Next book

WHAT THE DEVIL KNOWS

An intricate puzzle, based on a series of real-life murders, that indicts social injustices that continue to this day.

An aristocrat investigates a murder at the opposite end of British society.

Bow Street Magistrate Sir Henry Lovejoy asks Sebastian St. Cyr and his wife, Hero, no strangers to murder, for help in a dangerous and politically sensitive case: the murder of Magistrate Sir Edwin Pym. Three years after the notorious 1811 Ratcliffe Highway killings, Pym has been brutally murdered in the same way, his head bashed in and his throat cut. Although a suspect to the earlier killings was duly arrested and hanged himself in prison, this latest outrage indicates that either the authorities had the wrong man or there’s a copycat at work. Sebastian—who's the son-in-law of the powerful Lord Jarvis and heir to a dukedom despite not being the natural son of the duke—doesn’t know who his real father is and is desperate to track down the mother who deserted him, recently spotted on the continent. When more killings follow, Sebastian seeks and finds connections between sailors and the owners of public houses in the rough area near the docks. He’s shocked by the depth of depravity the wealthy will sink to in order to enhance their fortunes. Convinced that the suspect who killed himself was innocent, he labors to connect the murders, many of which may have been committed to cover up the original crimes, searching for a motive while narrowly escaping several attempts on his own life.

An intricate puzzle, based on a series of real-life murders, that indicts social injustices that continue to this day.

Pub Date: April 6, 2021

ISBN: 978-0-593-10266-4

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Berkley

Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021

Next book

A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.

A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

Pub Date: March 17, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 22


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


  • New York Times Bestseller

Next book

NONE OF THIS IS TRUE

It's hard to read but hard to look away from.

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 22


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


  • New York Times Bestseller

When two women who share a birthday meet, a journalist becomes the subject of her own true-crime mystery.

On their 45th birthdays, Josie Fair and Alix Summer meet at a pub and discover they were born not only on the same day, but in the same hospital. Alix is a successful journalist, and Josie convinces Alix that her story is worth telling: Josie met her husband when she was 13 and he was 40. “I can see that maybe I was being used, that maybe I was even being groomed?” she confesses to Alix. “But that feeling of being powerful, right at the start, when I was still in control. I miss that sometimes. I really do. And what I’d like, more than anything, is to get it back.” From this premise Alix creates a Netflix series, Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin! which investigates Josie’s life as she reconciles what happened to her as a teen and seeks a new path. With the story unfinished, the narrative unfolds in the present tense, with prose that jingles like song lyrics: “He turns to see if the girl is behind him, and sees her wishy-washy, wavy-wavy, in double vision through the glass windows of the hotel.” Alix is both intrigued and repulsed by Josie, but she initially gives her the benefit of the doubt. After all, Alix’s husband, Nathan, has a drinking problem, and Alix knows what it’s like to be reluctant to leave a bad situation. But Josie seems more interested in being part of Alix’s seemingly glamorous life than she is in fixing her own, and when three people end up dead and Alix’s life is turned upside down, the evidence points to Josie—and turns the TV series into a murder mystery. Transcripts from Alix’s interviews alternate with the narrative, offering increasingly varied perspectives on Josie’s story as told by her neighbors, friends, and family members. With so many versions of events, the ending shatters, leaving readers to decide whose is the truth.

It's hard to read but hard to look away from.

Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2023

ISBN: 9781982179007

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Atria

Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023

Close Quickview