Мэри Уиллис Уокер5.0 For forty-six days, bus driver Walter Demming and eleven schoolchildren have been buried underground, held captive in the fortified compound of a fundamentalist cult. Deprived of daylight, fresh air and contact with the outside world, they endure the terrifying rants of the cult's leader, the charismatic Samuel Mordecai. He joyfully predicts the arrival of Armageddon - in exactly five days' time.
All attempts at negotiations have failed. Enter tenacious crime reporter Molly Cates, the only journalist ever to have interviewed Mordecai. It was the worst assignment of her life - until this one. She has gained his trust before, and she must try again. But this time the stakes are impossibly high. And she has just five days...
Майкл Коннелли4.3 Гарри Босх раскрыл немало дел.
Но теперь ему предстоит расследовать, возможно, самое важное – дело об убийстве его собственной матери, совершенном тридцать лет назад.
Кто же убил дорогостоящую «девушку по вызову»?
Сутенер, которому она сообщила, что бросает «древнейшую» профессию? Окружной прокурор Лос-Анджелеса, который был ее любовником? Или помощник прокурора, действовавший по поручению шефа?
Почему это преступление так и осталось нераскрытым?
Гарри Босх собирается узнать темные тайны далекого прошлого – и это может стоить ему жизни...
Сьюзен Тейлор Чехак0.0 This compelling novel, set once again in the heartland of America, pairs two unlikely friends in a dark tale of seduction and murder. It is May Caldwell's sixteenth summer, and life couldn't be more dull in Linwood, Iowa. Vaguely suicidal and haunted by half-remembered scenes from her early childhood, May is a girl waiting for her life to happen. And happen it does with the unexpected arrival of Frances Anne Crane, a.k.a. Frankie, a girl with too much past and nothing to lose. Together they seduce an older man as Frankie awakens all that May has been holding inside: the mystery of her uncle Brodie's illicit past, the painful truth of her grandparents' slow dissolutions, and her own emerging sexuality. Where Frankie leads, May follows, and what's left is a murder no one can pin, a family's buried past resurfaced in a wild night of mayhem, and May's safe world blown to smithereens in this unforgettable tale of betrayal and desire.
"SMITHEREENS is lyrical, eerie and mysterious. Stephen King’s works are in the same genre, yet while King’s evil characters are in your face, Chehak’s leave you feeling as if a ghost might have run a finger down your back." —West Coast Review of Books
"Vivid [and] intense. . . SMITHEREENS has brooding, ominous atmosphere, sexual awakening, loss of innocence, murder. It could be described as a gothic coming-of-age novel, but it's far too good to lend itself to any label. Susan Taylor Chehak is a meticulous writer, an evocative stylist whose mastery is evident on every page." —Boston Globe
"Chehak is a very accomplished storyteller, always in control of her narrative, which moves ahead with grace and speed. But it's not only the plot that matters to this writer. It's the telling little details, particularly of teenage angst and of domestic life that makes the novel rich. . . SMITHEREENS is a novel fully worthy of the title thriller. It's hard to put down. It has a kind of dark allure." —The Los Angeles Times
"[A] lyrically told story. . . The narrative surges back and forth like a nighttime tide via flashback, present events and foreshadowing, pulling the reader irresistibly along. That some teens yearn for both death and life is common knowledge; here, Chehak offers a compelling and revealing take on that disturbing truth." —Publisher's Weekly
"What is best about SMITHEREENS is its intimate view of the volatile psychosexual bond that can exist between teenage girls, an intimacy often more dangerous than whatever sex they find. The novel is driven by frustrated lust and its familiar adolescent surrogates: shoplifting and voyeurism, drinking and smoking. . . SMITHEREENS fits into a genre you might call 'bildungsroman noir,' whose logic is hormonal and whose brutal dramas unfold at night, in overheated confusion. . ."
—The New York Times Book Review
"Dark, disturbing and compelling, this is an astonishing read that shouldn't be missed."
—Company (England)
Andrew Klavan0.0 True Crime is an edge-of-the-seat suspense novel that graphically portrays the final moments leading up to a condemned killer's appointment with the executioner. The plot is familiar but convincing: An inmate, Frank Beachum, denies any involvement in the murder of a young pregnant woman. His only chance for survival lies in the hands of a reporter, Steven Everett. From the very first page, however, veteran suspense writer Andrew Klavan does everything possible to make this journalist unlikable--he drinks too much, he's committed adultery. In fact, the incarcerated Beachum, who stands accused of a hideous crime, comes across as a much more decent person than Everett.
Foes of capital punishment will find in True Crime another buttress to the oft-expressed argument that state-sanctioned murder is not always just, that some police investigations are sloppy even when they're not politically tinged or racially motivated, and that exonerating evidence is often overlooked. Here such evidence is so glaringly overlooked that it's possible for a somewhat drunken reporter with plenty of other things on his mind (a wife who's about to leave him and a boss who's just discovered that Everett is cuckolding him) to spot the inconsistencies. He follows a hunch, discovers the identity of the real killer, and tries to clear Beachum's name as the minutes tick away. The relentless pace and Klavan's crisp, taut writing make the suspension of disbelief possible, and no doubt Clint Eastwood, who stars in the movie version, will make Steven Everett a more likely and likable hero. --Jane Adams
