thriller

Jawbone

Finalist for the 2022 National Book Award in Translated Literature, Longlisted for the PEN Translation Prize & Ms. Magazine “Favorite Books of 2022”

Fernanda and Annelise are so close they are practically sisters: a double image, inseparable. So how does Fernanda end up bound on the floor of a deserted cabin, held hostage by one of her teachers and estranged from Annelise?

When Fernanda, Annelise, and their friends from the Delta Bilingual Academy convene after school, Annelise leads them in thrilling but increasingly dangerous rituals to a rhinestoned, Dior-scented, drag-queen god of her own invention. Even more perilous is the secret Annelise and Fernanda share, rooted in a dare in which violence meets love. Meanwhile, their literature teacher Miss Clara, who is obsessed with imitating her dead mother, struggles to preserve her deteriorating sanity. Each day she edges nearer to a total break with reality.

Interweaving pop culture references and horror concepts drawn from Herman Melville, H. P. Lovecraft, and anonymous “creepypastas,” Jawbone is an ominous, multivocal novel that explores the terror inherent in the pure potentiality of adolescence and the fine line between desire and fear.

“Delectable. . . . There are echoes of Lovecraft and Shirley Jackson at play, but the vision is ultimately Ojeda’s own―delicious in how it seduces and disturbs the reader as the girls rely on horror both as entertainment and as a way of staving off the actual terrors of growing up. This is creepy good fun.” ―Publishers Weekly

“Edgar Allan Poe meets a few of the mean girls. . . . Mother-daughter relationships slide under Ojeda’s microscope, sharing space with the teacher-student dynamic and deities as objects in an exploration of power and sexuality during adolescence. . . . Every good horror story needs a victim; Ojeda’s monsters and victims wear the same faces.” ―Kirkus

“Rife with gothic body horror and the darkness of the jungle and within ourselves. . . . Ojeda is a strikingly singular voice, combining basic teen angst with stark madness and the power of teen girls to push back in a world that tries to make them powerless.” ―The Brooklyn Rail

(A special thank you to book club member, Jordi Valbuena for the suggestion.)

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The Square of Revenge

The beautiful medieval architecture of Bruges belies the dark longings of her residents…

When the wealthy and powerful Ludovic Degroof’s jewelry store is broken into, nothing is stolen, but the jewels have been dissolved in jars ofaqua regia, an acid so strong it can even melt gold. In the empty safe is a scrap of paper on which a strange square has been drawn.

At first, Inspector Van In pays little attention to the paper, focusing on the bizarre nature of the burglary. But when Degroof’s offspring also receive letters with this same square, Van In and the beautiful new DA Hannelore Martens find themselves unraveling a complex web of enigmatic Latin phrase and a baroness’ fallen family and Degroof’s relationship with a hostage grandchild, ransomed for a priceless collection of art.

“A very likeable and very politically incorrect group of detectives. Humor is permanent, the plot well constructed, and the whole story extremely exotic.” —L'Express (France)

“To sell a million copies in only ten years! This never happened in Flanders before.” —Het Laatste Nieuws (Belgium)

“Aspe is and always will be one of our favorite authors. An exciting murder mystery, a pinch of humor, and a generous serving of romance are among the highlights of the series.” —Crimezone Magazine

(Group read suggestion from Julie Jacobs, book club moderator.)

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After Elias

2021 Edmund White Award Finalist

When the airplane piloted by Elias Santos crashes one week before their wedding day, Coen Caraway loses the man he loves and the illusion of happiness he has worked so hard to create. The only thing Elias leaves behind is a recording of his final words, and even Coen is baffled by the cryptic message.

Numb with grief, he takes refuge on the Mexican island that was meant to host their wedding. But as fragments of the past come to the surface in the aftermath of the tragedy, Coen is forced to question everything he thought he knew about Elias and their life together. Beneath his flawed memory lies the truth about Elias—and himself.

From the damp concrete of Vancouver to the spoiled shores of Mexico, After Elias weaves the past with the present to tell a story of doubt, regret, and the fear of losing everything.

