Just to give you an update on the release dates for the newest additions to the series that I have reviewed.
Soon to be Released
Kevin Tinto – Ice Revelation
Expected Release Date 3/15/19
A Leah Andrews & Jack Hobson Novel
Iris Johansen – Dark Tribute
Expected Release Date 3/26/19
Despite her tragic childhood, violin prodigy Cara Delaney has finally found peace in her career as a professional musician and stability in her relationship with her guardians, forensic sculptor Eve Duncan and ex-Navy SEAL Joe Quinn. If only Jock Gavin, Cara’s lifelong friend and a man with his own twisted history, would even talk to her, everything would be perfect.
But the carefully constructed life Cara has built for herself is suddenly threatened when she is kidnapped by a mysterious man from her grandfather’s past, setting off a violent chain of events that puts everyone Cara loves in danger. Will Cara become a tribute to her family’s dark past, or will she be able to keep herself and her loved ones alive?
Mary Lawrence – The Alchemist of Lost Souls
Expected Release Date 4/30/19
A dangerous element discovered by Bianca Goddard’s father falls into the wrong hands . . . leading to a chain of multiple murders.
Spring 1544: Now that she is with child, Bianca is more determined than ever to distance herself from her unstable father. Desperate to win back the favor of King Henry VIII, disgraced alchemist Albern Goddard plans to reveal a powerful new element he’s discovered – one with deadly potential. But when the substance is stolen, he is panicked and expects his daughter to help.
Soon after, a woman’s body is found behind the Dim Dragon Inn, an eerie green vapor rising from her breathless mouth. To her grave concern, Bianca has reason to suspect her own mother may be involved in the theft and the murder. As her husband John is conscripted into King Henry’s army to subdue Scottish resistance, Bianca must navigate a twisted and treacherous path among alchemists, apothecaries, chandlers, and scoundrels – to find out who among them is willing to kill to possess the element known as lapis mortem, the stone of death.
Eliot Peper – Breach
Expected Release Date 5/14/19
A hacker is drawn out of hiding and into an epic geopolitical showdown in the frighteningly plausible conclusion to Eliot Peper’s critically acclaimed Analog Series.
When you’ve betrayed your revolutionary cadre, an off-grid fight club on a remote tropical island is a good place to hide—or die.
For notorious ex-hacker Emily Kim, the outcome of each fight makes little difference. Black-market blood sport is the perfect self-imposed penance. But when she stumbles on a plot to overthrow the corporate empire that provides the ubiquitous global feed, Emily discovers her old friends have been targeted. Warning them will force her out into the open, back on-grid, and directly into danger. Emily can’t escape the past. But can she seize the future?
Emily’s quest for redemption spirals into an all-out shadow war. What constitutes justice in a world run by algorithms? The feed—and Emily—must be reinvented. Or destroyed.
Danielle Girard – Expire
Expected Release Date 7/9/19
San Francisco medical examiner Annabelle Schwartzman has spent eight years looking over her shoulder. Stalked by her vengeful ex-husband, Spencer, she’s always known they’d meet again. Has her nightmare come true? Abducted, blindfolded, yoked, and tethered, she’s being held prisoner in an isolated cabin in Idaho. But it’s the unknown that terrifies Annabelle now. Because the man’s voice in the dark, though eerily familiar, is not Spencer’s.
Annabelle’s partner and lover, Inspector Hal Harris, knows in his gut that Annabelle’s disappearance is tied to the past. Except Spencer is fifteen hundred miles away. To save Annabelle, Hal is tracking every move Spencer makes. But is it drawing him closer to finding Annabelle? Or is it luring him farther from her desperate cries for help?
As a cruel game of retribution begins, Annabelle must rely on her wits, her will to survive, and a plan of escape. But time is running out. And her captor’s three chilling words make her fear that the worst is yet to come: sweet dreams, Bella.
