Sunset Limited

Sunset Limited

James Lee Burke

Mystery & Thrillers / Historical Fiction / Crime

Amazon.com Review Imagine Philip Marlowe sans the cigarettes and in AA. Put him in Louisiana and jump forward 50 years or so and you've got David Robicheaux, a tough-talking detective with the same soft spot as his prototype for troublesome women and for delving into places into which he probably has no business. New Iberia, Louisiana, perfectly rivals Marlowe's L.A. for its grit and corruption and dames who'll turn a good guy bad. James Lee Burke's 11th Robicheaux book, Sunset Limited, is a twisted mystery that at times becomes almost byzantine in its attempt to keep disparate characters and narratives wound in a cohesive story line. But Burke's writing is so stunning that all is forgiven as you become immersed in the tale, which meshes past and present to uncover the secret of a decades-old murder. Forty years ago, a local labor leader was crucified in a crime that remains unsolved. Now, his daughter-Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Megan Flynn-returns to New Iberia. With a seemingly insignificant remark to Robicheaux, she begins a chain of events that lead right back to her father's death. New Iberia, in some sense, is frozen in time as the age-old problems of race and class weave their way into the mystery, complicating Robicheaux's discovery of not only the original crime, but the wealth of murders that spring up along the way. Add in the Chinese mob, corrupt policemen, and a Hollywood film shoot, and the stage is set. Burke's forte is his ability to create characters so evil they're liable to get you up in the night to check in your closet and under your bed. The players-both good and bad-are characterized more by their flaws than their attributes, giving everyone a wicked sheen. The book isn't overly gory (although short descriptions can be rather graphic), but everyone has a dark side, emphasizing the noir-ish tones of the novel. His writing is powerful, mixing tender landscapes ("[W]e dropped through clouds that were pooled with fire in the sunrise and came in over biscuit-colored hills dotted with juniper and pine and pinyon trees…") with dead-on, cutting descriptions ("His face was tentacled with a huge purple-and-strawberry birthmark, so that his eyes looked squeezed inside a mask") and the camp dialogue of Chandler ("Evil doesn't have a zip code"). Oddly, these sundry elements blend seamlessly, allowing you to overlook tenuous connections and occasionally confusing turns.
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Mount Vernon Love Story

Mount Vernon Love Story

Mary Higgins Clark

Mystery / Thriller / Crime

Charming, insightful and immensely entertaining in its unique presentation of one of America's legendary figures, Mount Vernon Love Story, by famed suspense writer Mary Higgins Clark, shows the reader the man behind the legend, a of flesh, blood and passion, and in the author's skilled hands, the story and the man come fully and dramatically alive. Mary Higgins Clark's interest in George Washington was first sparked by a radio series she was writing in the 1960s, called "Portrait of a Patriot," vignettes of American presidents. Always a lover of history, she wrote this biographical novel -- her first book -- and titled it Aspire to the Heavens, which was the family motto of George Washington's mother. With all events, dates, scenes and characters based on historical research, the book was published in 1969. Its recent discovery by a Washington family descendent led to its reissue under its new title, Mount Vernon Love Story. In researching George Washington's life, Mary Higgins Clark was surprised to find the engaging man behind the pious legend. He was a giant of a man in every way, starting with his physical height. In an era when men averaged five foot seven inches, he towered over everyone at six foot three. He was the best dancer in the colony of Virginia. He was also a master horseman, which was why the Indians gave him their highest compliment: "He rides his horse like an Indian." She dispels the widespread belief that although George Washington married an older woman, a widow, his true love was Sally Carey Fairfax, his best friend's wife. Martha Dandridge Custis was older, but only by three months -- she was twenty-seven to his twenty-six when they met. Mary Higgins Clark describes their relationship from their first meeting, their closeness and his tenderness toward her two children. Martha shared his life in every way, crossing the British lines to join him in Boston and enduring with him the bitter hardship of the winter in Valley Forge. As Lady Bird Johnson was never called Claudia, Martha Washington was never known as Martha. Her family and friends called her Patsy. George always called her "my dearest Patsy" and wore a locket with her picture around his neck. In Mount Vernon Love Story, Mary Higgins Clark tells the story of a rare marriage and brings to life the human side of the man who became the "father of our country."
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Blood Moon

Blood Moon

Alexandra Sokoloff

Mystery & Thrillers / Horror / Crime

**       ---- Book II in the Thriller Award-nominated Huntress/FBI series ----** Twenty-five years have passed since a savage killer terrorized California, massacring three ordinary families before disappearing without a trace. The haunted child who was the only surviving victim of his rampage is now wanted by the FBI for brutal crimes of her own, and Special Agent Matthew Roarke is on an interstate manhunt for her, despite his conflicted sympathies for her history and motives. But when his search for her unearths evidence of new family slayings, the dangerous woman Roarke seeks - and wants - may be his only hope of preventing another bloodbath. ----- *It is highly recommended that you read Book I of the series, Huntress Moon, first.* ### Review Book II in the Thriller Award-nominated Huntress/FBI series ### About the Author **Alexandra Sokoloff **is the Thriller Award-winning and Bram Stoker, Anthony, and Black Quill Award-nominated author of the supernatural thrillers *The Harrowing,  The Price, The Unseen,  Book of Shadows, The Shifters, *and *The Space Between*, and the new, Thriller Award-nominated Huntress/FBI thriller series*.* The *New York Times Book Review* has called her a "daughter of Mary Shelley," and her books "Some of the most original and freshly unnerving work in the genre." As a screenwriter she has sold original horror and thriller scripts and adapted novels for numerous Hollywood studios. She has also written two non-fiction workbooks: *Screenwriting Tricks for Authors *and *Writing Love*, based on her internationally acclaimed workshops and blog (Screenwriting Tricks for Authors.).
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Fresh Kills

Fresh Kills

Bill Loehfelm

Literature & Fiction / Mystery & Thrillers / Crime

In Fresh Kills, the murder of John Sanders, Sr. on a New York street corner reunites his estranged and abused children, John, Jr. and Julia. While Julia struggles to keep things together on the home front, Junior, unhinged by his father's death, searches for the killer across the bleak, haunted landscape of his Staten Island hometown. Complicating Junior's pursuit are two police detectives: one, a former childhood friend; the other, a veteran cop who might have his own reasons to wish John, Sr. dead. Junior's emotional state crumbles under the pressure coming at him from every side. Bedding his high school sweetheart doesn't exactly simplify the situation. When the opportunity for revenge presents itself, Junior must decide whether he will continue the chain of violence that has nearly destroyed his life, or give in to the possibility of a new beginning. With emotional intensity, crackling dialogue and a heartfelt sense of place and character, Fresh Kills delivers unexpected and profound insights that speak to the soul of its struggling hero, and heralds a breakthrough voice in fiction.
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Husk

Husk

Dave Zeltserman

Mystery & Thrillers / Horror / Crime

Classic contemporary horror from the Shamus and Derringer-winning author of Small Crimes. Charlie is a Husker on the prowl in the New Hampshire wilderness when he falls in love with one of them: a girl named Jill. Loving Jill means leaving the Husk clan, with its gruesome cannibalistic rituals, and that will be far more difficult – and dangerous – than Charlie could have foreseen. It's only in New York City that the secret to ending his terrible cravings may reveal itself – if it doesn't kill him and everything he has grown to love first. A darkly imagined tale, all the more frightening for its apparent ordinariness and plausibility, Husk is guaranteed to leave readers shaken, stirred – and chilled to the bone.
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