”Arresting... [a] deftly crafted novel.” ―Foreword Reviews

“Tan has written an immersive, unpredictable, engaging novel propelled by mystery, softened by tenderness, and enriched with little wisdoms.” ―Patrick Nathan, noted author

”Tan has crafted a page turner from a set of unlikely ingredients—tragedy, grief, pain and the darker shadows of the human mind. But most of all he has written tenderly, resplendently, about love.” —Christopher J. Yates, noted author

”It's rare to find a book that works well as a deeply emotional exploration of grief and as a suspenseful thriller, but After Elias manages this feat.” —Booklist

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A Burning

For readers of Tommy Orange, Yaa Gyasi, and Jhumpa Lahiri, an electrifying debut novel about three unforgettable characters who seek to rise—to the middle class, to political power, to fame in the movies—and find their lives entangled in the wake of a catastrophe in contemporary India.

In this National Book Award Longlist honoree and “gripping thriller with compassionate social commentary” (USA Today), Jivan is a Muslim girl from the slums, determined to move up in life, who is accused of executing a terrorist attack on a train because of a careless comment on Facebook. PT Sir is an opportunistic gym teacher who hitches his aspirations to a right-wing political party, and finds that his own ascent becomes linked to Jivan’s fall. Lovely—an irresistible outcast whose exuberant voice and dreams of glory fill the novel with warmth and hope and humor—has the alibi that can set Jivan free, but it will cost her everything she holds dear.

Taut, symphonic, propulsive, and riveting from its opening lines, A Burning has the force of an epic while being so masterfully compressed it can be read in a single sitting. Majumdar writes with dazzling assurance at a breakneck pace on complex themes that read here as the components of a thriller: class, fate, corruption, justice, and what it feels like to face profound obstacles and yet nurture big dreams in a country spinning toward extremism. An extraordinary debut.

“Powerful… propulsive…This is a book to relish for its details, for the caress of the writer’s gaze against the world.” —The New York Times

“A gripping thriller with compassionate social commentary… It’s hard not to feel intense heartache while reading A Burning. Majumdar’s powerful debut is carefully crafted for maximum impact, carving out the most urgent parts of its characters for the whole world to see. This novel rightfully commands attention.” —USA Today

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Future Home of the Living God

[As a holiday present to the club, we decided to read an indigenous author from the North America region as there has been a great deal of excitement re: these authors.]

After voting, the following novel was chosen, a book written by a member of the Turtle Mountain Band, a tribe of the Anishinaabe (also known as Ojibwe and Chippewa):

Louise Erdrich, the NY Times bestselling, National Book Award-winning author paints a startling portrait

The world as we know it is ending. Evolution has reversed itself affecting every living creature on earth while woman after woman gives birth to infants that appear to be primitive species of humans. 32-year-old Cedar Hawk Songmaker, adopted daughter of a pair of big-hearted, open-minded Minneapolis liberals, is as disturbed and uncertain as the rest of America around her. But for Cedar, this change is profound and deeply personal. She is four months pregnant.

Though she wants to tell her parents, Cedar first feels compelled to find her birth mother, an Ojibwe living on the reservation, to understand her and her baby’s origins. As Cedar goes back to her own biological beginnings, society around her begins to disintegrate, fueled by a swelling panic about the end of humanity.

There are rumors of martial law, of Congress confining pregnant women. Of a registry, and rewards for those who turn these wanted women in. Flickering through the chaos are signs of increasing repression: a shaken Cedar witnesses a family wrenched apart when police violently drag a mother from her husband and child in a parking lot. The streets of her neighborhood have been renamed with Bible verses. A stranger answers the phone when she calls her adoptive parents, who have vanished without a trace. It will take all Cedar has to avoid the prying eyes of informants and keep her baby safe.

Future Home of the Living God is a startlingly original work from one of our most acclaimed writers: a moving meditation on female agency, self-determination, biology, and natural rights that speaks to the troubling changes of our time.

“Masterful…a breakout work of speculative fiction…enters the realm of The Handmaid’s Tale…A suspenseful, profoundly provoking novel of life’s vulnerability and insistence…with a bold theme, searing social critique, and high-adrenaline action.” —Booklist

“Smart and thrilling…Erdrich’s storytelling is seductive.” —Vanity Fair

(A special thank you to book club member, Julie Jacobs for the suggestion.)

