between fury and sorrow, and Noah, the quiet observer of the four who takes in a lot but says very little, have all joined him in his search. Blue has been told she will kill her true love for as far as she can remember. She had no idea that this would be an issue. She is no longer certain, though, as her life is drawn into the bizarre and evil world of the Raven Boys.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“The head is too wise. The heart is all fire.”
“I guess now would be a good time to tell you,” He said. “I took Chainsaw out of my dreams.”
“I don’t care to be pretty,” Blue shot back hotly, “I care to look on the outside like I look on the inside.”
“He was so much more dangerous when he wasn’t angry.”
“Depending on where you began the story, it was about Noah Czerny.”
Louise is a secretary, a single mother, and a victim of the modern rut. Sparks flare when she encounters a man in a bar on a rare night out. He leaves after their kiss, but she is still happy to have found someone. Louise meets David, her new supervisor when she reports working on Monday. the bar’s patron. The extremely married bar patron admits the kiss was a grave mistake but who can’t stop staring at Louise.
Then Louise encounters Adele, a newcomer to the area in need of friends who also happens to be David’s wife. Although David and Adele appear to be the ideal couple, why is David so domineering and why is Adele so afraid of him?
Louise discovers more perplexing questions than she does solutions as she becomes entangled in David and Adele’s world. The only thing that is certain is that there is something seriously wrong with this marriage, but Louise has no idea what it might be or how far someone might go to keep their marriage’s secrets hidden.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“There’s no right and wrong with feelings. There is only what there is.”
“It’s strange how different we all appear to who we really are.”
“Then she said that truth was all relative. Truth often came down to what is the most believable version of events.”
“Secrets, secrets, secrets. People are filled to the brim with them if you look closely.”
“Three can keep a secret if two are dead. —BENJAMIN FRANKLIN”
Theo Decker, the thirteen-year-old son of a dedicated mother and a negligent, largely absent father, escapes a collision that would have otherwise destroyed his life. He is welcomed in by a wealthy friend’s family in New York after being lost and alone there. He is plagued by an intolerable yearning for his mother, and over the years, he has clung to the item that reminds him of her the most: a small, oddly alluring painting that eventually pulls him into the underworld of crime. Theo develops the ability to move effortlessly between the opulent drawing rooms of the wealthy and the dingy antique shop where he works. He is in love and alienated, and his talisman, the painting, puts him in the center of a circling area that is getting smaller and riskier by the second.
The Goldfinch is a fascinating drama with a ghostly journey across modern-day America. It is a magnificent, enthralling triumph that combines unforgettable vivid characters with exhilarating suspense. It is a vast story of grief and obsession, of safety and self, and of the greatest riddles of love, identity, and fate.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light was laughter, and that this was the secret of the universe.”
“Stay away from the ones you love too much. Those are the ones who will kill you.”
“Sometimes we want what we want even if we know it’s going to kill us.”
“When you feel homesick,’ he said, ‘just look up. Because the moon is the same wherever you go.”
“Sometimes it’s about playing a poor hand well.”
Joe Goldberg does what any reasonable person would do when a stunning aspiring author enters the East Village bookstore where he works: he searches the name on her credit card. In New York City, there is just one Guinevere Beck. She does have a public Facebook page and frequently updates her Twitter account, giving Joe all the information he requires: she goes by Beck among her friends, attended Brown University, resides on Bank Street, and will be in a Brooklyn bar tonight—the ideal setting for a “chance” encounter.
Joe manipulates a series of circumstances to make sure Beck ends up in his welcoming arms as he stealthily and compulsively seizes control of her life. As Joe transitions from stalker to boyfriend, he becomes Beck’s ideal partner while subtly erasing any barriers in their path, even if it involves killing. Caroline Kepnes, a debut author, writes a razor-sharp book for our hyper-connected digital world that explores how vulnerable we are all to stalking and manipulation.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“The problem with books is that they end.”
“Work in a bookstore and learn that most people in this world feel guilty about being who they are.”
“Happiness is believing that you’re gonna be happy. It’s hope.”
“You blush. You are Charlotte’s Web and I could love you.”
“If people could handle their self-loathing, customer service would be smoother.”