This slow-burn whodunit from Frick (The Split) finds college friends Harper, Luca, Sirina, and David in Lake Como, Italy, to celebrate New Year’s Eve at their wealthy friend Clare Monroe’s glamorous palazzo. Amid the group’s midnight feasting, frolicking, and firework lighting, Clare goes missing. The next morning, she’s found dead. Clare’s father, powerful Hollywood venture capitalist Samuel Monroe, deems her death an accidental drowning and discourages any further investigation. Five years later, as a new art center is poised to open near Lake Como in Clare’s honor, Samuel offers his daughter’s surviving friends an all-expenses-paid trip back to Italy to celebrate the occasion. Though they’re slightly uneasy about revisiting the past, all four accept, only to realize, shortly after they arrive, that they’ve launched themselves into a game of cat and mouse with a blackmailer. Each friend narrates in rotating chapters, while Frick gradually doles out details about the precise nature of Clare’s death and the reasons each one of them is nursing private guilt about it. It takes a while for the plot to kick into gear, but once it does, this becomes a slickly satisfying ride. It’ll put a smile on thriller fans’ faces. Agent: Joelle Hobeika, Alloy Entertainment. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 10/10/2025 | Details & Permalink

In Clark’s run-of-the-mill fourth case for Chicago police detective Harriet Foster (after Echo), suspicion still trails Harriet after the murder of Eddie Noble, who killed her former partner, detective Glynnis Thompson, and vowed to kill Harriet before he died. With the Noble case hanging over her head, Harriet is drawn into a new investigation after spotting two overdose victims in a locked city park. One is dead by the time Harriet reaches him, but she manages to revive his companion, 19-year-old college student Ella Byrne, whose uncle, Matt Kelley, is one of Harriet’s colleagues on the force. The overdoses prove to be among the first of several linked to a new street drug called Edge, and Harriet sets out to find its source—though her determination to use official channels is complicated by Matt’s thirst for vengeance. Meanwhile, there are power struggles within the Gamons, a sophisticated street gang responsible for distributing Edge across Chicago. It’s all a bit too familiar, and Clark’s overwrought prose (“Grief stills the wings of even the strongest bird”) is little help. Not much here is memorable. Agent: Evan Marshall, Evan Marshall Literary. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 10/10/2025 | Details & Permalink

Goldman’s taut fifth thriller featuring Nils Shapiro (after Dead West) finds the private investigator out for revenge against Midwestern drug dealer Sammy Sykes, who killed his wife, Minneapolis police chief Gabriella Shapiro, two years ago. Despite vigorous efforts to track him down, Sykes remains at large. Frustrated by the cops’ lack of progress, Nils takes matters into his own hands by meeting with Sykes’s daughter, Anna, who served as a mole on the police force for her father and has since been put behind bars. Afterward, Nils tangles with one of Sykes’s men who’d wormed his way onto the prison staff, then unravels a conspiracy that takes him all the way to Amsterdam, where the drug lord may be hiding. En route to the novel’s operatic conclusion, Goldman serves up provocative information about the late Gabriella that smartly complicates the series’ stakes. Brisk pacing and breathless action make this a good bet for fans of Harlan Coben. Agent: Jennifer Weltz, Jean V. Naggar Literary. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 10/10/2025 | Details & Permalink

A Massachusetts detective investigates the possible reemergence of the serial killer she once escaped in this sturdy procedural from Ross (Half in Love with Death). In 1994, 16-year-old Samantha Star and her friend Bridget McGann were abducted after accepting a ride from a male stranger in Quincy, Mass. Detective Brian O’Neil managed to rescue Samantha, but not before Bridget was stabbed to death by the girls’ abductor, who left a yellow butterfly “on the ribbon of blood that separated her head from her body.” Bridget’s killer then went on to murder a string of other women and place butterflies on their corpses, earning him the nickname “the butterfly killer.” Twenty years later, Samantha has become O’Neil’s partner on the Quincy police force. When a friend of her daughter’s is found with a bashed-in skull and a blue butterfly on her throat, Samantha and O’Neil fear that the butterfly killer has returned—but their boss and the mayor pressure the detectives to prove that it’s the work of a copycat. Ross doesn’t reinvent the wheel, slickly executing rather than subverting the well-established tropes of the serial killer thriller. She maintains plenty of nerve-shredding tension, however, and makes her lead’s trauma palpable. This gets the job done. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 10/03/2025 | Details & Permalink

Solvinic’s bold sequel to The Hunter’s Daughter puts Anna Koray of the Bayern County sheriff’s department on the trail of a possibly paranormal killer. While carrying out a drug bust in the rural Midwest, Anna hears a girl’s scream and alters course to race toward the sound. The source is a distraught teenage babysitter scrambling to find her four-year-old charge, Mason Sumner, whom Anna manages to rescue from a nearby pond. Scratches on young Mason’s body seem to indicate that he was dragged beneath the surface, and a skull found in his family’s mailbox reinforces the idea that he was the victim of a targeted attack. When other locals start dying under unexplained circumstances, Anna—the daughter of a prolific serial killer and an aspiring witch—decides to explore the Bayern County’s “occult underbelly,” dredging up dark memories from her childhood in the process. Not every fan of the previous novel will stick with this installment as Solvinic plunges Anna headlong into the supernatural, but the author’s gifts for atmospheric scene-setting and nail-biting suspense are undiminished. It’s likely to be polarizing, but adventurous readers should check it out. Agent: Caitlin Blasdell, Liza Dawson Assoc. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 10/03/2025 | Details & Permalink