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Baby

Cynthia is 21, bored, and desperately waiting for something big to happen. Her striking fitness instructor, Anahera, is ready to throw in the towel on her job and marriage. Emptying Cynthia's father's bank account, they run away and buy “Baby,” an old boat docked in a beautiful bay, where Cynthia dreams they will live in a state of love. But when Gordon the German comes to live on board Baby, two’s company and three’s a crowd, especially when you’re a psychopath living on a tiny boat. Gordon soon becomes a rival for Anahera’s affections, and perhaps even worse than that, he dares to hold a mirror up to Cynthia and her narcissism.

“Cynthia, the simpering, scheming, covetous emotional sinkhole of Jochems’s debut novel, Baby, is alive and squirming; a memorable addition to the growing coteries of unapologetic antiheroines (dis)gracing the pages of contemporary fiction … There are echoes here of Megan Abbott, Emma Cline, Zoë Heller and Miranda July: writers drawn to the intricacies and ferocious possibilities of female friendship. There’s a dollop, too, of Tom Ripley and a dash of Lord of the Flies. What Jochems adds is a cloying grotesqueness. Baby is a novel of close-quarters living: of masticating mouths and human stink; of piss and vomit, sunburn and bruises, pimples and dandruff; of new fat expanding under the skin. A novel of bodies.” —The Guardian

“From page one, Baby is a dryly funny study of a young woman driven to shocking acts by what seems like boredom and lust alone, devoid of any semblance of a conscience … Come to Baby for a full-blown psychopath who makes you laugh out loud despite your horror.” —The Saturday Age

(Group read suggestion from Mia DeGiovine Chaveco, book club co-founder.)

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Trust No One

In this “outstanding psychological thriller” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) by the Edgar-nominated author of Joe Victim, a famous crime writer struggles to differentiate between his own reality and the frightening plot lines he’s created for the page.

Jerry Grey is known to most of the world by his crime writing pseudonym, Henry Cutter—a name that has been keeping readers on the edge of their seats for more than a decade. Recently diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s at the age of forty-nine, Jerry’s crime writing days are coming to an end. His twelve books tell stories of brutal murders committed by bad men, of a world out of balance, of victims finding the darkest forms of justice. As his dementia begins to break down the wall between his life and the lives of the characters he has created, Jerry confesses his worst secret: The stories are real. He knows this because he committed the crimes. Those close to him, including the nurses at the care home where he now lives, insist that it is all in his head, that his memory is being toyed with and manipulated by his unfortunate disease. But if that were true, then why are so many bad things happening? Why are people dying?

Hailed by critics as a “masterful” (Publishers Weekly) writer who consistently offers “ferocious storytelling that makes you think and feel” (The Listener) and whose fiction evokes “Breaking Bad reworked by the Coen Brothers” (Kirkus Reviews), Paul Cleave takes us down a cleverly twisted path to determine the fine line between an author and his characters, between fact and fiction.

Note: This book is also great on audio though the narrator is English, not a Kiwi (aka a New Zealander).

(Group read suggestion from Beth McCrea, book club co-founder.)

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Zoo City

Multi-award winner including the Arthur C. Clarke Award & Publisher's Weekly Best of the Year Sci Fi & Fantasy among others

A unique cyberpunk/urban fantasy mash-up set in an alt Johannesburg where murderers and other criminals have magical animals mystically bonded to them for their crimes.

Zinzi has a Sloth on her back, a dirty 419 scam habit, and a talent for finding lost things. When a little old lady turns up dead and the cops confiscate her last paycheck, Zinzi’s forced to take on her least favorite kind of job—missing persons.

Being hired by reclusive music producer Odi Huron to find a teenybop pop star should be her ticket out of Zoo City, the festering slum where the criminal underclass and their animal companions live in the shadow of hell’s undertow. Instead, it catapults Zinzi deeper into the maw of a city twisted by crime and magic, where she’ll be forced to confront the dark secrets of former lives including her own.