Iris Johansen – Smoke Screen
Expected Release Date 7/30/19
Forensic sculptor Eve Duncan journeys to Africa to help families torn apart by a violent attack deep in the jungle–but she may be putting herself in more danger than she knows.
A journalist shows up on Eve Duncan’s doorstep with a plea for help. Jill Cassidy has just come from a small African village with a heart wrenching story: half the villagers–many of them children–have been killed in a horrific attack by guerilla soldiers, the bodies burned beyond recognition. Now, the families desperately need Eve’s help to get closure and begin to heal.
But when Eve arrives in the remote jungle, she begins to suspect that Jill’s plea may have been a cover story for a deeper, more sinister plot. Isolated and unsure who she can trust, Eve finds herself stranded in an unstable country where violence threatens to break out again at any moment and with only her own instincts to rely on if she hopes to get home to her family alive . . .
David Lagercrantz – The Girl Who Lived Twice
Expected Release Date 8/27/19
Casey Hill – Fallout
Expected Release Date 8/31/19
Just Released
Simon Beckett – The Scent of Death
Released on 2/21/19
It has been a good summer for forensics expert Dr David Hunter. His relationship is going well and he’s in demand again as a police consultant. His life seems to be on an even keel.
But not for long. The call comes from an old associate: a body has been found, and she’d like Hunter to take a look . . .
St Jude’s Hospital now stands empty. Slowly rotting and silently awaiting demolition, the vast, oppressive building’s only visitors have been society’s outcasts, addicts and dealers. And it’s here that the partially mummified corpse has been discovered. Hunter is not sure how long the body has been hidden in the hospital’s cavernous loft, but he’s seen enough to know it’s a young woman. And that she was pregnant.
As the remains are removed for closer examination, a floor collapses revealing a previously sealed off part of a ward. Bricked up inside this hidden chamber are three beds. Two of them are occupied . . .
What other grisly secrets will St Jude’s reveal? The local community is alarmed and the police need answers. For David Hunter, what began as a challenging if straightforward case is about to become a twisted nightmare threatening him and those around him.
Michael C. Grumley – Mosaic
Released on 1/31/19
The world is losing hope.
Political and social infighting threaten to destroy the world. Rancor and hatred only grow stronger, engulfing nations around the globe. And each day moral and economic strife brings embroiled countries ever closer to war.
But hope is not dead. Everywhere, pockets of human kindness and compassion continue to persevere. Where lives are cherished and virtue endures. And one small, extraordinary group fights to save us all.
A team in possession of the mother of all secrets. The one secret – the one discovery – that could bring the world back from the brink.
James Rollins – Crucible
Released on 1/22/19
Arriving home on Christmas Eve, Commander Gray Pierce discovers his house ransacked, his pregnant lover missing, and his best friend’s wife, Kat, unconscious on the kitchen floor. With no shred of evidence to follow, his one hope to find the woman he loves and his unborn child is Kat, the only witness to what happened. But the injured woman is in a semi-comatose state and cannot speak—until a brilliant neurologist offers a radical approach to “unlock” her mind long enough to ask a few questions.
What Pierce learns from Kat sets Sigma Force on a frantic quest for answers that are connected to mysteries reaching back to the Spanish Inquisition and to one of the most reviled and blood-soaked books in human history—a Medieval text known as the Malleus Maleficarum, the Hammer of Witches. What they uncover hidden deep in the past will reveal a frightening truth in the present and a future on the brink of annihilation, and force them to confront the ultimate question: What does it mean to have a soul?
Keith McCarthy – To Mourn a Mischief
Released on 1/3/19
The grisly death of a young girl resurfaces after twenty-two years. The coroner’s open verdict comes under scrutiny…
Sasha Grove-Williams hated her wealthy father’s dubious business affairs – and ended up dead on a railway track. But did she jump or was she pushed? That’s the burning question for Chief Inspector Beverley Wharton when a raving answerphone message from the now dementia-suffering coroner of the day falls into her hands.