Chilton follows Swiped with a disappointing comic thriller focused on failed journalist Kirby Cornell and her former roommates. The group proudly called themselves “the Deadbeats” when they shared a flat in the sleepy English town of Crowhurst and maintained a steady routine of reality TV and pub crawls. When they welcomed buzzkill Esme into their ranks, however, their bonds started to fracture. Now, a year after Esme’s death, Kirby has left Crowhurst for London. She’s pulled back to her old life, however, when the dormant Deadbeats group chat gets revived by a message that appears to be from Esme: “Miss me?” Then another of the former Deadbeats dies, and “Esme” threatens more victims to follow. Equal parts frightened for her life and aware that she has a juicy story on her hands, Kirby tries to figure out if the killings could be linked to a massacre at Crowhurst’s annual Crawe Fair 30 years earlier. While the concept is promising, Chilton’s two-dimensional characters and anemic stabs at humor—there’s only so much to skewer about lazy 20-somethings—squander it. This lacks the ease and inspiration of the author’s debut. Agent: James Wills, Watson Little. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 10/03/2025 | Details & Permalink

This plodding standalone from Mitchard (A Very Inconvenient Scandal) finds Chicago fashion journalist Irene “Reenie” Bigelow returning to her native Wisconsin to report on her childhood best friend’s murder arrest and trial. What perplexes Reenie is how Felicity Wild, once a bright biology student, could have turned to a life of sex work and stand accused of poisoning two of her clients. The victims—economics professor Cary Church and dairy salesman Emil Gardener—both listed Felicity as a beneficiary of their life insurance policies, despite being married to other women. Still, Reenie believes Felicity is innocent, so she’s shocked when Felicity tells her to go away when the two bump into each other during the arraignment. Instead, Reenie persists, interviewing Felicity’s attorney and the pair’s mutual friends, which eventually leads her to Ophelia, the strip club where Felicity worked. Posing as a bartender at Ophelia, Reenie befriends some of Felicity’s former colleagues, who clue her into the club’s criminal underbelly. Mitchard squanders a strong setup with a predictable ending and too many long-winded, inconsequential diversions into the local lore of her Midwestern setting. It’s a letdown. Agent: Jeff Kleinman, Folio Literary. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 10/03/2025 | Details & Permalink

Battles’s satisfying latest adventure for master of disguise Teddy Fay (after Golden Hour) opens with the ex-CIA operative undercover as Billy Barnett, second-in-command at Centurion movie studios, playing a round of golf in Palm Springs with fellow Woods hero Stone Barrington. On the green, the pair start squabbling over petty rule-breaking with Belarusian oligarch Victor Popov, who’s in town to stage a takeover of Richards Renewable Energy, a wind turbine business, and rake in billions in contracts for the Belarusian government. After finagling an invite to the lavish birthday party of his favorite actor, Victor again runs into and tangles with Teddy and Stone. At the end of the night, an actress turns up dead in the party’s swimming pool, prompting Teddy to investigate. Meanwhile, RRE’s chief engineer toils away on a breakthrough wind technology that’s in danger of being stolen by a scheming coworker. It’s a lot of plot, but readers can rest assured that Battles maintains full control, pulling everything together without skimping on suspense or amusing banter. Devoted series fans will be happy to hear that Battles remains a fantastic steward of Teddy Fay’s adventures. Agent: Anne Hawkins, John Hawkins & Assoc. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 10/03/2025 | Details & Permalink

Bestseller McFadden (The Intruder) returns with a nasty dive inside the mind of the brilliant, psychopathic advice columnist Debbie Mullen. Thirty years ago, Debbie was an MIT computer science major en route to becoming the next Bill Gates. Now she writes an agony aunt column for her local newspaper in suburban Massachusetts and tries to be a supportive wife and mother to two teenage daughters. After Debbie is fired from her job at the paper for advising a reader to divorce her abusive husband, she comes into contact with an old enemy from college, and decides to take a more proactive—and less socially acceptable—approach to seeking justice. Drawing on her sharp computer skills, Debbie begins doling out twisted comeuppance to members of her shiny suburban set, including self-important book club attendees and predatory educators. Debbie’s dark but consistent moral code makes her easy to root for, but once the action kicks into high gear, it becomes a tad monotonous. Still, this darkly funny thriller will put a wicked smile on readers’ faces. Agent: Christina Hogrebe, Jane Rotrosen Agency. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 10/03/2025 | Details & Permalink

Set in a fictional British colony in 1920, this striking psychological thriller from Davids (An Imperfect Blessing) finds a housemaid questioning her employer’s motives. It dismays Soraya Matas to learn that her new job cooking and cleaning for widowed British settler Alice Hattingh is live-in; Soraya had hoped to continue residing in the Muslim Quarter, where she could freely practice her religion. Soraya’s family needs the money, however, so she makes peace with only seeing her loved ones once a fortnight, and befriends the benevolent ghost of her predecessor. Incorrectly believing Soraya to be illiterate, Mrs. Hattingh offers to write and receive her correspondence with her fiancé, aspiring teacher Nour. Postage is expensive, so Soraya accepts, but when Mrs. Hattingh prevents Soraya from examining what she writes and receives in return, Soraya starts to fear the woman is taking liberties with the correspondence. Her misgivings multiply when Mrs. Hattingh thrice postpones Soraya’s next visit home. Taut plotting, electric prose, and Soraya’s paranoid first-person narration set this slim, atmospheric novel apart. Gothic touches combine with elements of magical realism and real-life historical horrors to forge a chilling fable that’s at once familiar and singular. It’s a stunner. Agent: Bonnie McKiernan, Wylie Agency. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 10/03/2025 | Details & Permalink