“This book is a must read for lovers of South African fiction and urban fantasy alike. It is edgy and pacey. Like a rollercoaster ride, it sweeps you up, spins you around, turns you upside down and dumps you out on the other end, heady and breathless and yearning for more.” —Exclus1ves

"At times, the witty and lyrical prose is sheer magic, the story captivating and the characters exotic, cruel and beautiful while the backdrop of Johannesburg seethes with hidden, lurking dangers around every corner, Zoo City is quite simply captivating.” —SciFi & Fantasy Books

"Beukes’s future city is as spiky, distinctive and material a place as any cyberpunkopolis, and quit a bit fresher. The narrative is brisk and well turned, but the great achievement here is tonal: atmospheric, smart and memorable work.” —Locus

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Moxyland

Lauren Beukes’s frighteningly persuasive, high-tech fable follows four narrators living in a dystopian near-future.

Kendra, an art-school dropout, brands herself for a nanotech marketing program. Lerato, an ambitious AIDS baby, plots to defect from her corporate employers. Tendeka, a hot-headed activist, is becoming increasingly rabid. Toby, a roguish blogger, discovers that the video games he plays for cash are much more than they seem.

On a collision course that will rewire their lives, these characters crackle with bold and infectious ideas, connecting a ruthless corporate-apartheid government with video games, biotech attack dogs, slippery online identities, a township soccer school, shocking cell phones, addictive branding, and genetically modified art. Taking hedonistic trends in society to their ultimate conclusions, Lauren Beukes spins a tale of a utopia gone wrong, satirically undermining the idea of progress as society’s white knight.

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The Quarry

Damon Galgut established himself as a writer of international caliber with the publication of The Good Doctor, which was sold in sixteen countries and was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and the winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Africa. The Quarry, written ten years ago but never published outside South Africa, is another stark, intense, and crystalline novel in which human nature betrays itself against the desolate backdrop of rural South Africa.

It opens with a chance meeting on a lonely stretch of road, when a man picks up a hitchhiker. The driver is a minister on his way to a new congregation in an isolated village and the passenger, a fugitive from justice. When the minister realizes this, and confronts his passenger overlooking an empty quarry, the response is deadly. As the fugitive and the local police chief play out a tense game of cat and mouse, Damon Galgut gives us a devastating combat for man’s most prized attribute: freedom.

“This taut existential thriller . . . divulges little but manages to suggest volumes. . . . Stark, almost brutal minimalism.” —Boston Globe

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Strong Medicine

Erin du Toit's 9-year old daughter has been kidnapped by Johannesburg's most powerful witchdoctor. Can Erin save her child before she's chopped up for muthi?

Erin’s first instinct is to go to the police, but the South African Police Force is paralyzed by corruption and overwhelmed by hundreds of open cases. Cases just like Erin’s.

Erin delves into the dark underbelly of Johannesburg to find the man who took her daughter. When she realizes that the police are protecting him, she must decide between disobeying a violent police force and giving up on her daughter.

”Strong Medicine is an unsettling and engrossing jaunt through the high streets and back alleys of Johannesburg. Filled with memorably kick-ass women, a poignant take on suspended grief, and a plot that will keep you on your toes, this is the perfect book for late nights and bad dreams.” —Dirge Magazine

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The Hole

Winner of the Shirley Jackson Award. Named One of the Top 10 Thrillers to Read This Summer by Time Magazine. Misery meets The Vegetarian in this psychological thriller about loneliness and the dark truths we try to bury.

In this tense, gripping novel by a star of Korean literature, Oghi has woken from a coma after causing a devastating car accident that took his wife's life and left him paralyzed and badly disfigured. His caretaker is his mother-in-law, a widow grieving the loss of her only child. Oghi is neglected and left alone in his bed. His world shrinks to the room he lies in and his memories of his troubled relationship with his wife, a sensitive, intelligent woman who found all of her life goals thwarted except for one: cultivating the garden in front of their house.

But soon Oghi notices his mother-in-law in the abandoned garden, uprooting what his wife had worked so hard to plant and obsessively digging larger and larger holes. When asked, she answers only that she is finishing what her daughter started.

A bestseller in Korea, The Hole is a superbly crafted and deeply unnerving novel about the horrors of isolation and neglect in all of its banal and brutal forms. As Oghi desperately searches for a way to escape, he discovers the difficult truth about his wife and the toll their life together took on her.

