New releases from a few of my favorites and other recommendations

Here are a few releases from favorite authors that I really want to read and I would recommend.

August 4, 2020

The First to Lie by Hank Phillipi Ryan

This came out last week. I have read a couple of books by this author and really like the suspense and twists in Hank Phillipi Ryan's books.

About: "We all have our reasons for being who we are―but what if being someone else could get you what you want?

After a devastating betrayal, a young woman sets off on an obsessive path to justice, no matter what dark family secrets are revealed. What she doesn't know―she isn't the only one plotting revenge.
An affluent daughter of privilege. A glamorous manipulative wannabe. A determined reporter, in too deep. A grieving widow who has to choose her new reality. Who will be the first to lie? And when the stakes are life and death, do a few lies really matter?
Bestselling and award-winning author and investigative reporter Hank Phillippi Ryan delivers another twisty, thrilling cat and mouse novel of suspense that will have you guessing, and second-guessing, and then gasping with surprise."

9/1/20 20

All the Devils are Here by Louise Penny

Inspector Gamach series #16

About: "On their first night in Paris, the Gamaches gather as a family for a bistro dinner with Armand’s godfather, the billionaire Stephen Horowitz. Walking home together after the meal, they watch in horror as Stephen is knocked down and critically injured in what Gamache knows is no accident, but a deliberate attempt on the elderly man’s life. 

When a strange key is found in Stephen’s possession it sends Armand, his wife Reine-Marie, and his former second-in-command at the Sûreté, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, from the top of the Tour d’Eiffel, to the bowels of the Paris Archives, from luxury hotels to odd, coded, works of art.

It sends them deep into the secrets Armand’s godfather has kept for decades.

A gruesome discovery in Stephen’s Paris apartment makes it clear the secrets are more rancid, the danger far greater and more imminent, than they realized.

Soon the whole family is caught up in a web of lies and deceit. In order to find the truth, Gamache will have to decide whether he can trust his friends, his colleagues, his instincts, his own past. His own family.

For even the City of Light casts long shadows. And in that darkness devils hide."

Whoa!

9/17/2020 

Daylight  by David Baldacci; Atlee Pine series #3 

About: "FBI Agent Atlee Pine's search for her sister Mercy clashes with military investigator John Puller's high-stakes case, leading them both deep into a global conspiracy -- from which neither of them will escape unscathed. 

For many long years, Atlee Pine was tormented by uncertainty after her twin sister, Mercy, was abducted at the age of six and never seen again. Now, just as Atlee is pressured to end her investigation into Mercy's disappearance, she finally gets her most promising breakthrough yet: the identity of her sister's kidnapper, Ito Vincenzo.

With time running out, Atlee and her assistant Carol Blum race to Vincenzo's last known location in Trenton, New Jersey -- and unknowingly stumble straight into John Puller's case, blowing his arrest during a drug ring investigation involving a military installation.

Stunningly, Pine and Puller's joint investigation uncovers a connection between Vincenzo's family and a breathtaking scheme that strikes at the very heart of global democracy. Peeling back the layers of deceit, lies and cover-ups, Atlee finally discovers the truth about what happened to Mercy. And that truth will shock Pine to her very core."

Oh oh.

I talked about book #1 a couple of weeks ago, (Long Road to Mercy) - we read it for our Mystery Book Club (MBC) selection for August and everyone really liked it. Many of the book club members already read book #2 - A Minute to Midnight and really liked it also.  It came out 11/19/2019. I need to get this one soon. 

About: "FBI Agent Atlee Pine returns to her Georgia hometown to reopen the investigation of her twin sister's abduction, only to encounter a serial killer beginning a reign of terror, in this page-turning thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author David Baldacci.

FBI Agent Atlee Pine's life was never the same after her twin sister Mercy was kidnapped--and likely killed--thirty years ago. After a lifetime of torturous uncertainty, Atlee's unresolved anger finally gets the better of her on the job, and she finds she has to deal with the demons of her past if she wants to remain with the FBI.

Atlee and her assistant Carol Blum head back to Atlee's rural hometown in Georgia to see what they can uncover about the traumatic night Mercy was taken and Pine was almost killed. But soon after Atlee begins her investigation, a local woman is found ritualistically murdered, her face covered with a wedding veil--and the first killing is quickly followed by a second bizarre murder.

