Here are some books that have recently hit my radar and set off my alarm bells...
Before the Fall by Noah Hawley
From the Emmy, PEN, Peabody, Critics' Choice, and Golden Globe Award-winning creator of the TV show Fargo comes the thriller of the year.
On
a foggy summer night, eleven people-ten privileged, one
down-on-his-luck painter-depart Martha's Vineyard on a private jet
headed for New York. Sixteen minutes later, the unthinkable happens: the
plane plunges into the ocean. The only survivors are Scott
Burroughs-the painter-and a four-year-old boy, who is now the last
remaining member of an immensely wealthy and powerful media mogul's
family.
With chapters weaving between the aftermath of the crash
and the backstories of the passengers and crew members-including a Wall
Street titan and his wife, a Texan-born party boy just in from London, a
young woman questioning her path in life, and a career pilot-the
mystery surrounding the tragedy heightens. As the passengers' intrigues
unravel, odd coincidences point to a conspiracy. Was it merely by dumb
chance that so many influential people perished? Or was something far
more sinister at work? Events soon threaten to spiral out of control in
an escalating storm of media outrage and accusations. And while Scott
struggles to cope with fame that borders on notoriety, the authorities
scramble to salvage the truth from the wreckage.
Amid
pulse-quickening suspense, the fragile relationship between Scott and
the young boy glows at the heart of this stunning novel, raising
questions of fate, human nature, and the inextricable ties that bind us
together.
The Veins of the Ocean by Patricia Engel
Reina Castillo is the
alluring young woman whose beloved brother is serving a death sentence
for a crime that shocked the community, throwing a baby off a bridge—a
crime for which Reina secretly blames herself. With her brother's death,
though devastated and in mourning, Reina is finally released from her
prison vigil. Seeking anonymity, she moves to a sleepy town in the
Florida Keys where she meets Nesto Cadena, a recently exiled Cuban
awaiting with hope the arrival of the children he left behind in Havana.
Through Nesto’s love of the sea and capacity for faith, Reina comes to
understand her own connections to the life-giving and destructive forces
of the ocean that surrounds her as well as its role in her family's
troubled history, and in their companionship, begins to find freedom
from the burden of guilt she carries for her brother’s crime.
Set in the vibrant coastal and Caribbean communities of Miami, the Florida Keys, Havana, Cuba, and Cartagena, Colombia, with The Veins of the Ocean
Patricia Engel delivers a profound and riveting Pan-American story of
fractured lives finding solace and redemption in the beauty and power of
the natural world, and in one another.
The Fireman by Joe Hill
From the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of NOS4A2 and Heart-Shaped Box
comes a chilling novel about a worldwide pandemic of spontaneous
combustion that threatens to reduce civilization to ashes and a band of
improbable heroes who battle to save it, led by one powerful and
enigmatic man known as the Fireman.
The fireman is coming. Stay cool.
No
one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying
new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking
cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco
Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it’s Dragonscale, a highly
contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and
gold marks across their bodies—before causing them to burst into flames.
Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote.
No one is safe.
Harper Grayson, a compassionate, dedicated nurse
as pragmatic as Mary Poppins, treated hundreds of infected patients
before her hospital burned to the ground. Now she’s discovered the
telltale gold-flecked marks on her skin. When the outbreak first began,
she and her husband, Jakob, had made a pact: they would take matters
into their own hands if they became infected. To Jakob’s dismay, Harper
wants to live—at least until the fetus she is carrying comes to term. At
the hospital, she witnessed infected mothers give birth to healthy
babies and believes hers will be fine too. . . if she can live long
enough to deliver the child.
Convinced that his do-gooding wife
has made him sick, Jakob becomes unhinged, and eventually abandons her
as their placid New England community collapses in terror. The chaos
gives rise to ruthless Cremation Squads—armed, self-appointed posses
roaming the streets and woods to exterminate those who they believe
carry the spore. But Harper isn’t as alone as she fears: a mysterious
and compelling stranger she briefly met at the hospital, a man in a
dirty yellow fire fighter’s jacket, carrying a hooked iron bar,
straddles the abyss between insanity and death. Known as The Fireman, he
strolls the ruins of New Hampshire, a madman afflicted with Dragonscale
who has learned to control the fire within himself, using it as a
shield to protect the hunted . . . and as a weapon to avenge the
wronged.
In the desperate season to come, as the world burns out
of control, Harper must learn the Fireman’s secrets before her life—and
that of her unborn child—goes up in smoke.
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