Gone Girl
By Gillian Flynn
Crown, $25
On the eve of Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth anniversary, Nick arrives home to discover his wife is missing. So begins a clever “he said, she said” mystery that really draws you in. Nick’s point of view tells about the mounting pressure from the police and the media as well as Amy’s devoted parents. He finds himself caught up in a series of lies and deceptions. Amy’s story is told through her diary, with her perfectionist tendencies coming to light in her disturbing entries. New York Times bestselling author Gillian Flynn pulls out all the stops in this deliciously dark and ingeniously plotted page-turner about a marriage gone terribly wrong.
Waiting for Sunrise
By William Boyd
Harper, $25.99
In another classic William Boyd novel, where ordinary British citizens get caught up in pivotal historical events, we are taken to Vienna in 1913 and an English actor who seeks psychotherapy for a troubling ailment of a sexual nature. Lysander becomes caught up in a feverish affair with a beautiful, enigmatic woman, and when she goes to the police to press charges of rape, he is stunned and his few months of passion come to an abrupt end. Only a carefully plotted escape—with the help of two mysterious British diplomats—saves him from trial. Unable to live an ordinary existence, he is plunged into the dangerous theater of wartime intelligence—a world of sex, scandal, and spies, where lines of truth and deception blur with every waking day. Moving from Vienna to London’s West End, from the battlefields of France to hotel rooms in Geneva, Waiting for Sunrise is a captivating story, a beautifully observed portrait of wartime Europe, and a fast-paced thriller.
the Skeleton Box
By Bryan Gruley
Touchstone, $25
Does Gus Carpenter really want to know what’s inside the skeleton box? In award-winning author Bryan Gruley’s gripping new novel, Gus must decide if the truth is better off dead and buried. Several mysterious break-ins are happening in the small town of Starvation Lake in Northern Michigan. An intruder is slipping into the homes of the elderly as they attend Bingo at the Catholic church and looking through their financial files. When one break-in turns into a murder, the whole town becomes alarmed. Gus, the editor of the local paper, becomes involved in the murder investigation with the help of a downstate reporter. When the story leads him to his mother’s lockbox, Gus gets a surprise that changes the way he thinks about his small town.
In the Kingdom of Men
By Kim Barnes
Knopf, $24.95
It is 1967 and Gin Mitchell is stuck in a two-room shack in Oklahoma with her strict minister grandfather. When Mason, an attractive college boy, shows up, she is smitten and he takes her away to Saudi Arabia where he has a job with an American oil company. The young couple is given a home unlike anything they have ever seen with marble floors, a houseboy who cooks their meals, and a gardener who tends to the sandy patch of soil that surrounds their home. Gin lives in the American compound, surrounded by women under the veil, and learns about their strict laws while she experiences a freedom she has never had. Her world changes when a young Bedouin woman is found dead on the shores of the Persian Gulf. This world gets even smaller and she doesn’t know who to trust. A richly imagined story of a time and place unlike any other, complete with sandstorms, caravans, pearl divers, and a fascinating desert culture.