She and her pathologist lover Dr John Eisenmenger – an expert in forensics – are immediately plunged into a messy world of corruption and violence that seems to envelop everyone.
Who is the father of the Sasha’s foetus that unexpectedly comes to light? How can Beverley be mired in the charge of collusion? What evil will Stephen Grove-Williams not stoop to in order to end the snooping? What will John make of Beverley’s bid to blackmail a villain to feather her own nest? Can science triumph over treachery?
Wesley Chu – The Fall of Io
Released on 1/1/19
For Ella Patel, sharing her mind with the alien, Io, has been tough, but they’re beginning to trust each other. Of course, it’s not just Io she’s dealing with, but the whole of the alien Prophus high command, and the rest of her new team. Given time, some of them might even be friends… But their enemies, the Genjix, are a constant threat, and it looks like the Prophus may have seriously underestimated them. Someone should really do something about that – but are Ella and Io the right agents for the job?
Timothy S. Johnston – The War Beneath
Released on 1/1/19
Living and working underwater can be a dangerous thing. First the bulkheads sweat, then there’s a trickle of water . . .
. . . and then in an instant you’re gone. The only thing left is a bloody pulp in the dark water and crushed bone fragments on the seafloor.
And you can’t bolt to the surface in an emergency. . . . The bends will get you.
But that’s not the worst. When you’re living underwater and also working as a spy for your city, that’s when things get really dangerous.
Truman McClusky has been out of the intelligence business for years, working the kelp farms and helping his city Trieste flourish on the shallow continental shelf just off the coast of Florida. Until his former partner shows up, that is, steals a piece of valuable new technology and makes a mad dash into the Atlantic. Before he knows it, Mac ends up back in the game, chasing the spy to not only recapture the tech, but to kill his former friend.
But when he learns the grim truth behind the theft, it sends his stable life into turmoil and plunges him into an even deadlier mission: evade the submarines of hostile foreign powers, escape assassins, and forge through the world’s oceans at breakneck pace on a daring quest to survive, with more lethal secrets than he thought possible in his pocket.
The future of the city depends on McClusky . . . if he can make it back home
Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child – Verses for the Dead
Released on 12/31/18
After an overhaul of leadership at the FBI’s New York field office, A. X. L. Pendergast is abruptly forced to accept an unthinkable condition of continued employment: the famously rogue agent must now work with a partner.
Pendergast and his new teammate, junior agent Coldmoon, are assigned to Miami Beach, where a rash of killings by a bloodthirsty psychopath are distinguished by a confounding M.O.: cutting out the hearts of his victims and leaving them-along with cryptic handwritten letters-at local gravestones, unconnected save in one bizarre way: all belonged to women who committed suicide.
But the seeming lack of connection between the old suicides and the new murders is soon the least of Pendergast’s worries. Because as he digs deeper, he realizes the brutal new crimes may be just the tip of the iceberg: a conspiracy of death that reaches back decades.
Nick Thacker & Jim Heskett – The Severed Pines
Released on 12/26/18
A Harvey Bennett (Prequel) Novel
A grisly murder.
An unsuspecting witness.
A conspiracy that’s bigger than anyone thought.
Harvey “Ben” Bennett is a park ranger volunteer who stumbles across a crime scene. He’s immediately thrust into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse, and he must figure out who’s behind it all.
…Before he becomes the next victim.
James D. Prescott – Extinction Crisis
Released on 12/12/18
With the doomsday ship only days away from impacting the Earth, humanity’s demise seems all but assured. In every corner of the world, news of the impending destruction has led to chaos, looting and the collapse of the rule of law.
As the foundations of civilization crumble around them, Jack and Mia must race to find answers to perhaps the most important questions of all time. Why have the Ateans repeatedly eradicated life on our planet? And could the key to ending the cycle of extinctions be locked somewhere within the Salzburg Chromosome?
Unraveling the mystery will mean journeying deep into the heart of a perilous alien world and facing off against the very beings who created us.
A-Thrill-A-Week 