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The Good Son

“Ingeniously twisted.” —Entertainment Weekly, “Must List”

“Will leave even the most seasoned crime fiction readers guessing.” —CrimeReads

“[Jeong] maintains suspense about her inhuman-seeming protagonist’s fate until the bitter end.” —The Wall Street Journal

The Talented Mr. Ripley meets The Bad Seed in this breathless, chilling psychological thriller by the #1 bestselling novelist known as “Korea’s Stephen King” 

Who can you trust if you can’t trust yourself?
 
Early one morning, 26 year-old Yu-jin wakes up to a strange metallic smell, and a phone call from his brother asking if everything’s all right at home—he missed a call from their mother in the middle of the night. Yu-jin soon discovers her murdered body, lying in a pool of blood at the bottom of the stairs of their stylish Seoul duplex. He can’t remember much about the night before; having suffered from seizures for most of his life, Yu-jin often has trouble with his memory. All he has is a faint impression of his mother calling his name. But was she calling for help? Or begging for her life?
 
Thus begins Yu-jin’s frantic three-day search to uncover what happened that night, and to finally learn the truth about himself and his family. A shocking and addictive psychological thriller, The Good Son explores the mysteries of mind and memory, and the twisted relationship between a mother and son, with incredible urgency.

Named a Must-Read Book of the Summer by Elle, Entertainment Weekly, Vulture, Bustle, CrimeReads, Lit Hub, The Millions, Electric Literature, and Brit + Co

(A special thank you to book club member, Sarah Howe for the group read suggestion.)

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Your Republic is Calling You

A foreign film importer, Gi-yeong is a family man with a wife and daughter. An aficionado of Heineken, soccer, and sushi, he is also a North Korean spy who has been living among his enemies for twenty-one years. Suddenly he receives a mysterious email, a directive seemingly from the home office. He has one day to return to headquarters. He hasn’t heard from anyone in over ten years. Why is he being called back now? Is this message really from Pyongyang? Is he returning to receive new orders or to be executed for a lack of diligence? Has someone in the South discovered his secret identity? Is this a trap?

Spanning the course of one day, Your Republic Is Calling You is an emotionally taut, psychologically astute, haunting novel that reveals the depth of one particularly gripping family secret and the way in which we sometimes never really know the people we love. Confronting moral questions on small and large scales, it mines the political and cultural transformations that have transformed South Korea since the 1980s. A lament for the fate of a certain kind of man and a certain kind of manhood, it is ultimately a searing study of the long and insidious effects of dividing a nation in two.

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The Plotters

Named a Best Thriller of the Year by:
The Washington Post
The Telegraph

A fantastical crime novel set in an alternate Seoul where assassination guilds compete for market dominance.

Behind every assassination, there is an anonymous mastermind—a plotter—working in the shadows. Plotters quietly dictate the moves of the city’s most dangerous criminals, but their existence is little more than legend. Just who are the plotters? And more important, what do they want?

Reseng is an assassin. Raised by a cantankerous killer in the crime headquarters “The Library,” Reseng never questioned anything: where to go, who to kill, or why his home was filled with books that no one ever read. But one day, Reseng steps out of line on a job, toppling a set of carefully calibrated plans. And when he uncovers an extraordinary scheme set into motion by an eccentric trio of young women—a convenience store clerk, her wheelchair-bound sister, and a cross-eyed librarian—Reseng will have to decide if he will remain a pawn or finally take control of the plot.

Crackling with action and filled with unforgettable characters, The Plotters is a deeply entertaining thriller that soars with the soul, wit, and lyricism of real literary craft.

(Group read suggestion from Beth McCrea, book club co-founder.)

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Blindness

“This is a shattering work by a literary master.” - Boston Globe

“A stunningly powerful novel of humanity's will to survive against all odds during an epidemic by a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

 A city is hit by an epidemic of ‘white blindness’ which spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and raping women. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides seven strangers—among them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tears—through the barren streets, and the procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing. A magnificent parable of loss and disorientation, Blindness has swept the reading public with its powerful portrayal of our worst appetites and weaknesses—and humanity's ultimately exhilarating spirit.”

