Thriller

Chiamaka and Devon, two Black students at a prestigious high school, couldn't be more different from each other. Devon's goal is to keep his head down until he can get into Juilliard; Chiamaka, to claw her way up the social ladder and graduate as homecoming queen. That makes it all the more mysterious when they're targeted by an anonymous saboteur named Aces. Aces's meddling starts with rumors spread throughout the halls, but escalates into a dangerous game that could ruin the students' futures forever.

When you set a book in place named Charon County, you’d better be prepared to go to some dark places. S. A. Cosby’s latest thriller, All the Sinners Bleed, does not disappoint in that respect. Mixing strong characterizations and engrossing action with stories rooted in America’s racial reckoning, Cosby again proves why he’s become a must-read among crime readers.

I felt like shrieking more than a few times while reading The Teacher. Here's the deal: there's a student at Caseham High who was involved with a teacher last year in a way that drew suspicion from parents, other teachers, and administrators at the school. Nobody seems to know what happened, but the teacher resigned in disgrace and the student, Addie, earned a reputation for being troubled. It's not clear if Addie is truly troubled or if she's a victim of circumstance. What is clear is that she's a school pariah and being bullied by mean girls.

Jane's world changes the instant she meets Thalia. Both young women are waiting in line for a bus that will take them to their prestigious Oxford Creative Writing program and for Jane, the experience is heady and intoxicating. Thalia is beautiful and confident. She's smart and talented. She's wealthy and knows how to act. She has everything going for her and is beloved by all. Jane is plain and socially awkward. She's barely scraping by financially and in all aspects of her life.

Mackenzie is living and working mostly uneventfully in Toronto, Canada, until one morning, she awakes from a nightmare and notices something clutched in her hand. It’s the decapitated head of a crow, and besides being horrified by it, Mackenzie has no idea how it got there… except that she remembers it from her dream.

How did the crow's head make it from her nightmare into her waking life?

On a Saturday night in 1978, a man enters a Florida sorority house and systematically attacks women from room to room, leaving them for dead. He flees the sorority down the main staircase and out the front door as the sorority president Pamela Schumacher stands in the shadows, frozen in fear. She sees the killer's face and haunted by that night and the aftermath of the attack, she's determined to find justice. She's obsessed with finding the killer and eventually earns a law degree with the intention of facing him in court one day.

Alam starts his novel on the most ordinary of notes. Amanda and Clay and their two kids, Archie and Rose, are headed to a rural area of Long Island for a summer vacation. They've rented a house, a very nice one, on an isolated country road and plan on limited contact with the world. For the next few days they swim in the pool, hit the small local grocery store and make a trip to the beach. Nothing too exciting, but that's the goal. Late on the third night that goal is upended when there's a knock on the door.

Nicole Oruwari is living in Lagos with her handsome Nigerian-born husband and his wealthy family when she goes missing. Her auntie Claudine flies from the UK to Nigeria to find out more about what's happened to her niece and uncovers a tangled web of wealth and privilege that leaves readers riveted and surprised. At the heart of the mystery are the "nigerwives," a group of foreign-born women married to Nigerian men who regularly meet and look out for each other.  

I flew for the first time since the pandemic last week and I'd forgotten how much reading I can get done when I'm trapped in my seat on a crowded plane. Almost one book on the way out and another on the way home. In the first of them, a blurb describes The Housekeepers as a cross between Downton Abbey and Ocean's 8 - a description that appealed to me on all fronts. 

In his debut novel Nick Medina blends mystery, suspense and a touch of supernatural horror in a story that focuses on the disappearance of indigenous women. At the heart of the story is Anna Horn who is finishing high school and trying to figure out her place on the rez and in her tribe. While grappling with her own struggles, and feeling haunted by a entity of ancient myth, Anna is forced to reckon with a larger battle. Women on the reservation are going missing and no one seems to care. It becomes personal, and more immediate, when two women in Anna's life are lost.