Atlee is determined to continue her search for answers, but now she must also set her sights on finding a potential serial killer before another victim is claimed. But in a small town full of secrets--some of which could answer the questions that have plagued Atlee her entire life--digging deeper into the past could be more dangerous than she realizes . ."

Here are a couple of recommendations of other books coming up that I found out about at MBC and sound really good to me.

11/10/2020

Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz - sequel to The Magpie Murders, which PBS is making into a 6 part mini-series.

About: "Farlingaye Hall is a beautiful hotel in Suffolk on the east coast of England. Unfortunately, it is also the site of the brutal murder of Frank Parris, a retired advertising executive. Stefan Codrescu, a Romanian maintenance man, is arrested after police discover blood spatter on his clothes and bed linen. He is found guilty and sentenced to eight years in prison. It appears to be an open-and-shut case, but there is more to it than meets the eye.

Alan Conway, the late author of the fictional Magpie Murders, knew Frank Parris and once visited Farlingaye Hall. Also, the third book in Conway’s detective series, Atticus Pund Takes the Cake, was based on the hotel. Cecily Treherne, the daughter of Farlingaye Hall’s owner, has read the book and believes the proof of Stefan’s innocence can be found in its pages.

But now . . . Cecily Treherne has disappeared. So Conway’s former editor, Susan Ryeland, leaves her own hotel in Crete and travels to Suffolk to investigate the murder and Treherne’s disappearance.

Masterfully intriguing, brilliantly clever and relentlessly suspenseful, Moonflower Murders is a deviously dark take on vintage English crime fiction in which the reader becomes the detective."

Sounds like I need to check out Magpie Murders...

3/09/2021

The Rose Code by Kate Quinn

About: "The New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Huntress and The Alice Network returns with another heart-stopping World War II story of three female code breakers at Bletchley Park and the spy they must root out after the war is over.

940. As England prepares to fight the Nazis, three very different women answer the call to mysterious country estate Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes. Vivacious debutante Osla is the girl who has everything—beauty, wealth, and the dashing Prince Philip of Greece sending her roses—but she burns to prove herself as more than a society girl, and puts her fluent German to use as a translator of decoded enemy secrets. Imperious self-made Mab, product of east-end London poverty, works the legendary codebreaking machines as she conceals old wounds and looks for a socially advantageous husband. Both Osla and Mab are quick to see the potential in local village spinster Beth, whose shyness conceals a brilliant facility with puzzles, and soon Beth spreads her wings as one of the Park’s few female cryptanalysts. But war, loss, and the impossible pressure of secrecy will tear the three apart.

1947. As the royal wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip whips post-war Britain into a fever, three friends-turned-enemies are reunited by a mysterious encrypted letter--the key to which lies buried in the long-ago betrayal that destroyed their friendship and left one of them confined to an asylum. A mysterious traitor has emerged from the shadows of their Bletchley Park past, and now Osla, Mab, and Beth must resurrect their old alliance and crack one last code together. But each petal they remove from the rose code brings danger--and their true enemy--closer..."

I like historical fiction and these code breaker stories.

Last but not least, here is a vintage author that I want to check out.

Have you ever heard of Mary Roberts Rhinehart? One of the book club members recommended her. She is considered the "American Agatha Christie."

You can read about her in Wiki here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Roberts_Rinehart.

Here is the introduction in Wiki about her:  " (August 12, 1876 – September 22, 1958) was an American writer, often called the American Agatha Christie,^[1] although her first mystery novel was published 12 years before Christie's first novel in 1920.^[2]

Rinehart is considered the source of the phrase "The butler did it" from her novel The Door (1930), although the novel does not use the exact phrase. Rinehart is also considered to have invented the "Had-I-but-Known" school of mystery writing, with the publication of The Circular Staircase (1908)."

This looks like a good way to read some of her work. Includes 25 titles by her, on Amazon as an ebook. I like classic mysteries so adding this to me TBR stack. I mean mountain.

This should keep everyone busy as we continue to "stay at home."