“This is a an important book, one that is unafraid to face all of the horror of the century.” - Washington Post

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Fever

“From the international bestseller: an Afrikaner boy and his father navigate post-Apocalyptic South Africa—’reminiscent of The Stand and The Passage’ - Stephen King

"Nico Storm and his father, Willem, drive a truck filled with essential supplies through a desolate land. They are among the few in the world, as far as they know, to have survived a devastating virus that has swept over the planet. In this new reality, Nico realizes that his superb marksmanship and cool head mean he is destined to be his father’s protector, even though he is still only a boy.
 
Willem Storm, though not a fighter, is a wise and compassionate man with a vision for a new community that survivors will rebuild from the ruins. And so Amanzi is founded, drawing Storm’s ‘homeless and tempest-tost’—starting with Melinda Swanevelder, whom they rescue from brutal thugs; Hennie Fly, with his vital Cessna plane; Beryl Fortuin and her ragtag group of orphans; and Domingo, the man with the tattooed hand. Then Sofia Bergman arrives, the most beautiful girl Nico has ever seen, who changes everything.
 
As the community grows, so do the challenges they face—not just from the attacks of biker brigands, but also from within. Looking back later in life, Nico recounts the traumatic events that led to the greatest rupture of all—the murder of the person he loves most.”
 
“Compelling, action-packed and fraught with emotion . . . bears favourable comparison with landmarks of the genre such as Stephen King’s The Stand and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Simply stunning.” - John Coates, Express (UK)
 
“Great stuff.” - Stephen King

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The Keeper of Lost Causes

“Far from being just another morose Nordic crime writer, Adler-Olsen creates a detective whose curiosity is as active as his soul is tortured.” - Library Journal

“Adler-Olsen merges story lines with ingenious aplomb, effortlessly mixing hilarities with horrors. This crime fiction tour de force could only have been devised by an author who can even turn stomach flu into a belly laugh.” - Publishers Weekly

“Darkly humorous, propulsive, and atmospheric, The Keeper of Lost Causes introduces American readers to the mega-bestselling series fast becoming an international sensation.

Carl Mørck used to be one of Denmark’s best homicide detectives. Then a hail of bullets destroyed the lives of two fellow cops, and Carl—who didn’t draw his weapon—blames himself. So a promotion is the last thing he expects. But Department Q is a department of one, and Carl’s got only a stack of cold cases for company. His colleagues snicker, but Carl may have the last laugh, because one file keeps nagging at him: a liberal politician vanished five years earlier and is presumed dead. But she isn’t dead...yet.”

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The Boy in the Suitcase

“Nina Borg, a Red Cross nurse, wife, and mother of two, is a compulsive do-gooder who can't say no when someone asks for help—even when she knows better. When her estranged friend Karin leaves her a key to a public locker in the Copenhagen train station, Nina gets suckered into her most dangerous project yet. Inside the locker is a suitcase, and inside the suitcase is a three-year-old boy: naked and drugged, but alive.

Is the boy a victim of child trafficking? Can he be turned over to authorities, or will they only return him to whoever sold him? When Karin is discovered brutally murdered, Nina realizes that her life and the boy's are in jeopardy, too. In an increasingly desperate trek across Denmark, Nina tries to figure out who the boy is, where he belongs, and who exactly is trying to hunt him down.”

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The Midnight Witness

Voted Denmark's most popular novelist for the fourth time, Sara Blaedel is also a recipient of the Golden Laurel, Denmark's most prestigious literary award.

“Rookie homicide detective Louise Rick makes her debut in this thrilling #1 international bestseller that launched 3-million-copy bestselling writer Sara Blaedel's incredible career.

A young woman is found strangled in a park, and a male journalist has been killed in the backyard of the Royal Hotel in Copenhagen.

Detective Louise Rick is put on the case of the young girl, but very soon becomes entangled in solving the other homicide too when it turns out her best friend, journalist Camilla Lind, knew the murdered man. Louise tries to keep her friend from getting too involved, but Camilla's never been one to miss out on an interesting story. And this time, Camilla may have gone too far.

Emotionally riveting and filled with unexpected twists, The Midnight Witness is a tour-de-force from international phenomenon Sara Blaedel.”

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